In the Werewolf's Den (20 page)

The terrible reality was that no one else had done serious scientific work on the magical. The magical virus had infected a tenth of mankind, but no credible research had been done on the results of the infection.

Fear and panic, rather than science and reason, had formed the basis for virtually every decision made about relationships between the normal and the magical.

Snori peeked his huge head around the doorway. “Thought I heard someone moving in here.” He held up a radio scanner. “I think we'd better get a move on soon."

The troll jerked Carl's mind back to the here and now. “What have you heard?"

"Warder bands are all encrypted, of course. But there is a lot of chatter. More than I've ever heard before. And there's nothing but white noise on the short wave. Like there was a major sunspot outbreak. Only there wasn't."

"Sounds like the warders are jamming. I wonder what that means?"

Snori ran a hand over his bald head. “Well, it could mean that they're going to attack and they don't want any hams to blow the secrecy. I've heard about zones that suddenly just weren't there any more."

Snori wasn't being paranoid; it was a real possibility.

"They have to do something,” Carl admitted. “They'll want to come after me. But I'm not sure they'd want to take out the entire zone. In the first place, killing and disposing of a million or so magics wouldn't be cheap or easy. In the second place, I have to think that even some of the warders would balk. It's not like just encouraging an occasional riot."

Snori shrugged. They didn't have enough information to do more than speculate. And here Carl had thought he was the one who could offer scientific method.

"All right,” Carl decided. “We've got to get away from the zone border and go deep underground."

"What about Danielle?"

There was no way to avoid that question. What about Danielle? He didn't want to leave her. But could he trust her after she'd betrayed him to the warders?

"What do you think?” Not that he could evade ultimate responsibility for choosing. Still, Snori had shown amazing insight already. Carl knew he couldn't be unbiased when it came to Danielle.

Snori grinned. “I think she's a keeper, boss. Just get this warder nonsense out of her head. It isn't as if she's a real normal."

"Huh?” Maybe he'd been wrong about Snori's insights.

"Come on, boss. Wake up and smell the coffee.” Snori put his hands together and cracked his knuckles. The sound sent echoes through the room. “You fought her, didn't you? You saw how quick she moved. Can any normal fight like that?"

"It's the warder training,” Carl explained. “We saw another warder that had the same trick."

Snori slammed a massive fist into his palm. “Warder training.” His voice practically dripped with contempt. “That's such a bull line I need boots just to listen to it. Here I thought you were the scientific type. You know, look at the facts rather than people's made-up explanations."

Carl didn't feel comfortable with where this conversation was heading, but he had no choice but to follow it.

"Martial arts training can bring out exceptional talents,” he reminded the troll.

"Right. That's why you can go into that blur mode, right?” Snori looked around for a place to spit, then thought better of it and swallowed. He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a modest roar. “They're using our own kind against us. The warders are like old-time Janissaries."

Carl had revised his estimation of Snori once already. Now he did so again. “Janissaries like in the medieval Ottoman army?"

"Like the Turks gathered up children from their captive people, raised them, and then used them to keep their own cultures under control. Yeah, just like that."

He looked more closely at the troll. “Who were you before you became a troll, anyway?"

Snori laughed. “I was nobody before I became a troll. Since then, I've been reading. Nobody ever said that a troll can't read, you know. No laws in the zone."

Carl rubbed his eyes. He didn't know if Snori was right, but he couldn't say the troll was wrong either. And if Danielle was magical, that would solve no end of problems. Assuming she didn't kill him when he told her.

One thing was certain, he wouldn't abandon her. If she was magical, the warder leadership would see her as a disposable tool. And, thanks to Carl, the warders might just decide that it was time for them to dispose of her. Of course, if she was magical, that solved another problem. He'd wondered how a magical could have a relationship with a normal. And he wanted a relationship with Danielle. Needed it down to the bone. And last night he'd decided Arenesol was right. Even if he found the cure, he wouldn't take it. His magic enhanced, it didn't impair.

He made his decision. “Wake up Mike and I'll get Danielle. We've got to get out of here."

Snori smiled. “You going to tell her what I said?"

Carl shrugged. Danielle held her secrets tight. She'd never told him why she'd become a warder, but he didn't believe it was out of greed or a lust for power. If he just told her that she was one of the group she hated, she wouldn't believe him and might get violent.

Besides, if Snori was right about the warders, that meant that there might be plenty more magical living amongst the normal. “Not right away. I've got to think about this."

"Don't wait too long, boss. She's not the kind of woman who like it if you know secrets about her and don't tell."

Carl didn't think that kind of woman existed. “Let me worry about that. You worry about getting Mike out of his coffin."

He turned and headed back into the bedroom where he and Danielle had slept.

She was still lying in the bed, her eyes closed, her breath soft and deep.

Her short blonde hair stood out from her head like crabgrass grown wild. One long leg lay across the bed, scraped and bruised from her battles. The thin blanket covered but didn't conceal her. To Carl, she looked perfect.

He bent and kissed her.

Even asleep, a part of Danielle's mind was aware of what happened around her. Warders live too close to the edge of danger to let sleep control them completely. When Carl returned to the room, that part of her knew that she was no longer alone.

Still, her subconscious mind brushed away the warning. This presence wasn't dangerous, it assured her. She could continue to sleep in safety. After what she'd been though, she needed to recuperate, to replace her depleted energy.

Her subconscious's assurance made the surprise more complete. She awakened, panicked, to find something clamped over her mouth.

Danielle's reaction was immediate and forceful. She smashed both fists toward whatever blocked her breath.

A solid thump told her she'd connected. Whatever had covered her mouth vanished.

She inhaled deeply and opened her eyes just in time to see dark hair disappear over the edge of her bed.

"Carl?"

A faint moan was her only answer.

She pushed herself up. She couldn't have slept for more than a couple of hours, but she felt incredibly refreshed. Making love with Carl had filled her with energy and with a sort of bubbling happiness that she didn't even recognize.

That happiness faded when she peered over the bed and saw Carl slumped on the floor.

Carl had been trying to strangle her. Her mind reeled at the realization. Had sex just been his way of softening her up?

Only belatedly did the tingle from her lips reach her conscious mind. A tingle and the faintest touch of moisture. As if she had been—kissed.

"You idiot, Carl,” she growled. “Didn't anyone ever tell you to be careful when you wake up a warder?” She wrapped the scratchy blanket around herself and got down on her knees beside him. “Carl? Carl, wake up.” He was at least breathing, deeply and evenly. She patted his cheek.

"Everything all right in there?” Snori opened the door to Danielle's bedroom without waiting for an answer.

"Uh—"

"He told you, did he? Well, I think maybe you over-reacted just a—"

"Told me what?"

Snori stopped. “Oh. Uh, never mind. So, why did you deck him?"

Danielle opened her mouth to answer, then snapped it shut. Her imagination supplied an assortment of implausible conversation starters that could lead her to slug Carl, but she couldn't think of any she would want to review with the troll. “Let me take care of him and you can get ready somewhere else."

"Carl is my friend. I wouldn't want him to get hurt."

"I'm not going to hurt him.” Danielle knew her exasperation showed through but she couldn't help it.

"Really?"

Really. Joe Smealy had ordered her to terminate Carl and she wasn't going to do it. For the first time in since the start of her warder training, she intended to disobey a direct order.

"Just get out of here."

Snori nodded and headed out, closing the door behind her. Carl chose that moment to groan and open his eyes. “What—"

"Quiet.” She examined Carl's pupils and was relieved to see that neither was dilated.

"Our trainers used to come into the barracks at night,” she explained. “If we didn't awaken and defend ourselves, we washed out. I didn't wash out."

Carl managed a rueful smile. “So I'm lucky I wasn't badly hurt?"

She nodded. “Snori said you had something to tell me. Well, I'm listening."

His eyes evaded hers. A bad sign. Could he have a wife on the side? But that was impossible. His file hadn't mentioned even recent romantic involvement. Unless he'd found someone since they'd been in the zone.

"It's just speculation,” he finally said. “I don't feel right talking about it until I discover the facts."

That sounded more hopeful. He wouldn't need to find the facts about a secret wife.

Danielle shook her head. She might not be a warder any more, but she certainly didn't believe in old-fashioned pre-return-of-magic fairytales. Her fantasies about running away with Carl were just that. Fantasies.

"Whatever. In the meantime, do we have a plan, or are we just going to wing it?"

Carl pulled himself back to his feet, stretched gingerly as if expecting to find new broken bones, and then started tossing clothes to Danielle. “Snori has picked up hints that there is a major warder follow-up to last night's riots. They'll need to do something after the stupid stunt that Arenesol and I pulled off. Capturing me would be a start. So, at the minimum we can expect incursions. But Snori thinks that there may be more. Possibly even liquidating the entire zone."

"We wouldn't do that.” The
we
slipped out even though she'd just told herself that she wasn't a warder anymore.

"There've been reports of zones that just vanished."

"There are always crazy rumors,” Danielle argued. “But that doesn't make them true.” Some of the rumors had been horrible, though. Could she have closed her ears to them simply because she didn't want to hear the truth?

"It doesn't make them lies, either,” Carl reminded her. “We're going to head for the core until we figure out what to do next."

"All right. I guess we'll have to wait and see.” They had been too tired and too badly injured the previous evening to get far from the zone border. Finding the relative safety of the center of the zone could be a first step.

Goose bumps stood on her arms when she realized what she was thinking. She'd never thought of the zone's center as safe before. It was home to the worst of the impaired. Home to the most completely magical, she corrected herself. She had cast herself outside the pale of normal civilization. So much of what she knew, her thoughts, and her basic vocabulary, would be destructive rather than helpful in the new world she was entering.

But her training could be helpful, too. She knew how the warders would operate, what they'd be looking for. “We'll break up and head back toward Zang Boulevard. There's a market near the old Zang curve where we can rendezvous. Mike and Snori can leave first. You and I will follow taking an indirect route."

Carl looked amused. “Are you the boss now?"

"Somebody's got to be. I've had a lot more training in this than you have."

"Sounds like a plan to me,” Mike put in.

Danielle's skin still crawled when she saw the vampire. But she knew this was a conditioned reflex. Mike hadn't done anything to her personally—or was it vampirely? She forced herself to smile at him.

"You doing all right, Mike?” Carl asked.

"Except I owe my life to a troll. The other vampires are never going to let me live this one down."

"Yeah?” Snori demanded. “What about the other trolls? When I tell them I'm blood brothers with a vampire, I'll be a pariah."

"Sounds like you two are back to normal,” Carl said. “Unless anyone has a better plan, let's follow Danielle's. You two head out directly. We'll join you in what, three hours?"

He directed that last question to Danielle, deferring to her tactical expertise.

"Let's say four. We'll want to check out a few things."

Snori and the vampire nodded, then disappeared.

Danielle glared at the tattered remnants of her panties, then at Carl. “If you're going to do that again, make sure I have a spare pair handy."

"Are we going to do that again?” His face broke into a smile that made him look much younger.

"No promises,” she told him. But she promised herself that they would. She was walking away from the life she knew, from the life she'd been raised and trained for. And there had damned well better be some advantages. More sex with Carl sounded like a pretty tremendous advantage. Lots more sex.

"And definitely not now,” she told him when he closed the distance between them and kissed her neck. “Besides, I'm gross and sweaty."

"I like you sweaty."

"Figures. Men are all weird."

"Call me the weird
Were
,” he answered.

It wasn't very funny, but somehow she couldn't help laughing.

They made a quick stop at a tiny market off Jefferson and bought new underwear, a pre-return-of-magic t-shirt advertising Nude Fishing, something that made no sense at all to Danielle but that offered a lot more protection than her grimy sports bra. She also bought a toothbrush and a couple of chocolate croissants. She wasn't sure whether it was the chocolate, clean teeth, or clean clothes, but Danielle felt a little more human. She couldn't say the same for Carl, though. His smile had faded almost as soon as they'd left their hideout.