“Who are you talking about?” Earl asked, exasperated.
“You must not have received the wedding invitation. The Singer had a child eight months after our last battle. It was a healthy baby boy.”
Understanding came like a kick to the gut. Earl let go of Nikolai and turned away.
Nikolai continued without mercy. “A half-siren? The curse could never take hold in such blood. On a quarter-breed? Perhaps, perhaps not. We do not know. But what of a seed, barely taken hold in its mother’s womb, suddenly introduced to the curse through the mother’s blood? The mother would be fine, but the child . . . Oh, what an awful fate to inflict on a child.”
It was too horrific to comprehend. Normally, small children inflicted with the curse grew sick and died, but if the child was already supernaturally strong, then it was possible they could live through the change. “What have I done?” Earl whispered.
“Can you imagine? A being already blessed with monstrous gifts and a werewolf from birth? Such a creature would be a remarkable asset in the right hands. Surely, when such gifts began to manifest, that would be worth whisking a family off into top-secret obscurity, to be protected, to be . . . cultivated.”
“You don’t know this.”
Nikolai shook his head. “There is no confirmation. Only half-whispered legends. You are not naive enough to believe that your special task force was the last time your government would dabble in such things? Such a being could be very capable if he were to be raised and trained to control his gifts.”
A werewolf from birth, but instead of being tempered by a human side, he would have been a conglomeration of two monstrous halves. “Dear God. What have I done?”
“Now, what if this already remarkable being were to go astray, off the reservation as you would say, and found an ancient talisman that magnified his lycanthropic power tenfold?”
“He’d be unstoppable.” Earl looked at the carnage around them and felt nauseous for the first time. All of this had been caused by someone he’d created. Biting a pregnant woman . . . He’d cursed an unborn child and created a monster. “This is all my fault.”
“Yes,” Nikolai answered. “Now that I don’t need you, I was debating what to do when we are finished with this Alpha. But now? You should live. Knowing that you are responsible for such madness will wound you more than anything I could do. Your curse is gone, but it lives on through the damage caused by your line. No matter what you do, you are damned. You should have known there is no escape for men such as us.”
Nikolai didn’t understand. It wasn’t about escape. It was about penance. Sometimes the best thing a man could hope for was to set things right. Earl looked to the hills, dense forest stretching for miles, and he knew that somewhere out there, this Alpha, his bastard hybrid creation, was waiting.
Chapter 28
Harbinger had lied to her. Being a werewolf wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d described.
Sure, it had been awful at first; mind-blowing pain, incoherent rage, and thoughts so darkly violent that they’d make a homicidal maniac cringe—that part was exactly like Harbinger had told her it would be. But then she’d found her groove. Thinking was hard, but not impossible. It just took more concentration.
At first, in the dark, encircled in freezing cold steel, she’d been scared. Then she’d gotten angry. There was nothing in the world more important than killing everyone for putting her in the box. The black frenzy had blocked out everything else until she’d literally exhausted her anger.
Eventually other thoughts had snuck through the cracks in the madness. Heather had remembered her family. They were all gone now, but they wouldn’t want to see her like this. They’d be ashamed to think of her tearing people’s limbs off. Since she’d been young, she’d thought of herself as a peacemaker. She had always been the one to break up the fights, to kick a bully’s ass, to crack a joke, to try to help someone in need. When she’d gotten older, she’d continued doing the same thing, only more so.
Born with a strong sense of right and wrong, Heather had been an absolutist when it came to doing the right thing. Stubborn, she’d accomplished everything that anyone had ever dared tell her she couldn’t. She’d stayed a peacemaker, then added protector to the resume as she’d gotten older. As a female police officer, she’d had to work twice as hard to be considered half as good. So it had been her nature to work herself to death to be considered one of the best.
Back in Minneapolis, she’d risked her life to save a kid from being sold and disappearing into the underworld. She had been undercover, just supposed to be observing a ‘massage parlor’ for Vice. They’d had no idea what kind of evil really took place there. All alone, the radio failed, no backup, stupidly outnumbered, it hadn’t mattered. . . . Nobody else was there to protect that kid, so Heather had. It had put her on the fast track to detective.
But then her mom had gotten sick, and she’d dropped everything and come home. The decision hadn’t even taken a second thought; someone needed her help. Unfortunately, the only thing she could do was help make her comfortable. Her mom’s death had shaken Heather, and then she’d repeated the process with her grandpa, and then finally with her dad. One after the other. Her grandpa had always been a melancholy and angry man, and when he died it was almost like her dad had inherited that darkness, and then when he was gone he’d passed it on to her, like a family curse. By the time all of the dying was over, she’d been left burned-out and empty. She’d given until there was just nothing left inside, and she’d spent the time since on autopilot.
Then some scumbag had come along and threatened her town. It had awakened that dormant protective nature, and Heather again had a purpose. And she was a force to reckon with when she had a purpose.
The tracks in the snow behind her were paws, but as the distance grew, the tracks changed. By the time they were footprints, she could think clearly again. She continued running through the trees. The ice should have hurt her feet, but there was no pain. The cold should have cut through her naked skin, but she was warm. Faster than was humanly possible, she ran for town, never getting short of breath, never tiring. It felt good to be strong. It would have been so easy to pick a new direction and just keep on running, but Heather focused on the job. People were counting on her, and she couldn’t afford to let them down.
Copper Lake donated several snowmobiles with full tanks of gas to the cause. Nancy said their owners weren’t around to miss them. She’d sent someone to grab them from a local rental place. They were parked in front of the gym, just outside the pink-slush zone. Earl had sent runners to gather every remaining weapon from his overturned truck and was in the process of strapping the cases onto the back of a newer Polaris while Aino read aloud from Aksel Kerkonen’s journal.
“I don’t understand this,” Aino complained. “It’s nonsense words.”
“Repeat them to me.”
“They’re gibberish.”
“It’s a spell.” Earl sighed. He hated magic and had zero talent in that regard, but if you spent enough time hunting, you were bound to gain some familiarity. Earl had intimate knowledge of dark magic’s effects; he’d seen the dead rise, seas boil, and fire rain from the skies, but the idea of invoking it himself was abhorrent. But if it meant the difference between beating the Alpha or not, then Earl wasn’t above dabbling in the black arts. “Read them to me.”
“Aksel wrote that the Baba Yaga walked him through saying these first. I’m no witch of the woods.”
“No, you’re way too pretty.” Earl had never encountered an actual Baba Yaga. They were rare even in the dark frozen corners of Europe they originally hailed from and nonexistent in his usual area of operations, but by all accounts that particular fey was hideously ugly. “Just sound them out, already.”
“Well, Aksel couldn’t spell for shit, so this should be close.” Aino cleared his throat and made an attempt at the words. “Allut tvar mataw.”
Agent Stark, having found some supplies and another weapon, joined
them at the snowmobiles. “What’re you doing?” He was livid. “That sounds like Old Ones’ language. You can go to jail just for speaking that stuff.”
“Add it to the list of things you’re going to prosecute me for,” Earl said. “It’s all in that journal, Stark. The Soviets had a badass werewolf by the name of Koschei dealing out a lot of hurt during the Winter War. He was so tough they called him the Deathless, and it was all because he was wearing that damn amulet. They couldn’t kill Koschei no matter how hard they tried, until some enterprising young officer got tired of retreating and cut a deal with a Baba Yaga for instructions on how to kill him.”
“How complicated could it be?”
Aino looked up from the book. “She made some weird magic for them. She killed a bear, and inside its belly was a fox, and inside its belly was a chicken, and inside that chicken was an egg with a silver nugget inside, that she melted into a bunch of needles. Personally I think that part sounds like bullshit she made up so she could charge the army more money. The silver needles, they had to be driven square into Koschei’s forehead. Only place that would do, and they’d only work for a minute. Then somebody had to put their hands on the necklace and say the spell before it could be pulled off.”
Earl pointed at the antique Mosin-Nagant rifle on the back of his snowmobile. “That’s our long-range needle applicator. We find the super-werewolf. Shoot him in the face. Recite a few words. Then go out for coffee and doughnuts. My treat.”
Aino grunted. “I better get some damned sprinkles on mine.”
Stark was unimpressed. “Sure. Magic chicken egg antique silver bullets . . . How’d that work out last time?”
Earl didn’t look up from tying down cases. “Our boy Aksel was the only survivor, but he got the job done.”
“Superstitious nonsense. We should play this by the book. Casting spells is against the law.”
“I know that, but you want to square off against a super-werewolf that the hardest sons a bitches that ever came out of the frozen north couldn’t beat without cheating, be my guest.”
“You get an Old One’s attention, or even worse, bring one here, and we’ll be—”
Earl had never realized just how uninformed a senior member of the MCB could be. Myers, in comparison, was remarkably competent. “Okay, okay. Listen . . .” Earl tried to control his frustration, but since he was resisting the urge to strangle Stark, he considered it a win. “Didn’t they teach any classes at your fancy MCB school besides witness intimidation? Baba Yaga are fey, not Old Ones.”
“What’s the difference?” Aino asked.
“Different dimensions. One’s a whole lot meaner,” Earl explained. “Not that fey are nice, but they tend to keep their unpleasantness to the individual instead of the world-wrecking level. Come on, Stark. Grow a pair.”
“Still . . . It sounds like he just made it all up.”
“He wasn’t an MCB agent bucking for a promotion. Look. I’ll grab the amulet and say the words. You just cover me. Worst-case scenario if the Alpha doesn’t kill me first, which he probably will, is that I piss off some immortal crone and she hops a flight from Finland and comes over here and puts a hex on me. The bitch can get in line.”
Stark folded his arms. “You shouldn’t joke about that. Curses are serious business.”
Earl was the last person that needed to be lectured on curses. “Well, I’m short one, figured I’d collect some more. After this I’m thinking I’ll go desecrate a mummy’s tomb or something.”
“Fine.” Stark relented and climbed onto another snowmobile. “We’ll see who’s laughing when you get turned into a frog. Play with your antique bullets. We need to stop by my car on the way so I can get some modern weapons.”
Earl just smiled at Stark’s ignorance. Sure, he was packing a pair of wheel-guns, a subgun built during the Second World War, and a rifle design that dated back to the tsars, but he also had an 84mm recoilless rifle and enough shells to obliterate half the county. Earl Harbinger was retro-practical. “Aino, would you repeat those words?”
Aino complied. “Allut tvar mataw. Allut tvar mataw.”
The words were harsh, grating, unpleasant on the tongue, but at least they didn’t seem to bend his sanity like the Old Ones’ language did. Earl memorized the words and tried to repeat them. They didn’t feel particularly magical. He was probably going to screw this up.
Jason Lococo joined them a moment later, having borrowed some gear from the locals and unceremoniously dumped it on the back of his snowmobile. Earl had left him the biggest vehicle, an 800cc monstrosity. The giant stopped and silently listened to the words of the Baba Yaga. After Aino read the line and Earl repeated it for the fifth time, Jason asked, “If that don’t work, what do we do then?”
“Anything you can think of to hurt him, and if that doesn’t pan out, run for your life,” Earl directed. “If I go down, somebody needs to stay alive to warn everyone else about this guy.”
Stark raised his hand. “Maybe I should stay here then. You know . . . to report.”
It was an odd feeling, but Earl had never found himself wishing for the professionalism of Agent Myers before. Despite their mutual hatred for each other, at least Myers wasn’t a chicken. In fact, if he was going to be stuck with an agent, he would have traded Stark for any of the other ones he’d met. Sad to admit, but Franks would be especially useful. Hell, Franks would probably just walk up and punch the Alpha to death.
“Oh, come on, Agent Stark.” Jason chuckled. “You were all excited for us to be killing werewolves when you thought you were going to get a cut.”
“Shut up, you idiot!” Stark hissed.
“Huh?” Earl’s eyes narrowed. “Cut of what?”
Stark held up his hands defensively. “I don’t know what this guy’s talking about. Cut? What cut?”
“You didn’t know?” Jason shook his head. “Yeah, Horst gave Stark something like twenty percent of our PUFF. He told us about the infected deputy in the hospital. That was supposed to be an easy kill.”
Stark had called Briarwood? But that meant when Joe Buckley turned early at the hospital and killed all those folks and cursed Heather . . . That all could have been prevented. MCB’s own regulations would have required them to stay with anyone they even suspected was infected until it was confirmed if they were or not. Stark had not only known, he’d left someone newly cursed unattended in a crowded place. Earl’s gloved hand curled into a fist. Sam Haven had warned him about this guy, and apparently Sam hadn’t been exaggerating. He walked toward Stark’s snowmobile.
“That’s nonsense!” Stark shouted at Jason while trying to look indignant and failing miserably. “He’s lying, Harbinger.”
“When collecting on the deputy didn’t work out, Stark told Horst all about you,” Jason said. “I wasn’t there for that conversation, but Horst thought you were worth so much PUFF that it was worth shooting me in the back and leaving his girlfriend to rot to death to try and kill you.”
“You did what?”
“Harbinger, I—” Stark’s nose was smashed flat as Earl punched him square in the face. He fell over the side of his snowmobile. Earl followed him around and slugged him again as he started to rise. The impact hurt Earl’s fist. Stark hit the snow, groaning. Earl took a step back, shaking his aching hand, then changed his mind, came back, and kicked Stark in the ribs.
“I’d suggest that you stay down!” Earl was mad, downright enraged. If he’d still been a werewolf, it would have taken every bit of his self control not to change right then. Stark had violated a sacred trust. Earl had earned his PUFF exemption. Who was this bureaucrat to take that from him?
Stark reached into his coat. Earl no longer possessed superhuman speed, but he was by all reckoning still a very quick man. Drawing his Bowie knife, he grabbed Stark by the hood, jerked his head up before he could reach his pistol, and placed the cold steel edge against Stark’s jugular. That stopped him cold.
A flick of the wrist and the agent would die. “
I did everything they asked me to do. . . . Do you have any idea how many people I killed, how many friends I lost, war after war, so that some government flunky could stamp a piece of paper that said I got to live like a man?”
Blood was running from Stark’s nose. “N-no,” he whimpered.
“I’ve seen your kind before, boy. A new generation of assholes comes along, you forget about the sacrifices made by the ones that came before. They mean nothing. To you, we’re all the same. You can’t tell the difference between a man and a monster. Oh, you’ve got your rules, only they never apply to your kind. And their protections only apply to people like me when it’s convenient for people like you.” Earl twisted the bone handle of the razor-sharp knife. Stark yelped as it cut his skin.
A pair of boots stepped into Earl’s field of view. “Am I interrupting something?” Nikolai asked politely.
“Not really. I’m just deciding on whether to slit Agent Stark’s throat or not.”
“I found the scent,” Nikolai said. Earl paused and looked up. The Russian gestured toward the hills.
Earl leaned in close and hissed into Stark’s ear. “It’s your lucky day.” He let go of the hood, and Stark flopped facedown into the snow. Earl stood up and sheathed his knife. “Where?”
“He went north along Cliff Road.”
“The only thing up there are some farms and . . . That’s toward the old Quinn mine,” Aino said.
“The one that Aksel worked at?” Earl asked.
“The same. One of the deepest in the world, ’til part collapsed and killed a mess of us.”
“That sound like a reasonable place to hide a mystical amulet to you?” he asked Nikolai.