In the Werewolf's Den (12 page)

Joe was incredulous, at first. None of his informants had brought him any word of a major planned operation by any impaired mob. He assured her that the minefields and electronic security were unbreachable. Arenesol's promise that the Tigers had broken security didn't provide much guidance toward solving the problem.

Still, Joe agreed to reinforce the south-side barriers. Unlike the north, the south lacked the natural barrier of the river and opened up to largely deserted suburbs and semi-rural areas. A strong warder showing would persuade the Tigers to give up their efforts without anyone getting hurt, he promised.

"Any orders for me?” Danielle asked when Joe stopped fuming.

He paused for a moment. “Yeah,” he finally said. “When the distraction finally happens, I want you to make sure there's one extra victim. Carl Harriman is too disruptive. Terminate him. Wait until the breakout attempt and don't make it obvious. After all, he is a federal cause."

"You sure we'll be okay if he doesn't finish the research?"

"You've done a good job getting the information out, Danielle,” Joe assured her. “Let me do my job protecting you from the Feds."

"But—"

"You've got your orders, Warder Goodman. Carry them out."

Danielle signed off and powered down her cell.

She'd expected the order and thought she'd been mentally prepared for it. If Joe had told her to terminate Carl immediately, it would have been difficult enough. But how could she work with him, surround herself with his charisma and pure sex appeal, and then gun him down in cold blood?

She made herself call up the mental image of her mother, bleeding in her stepfather's arms. It had sustained her through the Warder Academy when so many of her peers had bailed. The impaired really were evil. And Carl was just one of them.

Carl was a dead man, or rather, a dead
were
. The only questions left were where, when, and how.

"This isn't a good idea.” Danielle had gotten a sore throat explaining her opinion to Carl. And he'd ignored everything she'd said about his so-called Olympiad. It didn't take four years in the Warder Academy to recognize it as a key part of the diversion Carl had promised Arenesol.

"I've got money. Why not spend it?"

"An athletic contest between normals and impaired? I mean, come on. You know it's going to cause problems."

Carl shook his head. “Humans have used athletic contests to bring people together peacefully for thousands of years. No reason why this should be different."

There were plenty of reasons why this would be different and Carl knew it as well as she did.

"It's going to be a joke, you know. At a million dollars prize money per event, the normals are going to send their best. All you have is a bunch of hungry impaired who haven't trained in years, if ever. It'll be a slaughter."

Her word choice was unfortunate. If she didn't persuade Carl to back off, she'd have to slaughter him. But that wasn't her only reason for objecting. Whatever distraction Carl was planning would result in impaired deaths. Maybe even normal deaths. Carl had, arguably, asked for it with his treason against the state. The others were innocent.

The weeks she'd spent living among the impaired had been eye opening for Danielle. It was harder and harder for her to summon her anger, to see all of the impaired as brutal killers. Many, maybe even most, seemed to be ordinary people trying to get on with their lives.

Sure they were different. The pointed ears, long teeth, and annoying habits of transforming into a wolf at inappropriate moments continued to unsettle her. Still, familiarity had, at least, made her think of them as people worth saving. The less slaughter she could ensure while protecting her own kind, the better.

Carl shook his head. “We impaired will just have to do the best we can, then. At any rate, it's too late to back out now."

Danielle hated it when people patronized her. She reminded herself that Carl wasn't really talking down to her, he was covering up. Covering up his real plans to betray humanity. It was odd that she would rather think of Carl as betraying his former species than belittling her, but then again, this business had been odd from the moment she'd come back to Dallas.

She sighed. “All right, you won't cancel the games. There's still no way I can get you permission to bring dozens of impaired out of the zone to the Cotton Bowl. Even if this were a good idea, which it isn't, it would take months to process the paperwork. And it would still get turned down by headquarters."

Carl's anguished look would have fooled most people. But Danielle wasn't most people. She was a warder. She was also a woman who had made love with this man. She knew him at a level he probably didn't know himself. He'd known this objection was coming—and had been counting on it.

"We don't have the facilities we need here in the zone,” he reminded her. “Everything would be better if we could use the Cotton Bowl.” A token protest if she'd ever heard one.

She was almost tempted to ruin all of his plans and approve the permits. Give him the Cotton Bowl, out of the zone, and he'd have a hard time doing anything for the Tigers.

Except she couldn't. She'd already run Carl's request by Joe, assuring him that they could head off whatever plans Carl was making by granting that special permission. Besides, Carl had probably developed an alternate plan. And, as Joe had forcefully reminded her, thousands of impaired running loose outside the zone was exactly the danger that had led to the creation of the Warders in the first place.

"You didn't ask my advice in creating this crazy plan, Carl. So don't go looking for me to fix it."

He nodded abruptly, defeat radiating from every lying pore of his body. “I guess we'll have to put contingency plans in place."

"If that's what you want to call them.” She didn't see the harm in letting him know that she saw through his posturing.

"I was hoping you would help judge the martial arts contest,” he continued as if she hadn't said anything. “They're a bit more subjective than running or throwing events. And all of my people know that you can be trusted to be fair."

His people
. That word choice rocked her. “No can do. I got orders from the regional office. I'm going to be a contestant."

A hint of a smile played across Carl's face. “Really? I thought you didn't approve of the games."

"The region decided that a Warder should be perfect at fighting the impaired and assigned the job to me.” She didn't need to mention that Joe thought it could be a recruiting plus to have her kicking impaired tail on the tube.

"Great. I always like to see you work."

Carl's whisper of a smile hinted that there was something he wasn't saying here. Well, he wasn't the only one with a hidden agenda. And she'd be damned before she gave him the pleasure of begging for whatever he was holding back.

"What will you do with the money if you win?” he asked.

She hadn't thought of that. A million was more than she'd ever imagined having at one time. Then reality set in. “It would make a big dent in my student loans,” she told him.

Carl frowned. “That's about the most boring thing I've ever heard. Why not trips to Paris or new wardrobes or a car of your own?"

She shrugged. “I see plenty of impaired here in the good old U.S.A., I don't need to fly to foreign countries for more. Besides, I don't want the money because I don't want the games to happen. I'm going to urge you one more time. Call the whole thing off, Carl. It's insane, it's a distraction from your job, and it'll only make things more difficult for those on both sides of the zone barrier."

It might be too late for Carl, but it wasn't too late for the dozens of Tiger children he was sending to their deaths. Unfortunately, Carl ignored even the least subtle of her warnings. Each day that passed was another day closer to when she'd have to terminate Carl. Like a car that had lost its brakes, she was careening toward a conflict she didn't want, but couldn't avoid.

Lesson One in warder school is that, sooner or later, someone you love will turn against you. The trick was to make sure you have no attachment so deep that you can't sever it with a knife or gun.

Right now, she wasn't very happy with Lesson One. Of course she wasn't in love with Carl. All she had to do was think about that wolf on the bed next to her and her skin crawled with horror. Still, she couldn't deny that she admired him, liked him, and, in weak moments, still felt the physical attraction. Now that she'd had time to cool down, she simply didn't want to kill him.

Carl reached out a hand, almost touched her arm, then pulled back. “I know you think this is a mistake, Danielle. Maybe you're right. But I have to do it. Either normals and the magical can find a way to live together or we can't. For me, the games will be an experiment. Even a failed experiment isn't a mistake, it's just an experiment that generated results you weren't expecting."

"But—"

"Trust me, honey. I've made a lot of mistakes. I'll make a lot more before I'm done. None of them has killed me yet."

No, Carl. Not yet
. She couldn't say those words, but she couldn't help thinking them.

Carl stepped onto the field of the old Sunset High School stadium, smiled at the pretty camerawoman from the normal part of town, and held up the lighted ignition device signaling the start of the First All-Sapient Games.

Danielle guessed her own smile was more than a little frayed, but she stood with her fellow normal athletes, waiting for their moment of glory—and big bucks. Amongst the normals, the mood was upbeat. But their competitors looked confident as well. Like they knew something Danielle didn't.

Carl thrust his ignition device deeply into the ceremonial torch, then stepped back as the games torch burst into flame. With loud cheers from the mixed crowd, the games were under way.

The crowd's seating was strictly segregated, of course. The normals had been assigned the western side of the stadium, giving them some protection from the hot Texas sun. The impaired got along with what was left.

Carl strode off the field toward the east side of the stadium. Even as the games’ founder, he wouldn't be welcomed by the normals. Since Danielle's event was the last of the day, she joined him there. He was still her herd and she intended to protect him—until she needed to terminate him.

Carl's All-Sapient Games were nothing compared to the weeklong pageantry of the pre-return Olympics, or even compared to the large track-and-field meets that some old-style normal colleges still held. Between the money he had available and the limited resources from the third-rate television network that had agreed to broadcast, he had limited the contest to ten events. Still, a million dollars per event—essentially all the money he had left—created an atmosphere of excitement and anticipation beyond what Danielle remembered from her childhood.

She thought people would watch the TV show. Carl seemed a bit worried about it, about whether he'd have any money left after the event. She couldn't bring herself to warn him that it didn't matter. Dead men don't spend money.

The first event was the hundred-meter run—popularly known as the event that defined the world's fastest human.

Danielle didn't think the normals would lose any of the events, but she was absolutely certain about this one. Three normals, two of them former record holders and one a college hurdler who had recently signed with the Dallas Cowboys as a wide receiver, had entered. Representing the magical world was a long-legged elf and a
Were
. From Danielle's research, neither of them had run anything for more than a decade. They were hopelessly outclassed.

A well-known television commentator—representing another hundred thousand of Carl's dollars—fired the starting pistol and the runners were off.

Mike the Vampire edged next to Danielle. “Carl asked me to pick the contestants. I think it'll be interesting."

Danielle though he should have picked a troll rather than an elf. Sprints require strength, not grace. “If getting slaughtered is interesting it will be."

"Watch."

For a moment, it looked like Mike had been a genius. The elf reacted fastest to the pistol and was out of the blocks two full steps before the normals reacted to the shot.

A collective gasp went up from the crowd, and then a hubbub of conversation as the normals recovered from their late start and pulled ahead.

The
Were
lagged behind, obviously outclassed as he struggled forward, his legs churning but without the grace of the elf or the power of the normal runners.

Until he shifted.

A black wolf charged down the track rapidly closing the distance to the panicked normals. A murmur went up from the crowd. An ugly murmur from the normal side of the stadium.

Could this be the beginning of Carl's distraction? “Isn't that cheating?” Danielle demanded.

Carl had somehow joined them. “Everybody knew that these games were to pit normals against the magical. Nobody said the magical couldn't use all four feet."

The wolf's final burst brought him even to the pack as they crossed the finish line. From where Danielle sat, it was impossible to determine who had won.

The crowd's murmurs grew louder and uglier as everyone waited for the official results to be posted.

Carl was grinning. A photo finish was exactly the type of result he had been hoping for. By now, phone calls and instant messages would be flashing through the normal world telling non-watchers to tune into the games, that something unique and exciting was happening.

A huge display, rented by Carl for exactly this purpose, displayed the photo finish. The young hurdler, hugely popular in sports-crazy Dallas, had edged out the wolf by a fraction of an inch.

A roar of approval went up from the normal side of the stadium. Their man had won and charges of cheating were quickly forgotten.

"That won't work in the martial arts competition,” Danielle remarked. “Anyone who transforms or uses their teeth will be disqualified."

"Of course, Carl agreed, almost too easily. “We all want to follow the rules."