Wolf Island Page 6

  “You know your problem?” I snap at Shark. “You use too many metaphors. Ants, fish, and rabbits, all in the same breath. That’s an abuse of the language.”

  Shark smiles. “I never was much good at school. Too busy reading about guns.” He steps away, clearing the area between me and Antoine.

  “Why?” I snarl. “Did you breed them to sell to circuses? To test your products on? Just to prove that you could?”

  “We did it to experiment and learn,” Antoine says. “The intake of regular specimens wasn’t sufficient. We needed more. Also, by studying their growth from birth, we were able to find out more about them. We hoped the young might differ physically from their parents, that we could use their genes to develop a cure. There were many reasons, all of them honest and pure.”

  “No,” I tell him. “Nothing about this is honest or pure. It’s warped. If there’s a hell, you’ve won yourself a one-way pass, you and all the rest of your bloody Lambs.”

  Antoine stifles a mocking yawn. I almost go for him again. Meera intervenes before things get out of hand.

  “You didn’t need to show us these pens,” she says. “So I thank you for your open hospitality. It’s hard for us to take in, but you knew we’d have difficulties. I imagine you struggled to adjust to the moral grey areas yourself at first.”

  “Absolutely.” Antoine beams. “We’re not monsters. We do these things to make the world a better place. I wasn’t sure about the breeding program to begin with. I still harbor doubts. But we’ve learned so much, and the promise of learning more is tantalizing. Do we have the right to play God? Maybe not. But are we justified in trying to help people, to do all in our power to repay the faith of those who invest money and hope in our cause? With all my heart, I believe so.”

  Antoine smiles at me, trying to get me back on board. I don’t return the gesture, but I don’t glower at him either. Shark’s right — this isn’t the time to get into an argument. Antoine Horwitzer is our only link to Prae Athim. We have to keep him sweet or he might shut us out completely.

  “Where are they?” I ask, nodding at the empty cages. “You said they vanished. What did you mean?”

  Antoine nods, happy to be moving on to a less sensitive subject. “Prae was head of this unit for twenty-six years. She’s been general director of the Lambs for nineteen of those. She worked on a number of private projects during her time in charge, commandeering staff and funds to conduct various experiments. She had a free reign for the past decade and a half.

  “Under her guidance, the breeding program was accelerated. Bred specimens develop much faster than those that were once human — a newborn becomes an adult in three or four years, with an expected lifespan of ten to twelve years. We’d always bred in small numbers, but Prae increased the birth rate. Some people wondered why, but nobody challenged her. Prae was an exemplary director. We were sure she had good reasons for implementing the changes.

  “A few months ago, she began making startling requests. She wanted to close down the programs and terminate all specimens.”

  “You mean kill all the werewolves?” Shark frowns.

  “Yes. She said a new strain of the disease had developed and spread. We couldn’t tell which were infected. If left to mutate and evolve, the strain might be passed to ordinary humans. She wanted to remove them to a secure area of her choosing, where they’d be safely disposed of.

  “Nobody believed her.” Antoine’s face is grave. “There were too many holes in her story, no facts to support her theory. She argued fiercely, threatened to resign, called in every favor. But we weren’t convinced. We insisted on more time to conduct our own experiments. Prae was allowed to continue in her post, but I was assigned to monitor her and approve her decisions.

  “Just over six weeks ago, Prae Athim disappeared. She left work on a Thursday and nobody has seen her since. That night, operatives acting on her behalf subdued regular staff, tranquilized the specimens, removed them from their cells, and made off with them. We’ve no idea where they went. We’ve devoted all of our resources to tracking them down but so far… nothing.”

  Antoine smiles shakily. “I hoped she’d followed through on her plan to destroy the specimens. That would have been a tragic loss, but at least it would have meant we didn’t have to worry about them. Now it seems my fears — that she had an ulterior motive — have been borne out. If some of them were sent to attack Dervish Grady, we’re dealing with a far greater problem. We have to find the missing specimens as swiftly as possible. The consequences if we don’t are staggering.”

  “I’m not that worried about the werewolves,” Shark sniffs. “They’re secondary to finding Prae Athim. I mean, how many are we talking about? A few dozen?”

  Antoine laughs sharply. “You don’t understand. I told you earlier — Prae Athim has worked in this unit for twenty-six years. But this is just one unit of many. We have bases on every continent and have been running similar programs in each. Prae didn’t just take the specimens from this complex. She took them from everywhere. There’s not one left.”

  Shark’s expression darkens. “How many?” he croaks.

  “I don’t have an exact number to give,” Antoine says. “Some of the projects were under Prae’s personal supervision, and records have been deleted from our system. It’s impossible to be accurate.”

  “Roughly,” Shark growls.

  Antoine gulps, then says quietly, so that we have to strain to hear, “Somewhere between six and seven hundred, give or take a few.” And his smile, this time, is a pale ghost of a grin.

  TIMAS ON THE JOB

  SIX or seven hundred werewolves on the loose, in the hands of a maniac most likely in league with Lord Loss. Nice! Demons rarely have time to kill many people because they can only stay on this world for a few minutes, while the window they crossed through remains open. But hundreds of werewolves, divided into groups of ten or twelve, set free in dozens of cities around the globe…

  If each killed only five people, I make that three and a half thousand fatalities. But it’s more likely they’d kill ten times that number, maybe more.

  We’re in Antoine’s office on the eleventh floor. It used to be Prae Athim’s. It’s a large room, but with twelve of us it’s a tight fit. Nobody’s said anything since we came in. We’ve been looking through photos of the specimens that Antoine gave us, studying the data that he has on file.

  I know from my own brush with lycanthropy that werewolves are strong and fast. I felt like an Olympic athlete when it was my time of turning. But I’m still seriously freaked by what I’m reading. I never knew they were this advanced.

  I shouldn’t let it matter. The Shadow must remain the priority. If it succeeds in uniting the demon masses and breaking through, the world will fall. The damage a pack of escaped werewolves might cause is nothing in comparison.

  But how can I ignore the possibility of tens of thousands of deaths? Beranabus could. He’s half-demon and has spent hundreds of years subduing his human impulses. We’re statistics to him. He’d take the line that a few thousand lives don’t make much difference in the grand scheme of things, that we have to focus on the millions and billions — real numbers.

  I can’t do that. Even if we find out that the attack in Carcery Vale has nothing to do with the demon assault at the hospital, that Prae Athim isn’t working with Lord Loss, I have to try and stop her. I won’t let thousands of people die if I can prevent it. Especially not when the killers are relatives of mine.

  Perhaps crazily, I still think of the werewolves as kin, even those bred in cages. They’re part of the Grady clan. That makes it personal.

  “We have to find them,” I blurt out, without meaning to. All heads in the office bob up and everybody stares at me. I’m sitting by one of the large windows, the city spread out behind me. Any of the people on the streets, eleven floors down, could fall victim to the werewolves if Prae Athim unleashes them.

  “We have to stop this.” I get to my feet, discarding the p
hotos I’d been mutely studying.

  “Maybe there’s nothing to stop,” Meera says unconvincingly. “Maybe Prae was telling the truth about a new disease and took them to dispose of safely. Perhaps the few who were sent to attack Dervish were simply being used to settle an old score, and were then executed along with the rest.”

  “Bull!” Shark snorts. “If she’d wanted to kill them, she’d have slaughtered them in their cages. It would have been a lot simpler than smuggling them out.”

  “Probably,” Meera sighs. “I was just saying maybe…”

  “What will she do with them?” Marian asks.

  “I guess she’ll drop them off in a city somewhere,” Shark replies. “Let them run wild. Maybe collect them at the end and take them on somewhere else.”

  “But why?” Marian frowns. “Why not build bombs, poison a city’s water supply or develop chemical weapons? Hijacking hundreds of werewolves to use as crazed assassins… it’s like something out of a Batman comic!”

  “Crazy people don’t think the way we do,” Meera says glumly. “They have all sorts of warped ideas and plans, and if they gain enough power, they get to inflict their mad schemes on others.”

  “Like Davida Haym in Slawter,” I note.

  “There’s another possibility,” Terry says. “She might have done this for humane reasons. Maybe she suffered a moral crisis. Decided they’d been mistreating these creatures. Took them somewhere isolated, to set them free.”

  “Unlikely,” Antoine says with a cynical smile. “Her people killed seventeen of our staff during the breakouts. Many more were seriously injured. Hardly the work of a good samaritan.”

  “I’ve seen fanatics who think animals are nobler than humans,” Terry says. “They’d happily kill a human to save a dog or cat from abuse.”

  “Prae Athim isn’t an animal rights activist,” Antoine says firmly. “I refuse to entertain the notion that she did this to free the specimens, that she stood waving them off as they returned to the wilds, happy tears in her eyes.”

  “He’s right,” Shark says. “We have to assume this was done with the intent of creating maximum havoc.”

  “So let’s track her down and stop her,” I snarl. “We can’t just sit here and talk about it. We have to… to…” I throw my hands up, frustrated.

  “We all know how you feel,” Meera says sympathetically. “But until she makes a move, there’s nothing we can do. The world’s a big place. You could hide seven hundred werewolves just about anywhere. We can’t —”

  “I could find them,” Timas interrupts. “If I had access to your mainframe,” he adds, smiling at Antoine.

  “I told you — the records have been wiped,” Antoine scowls.

  “It’s virtually impossible to wipe a mainframe completely clean,” Timas says. “That’s one of the reasons I was surprised you still used one. I can perform at the very least a partial restore.”

  “We’ve had experts working on it for the last six weeks,” Antoine says sharply.

  “I’m sure you’ve employed some of the best people in the business,” Timas says earnestly. “But I’m the very best.”

  “Even assuming you could restore it,” Shark rumbles, “how would that help us? She’s unlikely to have outlined her secret plans on a work computer.”

  “You can’t move that many bodies around without leaving a trail,” Timas says. “If I find out more about the creatures, I can use that information to fish for clues on the Web.”

  “What do you mean?” Shark asks.

  “They didn’t take the cages,” Timas notes. “That means they transported them in cages of their own. Once I know what the cages are made from, I can search for companies who specialize in this type of construction and find out if they’ve filled any large orders recently. If they have, I’ll learn where they delivered the cages to.

  “If I can determine how the werewolves were tranquilized, I can track the drugs back to where they were manufactured, then trace them through delivery records.

  “How did they transport the creatures — airplanes, articulated trucks, trains, boats? I’m assuming they moved at least some of them across international borders. There will be a trail of red tape, no matter how surreptitiously they went about it. I’ve followed such trails before and enjoyed a large measure of success.

  “Do you want me to continue explaining or shall I get started?” Timas addresses this question to Antoine Horwitzer.

  Antoine’s torn. “Is he really that good?” he asks Shark.

  “Yes.”

  “If he can do what he says… he will have access to confidential information. He’ll have to sign a privacy clause. We need absolute affirmation that he’d never reveal —”

  “You present the forms, he’ll sign them,” Shark cuts in.

  Antoine struggles with the idea for a couple of seconds, then sighs. “Very well. I’ll log you in and provide you with the relevant security codes.”

  “No need,” Timas says, sliding into Antoine’s plush leather chair. “I can crack them. The exercise will serve as a useful warm-up.”

  “How long will it take?” Shark asks as Timas’s fingers dance across the keyboard.

  “A few days, I imagine,” Timas replies absently. “Quicker if we get a lucky break. Longer if she’s hidden her trail artfully. I’ll need complete privacy. And my equipment from the helicopter.”

  “I’ll have it sent down,” Shark says, and ushers us out.

  “Perhaps I should stay and keep an eye on him,” Antoine says nervously.

  “No chance,” Shark responds firmly, and pushes out the suave chief executive, ignoring his spluttering protests.

  Some of the rooms on the uppermost floor have beds, or couches that pull out into sleeping cots. Members of the higher echelon move around a lot between buildings owned by the Lambs. Given the secretive nature of their business, they often prefer to stay onsite rather than check into hotels.

  I’m sharing a room with Spenser and James. They don’t speak to me much. They know I’m part of Beranabus’s world of magic and demons, but they’ve had little first-hand experience of that. They find it hard to think of me as anything other than an especially large but otherwise unremarkable teenager. I’m not too bothered. I find most of their conversation pretty boring — weapons, planes, helicopters, war, battle tactics. I’m happy to be excluded.

  I spend my spare time experimenting, testing my powers. I don’t know how much I’m capable of doing on this world, in the absence of magical energy. I want to find out what my limits are, so as not to exceed them and leave myself exposed.

  I’m pretty good at moving objects. Size doesn’t seem to matter — I can slide a heavy oak wardrobe across the floor as easily as a telephone. I spend a couple of hours moving things around. I’m pretty beat by the end, and not back to full health until the next morning. It’s reassuring that I can recharge, but worrying that it takes so long once I’ve been drained.

  Other maneuvers are more demanding. I can heighten my senses — to eavesdrop on a conversation, or view a scene from a few miles away — but that takes a lot of effort and quickly eats into my resources. I can’t change shape, but I can make myself partially invisible for a very short time. I can create fire and freeze objects, but again those demand a lot of me. I can shoot off several bolts of magical energy, but I’m good for nothing for hours afterwards.

  There are all sorts of compensating spells that I could make use of if I knew them. But I refused to dabble in magic when I lived with Dervish and I didn’t need spells in the Demonata universe — if a spell was required there, Beranabus took care of it. He wasn’t interested in training Kernel or me, just in using us to bully and kill demons.

  I wish I’d demanded more of Beranabus and Dervish. Mages can do a lot with a few subtle spells. As a magician I could do even more. I get Meera to teach me some simple incantations, but we don’t have time to cover much ground.

  I worry about my uncle constantly. What’s he doing?
Where is he? Time moves differently in the other universe, usually faster or slower than here. Years might have passed for him, or only minutes. Is he alive or dead? I’ve no way of knowing. Beranabus taught me how to open windows, so I could go and find them. But I couldn’t guarantee how long that would take.

  I have to remain here until our mission’s over. I’m the reason the others are involved, the one who vowed to track down Prae Athim and uncover the truth. I can’t cut out early. That would be the selfish act of a child, which I’m not. I’m a Disciple. We see things through to the end. No matter how scared and alone we feel.

  Four days pass. Everyone’s impatient for news, but Timas refuses to provide us with partial updates. On the few occasions that Shark barges into Antoine’s office and demands answers, the reply is always the same. “I’ll summon you promptly when I’ve concluded my investigations.”

  Timas finally reaches that conclusion shortly before dawn on the fifth day. Shark hammers on our door, waking us all, then sticks his head in and shouts, “The office! Now!”

  Five minutes later we’re all huddled around Timas and his computers. We’re bleary-eyed, hair all over the place, typical early morning messes. Except Timas. As far as I know, he’s worked almost nonstop since I last saw him, sleeping only two or three hours a night. But he looks as perky as an actor in a TV commercial.

  “I’ve found them,” he says without any preliminaries. “They’re on an island. It has no official name, but the Lambs nicknamed it Wolf Island. Prae Athim purchased it through a fifth-generation contact several years ago.”

  “What’s a fifth-generation contact?” I ask.

  “A contact of a contact of a contact of a contact of a contact,” Timas intones. “She conducts most of her business that way, making it almost impossible to trace anything back to her personally. Almost,” he repeats with a justifiably smug smile.

  “Where’s the island?” Shark grunts.

  Timas passes him a stapled printout of about twenty pages, then hands copies around to the rest of us. The small sheaf is crammed with all sorts of info about the island, its history, dimensions, wildlife, plant life, natural formations. There are several maps, most of the island, but also of the surrounding waters, noting currents, depth, temperatures, sea life.

  “They’ve built a base,” Timas points out. “Page nine. They constructed it on the island’s largest crag, so they need only face an assault from one direction if the werewolves get out of control. That extra measure wasn’t a necessity — the fortifications are sound, with more than six separate security systems in place, powered by a variety of independent generators. The werewolves might have the run of the island,