Cold Hard Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 2) (27 page)

He took one step toward me and stumbled, his eyes defocusing, and suddenly I knew what Steele had done.

The werewolf stumbled to his knees, his head wobbling dangerously from side to side. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, I rounded on him and delivered another vicious blow with Daisy. This time, my gal pal peppered her magic fairy dust over the victim. He slumped and fell onto the floor with a thud.

Moments after he hit the hardwood, his body began to revert to human form, but at a far cry from the rate at which he’d initially turned, like air slowly being let out of an oversized werewolf balloon.

I wiped a drop of sweat from my brow as I stood over the shrinking figure. Quinto sat on the floor panting and holding his arm, which featured a few red gouges that glistened and stained the sleeve of his coat. Steele rose to her feet and offered Quinto a hand.

“Here, let me help,” said Rodgers, approaching from near the door. “He’d pull you over if you tried that.”

As Rodgers helped his partner up, I turned to mine. “Nice work. Where’d you find the ether?”

Shay pointed to a corner of the room where a laboratory supply crate filled with syringes, glass bottles, and a large metal flask of some sort sat. I also noticed a dark, hooded cloak draped over the right side of the bed’s headboard.

“I had it in the back of my mind we might find the chemicals here,” she said. “When things turned south with Milton, I sprang into action.”

“So basically as soon as we set foot in the door, then,” I said.

“Pretty much,” said Steele.

“You ok, Quinto?” I asked.

“I got gashed pretty good,” he said, looking at his arm. “Might even need some stitches, but it’s nothing I won’t heal from. You?”

“I’ll have some sore ribs tomorrow, but I didn’t break anything,” I said. “Now come help me secure this guy. I don’t think ropes will help any, though chains might work. I say we wrap his face in ether-soaked rags and high-step it back to the precinct.”

As Rodgers and Quinto gathered the materials, I stopped my partner with a hand to her shoulder. “Hey, Steele?”

“Yes?” she said.

“Thanks. You saved our lives. I’m not kidding. We owe you. All of us.”

Rodgers and Quinto nodded in agreement.

“Yes. Thank you,” said Quinto.

A shy smile crept across her face. “Well, you’re welcome. Anytime. Although, let’s try not to make this a regular occurrence. I’m not sure how many creative ways I can come up with to take down vicious, furry werebeasts.”

“Let’s just hope we don’t need another method this evening,” I said.

It was a sobering thought. We doubled up on the ether.

47

“You know, I have to admit,” said Shay. “That went far better than I expected.”

“I know, right?” I said. “There’s so many points at which it all could’ve blown up in our faces, not least of which during the walk back here. I was afraid we’d run out of goofy juice.”

“I meant I was surprised he ended up being willing to talk,” said Steele.

“Oh, right,” I said. “That worked out nicely, too.”

We walked from the holding cells toward our work stations on the main floor, having successfully imprisoned and interrogated Milton and survived the ordeal with nary a scratch between us.

“Can I tell you something, though?” said Steele.

“Of course,” I said.

“When he first woke up and charged us as he transformed, I was afraid the cage might not hold.”

“Really?” I said. “That enclosure we put him in was built for trolls. There’s no way he’d break out.”

“I knew that,” said Steele. “At least the logical side of me did. Trust me, I know how strong tempered steel can be. But still, watching a seven-foot werewolf with teeth and claws like razors charge you with only a few metal bars between you and him?”

I nodded. “Logic goes right out the window when you’re scared. The mind’s funny like that.”

“You
didn’t seem frightened,” she said.

I smirked. “I’ve been doing this for a long time.”

“So you eventually learned not to be afraid?”

“Nope,” I said. “I learned not to show it. On the inside, I’m still terrified. But I put on a brave face.”

We found Rodgers and Quinto packing up their things as we reached our desks, the latter of which had a thick, white bandage wrapped around his forearm.

“Hey, you guys are still here,” I said.

“Quinto just finished with the medic,” said Rodgers, “and I debriefed the Captain while you guys got Milton situated. You manage to get anything other than growls and spittle out of the kid?”

“Surprisingly, yes,” I said. “Once he vented a little of his latent anger on the troll cage, he reverted back to human form and settled down. Eventually he sung like a canary. I think he was almost relieved to get some of it off his chest, though Shay helped. She has a knack for drawing narratives out of young, male suspects.”

My partner gave a miniature curtsey.

Rodgers and Quinto shared an eyebrow raise.

“Well,” said the big guy as he threw on his coat, “we were going to wait until tomorrow morning to pester you about it, but since you’re already back, why don’t you fill in the missing details for us.”

“It’s more or less what we expected,” I said. “Zeb, as I surmised, is
not
a werewolf, but he does love them to an unhealthy degree. He spent years trying to become one, experimenting with werewolf blood, injecting himself with serums, even begging werewolves to bite him in the name of science. According to Milton, the weirdo even raked himself with the teeth from a dead werewolf once, hoping it might have the desired effect a bite from a live werewolf didn’t.”

Rodgers grinned at me. “If anything, wouldn’t that have turned him into a
zombie
werewolf?”

“Don’t start with me,” I said. “Anyway, Zeb’s studies led him to the conclusion that werewolfism, or lycanthropy, or whatever you want to call it, isn’t purely a transmitted disease, otherwise he would’ve been able to infect himself with it. But neither is it a purely genetic condition. His history texts made that clear. But there had to be some connection, some factor that made Zeb—and the majority of the population at-large—immune to its ravages. So Zeb came to the conclusion that werewolfism
is
a disease, but only a small subset of people have the genetic predisposition to catch it. And this is where the story gets really weird.”

“You guys remember when Daggers asked Zeb about his estranged wife and he skirted the issue?” said Shay.

Quinto and Rodgers nodded.

“Well,” she said, “it turns out Zeb found a woman who possessed several ancestors who’d become werewolves,” said Shay. “Zeb befriended her, made her fall in love with him, impregnated her, and when she gave birth to their child, he kidnapped him—their son, Milton.”

Quinto blinked. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope,” said Shay. “If Zeb couldn’t give himself lycanthropy, he figured he’d try to pass that greatest of gifts onto another, someone close to him, his own flesh and blood. There was only one problem. Well, two really. The first was Milton’s predisposition to the disease wasn’t as great as Zeb had hoped. It took years of testing and experimentation before the disease took hold of his son. And second? Well…the second problem is that Milton doesn’t currently have, nor has he ever had, any interest whatsoever in being a werewolf.”

“The kid hates his old man with a
passion,”
I said. “Hates that he kidnapped him and stole him from his mother. Hates that he locked him up in a cage and performed medical tests and experiments on him for the greater part of his childhood. And most importantly, he hates that he turned him into a werewolf. A ‘freak of nature’ were the specific words Milton used.”

“Wait,” said Rodgers. “If Milton’s a werewolf and his dad isn’t, and if he resents and hates his old man so much, why didn’t he tear the old guy to shreds and be done with it?”

“Well, that part’s complicated,” I said. “We might need to talk to a clinical psychologist before we can fully unravel it, but from my understanding, there’s a specific psychological affliction that affects kidnapping victims who’ve been forced to live with their captors for long periods of time. Something-or-other syndrome—I forget the name. It makes them relate to their captors and minimize the pain they’ve been put through. And there’s more to it. Though Zeb kidnapped Milton, he’s his biological father and the only family the kid’s ever known. Think most father-son relationships are love-hate affairs? This is like that to a power of ten.”

“Well, that makes sense,” said Quinto, scratching his chin. “But it doesn’t explain why he killed those other werewolves.”

“There’s more to the story, of course,” said Steele with a smile. “Keep in mind Milton hates, and I mean absolutely
despises
, werewolves—and that’s not a hypocritical statement. He hates himself, too. The poor kid really is a piece of work, but that’s neither here nor there. The important thing is, unlike his father, Milton’s singular purpose in life has been to figure out a way to cure himself of his disease.”

“Remember how Zeb mentioned Milton just started to attend college this year, and he’s working on a degree in biology?” I said. “Well, his interest in biology and immunology goes way back, and he’s been doing small tests regarding the nature of werewolfism in the privacy of his own home for years. But it was only recently, when he got a job at the university’s biology laboratory, that he finally had access to more modern equipment to help him in his studies. He was able to create cultures of his own blood and develop a serum he hoped might cure him of his disease. It’s also, incidentally, where he obtained the ether he used to dose Octavio and the refrigerated gas he put in the murder weapons.”

“Milton recently finished perfecting the serum he thought might cure him,” said Shay. “But he was afraid to use it. Given that lycanthropy only takes hold in the host if they have a weakness to the disease in the first place, he worried the cure, if it worked, might cause irreparable damage to him. So Milton decided he’d try it out on others first.”

“The others being the writing group,” I said. “According to Milton, most of them did, in fact, think his dad was a crackpot. But they thought Milton was ok. They knew he wanted to find a cure for lycanthropy, and they supported him in the endeavor. None of the others particularly liked being werewolves, either. Milton just conveniently failed to mention to any of them he was a werewolf, too—or that he was a sociopathic werewolf hater and soon-to-be murderer.”

Shay nodded. “Milton’s first try was with Terrence. He convinced him to stay home the night of the full moon, and after he’d transformed, Milton injected him with the serum. Unfortunately, it didn’t have the desired effect. Rather than curing him of the disease, it made him even more virile and wolflike. Terrence wasn’t pleased. According to Milton, Terrence attacked him in a rage—and was quite surprised when Milton transformed in return. The two tussled and Milton eventually killed him with a cold dagger.”

“Now, remember Milton detests werewolves,” I said. “If the serum hadn’t worked, Milton had planned to kill Terrence anyway as a ‘service to the world.’ But Terrence forced his hand.”

“As a result, Milton thought he’d taken a wrong turn with his serum,” said Shay. “Instead of working to deactivate the body’s ‘lycanthropic detectors,’ perhaps it worked to activate them instead. So the following night, he donned his spooky mystery cloak and paid a visit to Octavio. He knocked him out with ether as a means to keep him quiet, then injected him with the serum to see if it would cause him to transform into a werewolf despite the moon not being full. He watched him all night, but nothing happened, so Milton murdered him and went back to the drawing board.”

“Milton believes autonomous and cyclical lycanthropy is the same disease but with a different genetic component,” I said. “He thought his serum would work on any kind of werewolf, but he started to doubt himself after failing to cure either Terry or Octavio. So next he went after Cynthia, except he tried a new trick. He refrigerated his serum, thinking that if werewolves are naturally susceptible to cold, a refrigerated serum would be more effective at eliminating the disease than a room temperature version. That’s why Cairny found frostbite burns near the injection site on Cynthia’s arm.

“Unfortunately, the temperature of the serum made no difference, and he found himself in quite the battle for his life against the ghostwriter. Ultimately, Milton won and managed to spear Cynthia in the heart, just like the others.”

“And that’s all there is to it,” said Steele, “though Milton’s pretty bent out of shape about the fact that his serum failed. He’d poured his life, young as it is, into it. Honestly, if you want to experience what years of physical and emotional abuse can do to a person, go chat with him. Now that he knows his serum doesn’t work, he pled with us to kill him. Thinks it’d be better for everyone. Although he didn’t fail to mention that we should kill Eustace, too, since he didn’t have a chance to do it himself.”

Rodgers shook his head. “That’s messed up. I almost wish I hadn’t asked what you’d learned.”

“That’s a lie and you know it,” I said. “You barely would’ve slept if you’d left before getting closure. Alison probably would’ve kicked you out of bed in the middle of the night because of your uncontrollable twitching.”

“And how exactly do you know how I behave in bed?” asked Rodgers.

I grunted in response.

“I’m just pulling your leg, Daggers,” said Rodgers. “You’re right, but with that said, I’d better get going. I’m late, and Alison’s going to be steamed. See you guys tomorrow.”

We waved him goodbye.

Quinto shrugged. “Well, I’m going to head out. I’m running late, too.”

“You? Running late?” I said. “For what? You never do anything but work and eat.”

Quinto adopted the shifty eyes he’d sprung on me earlier. “What? No, that’s not what I meant. It’s just an expression. I mean, it’s late, and—”

“Relax,” I said. “Go enjoy your date.”

Quinto squinted at me, perhaps deciding if it was worth crushing me like a bug and suffering the consequences later.