Dog Warrior

After the last one, Mouse looked again to Ice. "He nailed them all."

"Good, good." Ice swung a chair around and straddled it, facing backward. "Play him the last call we managed to record."

Mouse closed the "Angel" folder and picked a program off the toolbar via an icon of a reel-to-reel tape deck. The resulting program quickly scanned through the selected recording, did a voice recognition on the speakers, produced photographs of a young black woman and a middle-aged white man, and rendered out a complex 3-D tree of colored nodes. The woman was identified as Demon BU1-623-S, alias unknown, and the man as Demon B3-215-S, alias Peter Caldwell.

"What are the numbers for?" Ukiah tapped the numbers for the man and was startled as a window opened giving more information: Peter Caldwell, six-one, a hundred and sixty pounds, brown hair, blue eyes. Nest: Caldwell and Associates Engineering, Totten Pond Road, Waltham.

"The first set is the nest they belong to." Mouse closed the window. "This is a demon from one of the Buffalo nests, speaking to a Boston nest."

"Since they rarely travel solo," Ice said, "a nest number gives us a truer idea of their movements."

Mouse nodded and tapped the last part of the identifying number. "The S indicates that these are Speakers, which means they're the ones who usually do the phone calls for their collective. We thought this meant the Speakers were also the leaders, but we learned they're kind of like salmon swimming upstream. They all react—individually or as a mass—in identical fashion to whatever predetermined goal they currently have locked into their collective brain. Killing the Speakers doesn't throw them into confusion."

"But it means one well-designed trap," Ether said, "presented to them individually, will trap them all."

"It's the only way we can hope to fight them," Ice said.

Phone numbers were shown. The Buffalo Get was using a phone in Butler, Pennsylvania; the Boston Get was in Waltham, Massachusetts.

"I am in Butler," the Buffalo Get reported. "Ae missing, not destroyed, thief unknown. New incursion of aware hosts discovered. Partial Get recovered."

"That's what they call us: aware hosts," Mouse said as Ether added, "We think they're talking about Eden."

"Neutralize," the Gets harmonized as they agreed on a course of action.

"Neutralized," the Buffalo Get stated.

The Ontongard then bombed Eden Court, reducing the grand mansion to smoking rubble.

"This part we don't understand," Ice murmured.

"Female host has interacted with breeder," the Buffalo Get said.

"Prime's breeder?" the Boston Get asked.

"Prime's," the Buffalo Get said.

"Capture and contain," the two spoke in duet.

"Contained female," Buffalo reported. "Incubation, nine months."

"Incubate." Again the duet.

Ice leaned in, stabbing a key to pause the conversation. "What are they talking about? Ping is the only female missing."

Ukiah had avoided all thoughts of Ping and the night he spent with her and Core. Beyond the raw emotions of his rape lay the whole ugly inevitability of conception; he was a breeder and she had been all but painted with the breeding drug, Invisible Red. All the implications—from Indigo's reaction to another woman bearing his baby to the Ontongard holding Ping—and therefore his unborn child—churned in his stomach like icy snakes.

"Well?" There was fear and hurt, but also steel resolve in Ice's eyes.

"They have Ping," Ukiah admitted. "She's pregnant. They're keeping her alive and untouched until she has the baby."

"So she hasn't been possessed?" Ice asked.

"No."

As Ice relaxed, Mouse restarted the recording.

"Breeder contamination/infection/adaptation detected in one male," the Buffalo Get reported in Ontongard. "Survival possibility excellent."

Breeder contamination? Core was dead, and he was the only male Ukiah had interacted with for any length of time. They had to be talking about the missing Parity—but how? True, high on Invisible Red, Ukiah had nearly choked the boy to death, but that was just minutes before the Ontongard captured Parity. There couldn't possibly have been enough time. Ukiah flashed back to the beating he gave Parity in the hall. Wait, the contamination was already in Parity's blood . . .

Mouse had paused the recording and the cultists looked at him expectantly.

"What did it say?" Ice demanded.

How could Parity already have been infected? Realization dawned on Ukiah. "Did Parity handle my son at any point?"

"The nephilim?" Ice looked surprised at the question. "Yeah. It bit him in the leg; he needed stitches. Why?"

"They're planning to possess Parity; he's probably one of them now. Anything he knew, they now know."

Which included everything about him and Kittanning.

"Shit," Link hissed. "At least he was just an initiate."

Ice looked troubled but signaled Mouse to continue the recording.

"Contain breeder," Boston said.

"Current whereabouts of breeder unknown," Buffalo reported. "Aware hosts more dangerous than previously thought."

"They must not be allowed to interfere with the priority project," Boston and Buffalo stated together.

"Returning to confer," Buffalo said, and hung up.

"This was Saturday morning. There haven't been any more phone calls."

"Does Parity know about this place? Sanctuary?"

The cultists looked at each other.

Mouse shook his head. "No. Until the demons hit Pittsburgh, Sanctuary was restricted to inner circle only."

"Ping knows where it is," Ether pointed out.

"She wouldn't talk," Link said.

"She's alone with the demons," Ether said. "She has to be scared shitless. Who knows how long she can hold out?"

"Go check on the fortifications," Ice said wearily. "All of you."

"All?" Mouse squeaked like his namesake.

"Yes, go on," Ice said.

Cultists scurried off to obey him, leaving Ukiah alone with Ice.

Ice sighed. "We got back to Butler to find Eden on fire. I parked across the street and walked through the gardens. Crowds of people had gathered; the entire neighborhood had come to watch the great house burn. I saw themstanding in the crowd, like ravens among mourning doves, only no one seemed to notice them. Like they were blind to the evil beside them. There were bodies sprawled on the grass, covered with white sheets, stained with bright red flowers of blood. I couldn't tell who it was—Core, Ping, Io—but there was nothing I could do but turn and walk away."

Ice fixed his cold stare on Ukiah. "Where were you while it burned?"

"I was flying to Pittsburgh." Ukiah had managed to escape to the nearby Butler Memorial Hospital. The fireball from Eden going up had convinced the staff to fly Ukiah via the Lifeflight helicopter to Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh. All things considered, it had been a fortunate decision.

Ice's eyes widened slightly at the news. "Oh, demons can't fly—but I guess that's part of being an angel."

Ukiah swallowed down an automatic "I meant by helicopter." It would be best not to shake the cult leader's belief.

Luckily, Ice was cuing up another recorded telephone conversation. "We'll step you backward from Saturday. We want to know what this priority project they're working on is."

"Tell me first, where are the founts?"

Ice stopped what he was doing to give Ukiah another cold look. "Why?"

"The demons created the founts for the sole purpose of wiping out humans." If the Ontongard found the highest order of native life on a planet too difficult to take over, they used the Ae to design a species-specific disease and wiped them out—settling for a less advanced species as a host. Since their own intelligence depended on their host, the Ontongard were reluctant to take such a drastic step. "They were holding them in reserve because they thought their invasion at Buffalo would work. They had been planning for centuries for that day, and until June they thought they would win."

"So why did they wait until September to check on them?"

Why indeed? With the FBI and the cult being new pressures on the Ontongard, why hadn't they acted?

"I don't know," Ukiah admitted. "But the founts are deadly. You can't use them. Don't even try."

"We've identified over a thousand demons, and managed only to kill less than a hundred. They have superhuman strength and speed, and now we learn they have telepathy. They can take massive damage and regenerate. Last Thursday we were fifty people; now we're down to twenty, and we're being hunted by demons that know all our secrets. We need to strike first, and strike hard, or we're not going to survive."

"The founts are too dangerous. You could accidentally kill everything on the planet."

"Core had a saying that truly applies: Would God give us the gift if he didn't mean for us to use it?"

Ukiah stared at him, horrified. "You can't be serious."

"God put Core at the car accident where he learned about the demons. He connected Zip with Core to give us access to the founts. A thousand little connections had to line up just perfect for us to find the founts and learn how to make them work. The chances were billions to one, and yet, we have the founts. Isn't that a miracle enough?"

What was the nature of miracles? Did the happenings have to be impossibilities, or merely extremely unlikely? Certainly it was stunning what the cult had accomplished, from decoding the Ontongard language to making advanced technology work without instructions. Ukiah could not believe, though, that God wanted the destruction of humanity.

"It's too dangerous," Ukiah said again. "You have no idea what you're doing. You're just guessing at this."

"Then help us. Surely God put you into our power so that we can use you."

He opened his mouth to say no, but then remembered that Atticus would play along, gathering information. He considered the computers around him, filled with the cult's databases. The cult didn't seem to realize that the Ontongard had genetic memory with perfect recall. While he had talked with Ice, he also overheard a conversation in the kitchen, and shouted instructions from the cultists outside.

And if he couldn't find the key to stopping the Ae, maybe he could keep the cult from misusing them.

"I am helping you," he said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Temple of New Reason Commune, Sanctuary Island,

Atlantic Ocean

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Ukiah worked through the night, translating and learning about the Ontongard and the cult. The island acted as the cult's ultimate data haven, with high-speed satellite Internet service and IP telephony. The last was a frustrating temptation. The phone sat on the desk beside the monitor he used, but since he didn't know where the island lay, he wasn't sure if calling out would have any point. GPS in regards to phone service was on the crumbling edge of his knowledge of technology. Part of his ignorance came from the fact that he was still fairly new to civilization. The rest was due to his lack of interest, until three months ago when he had received Rennie's memories, in learning all of the bells and whistles life had to offer. He knew land-based phones and cell phones could be traced, but IP telephony? He didn't know. He ached to find out, but the cult never left him alone.

He was dealing with the same type of problem with the translations. While in Oregon, he had noticed that his Pack memories were disintegrating, his "borrowed" memories being crowded out as he grew toward being a full adult. The Ontongard had been guiding technology development in dozens of small high-tech firms across the country, each one building tiny parts to be shipped to Boston to be assembled into something much larger. After the pieces had shipped, the Ontongard were dismantling the companies to keep their secret. But he was at a loss as to what they were building. Either he had never had the knowledge, or it had worn away over the months of hard living and dying.

But the most terrifying hole was in the last twenty-four hours, there was a tiny gap of what he had done between Animal dying and calling Max.

He had lost a mouse.

Or the cult had stolen it.

Neither was good.

He found excuses to roam the house: going to the bathroom, getting something to drink, raiding the refrigerator, stretching his legs by pacing the large living room. On these forays he couldn't sense any of his mice, but a small collection of cells had a limited range to their telepathy. Whereas he could spot Atticus anywhere on the island and the combined Dog Warriors from miles away, he would almost need to stand on a single mouse to sense it.

In desperation, he insisted that he knewthat Schrцdinger needed to be outside to go to the bathroom, claiming inside angel knowledge, and that he could use some fresh air. The cult reluctantly agreed, but tripled his guard, kept him within fifty feet of the house, and sent Mouse along as an escort. The night was cold and clear. To the west, the moon gleamed on the ocean like a massive field of silver flowers. He was thankful the kitten did its part to uphold his ruse and buried its waste in the loose sand. Ukiah circled the house, using up his hoarded gum, picking up occasional bright pebbles to examine. The cult had drawn heavy black curtains on the expansive windows, keeping in the light so no passing boats would realize people were living on the island.

"It's really not safe out here in the dark." Mouse shivered in the freezing wind. "We've got land mines everywhere."

Ukiah slipped his most recent find—a thumb-sized disk of matte black stone—into his jeans pocket, picked up Schrцdinger, and went back in, none the wiser on the location of his mouse.

As they walked into the house, the phone rang.

Mouse froze, a look of utter terror on his face as he stared at the phone. It rang again, the noise jarring in the sudden stillness of the house.

Ice came running down the stairs and paused at the bottom of the steps. "Was that the phone?"

The phone rang in answer.

"We're all here," Mouse whispered.

Ice approached the phone with caution and snatched it up as if it were a poisonous snake, barely holding it to his ear. "Hello?"

Ukiah's keen ears caught the voice on the other end.

"Ice? Is that you? It's Parity."

"Parity?" Ice gasped as if punched.

"Parity. Only Parity—no one else. None of them. But listen—they know where you are! They're coming to get you. They're pissed as hell and they plan to make you all one of them."

"H-h-how?"

"It was so hard to think straight at first. I had to tell them something so I gave them some old addresses—places I knew you wouldn't be. I told them about the boat slip. When we found the wolf boy there, I managed to slip away long enough to clear out my head."

"How do they know about the island?" Ice growled.

"Ping—Ping told them. They've got her at Totten Pond. I haven't been able to get to her. She said something about the wiretapping. They traced the tap back to the satellite provider and you're the only connection within miles of that GPS position."

Ice glanced upward as if to see the satellite overhead, pinpointing them.

"You've got to move before they get there. They'll be there in force—like a hundred of them. You've got to get out! I'll get hold of you later, somehow. I've got to go."

The phone clicked to silence but Ice stood there with the phone to his ear for another minute, pale and stunned. Finally he hung up, whispering hoarsely, "They know where we are. Start an evacuation."

The cultists remained still, reflecting his shock.

"Where are we going to go?" Ether finally asked.

"I'll think of something," Ice said. "Go on. Grab only the bare necessities and get them down to the boats."

"We just believe him?" Link said.

"We don't have a choice." Ice sighed heavily.

Link started to protest, "But he didn't sound like one of—"

"Move!" Ice shouted, and flung the phone at Link.

The cult scattered like a flock of frightened birds.

Ice focused on Ukiah. "Is it possible? Could he be one of them—and yet not be?"

Prime had been a mutation—a sole individual—but they didn't know why. What had caused Prime to be different? If Parity had been exposed to Kittanning, the Ontongard, and Invisible Red, maybe he had built up a resistance.

"Yes or no?" Ice hissed.

Ukiah replayed the conversation with Parity, listening to the words and the tone of voice. There had been a slight drag, but it wasn't Hex's emotionally dead intonation. There had been fear, sorrow, and true concern—things a Get seemed incapable of understanding despite its human form, its original personality drowned under Hex's alien mind. "Yes. He might be something new."

"Do you know what they're building yet?"

"No."

Ice gave a weary sigh. "We're running out of time, angel."

***

An hour later, Ice declared that ready or not, they needed to leave. "Meta, get the angel down to the boat."

The tall, burly cultist caught Uriah's elbow and guided him toward the door. Ukiah snatched up Schrцdinger, determined that the kitten wouldn't be left to the mercy of the Ontongard.

Outside, Ice pulled Mouse aside, saying, "Link, we're all out of the house. Set the defenses and come down to the boats."

"Keep to the path." Meta urged Ukiah down the hill to the boathouse. "It would be inconvenient if you got blown to pieces now."

Ukiah wasn't sure if Meta was teasing him or not, but kept to the graveled path. Ice and Mouse trailed behind, arms over each other's shoulders, heads close together, deep in whispered conversation.

There seemed to be some kind of preplanned system, as the twenty cultists split themselves in orderly fashion between the two boats. Ukiah found himself firmly escorted to a boat called the Ashpool.

Ice and Mouse stood on the dock, the younger man crying openly.

"We're going ahead with the Cleansing," Ice said. "Take the angel and go south."

"South?"

"As far south as your diesel will get you."

Link came dashing down the path. "Everything's set," he said, and scrambled on board the Nautilus.The engine revved up and the boat started to pull away from the dock.

Ice hugged Mouse fiercely, kissing him on the forehead. "Go on. Live for us."

Ice jumped onto the Nautilusand the boat leapt forward away in a spray of water.

Ukiah was on the wrong boat to stop Ice.

***

They went south as fast as the Ashpoolwould take them, the cultists silent as the big engines roared. The Nautiluswas nowhere in sight, and the island quickly vanished behind them. Ukiah huddled in the corner of the stern's sitting area, with Meta in the opposite corner, keeping close watch on him.

He'd screwed up. He should have done something, anything, although even now he wasn't sure what.

He considered his options. There was the radio, but he still didn't know where he was, where Ice was heading, nor where the Ae were, except they hadn't been loaded onto the boats. His chances of overpowering all ten cultists to steer the boat to land, which presumably lay off to the west, were laughable.

He eyed his guard. Meta was pale and unfocused, as if the heaving boat were making him seasick. Ukiah wasn't prone to motion sickness; after the first few minutes of jiggling, his body would ignore his inner ear as alarmist.

"Are you okay?" Ukiah shouted over the engine's roar. When Meta didn't respond, Ukiah leaned over to prod the cultist. "Meta?"

Meta's eyes rolled up to white and he went rigid, his arms and legs stiffening and starting to jerk rhythmically.

"Mouse! Mouse!" Ukiah eased Meta to the floor.

The little cultist appeared at the cabin doorway, swore, and hurried to Meta. "Oh, no, not again."

"What's wrong with him?" Ukiah made way for Mouse.

"It's Blissfire withdrawal!" Mouse turned and shouted for the other cultists. "Oh, God, please don't die, Meta. Please don't die."

Ukiah found himself pushed to the bow of the boat as the other cultists crowded around the fallen Meta. Qwerty had a small bag that she dipped her fingers into. She painted a glittering cross onto Meta's forehead, and then, as others pried open Meta's jaw, coated the inside of his mouth. It was doubtful Meta could be saved once the drug triggered its extermination subroutines, but apparently the cult had pulled others back from the brink, using a new dose of the drug to override the kill order. Qwerty kissed the unresponsive man, her tears falling on his face and the hands of the cultists holding him still.

Rolling thunder pulled Ukiah's attention away from the desperate scene. A 747 jet passed low overhead. Its flaps were up and its landing gear down. It vanished from sight over the shifting horizon, but he could hear the whine and roar as braking jets kicked in.

It was landing at Logan Airport. Boston was just over the horizon.

It felt heartless to take advantage of Meta's collapse, but it might be his only chance to slip away. He had to get to Boston. He had to stop Ice.

Grabbing the rail, he swung over the side and dropped into the ocean. He let himself sink for a moment, and then angled off so that when he surfaced, he was on the other side of the boat.

The cultists had stopped the boat. Mouse and other male cultists were scanning the rolling waves, presumably as the females worked to save Meta.

"Ukiah! Wolf boy!" Mouse shouted, as another male said, "I don't know how long angels can hold their breath. He might not even be down there anymore. He's an angel!"

Ukiah ducked under the water, kicked off his shoes, and swam until his lungs felt like they were about to burst, then surfaced again. He was alone in vast shifting waters with only the echoes of jets to guide him.

***

It was a lot farther to Boston than he imagined.

***

He found the first lobster trap by accident. A wave was rolling him down a plane of water as he swam and he saw a Tide detergent bottle floating in the water. Four years of Boy Scouts told him that detergent bottles made good floatation devices in a pinch. He detoured and caught hold of it, hugging it to his chest. It was a relief to float there, at rest in the chilly water. It would have been perfect, except the bottle was anchored to something far underwater. It puzzled him for a while until he realized it was a lobster trap and the Tide bottle was a buoy marker.

He bobbed in the waves, panting, weary, nothing but water in sight.

He'd been insane to leave the boat.

He knew he couldn't stay with the lobster trap buoy, but he didn't want to let go. It was starting to dawn on him that drowning was a real possibility. Strange, except for being hit by cars and shot, he'd never pushed his body to its limits before. Max had always been there, reining him in before he'd collapsed, shoving food into him, keeping him safe from his own stupidity. Any normal human wouldn't have jumped off a perfectly fine boat, blithely assuming he could swim to an unseen shore.

Atticus probably wouldn't have been so stupid.

What the hell did he think he could do once he got back to Boston? While the cult had unknowingly supplied him with information on the Ontongard, their plans remained a mystery. He had no money, no shoes, and no weapons. The Pack would have moved dens, making finding them nearly impossible. And it seemed unlikely, now, that he'd even survive to reach land.

He tugged at the knots tying the buoy to the trap, but tension and time had rendered them impossible to untie. He chewed at the rope, hoping to fray it, but several minutes of gnawing produced no noticeable effect.

Nothing to be done but abandon the tiny haven of safety and swim on.

***

There were a surprising number of lobster traps in Boston Harbor.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Atlantic Ocean

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Later Ukiah would recall the boat bearing down on him, and the blare of horns. As it was, though, the Coast Guard officer seemed to appear in the water beside him like magic. He was far too weary to do anything once they hauled him into their boat but huddle around the mug of hot cocoa they gave him.

"We're taking you to Mass General Hospital."

"N-n-no," he forced out between chattering teeth. "No hospital."

While hanging from lobster buoys, he had pieced together a plan. It was filled with things he had originally wanted to avoid, but facing death, they grew less unpleasant. Atticus was one of them.

"My brother—he's at the Boston Harbor Hotel." The Pack had plucked the hotel name from Atticus's memory during his test. "D-d-drop me there."

"We really should take you to the hospital. You're hypothermic."

"I-I-I'm fine," he told them. "P-p-please—hotel."

In the end, they dropped him on the wharf in front of the hotel. He squelched his way into the lobby and stood dripping on the marble floor as he waited for the elevator. It was easy to find out which floor Atticus and Ru were on—running his hands over the buttons inside the elevator, he found the one they'd pushed to get to their rooms. He went down the hall sniffing, smelling mostly the Atlantic Ocean soaked into his skin.

He found their rooms. Atticus wasn't there, but someone was moving around inside. Teeth chattering, he knocked on the door.

"Who is it?" Kyle called.

"U-U-Ukiah."

"Step back from the door," Kyle said.

Ukiah leaned against the far wall.

Kyle had his pistol in hand when he opened the door and scanned the hall. He relaxed once he saw they were alone. "Why are you wet?"

"I-I-I was swimming."

Kyle sniffed at the north Atlantic stench. "You need to clean your pool."

Ukiah laughed weakly.

"So, what do you want?"

"A sh-sh-shower and something to eat—f-f-find the cult—w-w-world peace."

"You mean, like, use our shower?"

Ukiah nodded, sniffing.

Kyle paced back and forth, trying to decide what to do. Down the hall the elevator dinged, signaling its arrival. The sound decided it for Kyle. He reached out, caught Ukiah by the shirt, jerked him into the room, and slammed shut the door.

"Okay. Okay. Everything's cool." Kyle motioned toward the adjoining room with a king-sized bed. "You can use Atticus's bathroom and I'll call room service."

***

It felt weird to be using Atticus and Ru's bathroom, the counter strewn with toothbrushes and combs and deodorant, the hotel's shampoo ignored in favor of their own. It seemed like an invasion of their privacy. Out of habit he fumbled through his pants pockets as he stripped. The cult had managed to strip him of his wallet yet again—the only things in his pocket were the gum wrappers and the pebble from Sanctuary Island. He dropped the gum wrappers into the trash, but the pebble slipped through his trembling fingers to land among Atticus's things, disappearing from sight.

Ukiah eyed the crowded counter. Where did it go? Under the toiletry bag? He lifted the corner of the bag and nearly knocked over a bottle of expensive aftershave. With a sigh, he abandoned it; he'd look for it once he stopped shivering.

***

Ukiah stood in the steaming hot water until he heard room service at the door. He stepped out of the bathroom, towel pinned around his hips, drying his hair, to find a stranger in the room with Kyle and the food.

The stranger glanced at Ukiah and made an exasperated noise. "Johnston's been telling me he didn't know when you were getting back."

Kyle looked over his shoulder at Ukiah in surprise. "But this isn't—"

"Zip it, Johnston," the stranger snapped. "Where the hell were you?"

Ukiah guessed that "the shower" wasn't the answer the stranger was looking for. "I was kidnapped by the Temple of New Reason."

"Where is your partner?" the stranger asked.

Partner?Ukiah froze. What did he want with Max?

"Takahashi is with the Coast Guard," Kyle said, making it obvious this man thought Ukiah was Atticus. "Out looking for . . . him. Hikaru will be back in a couple hours."

He felt guilty now that he had misled the Coast Guard into thinking he had only suffered a boating accident. They'd taken his name but apparently not checked if anyone was looking for him.

The stranger looked at his watch. "Fine. Call me when he gets back."

"Who the hell was that?" Ukiah asked after the door closed behind the stranger.

"Our boss. Sumpter. He came in with room service."

Kyle had ordered stuffed rabbit with peppers, pea shoots, and onions, three types of strong-smelling cheeses he didn't recognize even after several years of Max's tutelage; a plate of pistachios, macadamia nuts, and almonds; and lastly, chocolate desserts. Protein, protein, protein with a shot of pure sugar.

Kyle fidgeted in silence as Ukiah ate, and finally fell into report mode, as if he wasn't comfortable with carrying the main bulk of the conversation. "I sent your clothes down to be washed. They said they wouldn't be ready to be picked up until tomorrow morning." Realization dawned on him. "I guess I should get you something to wear until then."

Finally given a task, Kyle ticked down the needed clothes, providing T-shirt, boxers, sweatpants, socks, and a pair of tennis shoes out of Atticus's luggage. None of the suitcases were unpacked, only canted open, ready to be zipped shut and taken at a moment's notice.

"Where isAtticus?" Ukiah asked around a mouthful of the rabbit.

"He and Ru are out searching for you. The coast guard is flying them to various islands where the cult might be hiding."

Actually this worked well with his plans. Atticus didn't have Pack memory; he didn't know the dangers that the Ontongard represented to the world, so it was extremely unlikely he would help Ukiah raid one of their dens. Nor did Ukiah want to put his brother's "family" at risk, not when the Pack was available to help instead.

"Can I use the phone?" Ukiah didn't wait for permission, glancing at the instructions for getting an outside line and then dialing Indigo's number while Kyle was still trying to form an answer. Without a vehicle or money, his only hope of contacting the Pack was via whoever was guarding Indigo. Unfortunately, her number dropped him straight into voice mail. "It's me, Ukiah." He paused, not sure what else to say—he wasn't sure how long he'd be staying in Atticus's hotel room. "I got free of the cult and I'm safe. I'll call you back."

"I don't know—" Kyle managed to get out as Ukiah pressed the reset button and dialed Max.

"Bennett." Max answered the phone with a snarl worthy of the Pack.

"Max, it's me."

"Ukiah! Where the hell are you now?"

Ukiah explained about his kidnapping and escape, which got an "Oh, Jesus, Ukiah, you didn't!" from Max and a "You just jumped off the boat?" from Kyle, who up to this point had been pretending not to listen.

"You're lucky you didn't drown," Max snapped. "Who's there with you now?"

"Kyle," Ukiah said. "He's one of Atticus's best friends. He knows everything. Max, I know where the Ontongard are holding Ping."

"You want to rescue Ping? After what she and Core did?"

The curse of a perfect memory meant it took only one mention of his rape to shove Ukiah back to the night that Core drugged him with Invisible Red and shared him with Ping.

. . . candles lit the mom to a soft glow. Ping knelt on the white satin sheets of the king-sized bed, dressed in a black robe so sheer it seemed to be only shadows. Core checked Ukiah just short of the bed, and Ping stretched with false casualness, the candles silhouetting her lithe form as she arched her back, lifting her breasts. To Ukiah's disgust, his body responded. He wanted to say no, but his mouth wouldn't shape the words. The breeding drug held his will captive, freeing his body to its artificial desires. He started to growl instead. Ping parted the gauze robe aside enough to reveal her sex, and it glittered with Invisible Red.

She stroked herself there, and lifted her damp, glittering fingers to him." Come to me."

Ukiah's legs stoned to move, carrying him to her, while he could only snarl in helpless anger. A moment later, he felt Core's nude body beside him . . .

Ukiah pushed the memory away. "Yes, I want to rescue her."

He had had lots of time to think, out in the ocean. He hated her for using him, and that the child she carried could destroy his ties with the ones he loved most—Indigo and the Pack. But he didn't hate her enough to wish what the Ontongard planned for her. "She was part of the cult's inner circle. She knows all their secrets. She'll know where Ice has the Ae, and what his plans for 'the Cleansing' are."

"You're not thinking of doing this alone?" Max asked.

"I'm taking the Pack—once I find them."

"Good," Max said. "So where's this den?"

"I just have a street name, no number: Totten Pond Road."

Kyle sat down at his computer and started to type as Ukiah spelled it out to Max. "That's in Waltham."

"A fairly short segment of road," Max added.

Ukiah switched over to speakerphone and said, "According to the cult, there will be six nests in a hexagonal pattern. I've got street names for all six but none of the street numbers."

"So if we find the points that link all the street addresses into a hexagon—" Kyle started.

"—we'll be able to pinpoint the nests," Max finished .

***

Atticus had been building to a bitter rage for hours.

Much to his disgust, they'd spent the night with Zheng, sifting through the victims from the cremation site, building a profile. Kyle had been reduced to puppy love silliness with delight. The FBI agent, however, retreated behind her unreadable mask as they sifted through police reports and grisly photographs. Normally Atticus would have been only mildly annoyed by the two, but he found himself trying to fight off growing concern for Ukiah. He didn't want to care.

Nor was he happy with the shades of moral gray his team was drifting into by working with the Pack. With undercover work, the danger of sympathizing with the criminals ran high; having met the Ontongard, though, he was no longer sure that the Pack were the bad guys. He tried to keep in mind that their job in this mess was to find the drugs and get them off the street.

They pinpointed a surveying company in Watertown, Massachusetts, outside of Boston, as a possible den for the Ontongard. Three of the victims worked for the company, and from there, relationships spiraled outward. The police already suspected the company, citing "odd reactions to the news" and "seems mentally unbalanced" in reports of surviving employees. Even with Zheng's reassurance that the Pack would be able to tell the difference between humans and Ontongard, it felt wrong to turn the information over to them without first checking into it themselves.

But they'd run out of time.

They had missed the cult. Luckily, so had the Ontongard. After several cautious flybys, the coast guard pilot landed their Jayhawk helicopter on the cult's island refuge. The cult had left dangerous presents behind, and the Ontongard had tripped several. The boathouse in the small bay burned, a charred body occasionally visible among the flames. The walls of the living room were riddled with grapeshot, and dried blood flecked the floor. Too little blood. Something scurried on tiny feet among the overturned furniture and Atticus sensed small and vicious eyes watching him.

In the basement they found a windowless cell. Ukiah's scent was on the bare foam pad. The cult had provided only a litter box to use as a toilet. Of his brother, there was no sign whether he left the island alive or dead, alone or with others.

Agent Zheng lived up to her reputation, cold and distant and unreadable as a frozen lake. On the flight back to Cape Cod Coast Guard Air Station, the hopeful Coast Guard copilot proved immune to her chilly silence and grated on everyone's nerves with his attempts to break the ice. The moment they touched down, the FBI agent fled the helicopter.

"Zheng!" Atticus ducked under the still-whirling blades.

"Later, Atticus," she shouted without so much as looking over her shoulder.

He jogged to catch up with her. "We need to talk."

"Not now." She focused on getting to her rental SUV parked next to his Jaguar, walking in long, purposeful strides.

"Wait." He caught her arm and pulled her to a stop. "Talk to me."

"I can't." She turned her head away from him, covering her face with her hand. "I can't even look at you!"

It felt like she'd slapped him. She had seemed so accepting of his alien heritage. What had happened to change her mind—or had she always felt this way, and everything had been a lie to get his team to help her?

She took deep, cleansing breaths. "I need some time alone," she cried into her palm. "I'll talk to you later."

He drove back to Boston, barely holding his anger in check. Knowing him well, Ru waited until they were no longer trapped in the small confines of the Jaguar before talking.

"You're worried about your brother, aren't you?"

"No!" Atticus snapped as they stepped off the elevator. "I don't know where the little brat is, but I'm sure he's fine."

He slid the card key into the lock of Kyle's hotel room, pushed open the door—and there was Ukiah, sitting in the corner wing chair. Thrown off balance, Atticus lost control of his anger. "What are you doing here?"

"Atticus," Ukiah said, as if surprised to see Atticus in his own room.

"How the hell did you get here?" Atticus slammed shut the door behind him.

"I swam."

"From the island?"

"No, out in the bay someplace."

"How long have you been here?"

"About an hour."

Atticus glared at Kyle, who flinched under the look.

"I tried calling you, Atty, but you must have been out of the range of any cell tower."

"Out in the middle of the ocean, yes." Atticus took in the fact that Ukiah was dressed in his clothes. The room smelled of roasted meat and expensive cheese. A room service cart set for one was shoved into the corner, well-gnawed bones the only evidence of what the meal might have been. "You've made yourself at home. Why did you come here instead of to the Dog Warriors?"

"I'm not sure where they are," Ukiah admitted. "And the Coast Guard—after they pulled me out of the water—were afraid I was hypothermic and wanted to take me to the hospital. When I told them you were here . . ."

"Useless fucks," Atticus said of the Coast Guard, to have found someone with an APB out on them and let them walk away.

"Are you okay?" Ru crossed the room to press a hand to Ukiah's forehead. "You're still a little cool."

"I'm fine." Ukiah took the mothering in good grace.

"You had us worried." Ru tousled his hair and Ukiah leaned against him, soaking in the affection. Atticus realized that the boy was emotionally raw after days of battering and isolation among his enemies; now with Ru, whom he counted as a friend, Ukiah sought solace.

Jealousy flared through Atticus. "You have a lot of nerve to come asking help from us after what you've done. The ambush at the beach house. Stealing the Pixie Dust."

Ukiah flinched as if struck. "I'm sorry about that." He stood up. "I'll pay you back for the food, and I'll swap you clothes once I get something else to wear."

"What are you going to do about Ping and the dens?" Kyle asked.

"What's this?" Atticus asked.

Ukiah stared at Atticus with his feral gaze that looked the whole way through him, and said nothing.

"We were pulling together information on the dens." Kyle held out a printout of an aerial photo, one building circled in red. "Using information your brother skimmed from the cult. We—he thinks they're holding Ping at an engineering firm in Waltham."

"You think you're going off, getting the Pack, and attacking this office building?"

"Ping will know where Ice has the Ae." Ukiah looked away but his pain was obvious. "And she's pregnant with my child."

"You're not going into an office building with those killers. If you think Ping is actually there, we'll call the FBI and the police and get an assault team set up."

"The Pack exists to fight the Ontongard. Why put humans at risk?"

"Because it's their world, their laws."

"The Gets will fight to the death—and then come back. They'll shatter down to mice to escape any prison cell. They'll infect any human who's jailed with them. You can kill them only with fire and poison, and human law doesn't allow that."

"So you conveniently leave humans in the dark so they can't ever deal with the problem themselves?"

That stumped Ukiah; he tried to brush past but Atticus caught hold of him. With the physical contact, Atticus's awareness of his brother expanded—the room service meal was the only reason Ukiah was still standing. The repeated attacks, the long, cold swim, the repeated dosing of various drugs, and perhaps even starvation in the barren cell on the island had him on the verge of collapse. If Ukiah went into the water in such bad shape, it was amazing he didn't drown.

"How are you going to find the Pack?" Atticus asked, his anger falling away to concern. "You'll probably drop over just outside the door."

"I'll make some phone calls." Ukiah tried to pull away.

Atticus tightened his hold; he couldn't let his feelings jeopardize his brother's life. "Don't be stupid. I'd rather work with you than argue with you."

The fight left Ukiah with a sigh that seemed born more from exhaustion than frustration. He leaned against Atticus. The smell of the ocean still clung to him, as if the water had seeped down to the bone. The tension between them temporarily resolved, the feeling of "this is right, this is good" resounding between them, echoes of an earlier happiness, when they were one. Atticus found himself holding his brother tightly, savoring the closeness like a starving man trying to make a morsel of food last.

It was then that Atticus realized that earlier, when Ukiah sought solace with Ru, it hadn't been Ukiah that he had been jealous of. What idiocy.

"You say that you think Ping is there," Ru said. "Why don't we scout the location, see what's there. The cult might have given you old information."

"It would be dangerous," Ukiah murmured into Atticus's shoulder.

"We are familiar with danger," Atticus said.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Waltham, Massachusetts

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Ukiah eyed the Ontongard den with faint dismay. It was a huge redbrick cube of an office building. Four floors tall, and equally wide, it sat behind a moat of access roads, a parking lot, and landscaping. Its tinted windows hid its secrets from anyone curious enough to cross the moat and try to spy in.

"We should be able to sense the Ontongard from here," Ukiah told Atticus as they studied the building. Their uneasy alliance was holding, although Atticus had driven from downtown to this beltway suburb with savage speed. Ukiah envied not only his skill at handling the sports car in the pounding traffic, but also the ease with which Atticus dealt with bewildering detours, unfamiliar road signage, and a toll road that required you to fling quarters into an open bin to pass. The DEA agents laid siege to the nest with practiced efficiency. After a cautious drive-by, Atticus pulled in near the front doors. Kyle parked across the parking lot in the Explorer, disassociated from the Jaguar, but connected by radio.

"I don't feel anything." Atticus's voice was flat with hostility.

"That's what I mean," Ukiah said. "Even if there were only one Get inside, at this distance, we should be able to tell."

"If no one's home, let's have a closer look." Still Ru waited for a slight nod from Atticus before getting out.

The foyer was a vast, two-story room with a bulky receptionist's desk. Two visitor's chairs sat close to the front doors, as if visitors were encouraged to leave.

The receptionist herself was another surprise: a pixie-small girl, thin and nearly sexless. Her hair was cut and styled into spikes, and dyed a vivid purple. A collection of gold loops dazzled in her ears, right eyebrow, and left nostril. She wore a silk tunic that matched her hair, black leggings, and cowboy boots.

Despite her outlandish appearance, when she answered the phone with "Good morning, Peter Caldwell and Associates," she sounded as smooth and polished as any receptionist Ukiah had ever heard.

"Is she one of them?" Ru whispered to Atticus.

"I don't think so," Atticus said. "My spider sense isn't tingling."

"She's human." Ukiah walked to the desk and his brother and Ru fell in beside him so that they made an impressive array as the receptionist finished taking a message and glanced up.

"May I help you?"

"I'm Agent Takahashi." Ru showed the girl his ID.

"Oh, shit," she said. "I knew this job was too good to be true."

"We have information that a kidnapped woman is being held here." Ru tucked his ID away before she could see that he was DEA, not FBI. "We need to search the premises for her."

"Don't you need a warrant for that?"

"Not in a kidnapping. Can you tell me how many people are currently in the building?"

"I'm not sure." She shrugged. "This is all of the building I usually see outside the john. People come and go—I'm not allowed to check ID or anything on them. They have new hires all the time, but after a few days they call in sick or . . . You know, this is a really creepy place to work. I knew something was wrong when they put meon front desk."

"What were you going to say about new hires?" Atticus asked.

"This is going to sound weird, but it's like attack of the pod people here. Bright and happy people turn into shuffling zombies in less than a week, or they just don't come back."

"You've never called the authorities?" Atticus sounded annoyed.

"Oh, yeah, like I'm a pillar of the community that the police are going to listen to about zombies from Mars."

"We're looking for this woman." Ukiah showed her Ping's photo.

"I haven't seen her." She eyed them. "Am I in trouble?"

"No, but we would like you to give us your name and address and then go home. Nor would it be wise for you to return. Your employers are dangerous men."

"Oh, I'd believe that of upper management. Most of Engineering and Accounting are okay. They're up on the second floor."

"No pod people?"

"Yeah, zombie-free zones. Just major geeks. Third floor is iffy. No one but pod people go up to the fourth floor. Past the elevator lobby, the doors are locked with card keys."

Her name was Sonya Barnes, and she gave her address in a town called Natick, which looked like Nat-ick to Ukiah but she pronounced it as Nay-ick and had to spell it for Atticus.

"I don't know if this means anything," Sonya said. "But there was a mass exodus a little while ago of the pod people."

"What time?"

"About two hours ago."

Had the cult attacked one of the dens, triggering the Ontongard to abandon the rest?

"If they're moving their . . ." Ukiah paused, as Ru and Atticus both glanced hard at Sonya to remind him that she was listening to their conversation. ". . . hideout, they might have taken Ping with them already."

"We'll see." Atticus frowned at the near slip.

The DEA agent walked Sonya to the door to prevent any other slips.

"Fourth floor?" Ukiah asked.

"Let's evacuate the civilians first." Atticus shook his head, his annoyance feeling like a coat of thorns. "Just in case we get in a shoot-out."

***

The elevator slid open to the scent of death and Ontongard. Ukiah growled softly as the familiar reek triggered generations of hate. He went to step off the elevator, but Atticus checked him.

"Wait," his brother commanded, pistol in hand. Ru held the door as Atticus cautiously checked the lobby beyond. "Okay. We're clear."

"Roger that," Kyle whispered from the nearly invisible earbud that Atticus was wearing.

There was a security door with a card-key lock.

"What's bugging you?" Atticus asked Ukiah as Ru produced a small electronic lock pick.

"There's something freshly dead up here." Ukiah wondered how Atticus could miss it.

Atticus sniffed deeply and then nodded slowly.

The door clunked open. Ukiah tracked death through the maze of offices and hallways. Atticus trailed behind, a bristling presence. In a small windowless supply room, they found Ping.

On the night of his rape, after Core had been called away, Ukiah had dragged himself off the sleeping Ping and showered away the drug's control. After tying up Ping, he fled the cult's commune, unaware that the Ontongard were zeroing in on it. The Gets must have found Ping as Ukiah had left her—bound and naked. They put the closest set of clothes on her: Core's black slacks and silk dress shirt, several sizes too large for her slight frame. To keep up her pants, the Gets had made the mistake of giving her a belt. One end of the belt was now tied to an overhead pipe, the buckle cinched tight around her slender neck. The slacks pooled on the floor under her dangling feet, while the shirt at least covered her body to her knees, preserving her dignity.

Ukiah stared at her, horrified, relieved, and ashamed of his relief. "Oh, God," he moaned; and stepped forward to take her down.

"No." Atticus caught him. "Don't disturb the crime scene."

"Poor thing," Ru whispered. "What do you think this mess on the wall means?"

After slicing her fingers on something sharp in her small prison, she had used the blood to paint her last message on the wall.

I misspoke and betrayed them all. Parity has fallen. God forgive me for what I must do.

Had she suspected why the Ontongard were keeping her untainted, or had she acted only to save herself from them? There were no answers on the blood-painted walls.

Above it was a word in the cult's phonetic spelling of an Ontongard word. Ukiah didn't recognize it until he sounded it out. Zaeta.But surely that couldn't be right.

No longer focused on the smell of death, other scents vied for his attention. He abandoned Ping to creep cautiously down another hall, following one smell in particular.

Atticus pulled him up short. "What is it?"

"Don't you use your nose?"

"Apparently not as much as you do," Atticus snapped.

"I can smell C-four. There may be a bomb up here."

"Did you hear that?" Atticus asked his teammates.

"I'll make sure the other floors are empty." Ru headed back to the elevator.

"Calling the bomb squad and signing off." Kyle's tinny voice came from Atticus's ear.

Atticus turned off his radio and then signaled Ukiah to continue. At the end of the hallway, though, Atticus suddenly caught hold of Ukiah's braid and dragged him backward. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, it's booby-trapped."

"It is?" Ukiah froze.

"The motion detector for the security system." Atticus pointed upward, not down at the floor where Ukiah had been focused. A cord dangled down off the corner unit. "We're not in its range, but we will be in a step or two."

"So how do we get around it?"

Atticus tugged on Ukiah's braid. "We don't. We leave it to experts."

"But . . ."

"Take it from your older, more experienced brother—don't play with bombs!" Atticus pulled him backward via the braid. "Come!"

Atticus didn't let go of his hair until they were on the elevator.

"The Ontongard normally don't bomb their own dens." Ukiah rubbed the back of his head where all the roots were complaining of his brother's rough treatment. "Things blowing up attracts more attention. Also, their means of communication is so loose, a returning Get is more likely to set it off than a human."

"Why did they leave in the first place?"

"If the cult attacked one of the other dens in the hexagon, then they would abandon all the rest except one."

Atticus swore. "Not the cult, the Pack. They went after a den in Watertown this morning while we went to the island."

The elevator door opened to the foyer. Through the tinted glass walls, as they walked toward the doors, they could see the police were arriving, several squad cars' worth.

"Let Ru do the talking." Atticus put a hand to Ukiah's shoulder as they walked out the door.

Ru had found some office workers, and he herded them across the parking lot to where the Jaguar and Explorer sat, screened by some low bushes. Atticus steered Ukiah toward the crowd. The police car passed Ru and pulled up to the building. Atticus ignored it, propelling Ukiah along.

"We got a call on a bomb threat," the officer called after Atticus.

"Yes, it's up on the fourth floor and it's booby-trapped!" Atticus shouted back, not stopping.

The policeman glanced at the building and then started after Atticus and Ukiah, leaving his cruiser behind, door open, lights flashing. "Were you the ones who called this in?"

Ukiah paused, only to have Atticus shove him forward.

"Yes! We found it!" Atticus kept walking.

"Hold on, I need to get your names, take your statement." The officer's hand was now riding his pistol grip.

"DEA! Agent Steele! And the number one rule of bombs, Officer, is clear the area."

As Kyle had the Explorer in the far reaches of the parking lot, they were now over two hundred feet from the building. The policeman paused, glancing back at the building and his cruiser in front of it.

"Don't you think this is a little excessive?" the policeman called.

The building exploded, floors flashing out like Chinese firecrackers, one after another. When the ground floor flared, the blast flipped the police cruiser like a toy. Atticus started to push Ukiah down and then they were both smacked to the ground hard; Atticus shielded him as the deafening noise, smoky heat, and flying glass blasted over them. Ukiah felt a dozen prickles of pain from Atticus as if they were his own.

The sound had been indescribably loud, and the silence afterward was shocking.

Atticus scrambled to the police officer while Ukiah's body was inclined to stay put—it seemed safer that way. The policeman got up, swearing, clearly no worse for the experience.

"Obviously," Atticus said, "it wasn't excessive enough."

***

The golden afternoon blurred with the arrival of fire trucks and police cars and various government agencies. Atticus tried to keep a hand on Ukiah at all times while fending off offers to take them both to the hospital. True, he had slivers of glass embedded in his back, making him feel as grouchy as a porcupine, but Ukiah withdrew alarmingly into himself. With another man, Atticus would have taken this as an attempt at duplicity, but he could feel his brother's endurance was thread thin and fraying.

He made his way toward the Explorer, pulling Ukiah along with him. Kyle was still holed up in the SUV, eyeing the crowd with dismay.

"You killed your earbud." Kyle reported, motioning to his own ear rather than touching Atticus.

Atticus found the remains dangling from his shoulder, a thin coat of his dead blood on it. Gingerly he explored his ear—a piece had blown off but it had found its way back. Unfortunately the earbud couldn't similarly repair itself.

"I've been trying to tell you," Kyle continued. "They blew the other four dens too."

Atticus glanced at the office workers being grilled by police about their missing employers. If his team hadn't evacuated the building for the expected gunfight, all seventy-some employees would have been in their offices when the bomb went off. The midafternoon time might have been chosen to ensure maximum kill. "Do they have any idea of a body count yet?"

"I called in bomb threats on all the addresses we had when you found this bomb."

"Good work!" Atticus gripped Kyle's shoulder.

Kyle grinned shyly at the praise, and then confessed, "Well, your brother stressed the symmetry of the dens, so I figured if they'd blow this one, they'd do the rest too."

Kyle had trusted a virtual stranger, someone he'd seen only twice and had every reason to mistrust, because he was Atticus's brother. Atticus supposed that was the nature of family, but he found it faintly alarming. In the old adage of blood and water, why did thickness make the fluid more trustworthy? Was Ukiah someone who could be trusted? Atticus had wanted to take the den with a SWAT team, but the plain truth was that the machines of justice moved slowly. Everyone in the six buildings would have been killed while they decided how to deal with perps who had already fled the scene. Would Ukiah's conviction that Ping was being held in the office building have been good enough to warrant a search? In the end, Atticus suspected, the law officers involved would have weighed their decision on the fact that Ukiah was his brother.

Atticus saw Agent Zheng stopped at the police barrier by a uniformed policeman. She showed her ID to pass it; another person of questionable reliability gaining automatic trust in the brotherhood of law officers. There had been a thawing of Zheng's arctic north; dismay registered as she saw the extent of the destruction to the office building. She spotted him and something passed through her eyes at the moment of recognition, a flicker of excitement then extinguished by something she saw in his face.

What was that all about? Did he communicate something to her without knowing?

She glanced past him and summer came to the arctic.

From behind him, Atticus feltan answering warm outbreak.

Ukiah—of course.

The two threaded through the crowd as if they were alone in a forest, the people around them no more interesting than trees. Ukiah took Zheng's hand, looked into her eyes, and a calmness washed over him.

"That explains much," Ru murmured in his ear.

Atticus glared at his partner.

Ru only laughed at him. "I've never seen a straight woman resist you so completely—but she's got her own little honeypot."

Ukiah's love was a deep current dragging Atticus along to places he didn't want to go. Beauty, they said, was in the eye of the beholder. Tainted by Ukiah's love, Atticus suddenly could see Zheng's glacial demeanor as Indigo's beautiful calm—serenity that all the world's madness didn't invade. A refuge.

For his brother, at least, this was the true thing, a love to die for. Did Indigo feel the same? Ukiah would give Indigo access to the Pack. It was easier to imagine her using his brother than her falling in love with him. Her strong self-control eliminated the obvious attraction: Ukiah's lean, well-defined body and handsome face. He was wolf silent with all-seeing feral eyes—what would they talk about?

"Distract Ukiah away from Indigo."

Ru looked at the two, isolated in a universe of their own making. "How?"

"I want five minutes alone with her. Think of it as a challenge."

Ru scoffed at the idea. "You owe me."

Atticus watched as Ru got Ukiah's attention by touching the bare skin of his wrist. With a smile and a nod toward the Explorer, Ru suggested that Ukiah change his torn and bloody shirt and get something to eat. Ukiah wavered, the suggestion of food fighting with his desire to be with Indigo.

With a glance toward Atticus, Indigo let go of Ukiah's hand. "Go on; I want to talk to Atticus."

They watched as Ru got Ukiah to the well-stocked Explorer before Indigo turned to Atticus.

"What is it you want?"

Uh-oh, busted.

"I want to know—do you love my brother, or are you just using him?" When she didn't react, he added, "I can promise you, one law officer to another, that anything you say to me won't be repeated."

"Normally I would say, one law officer to another, that it's none of your business."

"He's my brother."

"That's between you and him," Zheng said in her calm, unreadable way. "But your brother asked me to marry him. Last week I told him I had to think about it. This week I've been praying that I would have a chance to tell him yes." She gave him her Mona Lisa smile. "That makes you my brother-in-law. I'm telling you because that's between you and me."

She was marrying his brother? "What the hell do you see in him?"

"Only people who don't know him ask that question."

"I don't know my brother."

"Obviously." She considered him with a level look not unlike Ukiah's. "I can outthink, outshoot, outfight, plain out-brass ball most men. But men have this unwritten rule: The only women who are allowed to be stronger than them are their mothers. If you don't do the mothering routine, then they call you a grade-A bitch. With most men you can see it in their eyes as they try out the labels: hot babe, possible mother, bitch."

No, we don't have issues, do we?"And Ukiah doesn't."

"When I first met Ukiah, he looked at me, and saw me.Not the babe, the mother, or the bitch, just me. And I was hooked. The more I got to know him, the more I wanted him. He's the gentlest, most compassionate, wisest man I have ever met."

"Ukiah?" Those were three words that Atticus wouldn't ever have thought to apply to his brother; nor were they words that described Atticus either.

"If you spent any time getting to know him, you would see that for yourself." She said it as if it were a challenge. I double-dare you.

"How did you end up spending time with him?"

"He saved my life," Indigo said, and explained no more, except to add, "Believe me, there is nothing sexier than having a man save your life and then never mention it."

"So it is the hot monkey sex?"

She actually laughed and then sobered. "Sometimes it's like dating the Dalai Lama in the body of a young god. There might be a lot he doesn't know about the world, but his soul is old and patient."

"If he's so great, why didn't you say yes?"

She looked away to hide the sorrow in her eyes. "For reasons that seemed so trivial when the cult killed him and took his body."

It made him uncomfortable that he understood too well the terror that held. Of all the people who were trusting Ukiah just because he was Atticus's brother, the one he worried about most was himself. Atticus's world was too fragile to entrust it to a stranger with dangerous connections—FBI fiancйe or not.

"I'm glad he went to you for help," Indigo said. "If he'd been here with the Pack, he'd have been arrested."

"He didn't want my help."

"Yes, he did; otherwise he wouldn't have come to you." Indigo reached out and took his hand. At the point of contact, Atticus felt Ukiah on her, but then lost the sense of his brother under his own touch—they were too identical for Atticus to keep separate. "And he needs you."

Atticus pulled his hand free. "I think you're confusing me with someone who gives a damn."

"Oh, this isn't the same man who no more than three minutes ago was asking if my intentions were honorable or not?"

Sometimes keeping silent was the only safe answer.

"He's about to collapse. You're hurt too. If we're to stop these monsters, I can't take time to care for him, and if I leave him alone, the Pack will take him."

"So? He's a Dog Warrior."

"And so are you." "

He glared at her, unsure of the truth. Was he?

Her eyes were gray as gunmetal. "He has a clean record, but if he'd come here today with the Pack, he'd have been arrested instead of praised. Please take care of him tonight."

All things considered, she was a good match for his brother in her ability to stare a person down.

"He can come with us. We've got an extra bed back at the hotel."

She rewarded him with a smile, and put away her steel-gray weapons. "Thank you."

***

Atticus decided they couldn't wait for food until they returned to the hotel. Changing shirts, they stopped at the first place at hand, a seafood place called Naked Fish on Totten Pond Road. Done in a decor of mustard yellow and splashes of purple, it featured Cuban cooking. The place was crowded with a wait for tables, but Ru—with the judicious use of a ten-dollar bill—got them seated immediately. Atticus didn't bother looking at the menu, knowing Ru would order for him. Ukiah scanned the menu with tired bewilderment while Kyle directed pouting glares at him. Obviously Kyle had also seen Indigo with Ukiah and wasn't taking the loss of his dream girl gracefully.

Ru looked up as the waiter appeared with a basket of rolls to take drink orders. "We know what we want. I'll take the crispy calamari salad, and they'll both take the empanadas criollas de carne, gambas al ajillo,the valencianapaella, and side orders of the plantains."

"They have plantains?" Atticus picked up the menu to scan it.

"What are plantains?" Ukiah asked.

"You'll like them," Ru reassured him, and ordered clam chowder and steak for Kyle. He finished with, "Two root beers, a Coke, and an iced tea."

The waiter eyed Atticus, who was clearly in pain, Ukiah on the verge of collapse, and Kyle pouting and then looked back to Ru. "Ooookay. I'll go get that order right in and bring your drinks, but we're really backed up. It's going to be a while."

Ukiah surrendered the menu. "What did you order us?"

"A beef turnover; shrimp; and a rice dish with shrimp, scallops . . . chicken and sausage and probably some stuff I've forgotten. Atty loves it; you should like it too."

Ukiah sighed, leaning his head against the wall behind him, eyes closed. "We don't have time for this."

"You're not up to anything but this," Atticus snapped.

After a long delay, Ukiah grunted, acknowledging it. He considered his bloodstained fingers. "I should wash. I have Ping's blood on my hands."

"I'll go with you—I need to go," Ru lied, probably guessing that in his condition, Ukiah would have a difficult time finding his way through the restaurant to the bathroom and back.

Atticus took advantage of their absence to fix Kyle with his gaze. "Kyle, I'm sorry about Indigo—but we've talked about this before."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Someday I'll meet the girl of my dreams. Just got to keep looking. Blah blah blah." Kyle seized one of the hot buns and angrily tore small pieces from it. "It's not fair. The hot chicks are always already taken or they never even look at me. All you have to do—all your brother has to do—is walk into a room and they watch you."

Kyle jerked his head toward Ukiah, following Ru to the bathroom. Indeed, every woman who noticed his passing continued to, follow him with her eyes. Atticus had always been somewhat aware of the attention he received, but this time, being separate from the focus, he saw how profound the effect was. Ukiah seemed completely oblivious.

"You know it's nothing we can control. You just have to deal with it."

"Doesn't mean I have to like it." Kyle sighed. "You don't know how lucky you are to have Ru."

Across the room, Ru paused at the bathroom door and glanced back to the table. When their eyes met, Ru smiled.

"No," Atticus said. "I know exactly how lucky I am."

***

"If Ping is dead," Ukiah said once he and Ru returned to the table, "we're back to square one in finding the Ae."

"What about this word that Ping wrote onto the wall?" Ru asked.

Ukiah shrugged. "I think it's zaeta,which roughly means 'transmitter,' but that wouldn't make sense. She must have gotten the word wrong."

"Why?" Atticus asked.

"The zaetaworks on a quantum level to achieve instant communication between star systems. It was developed by a race that had achieved three colonies in nearby star systems."

"Cool." Kyle's pout slipped away in the face of far-flung alien civilizations. "Why doesn't 'transmitter' make sense? E.T. phone home." This got a blank look from Ukiah. "They're sending messages back to the home world."

Ukiah shook his head. "No. You don't understand the Ontongard."

"Pretend we know nothing," Atticus said. "That shouldn't be much of a stretch."

"The Ontongard can't stay on one planet," Ukiah said. "Eventually they wipe out the ecology by becoming the ecology, and cannibalism follows. So they gear all the planet's industries toward building seed ships. They build thousands, until the planet's resources are depleted, and then they leave, each ship traveling on a different vector. It's completely blind. One ship might travel one light year to the next star system, and the next ship could travel thousands."

"So the transmitters are used to keep the scattered colonies connected," Kyle guessed.

"No." Ukiah shook his head. "There is no home world. There is no plan. This isn't an effort to build a civilization to span the universe. The Ontongard is just one organism, reproducing mindlessly. After they find a suitable planet, they pull their ship into orbit and dismantle it, parachuting everything down to the surface in an all-or-nothing try to take over. If they succeed, they reproduce until they wipe out all life on that planet and then leave. If they fail, who cares?"

"The ones that die." Atticus felt the need to poke holes in Ukiah's theory. He found his brother's knowledge annoying in the face of his own ignorance. "It might be a long shot, but the ones here on Earth might be desperate enough to take it. Why not send out a message saying there's a perfect planet here, waiting to be plundered, if another ship was so inclined to head in this direction?"

Ukiah gave him a lost look, uncertain.

"These translations the cult had you do." Ru gave Ukiah a nudge like he would if they were questioning a witness. "They never mentioned the transmitter?"

Ukiah closed his eyes and sat still for a minute. Atticus sensed that he was flicking back over hours of spoken conversation. "A lot of the same equipment goes to building a lot of things: computer controls, monitors, switches, gauges. They could be building anything—but they areall things found in a transmitter. The Ontongard would have needed years to bring everything together, and I listened only to a few months of recordings."

"They're still building it, or they wouldn't be talking about parts," Kyle guessed. "Any indication how close to finished they are?"

Ukiah made a face. "It could be done now and still be useless."

"Huh?"

"Well, these things are more like cell phones than radios, if I understand human technology right. The transmitter isn't like a radio tower, where it broadcasts out and anyone out there with a radio can pick it up. It's like a cell phone, where there's two-way communication set up. There's what Max calls 'the handshake' going on—signals that go from sender to receiver and back."

"What's the protocol?" Kyle got a blank look. "How do they initiate a message?"

"They would have to . . ." Ukiah said slowly, grinding through the process, ". . . detect another transmitter first, which might take years . . . unless they know something that the Pack doesn't—like the Ontongard on the last world or two decided to set one up at a certain location, or knew of one they were going to take over."

Atticus blew out his breath in exasperation. It sounded like lots of unknowns, maybes, and dependings. He wasn't even sure why they were talking about it, since only finding the Ae mattered.

Kyle, however, was intrigued. "Let's just assume they are building this transmitter. How do we find it? What does it look like? Is it bigger than a bread box?"

"It's massive. The housing for the containment field would be, like, thirty feet tall, and waveguides are very long and straight. It's not something they'll be able to hide."

"When you say very long, what measurements are you talking here?"

Ukiah thought for a minute, translating out the measurements. "They would have to be nearly half a mile in length."

"And how thick around is the waveguide?"

Ukiah measured it off with his hands. "But there would have to be, like, twenty-five feet of earth acting as a buffer from outside interference."

"How do you know all this stuff?" Atticus asked him.

"I have Rennie's memories."

"What does that have to do with it?"

"He's Coyote's Get, who was Prime's only Get." He saw Atticus's blank look. "Ontongard store their memories in their genetics because in essence, each cell is an individual, but they function as one vast creature. The Ontongard pass mice back and forth all the time to keep all of themselves on the same page. They all remember back for thousands of years."

"But what does that have to do with you and Rennie?"

"Pack is just like the Ontongard, only completely different," Ukiah said.

"Well, that's completely clear."

"Have you ever seen the movie Blade Runner?"

"Can we have a straightforward conversation? One without all these weird jumps?"

"Max has this big-screen TV and surround sound and Blade Runneron DVD. When you watch it, you're immersed in that world, and throughout the entire movie it rains and rains. So at the end, when you go outside and the sun is shining, you think—for one split second—wow, it's stopped raining."

"It never was raining." Atticus refrained from asking who Max was, since it would derail the conversation even further.

"Exactly."

"Just get to the point."

"The movie infringed on your reality, but only so you're disoriented for a moment, just a second or two, and then it all goes back to being just a movie you watched. When Pack trade mice, they can tell what is the movie and what is the real world. Where the other person's memories end, and theirs start."

"A good book that you can put back on the shelf?"

"Yeah. For the Ontongard, both your world and the movie are equally real. You are yourself, and all the characters in that movie, and all the movies ever made in the history of the art. A million lives, all equally weighed."

"How can they think that way?"

Ukiah shrugged. "But that's really the only difference between Pack and Ontongard. We have a mutation that lets us remain individuals, with all the hates and desires and free will that implies—but the 'me' of an Ontongard host is lost under the flood of 'them.' You say that humans should deal with this. The Pack were all born human. They were infected by Coyote with Prime's mutation. They're genetically aliens, but in their hearts and souls, they're still human."

"As far as I'm concerned, the Pack are nothing but low-life slime deluding themselves that they're saving the world. They're no different from the cult. The Ontongard are convenient bogeymen to excuse the Pack's criminal behavior."

"I can show you."

It took Atticus a moment to realize what Ukiah meant. "I already had my mind raped."

Ukiah ducked his head; if he were a dog, he'd probably be flattening back his ears. "Not like that. You read me, like the Pack read you."

"No."

Ukiah locked his feral stare onto Atticus. "You want to stay blind to the danger until it kills you?" And he thought, but did not say aloud, " Kills Ru?"

Twin spikes of guilt and anger hit Atticus. He matched Ukiah's gaze, until he realized that Ukiah was offering to give Atticus free access to his memories. The offer spoke to him of sincere trust. "I don't know how."

Ukiah leaned close, locking Atticus with his intense gaze. "Just look."

Atticus never considered howhe remembered before—how he could focus on a nearby wall, and yet in his mind, like transversing some invisible dimension, walk through the houses of his childhood. Vaguely he knew it was neurons firing, replaying stored information, only his recording was perfect. At some point, the past would crowd the present out of his sight with things recalled.

He looked into his brother's dark eyes with their vaguely Asian shape, marked with exhaustion. He could feel the fearlessness with which Ukiah opened himself up in a way that seemed both trustingly childlike and patiently wise. One of them took a breath, and Atticus wasn't sure which body moved.

Ukiah's thoughts traveled to a distant time and firmly guided Atticus there too.

All his life, Prime had been caged. Loose pellets of nutrients were dropped into the feeding bowl. Water flowed endlessly in the drinking trough. He and the others in his cage had learned sometime in their pasts to use the trench in the back to urinate and defecate. Their language was a dozen words, all that was needed to explain their limited world. To count was meaningless— nothing ever was added or subtracted. Day was light. Night was dark. Only their bodies changed, growing taller; things that had been challenging in the play area now seemed too simple, and they invented complex games to take up their endless time. At one point they'd learned that to copulate felt good, so they did it often. The timeless imprisonment ended after the bitter-smelling air that made him sleep. They woke with identical angry red marks on their arms. Soon afterward he felt the change work through him, a whispering of a million voices, trying to crowd him out . . .

Ukiah flicked them forward in time.

Prime was like them, but not. They seemed to have no identity other than the group self. It was as if he were immersed in the sea, their presence shifting all around him, trying to carry him away with their nearly antlike desires. Build here. Destroy here. Gather food. Distribute it. They had bodies like himself, and anywhere there was dirt, they also grew like plants and trees and moss. They were everything until the planet was one vast organism, and the single individuals weren't even antlike anymore, but merely cells in a body.

He drifted through the world, resisting the local urges, masking his thoughts, utterly alone on a planet utterly alive. Perhaps he would have joined with them if not, ironically enough, for the memories they infected him with. They remembered the planet as it had been, the millions of species, the billions of his mother's people. And in comparison, utter worldwide genocide was unpardonable.

Ukiah took another step forward in Prime's life.

They had been pond scum, and later stolen the forms of brilliant, creative creatures, and all the ranges of life between, creeping slowly across the universe. If they ever chose to go back, they could find their home world, but its location was now lost in indifference, caring no more than a seed for its pod after it'd been cast off.

And yet, they remained true to the strictures of life formed on that planet.

Mindless as a dafi plant, they built their seed ships in orbit until L5 bristled, waiting and waiting until the last ship was built. He would have suspected that they had a reluctance to separate, tearing away from the planet that was now virtually one of them, except he knew they held no such emotion. Verily, they had nearly no emotions at all.

The time to sail, though, was now at hand.

One by one, the great solar sails unfurled, and the ships began to peel away, each on a slightly different vector as the planet circled the star, like the white heads of dafi seeds, drifting out on the wind. At the great distance, the ugly ships were merely darkness trailing behind their glistening sails.

If he didn't know that they were death spores drifting toward another planet to kill, he would have found them beautiful . . .

He had failed. They were making a landing on a new planet to rape. A shimmering teardrop of a world, teeming with life, like so many worlds before . . .

Atticus recognized Earth, the North American continent under scant cloud cover. He recoiled. No, this couldn't be true. Ukiah was controlling what he saw. Maybe he was giving Atticus only the most damning of information. Besides, these weren't Ukiah's memories; they could be elaborate creations handed to Ukiah as real. How did they compare to the real thing? The Pack took what they wanted from him, so he must be able to do the same.

Let me see Oregon,he thought, and pushed his way into Ukiah's memory.

It was like falling into a deep well. There was a shallow layer of civilized confusion, and then a long silence of dappled forest. At the bottom, he found a toddler, naked, hungry, alone, and scared.

Where did you go?the child cried, and the voice was achingly familiar.

I don't know.He drew back, away from his failing. This wasn't what he wanted. There was nothing he could do about this. He couldn't even remember how he went from wolf protector to being a child just as lost and alone.

Nor did he want to dwell on those memories of being a feral child. He passed back through them, green leaves, white snow, and shaggy gray bodies. Thoughts so centered on the forest around him, the only horizon being the next meal, that they seemed barely human.

Finally he resurfaced.

The woman carefully pushed a piece of jerky through the cage bars." I know, I know, you don't like the cage." She seemed to be in her early twenties, dark eyed, dark haired, and athletic in build. The child listening to her didn't understand the low-crooned words, but was beginning to trust the speaker." But if I let you out, I'm afraid that you'll run away, so we're going to do this nice and slow and easy."

Another piece of jerky slipped between the cage bars." And we're not going to tell anyone about you. No, no, we're not going to let big, uncaring government with its Jerry Falwell ethics get ahold of you. I'm not going to let that happen to you, my little Mowgli. I'm going to keep you safe. . ."

And up through the days that followed as this woman, Ukiah's adopted mother, showed stunning patience, gaining the wild child's love and gentling him. A second woman merged into the memories, a beautiful sunny blonde, as strong and caring as the first.

" I did research on autistic and feral children. I think"— the blonde paused to accept a snuggling hug from the boy who was discovering the joys of physical affection—"the reason the radio and television bother him is he's suffering from sensory overload. You didn't say how cute he was."

" It was hard to tell under all the dirt and matted hair."

" Well, it's a good sign that he's showing affection."

" Thank you for saying yes, kitten; I know it wasn't fair to ask you to take on a teenage wolf boy."

Teenage wolf boy? Atticus jerked up out of the memories, to stare at Ukiah. "How old were you?"

"Thirteen."

Atticus suffered a sudden flash of guilt—he'd left the baby in the woods and it never found its way out. There's nothing I could have done differently,he told himself. But there were still disquieting echoes deep inside him, plans to search the woods, made and abandoned several times in the last twenty-five years. I knew there was someone I lost.

On the heels of that, he did the math. Thirteen? Ukiah's driver's license claimed he was twenty-one. That meant that Ukiah had been part of civilization for only eight years. No wonder he struck Ru as childlike.

"Food's coming," Ru warned Atticus, and they sat silently as the waiter unloaded his tray onto the table. Ru, though, watched Atticus closely. "Well?"

Atticus had to think back to the last spokenconversation, which seemed like a lifetime ago. Ah, yes, he was sneering at the idea of the Ontongard being bogeymen. "The Ontongard are complete monsters. The Pack is right to be doing whatever it takes to stop them."

Ukiah eyed his plantains and tasted them cautiously. "They're fried bananas?"

"More or less." Atticus swallowed down his unease along with a bit of the sweet fried fruit. Only eight years.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Boston Harbor Hotel, Boston, Massachusetts

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Atticus and his team had just gotten Ukiah tucked into the extra bed in Kyle's room when there was a loud knock at the door.

Atticus stilled and focused. In his memory, he found Sumpter's familiar stride coming down the hall, and could now catch his scent. "Oh, shit. It's Sumpter. Other room."

Atticus went last, closing the connecting doors behind him. Sumpter was knocking a second time when he opened the hall door. "We're over here."

The problem with his and Ru's room was the king-sized bed. While he and Ru didn't lie about their relationship, they tried to keep it fairly low-key, which usually meant keeping Sumpter out of their bedroom. The bed made it a little too obvious to miss.

"Where have you been?" Sumpter shied from the bed as if it were a sex act, heading for the connecting doors.

"We had a lead on the cult," Atticus said, blocking him. "But it was blown to smithereens."

"Let's go in the other room and you can brief me."

Atticus sighed. Trying to keep Sumpter in the dark would only make him more hostile. "We have a civilian sleeping over there. My younger brother."

"What the hell are you thinking?" At least Sumpter stopped trying to flee the room. "What does he know?"

A lot more than I do."Everything."

"Everything? What you are and what we're doing here?"

It took Atticus a second to realize Sumpter meant he was DEA, not that Atticus was an alien. "The whole shebang."

"That's just fucking perfect," Sumpter snapped. "What were you thinking?"

"I think I'm doing my job. Don't come here half-assed, without a clue about what the fuck is going on, and start raking me over the coals."

"If you bothered to keep me briefed, then I wouldn't be reaming you a new one. You didn't mention this when I saw you earlier today."

"That wasn't Atticus," Kyle said quietly. "That was Ukiah you talked to."

"Ukiah?" Sumpter asked.

"My brother," Atticus said.

Sumpter looked at them as if he thought they were lying and walked into the next room. Ukiah lay in quiet testament that they were telling the truth. "Well, I'll be damned. But why the hell did you bring him into the middle of this?"

"The cult kidnapped him," Ru volunteered, weaving truth and fiction. "They took his wallet and threw him overboard to drown. The Coast Guard picked him up while we were at the cult's hideout this afternoon. He has no money, no place else to go, and a lot he can tell us about the cult."

Sumpter gave Atticus a look that was both calculating and suspicious. Chances were, he was wondering if the entire case was a vendetta to wreak vengeance for Ukiah's kidnapping.

"Can you trust him to keep his mouth shut?" Sumpter finally asked.

"Yes," Atticus said.

"So where do we stand?"

***

They did more than dance around the truth. They dressed up half-truths and waltzed them past Sumpter to divert him from the things they were covering up. It proved useful, though, as it focused on what they knew without the distraction of all the weirdness.

"We know that the cult is using the drugs to fund their terrorist activities. We've heard rumors that they plan something large-scale aimed at the companies they've been wiretapping. Today's bombings were at the offices of six of those companies."

"Why them?"

"We don't know," Atticus lied. "We think it might have to do with a construction project that is common to all six companies."

"The cult thinks they're eeevil," Ru said, dancing closer to the truth.

"This was the island where the cult was hiding." Atticus gave Kyle the GPS coordinates. "It wasn't on Indigo's—Agent Zheng's—list of cult properties. We should find out who owns it; it might lead us to other sites. According to what they told my brother, their drug lab is somewhere in the immediate Boston area."

Kyle nodded and focused on the search. "I think I found it," he said after several minutes. "The same account that bought the island also purchased a warehouse and pays for the electric and such. It's in South Boston, just across the channel."

***

Ukiah woke alone. On the doors and the bathroom mirror, post-it notes commanded: Stay Put!!!Triple exclamation points and no clues as to where they'd gone or how long he should wait.

The thing about his perfect memory was that it didn't turn off while he slept. There, stored with the shifting shadows across his closed eyelids, he found their conversation with Sumpter. They talked about a warehouse in South Boston, planning to put it under surveillance, and what they would need to get warrants and enlist backup from the police to stage a raid.

They had taken Kyle's laptop—source of a nearly constant clicking of keys—and the maps they'd crinkled and rustled, but left behind a series of satellite photos printed onto plain paper. The grainy photos zeroed in on an untidy sprawl of warehouses and parking lots beside a dry dock and rimmed by water. While the address meant nothing to Ukiah, one of the photographs jogged recognition. The cult had a similar picture with a building circled in red and labeled VB6. When he saw it earlier, there wasn't enough in the photo to identify the location, but linked to the other photographs, now part of a whole, Ukiah could guess where the site lay.

And it wasn't where Atticus was heading .

***

Using the hotel phone, he called Indigo.

"Tell me that you're still safe with your brother," she commanded.

"Well, not quite." Ukiah explained the situation while he searched through his brother's luggage, looking for anything to use as a weapon. He found a twenty-dollar bill still tucked into the pants pockets of the jeans Atticus wore the day before, but nothing else of use.

"Either way, this is bad," Indigo said when he finished. "The coast guard found the Nautilusdrifting in the harbor. It appears that the Ontongard caught up with the cult. The boat is riddled with bullets and there's blood everywhere."

"Ice and the others?"

"We've got one John Doe—we think it's Boolean—and that's it."

"There were ten people on the Nautilus."

"There's no sign of them."

He sat on the end of Atticus's bed, stunned by the news. "When . . . when did it happen?"

"Around noon."

Ukiah glanced out the window at the rain-dark night. Hours ago. Any of the cultists taken alive by the Ontongard would have already been infected. Ice and the others were all gone.

Noon, though, would have given the cult time to set up Loo-ae. It could be somewhere even now, slowly filling the air with poison.

"I think I know where they intended to set up Loo-ae." He described the aerial photo and the street map. "Have the Dogs meet me there."

"Be careful. The Ontongard might already be there."

"I know. Tell the Dogs to hurry. I'd wait for them, but I'm not sure there's time."

***

He used Atticus's twenty-dollar bill to take a taxi to the empty corner of Fish Pier and Seaport Boulevard, a few blocks from the target building.

"Here?" The cabbie swept his hand to take in the deserted pier, the empty parking lots, and a tangle of highways disappearing into a tunnel entrance. Obviously an industrial area—there were no apartments or open businesses in sight.

Ukiah hushed him and scanned the surroundings for Ontongard. If he pushed, he could sense a small group of them distantly, moving invisibly in the darkness beyond. He pulled back into himself. Being only one person, he'd be harder to detect, but it was possible that the Ontongard would sense him if he continued to blindly reach out. "Yes, here."

"There's nothing here."

"Yeah, that's good." Ukiah handed forward the twenty, which the cabbie took warily. "Do you know what that building up there is?"

The cabbie gave it a quick glance. "It's one of the ventilation buildings for the Big Dig. They blow air down into the tunnels with big fans to keep the fumes from killing drivers. There's, like, ten of them, all over the city."

Big fans? Ukiah shuddered at the thought of Loo-ae tied to such things, distributing the airborne poison. He'd hoped the cult would have the machine in an enclosed space, where there was a slim hope of containing the viral biotoxin.

Ukiah paid the fare and slid out of the safety of the cab.

In Pittsburgh, there would have been hillsides and deep weeds anyplace that wasn't paved over, but here there was just a flat wasteland of cement and plowed earth. A storm wind was blowing off the black ocean, scouring up dusty ghosts of demolished buildings and roadways. Water slapped against stone, a restless murmur.

"You sure you've got the address right, kid?" The cabbie seemed suddenly friendlier, and Ukiah realized the man had thought Ukiah planned to rob him in this empty place.

"Yeah, this is the place. I'm meeting some friends here." Ukiah waved toward a dark boat moored to the pier. "They get off at midnight. Thanks!"

The cabbie eyed the boat and shrugged. He put the cab into gear and drove away, leaving Ukiah alone.

At least with the oncoming storm, the sky was cloaked and the shadows deep.

Avoiding the pools of light thrown by the overhead streetlights, Ukiah moved wolf-silent toward Ventilation Building Six. It was larger than he had expected—on the photo it had been a small square smudge beside a rectangle of water. In truth, it was built on a giant's scale, several stories high with truck-sized doors. Despite its utilitarian function, an effort had been made to make it pretty. The air shafts rising like chimneys from the roof had been stylized into wedges and tipped with something that gleamed with reflected light.

He sensed something wrong with the building and stilled. He stood downwind, in a heavy flow of hot fumes, as if one huge engine were pouring out its exhaust, and caught the scent of blood. Stalking forward, smothering down a growl, he found a human-sized door ajar. Leads bypassed the security sensors in the door's sill, and just inside a night watchman was sprawled out dead—the source of the blood.

The cult was already in the building.

They'd left the guard's gun in its holster. Ukiah crept forward and slid it out.

At the slight noise, the prickle of Ontongard brushed over him.

"What are you doing here?" a voice asked, coming out of the darkness.

Ukiah recognized Ice's voice, though it sounded raspy and hoarse. He reached out and felt Ice, his scent mixed with sickness and Hex's reek. Parts of Ice were still human, but the rest pushed against Ukiah's senses like sandpaper. Ice was becoming a Get.

Ukiah growled low.

"What are you doing here?" Ice asked again. He staggered down the passage, hand on the wall, sweat pouring from him. "You haven't come to stop it?"

"You're infected."

"Yes." Ice licked his lips. "Evil is inside of me, crowding me out. I'm barely here. I'm barely me."

Ukiah could sense the Ontongard presence growing inside of Ice's body, a coil of hate. "I know."

"You must have power over the evil. I can feel how much he hates you. Can you save me?"

"No." There was a machine that could reverse the process, but it was on the West Coast; Ice would be a Get long before they could bring him to it. "Where is Hu-ae?"

"We sold it to John Daggit—the philistine—for access keys to this building." Ice dismissed Daggit with a wave of his hand. "He's making arrangements to move it and what's left of our inventory out of our warehouse on Summer Street. God rest his soul."

"He's dead?"

"Hmm." Ice pursed his lips together, thinking. "By now, probably. I had to use him as a distraction for the evil. We'd set up Loo-ae on a remote, so we'd have a chance to be clear of it when it started up. A running start. The demons—the Ontongard—caught us at the docks. Everyone else is dead, some with cleaner deaths than others. They knew we stole the Ae." He pressed fingertips to his forehead. "They started to rummage through my mind, trying to discover what we'd done with the Ae, so I gave them Daggit and Hu-ae to save Loo-ae." He laughed softly. "Hu-ae. Loo-ae. Listen to me. I'm using their real names."

Ice had made a small gesture to the shadows beside him. Ukiah looked and with a start recognized Loo-ae beside the huge bulk of a giant ventilation fan. A hole had been arc-welded into the metal sheeting of the ductwork, and the Loo-ae's exit chute was duct-taped into the air shaft.

"You can't use Loo-ae to stop them."

"I rekeyed it." He lifted his left hand and showed off the bloody stump of a pinkie, already trying to grow back. "I managed to slice off some of the evil and used Loo-ae to change it from your genetic key."

So they had taken one of his mice to program Loo-ae.

"Are you sure it was pure Ontongard? Even a few human cells, and you'd kill off everything on the planet."

"What do you want of me? Look!" Ice indicated a cut along his cheek. "I tried to kill myself, put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger, but he's already too strong. He stopped me."

"I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do."

"Fine. Then I'll kill them all, even as I become one of them."

"This machine won't stop them."

"It might—that's all I care about."

"You can't do this. You'll kill millions of innocent humans."

Ice wavered. "The evil wants me to smash it. Is that enough of an answer?"

"No."

"They're finishing the transmitter today. They've had the detector done for years and found a source months ago. They'll be able to start sending messages out tomorrow. Sunday at the latest. What's a few million to the fate of the world?"

Ukiah edged sideways, hoping to get closer to the machine. "We still have time to stop them without Loo-ae."

"No!" Ice pulled out his pistol, aimed at Ukiah, and fired. At the last moment, though, his hand flicked to one side. Ice screamed surprise and anger as the bullets plowed through Loo-ae's casing to blast holes into the delicate circuitry inside. One of the bullets hit the power supply, and electricity arced in a miniature electrical storm.

They stood for a minute staring as the machine died, and with it all the hopes of the cult. Like all who had fallen to the Ontongard over the millennia, the cult had failed in the face of the sheer resilience of their enemy. Again and again, the invaders could recover from any blow, while the native-born either died or—infected—betrayed their own race.

Ice stared at his traitorous hand. "Oh, God." He dropped to his knees. "Wolf child, please, give me mercy. Kill me before they take me."

And take him they would. With Ice would go all the knowledge of Ukiah's world. Max. Indigo. His infant son. Nor was there time to consider long. While Atticus might physically survive the Ontongard's ambush at the cult's warehouse, if Ru was killed or worse—and more likely after years of close association with Atticus—made one of them, Atticus's fragile world would be crushed.

Ukiah couldn't let that happen.

Still, it was the hardest thing Ukiah had ever done, to pull out his newfound gun and point it at a person he knew. To keep it aimed between Ice's pale blue eyes. To pull the trigger. In the enclosed space, the gun thundered. The bullet smashed Ice to the ground. Gunsmoke and blood filled Ukiah's senses. All he could see was the sprawl of Ice's body. Still, the mostly Ontongard heart struggled to save the host. With a sob, Ukiah aimed at the pounding heart and fired again and again. The body jerked under the blows and went still. Life continued to exist, but could no longer steal Ice's form and memories.

***

Why, Atticus wondered, couldn't anything be simple anymore? There was a time—strangely just last week, but it seemed much longer now—when it was a straight and simple good guys versus bad guys. No werewolves, angels, demons, or aliens. Planning a raid seemed to offer the return to comforting routine.

The warehouse sat in a flat, treeless area; a desert of an industrial park. Dusk was running before heavy rain clouds, leaving behind a windy night full of the promise of rain. While the loading bays fronting Summer Street remained closed, one of the doors to the back alley had been wedged open. A black pickup truck blocked the narrow alley, as if the driver had tried to back it to the door, discovered it wouldn't fit, and left it at a drunken angle. Apparently someone was loading up with all haste.

"Looks like they're bolting." Ru took out the night-vision binoculars to scan the warehouse.

Atticus grunted. So much for an easily orchestrated raid. "Not surprising with the pod people breathing down their neck. Grab the cash cow and run." He checked his pistol, made sure it was fully loaded, and patted his pocket to check on the extra magazine.

"Speaking of pod people, you feel anything with your super spider senses?"

There were times when Ru took things a little too easy. Atticus grunted again in annoyance, but he closed his eyes and tried that weird "other" sense. "No."

"Hello? What's hedoing here?" Ru murmured.

Atticus opened his eyes and peered across the street. John Daggit came out of the warehouse carrying a cardboard box. Since his right hand was a painful collection of metal braces for his broken fingers, Daggit juggled the box awkwardly with his left hand.

"Call for backup?" Ru asked.

"Let me scout the area." Atticus dialed down the interior lights so they wouldn't turn on when the door opened. "See how many people we're dealing with."

Daggit dropped his load into the pickup's bed and hurried back inside. Faint thunder rolled around in the sky as Atticus eased out of the Jaguar and into the chilly wind. Instantly the omnipresent fish-and-salt smell of the ocean filled his senses. Keeping to the shadows, he crossed the street and crept to the pickup. Battered and muddy with steel toolboxes built in, the vehicle was obviously used for construction. A tarp and bindings lay ready to cover up the load.

Liquor boxes sat in the truck bed, perhaps a dozen in all, shoved as far as Daggit could easily reach, leaving a glittering trail of Invisible Red. Atticus slid on a plastic glove and gingerly tipped the nearest box to peer inside. Plastic bags of the alien drug filled the box. Based on what Daggit had sold his team, the boxes represented several million dollars' worth of drugs. What was Daggit doing with it? Where was the cult? But most important, where were Hu-ae and Loo-ae?

Atticus skinned off the gloves, dropped them into the already contaminated pickup, and stalked quietly to the back door to listen intently. The wind and the distant murmur of waves combined to make a deafening white noise. Taking out his pistol, he slipped inside.

The warehouse was silent. Its vast interior was stacked with great beams of hand-hewn wood. There was half of an old sign leaned against the wall near the door, painted with years after theMayflower took the Pilgrims to America, it was stranded and purchased by a farmer who towed it up the Thames and dismantled it to build this barn.The ghost scent of cows hung in the musty air.

There was something ironic in the fact that the cult had hidden an alien invader's tool in among the bones of their own ancestral invasion craft.

After several minutes of listening closely, Atticus was fairly certain that Daggit was working alone in the dim warehouse. He leaned back outside to signal to Ru. Thunder boomed, closer now. As the sound faded, there was an odd metallic noise within the building and the warehouse seemed to suddenly breathe out, the exhaled air warmer than the night around Atticus. Daggit had rolled up one of the great steel doors to the loading docks. Had he heard Atticus?

He waved to Ru to head Daggit off, and charged inside.

Daggit had run out of boxes. A small stack of plastic bags were piled in front of the tall door meant for tractor-trailers. A cube matching Indigo's sketch of the alien machines sat by the loading dock—but only one was in sight. Daggit struggled one-handed with a Mayflowertimber, apparently planning to use it as a ramp to load the Ae once he pulled the pickup around .

The biker looked up as Atticus ran toward him, and swore. He fumbled out his pistol with his left hand. Atticus kicked it away. Compared to the Ontongard, Daggit moved ponderously slowly. Even as the big man started to react, Atticus whirled, caught Daggit's wrist, and took him down to his knees and then stomach while twisting Daggit's unbroken hand up behind his back.

Ru squealed the Jaguar around the corner and to a stop in front of the dock, flooding the area with light. He got out, hidden by the glare of headlights, and pulled his gun. "Solid?"

"We're solid." Atticus kneed Daggit in the back, keeping him pinned.

Daggit preempted the questioning with, "I don't know where the little bastards are! They called me. Sold me that damn machine, told me how it works, took the money, and ran. I don't have a clue where your brother is."

"My brother is back at my hotel." Atticus took out his handcuffs. "He swam ashore."

"So it was always about the fucking drugs?"

"Yes." Atticus cuffed the biker. "As far as we're concerned, it's always been about getting the drugs off the street and shutting the lab down. John Daggit, you're under arrest for drug trafficking, possession of controlled substances, and anything else we can tack on you."

"What? Are you kidding me? You're Pack."

"No." Atticus flipped out his ID and shoved it under Daggit's nose. "I'm DEA."

Daggit exploded into profanity as Atticus patted him down, ending with, "You're going to be so dead when the Pack finds out."

"They know." Atticus liberated a set of car keys, a switchblade, and a stash pistol. "They don't care. This hasn't been about the drugs for them."

Daggit grunted as if struck and then muttered darkly, "Those bastards, those fucking bastards," in an endless litany.

With a growing murmur, the storm front moved over them, bringing a downpour. Ru left the Jaguar's lights on, slammed the door, and scrambled up to the shelter of the loading dock. "Is that it?" Ru asked, indicating the alien device sitting next to Atticus. It was a waist-high cube of something that looked like brushed steel, with the "Hu-ae" symbol. Not totally what Atticus expected, but it matched Indigo's drawing. "Where's the other one?"

"I want a lawyer," Daggit said, assuming the question was aimed at him. "I know my rights."

"Look, you idiot." Atticus kicked Daggit harder than he intended. Daggit, he realized, had a trace amount of the drug on his hands, and it was affecting him. "The other machine is a bioweapon. It produces enough toxin to kill the entire city. If you're sitting in a holding pen when they turn it on, you're dead meat. Understand? Now where the fuck is the other one?"

Daggit considered in silence and then said quietly, "They took it away. They didn't tell me where they were taking it."

Atticus felt a tendril of fear uncoil inside him. Having seen Prime's world through his memories, Atticus now understood the scope of possible destruction that the Ontongard and their tools could create.

His fear awakened concern in Ru. "What do we do?"

"We contain this mess, get him into a holding tank, and find the cult." Atticus indicated Daggit. "There's drugs smeared everywhere. Just watch him—I'll handle things."

"I've got gloves on," Ru pointed out.

"Good."

Rain beat on the warehouse roof, a low, endless roar. Atticus just reached the truck when panic swept over him. He stood for a moment, panting from the sudden adrenaline rush. What was wrong? Why did he feel this way?

Then another person's will slammed into him. Get out! Go! Run!

Ukiah?

His brother was closing at a fast run, his fear racing out before him. Knowing his brother, there were only two things he'd be running from. Atticus focused on his new awareness of others like him and found the Ontongard nearly on top of him.

"Shit!" Atticus ducked back into the long warehouse. Silhouetted by the Jaguar's headlights, Ru stood over the prone Daggit. The falling rain formed a sheet of gray beyond the open doorway. "Ru! Get him out of here!"

Behind Atticus came the cough of a grenade launcher. In a burst of heat and sound, the truck exploded. He was smashed from his feet by the concussion.

Well, damn, the Ontongard were sick of losing, he thought. They'd come to the fight armed to the teeth. He scrambled to his feet, knowing that the stacks of ancient timber would go up like kindling.

In the far doorway, Ru turned toward the explosion. Daggit twisted as he stood up, snatched one of the plastic bags stacked by the door, and spun, swinging the bag of drugs at Ru.

"No!" Atticus cried, helpless, too far away to do anything but scream.

But somehow Ukiah was close enough to do more than that. He was suddenly between Ru and Daggit, shielding Ru with his own body. The bag struck Ukiah midchest and burst on impact. The transparent drug covered him instantly, setting his nerves on fire.

Atticus felt the drug blast through Ukiah's system as if his own body were washed with white fire. Ukiah had reflexively flung up his hands to protect his head. He screamed, arms flexing tight so muscles corded, and toppled—still screaming—into a fetal position, a fire victim wrapped in invisible flames. Atticus stood stunned, lost in another's pain, as the cloud of drug particles glittered in the light over his fallen brother. Ukiah's screams sucked the Blissfire into his lungs, and Atticus could feel the fire move through his brother's core.

Guns spat into the dim warehouse, bullets dancing Daggit backward, but all Atticus could hear was the deafening, endless bell-like chime of Bliss. The taste of red filled his mouth.

The Dog Warriors flowed into the warehouse even as another grenade exploded somewhere close by. Then the universe whited out and Atticus couldn't sense his body past the pain, although he knew he was moving his legs.

And then like a star going nova and dying to a dark cinder, the blaze of pain that had been Ukiah flared out.

Atticus stumbled at the sheer absence. Only Ru's support kept him from falling. Somehow they'd gotten outside, into the bitter-cold rain—a full block from the gunfight in the warehouse. The timer on the Jaguar's headlights had finally tripped, and they turned off. The fire shone through the open doorway like a baneful red eye, growing brighter.

He panted, trembling, feeling hollow, as if the experience had burned the core out of him.

"Atty?" There was fear in Ru's eyes.

"I'm fine. I'm fine."

Ru followed his gaze. "Ukiah?"

"He's dead." The words dropped into the hollow place like stones.

Rennie came out of the warehouse, Ukiah's body slung over his shoulder. At the corner of the neighboring building, a broken downspout showered rain past a spotlight, creating a glittering spray of water.

. . . a halo of dust. . . a million prickles of pain flashing into one flare of agony . . .

Shaw crouched in the shower, shifting Ukiah to the ground, letting the torrent wash the shimmering drug from the boy's body.

"You said this stuff is harmless!" Atticus shouted at Shaw. "That it only killed humans."

"Harmless to Pack." Shaw stripped the sodden clothes off of Ukiah as the water pounded unheeded on Shaw's shoulders and back. "Not to him. Not to you either. Not at that amount. His body shut down, rather than spread the poison completely through his system."

"He'll recover—won't he?"

"I don't know," Shaw snapped. "Poison is one way to kill us, as is fire."

. . . a blaze of pain like white fire and then nothing . . .

"Oh, fuck." Atticus couldn't bear looking at his brother; he stared instead at drops of rain sparkling in the spotlight. "What are you going to do with him?"

"He's our son; we'll do whatever needs to be done." Rennie stood, lifting Ukiah like a sleeping child.

The empty feeling grew, eating Atticus from the inside. He recognized the emotion now: grief. He found himself walking away, trying to put distance between him and the pain.

. . . another's pain filling him— a complete union of a soul that once was one— and then nothing . . .

Ru walked beside him, one hand on Atticus's shoulder, a spot of warmth in the cold rain. "He'll be fine." Ru's voice betrayed what the rain hid—he was crying.

Atticus steeled himself with anger and kept walking. He just met Ukiah on Sunday. Five fucking days—just enough time to leave a wound that would never heal. Humans were the lucky ones. They forgot the pain and hurt, given enough time. In vivid slices, he could still remember parts of being a wolf—a moment here, a moment there—from what it was like to run on all four legs, to having a tail, to seeing the world in black and white. After he became human, every agony was locked into place. Despite being less than a year old at the time, he still could recall his adopted parents in exacting detail, had every moment he spent with them etched into his perfect memory.

. . . and then nothing . . .

They'd come to an enclosed bus stop. Ru pulled him inside, out of the rain. In that enclosed womb, Atticus took out his Swiss army knife and opened the blade.

"What are you doing?" Ru asked.

"If I live the rest of my life with the moment of his death locked into my memory . . . I'll go mad." He cocked his wrist, placed the blade on the blue line of his vein, and cut deep.

Ru groaned and sagged against the shelter's wall, looking away.

The blood ran hot over Atticus's rain-chilled wrist and gathered in his hand. He willed it to form a mouse while staring at the ceiling, trying to think of nothing but the slow drumming of the rain on the roof. They say if someone tells you not to think of a polar bear, it becomes impossible not to. If he thought about what he was trying to drain out of himself, it would embed itself back into his memory. So he thought about the sound of the rain, scanning through his perfect memory for music that matched the rhythm. He found one in the mournful ballad of "I Am A Rock" and filled his mind with its somber words. I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died . . .

***

. . . If I never loved I never would have cried.

Atticus blinked, aware that tears were in his eyes, but having no idea why he'd been crying. He was in a bus shelter, rain drumming on the roof, an old Simon and Garfunkel song running through his head. For a panicked moment, he was worried something had happened to Ru, but his love was right there, on the wooden bench beside him. Mice whiskers tickled his fingers. He glanced down and found his knife in his right hand, a healing cut on his left wrist, and a mouse cupped in his palm, anxious about its fate.

He hadn't drained out memories since he was a child. Oh, God, what happened that made me do this again?

"Kyle?" he asked fearfully.

"No," Ru whispered huskily. "Your brother died."

"Again?"

Ru gave a shaky laugh, and then hunched over and began to weep.

Atticus spilled his mouse onto a floor strewn with cigarette butts and gathered Ru to him. "Hush, hush, I'm here."

What had happened? he wondered with dread. His brother must have gotten himself totally fucked-up if Ru was worried. The mouse climbed his shoe to press against his sock, fearful, aware of being cast out. Atticus had learned the hard way that he did this to himself for good reasons; taking back the mouse would be worse than being ignorant. His brother was dead—that was all he really needed to know to function. Perhaps all he could handle.

Tentatively, he probed his memories.

He could remember splitting up possible drug lab sites with Sumpter. After that, images of driving to South Boston and finding Daggit packing stuttered through his mind, ending with the Ontongard bearing down on them, and Ukiah racing toward them, and behind him, sweeping in on motorcycles, the Pack. At the time, he'd been too caught up in the roar of explosions to even notice the Dog Warriors. Distanced by time, now, he could feel them moving as one creature, with Ukiah as its heart and soul. They resounded with one will, one thought: to protect Ru. It would kill Atticus to lose Ru.

He had one clear memory of Ukiah shielding Ru with his own body, and then his recall ended, as if sliced out with laser precision. Practice made perfect. He could guess what followed. Even without the memory, knowledge that his brother sacrificed himself for Ru made him feel sick even as it confused him.

Why had Ukiah saved Ru? Why had he cared?

On the heels of that, he realized how close he'd been to losing Ru. Ukiah had acted with inhuman speed; Ru wouldn't have been able to save himself. The potential loss opened up a canyon of grief, which he could look into but—because of Ukiah—not fall into. If Ru had died, draining out a day's worth of memories would not have helped. To go home to an empty house and empty life, to go back to his life as it had been while he was growing up . . .

Ukiah had been right—losing Ru would have driven him mad.

It was stunning and humbling that his brother guessed what he hadn't known about himself.

Worse was the knowledge that he'd created the danger himself. He'd known the Ontongard had been tracking the cult, and in any direct confrontation between human and alien, the aliens would win. Yet he had not taken Ukiah with him, admitted the truth to Sumpter, nor contacted Indigo. He'd been a fool.

This wasn't just about the drug anymore. It couldn't be. He couldn't accept that huge a gift from his brother and then let all the pieces of Ukiah's life fall to the ground. There was the second Ae, the rest of the cult, and the transmitter to find. But his team couldn't do it alone. They had to get help .

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Summer Street, South Boston, Massachusetts

Thursday, September 23, 2004

The rain tapered off, leaving behind streets that gleamed like black silk. A wild wind rushed through the darkness, chasing the storm front. The warehouse burned with bonfire ferocity; they could feel the heat even where they stood, a full city block away. The smell of burning diesel and human flesh tainted the honest wood smoke of the Mayflowertimbers. Assaulting his senses, fire trucks wailed past them, lights cutting with razor intensity through the rain-black night.

Atticus noticed that the Jaguar sat across the street from the bus shelter, tucked back into shadows, far away from all the excitement. Had the Dog Warriors moved the car, or had he done it himself during that time of not remembering?

He could feel the Pack around him, numbers growing as more arrived, but scattered and well hidden. Shaw came out of the shadows, smelling of slaughter and smoke, the fire reflecting red in his eyes.

"Where's my brother?"

"Bear, Heathyr, and Smack took his body back to Pittsburgh."

Atticus flinched. "He's not going to recover?"

"It's too soon to tell. Even if he does, he'll be weak as a kitten until the poison works out of his system. I wanted him safe regardless of what happens here."

It dawned on Atticus that Shaw loved Ukiah dearly. The human race had always confounded him; even the most hardened of criminals often had someone they loved. Someone they would protect. Someone they would die for. It seemed that the Pack retained that in their vestiges of humanity.

The shadows danced as the flames leapt through the warehouse's roof, brightening the night with flickering reds. The colors moved across the wet asphalt like running blood.

"Daggit said the cult took Loo-ae away," Ru said, changing the subject.

"Our Cub destroyed it." Shaw explained that Ukiah had called Indigo to let her know he had figured out Loo-ae's location and arranged for the Pack to meet him. The Dog Warriors arrived to find the device full of bullets and Ukiah far out ahead of them.

"And the cult?" Atticus asked.

"No sign of them," Shaw said.

"How did he know we were walking into trouble?"

Shaw gave him a look that made Atticus realize the Dog Warrior was lying about something but wasn't about to betray Ukiah.

"We're about to hang our asses way out over the line to work with you. The Ontongard are working on a transmitter. Ukiah showed me Prime's memories. I know we have to stop them, and I'm committing to do whatever it takes, but I need to know everything. Tell me what happened."

Shaw assessed him with a long, hard stare. "The Gets caught up with the cult this morning. We found Ice's body with Loo-ae; he was within a few hours of transforming fully into a Get."

What Shaw didn't say—would probably never say to a law officer—was that Ukiah had killed Ice.

Atticus pushed through the flash of anger at his brother. He was jumping to conclusions in thinking it was a coldblooded murder. Given how he had first found Ukiah, self-defense was entirely possible. "We need to pool knowledge."

Something exploded in the warehouse, drawing their eyes.

"Not here." Shaw jerked his head in the opposite direction. "Let's find someplace quiet to plan."

***

They gathered under a highway overpass slated to be torn down as part of the Big Dig. Indigo arrived, flanked by her Pack guard. The Dog Warriors drifted into the shadows to stand watch. Indigo had once again wrapped herself in her arctic zone. She saw Atticus watching her, and said, "It's not like I haven't been through this a dozen times before," to which Ru nodded.

He and Ru had pried Kyle from Sumpter, distracting their supervisor with Hellena Gobeyn in her tight leather pants and camisole top. The alpha female promised that she wouldn't break any bones and all Sumpter's bruises would fade within two or three weeks.

The meeting was deceptively small. To the humans, it probably seemed that Rennie Shaw was the only addition to the combination of DEA and FBI forces, but Atticus could sense the rest of the Pack spread out around them, listening in.

"The cult had learned that the Ontongard set their nests up in a hexagonal pattern." Kyle spread out a map on the Explorer's tailgate, showing that the Waltham site formed one corner. "Ukiah said that the cult also had an algorithm to figure out where they would move to if one nest was destroyed; basically this pattern would swivel on the nest opposite of the nest destroyed. Since the Pack attacked the Watertown nest, it would have made sense for them to destroy the Waltham nest, and these, but they should have left this one."

"So they've cut the thread."

"Stone cold."

"Maybe," Zheng said. "I've noticed one thing about these nests: They're all at companies that have to do with large construction projects."

That niggled something in the back of Atticus's mind. "Well, if they've built this transmitter someplace, they would need construction companies. This thing is supposed to be huge."

"Much bigger than a bread box," Rennie agreed.

How do you hide something so big—especially with it just hours from being finished?

Atticus gasped and flipped the map. "The Big Dig. It's the largest construction project in the country, perhaps the world, at the moment. If the Ontongard infiltrated the right companies, they could just add the transmitter to the design specs."

"Okay." Kyle took out a highlighter and marked up the map until the downtown area of Boston bled pink. "This is an old map we picked up from the D.C. office. These highways here are what got buried."

Rennie was already shaking his head. "We've been all over this area. Hell, your team has been sleeping almost on top of it. The Ontongard aren't down in these tunnels, and I can't see them leaving the thing unguarded. It's not Hex's way to trust humans."

Atticus studied the highlighting. There had been plenty of Ontongard at the warehouse just hours ago, and there had been Ice, halfway between the two races. "Where did Ukiah find Loo-ae?"

"Here." Rennie pointed out a point just on the water's edge. "Ventilation Building Six."

Kyle typed in a search. "VB-Six pulls exhaust out of the Ted Williams Tunnel." He paused to draw a line across the harbor. "And feeds in fresh air."

"Loo-ae was duct-taped to one of the intake fans," Rennie reported.

"Intake?" Atticus said. "The cult wanted the poisons down inthe tunnel?"

"We haven't been out on the water," Rennie murmured. "If Hex somehow added to the tunnel there, under the bay, his Gets would be well hidden from us."

"I saw a documentary on how they built these tunnels," Indigo said. "They actually built large tubes down in Baltimore, floated them up the harbor, and sank them to make these tunnels. It seemed like an insane way of doing it to me."

"The transmitter's particle tubes need precision you're not going to get tunneling through rock." Rennie tapped the map at VB6. "But there were no Ontongard with Ice at this building."

"If it's number six," Atticus said, "there's at least five others."

"One on each end of the tunnel." Kyle spoke without looking up, searching through files on his laptop.

"So what if, knowing that he couldn't get Loo-ae into this building"—Atticus pointed to the far end of the Ted Williams Tunnel—"he put it in this one and counted on the poison being sucked through?"

Rennie went still, but Atticus could feel him expanding outward, becoming all of the Pack, tapping their memories. "That peninsula is all man-made land in the last few decades. We forget it's there. They made it to build Logan Airport. We've always had little need for planes. Wolves are meant to run on the ground. None of us have been out to that part of the city."

"So they've hidden the control center someplace out here." Atticus ran his finger along the runnel and up to the man-made land. "We need to find it and destroy it."

"In a nutshell, yes," Shaw said. "One very big and hard nutshell—and the clock is ticking."

Kyle made a noise of frustration. "There's a ton of info on the Big Dig, but for as-built drawings and actual information on access doors and security protocols and locations of cameras . . . we're talking hours for me to get anywhere."

"Then let's go to the source." Ru grinned. "DEA with FBI backup? We can glide into anything tonight."

***

Operations Control Center, nicknamed OCC, was in South Boston. Flashing badges, his team and Indigo bullied their way into the building, sans any of the Pack—but only after being sure it was innocent of Ontongard. The bulk of the building was dedicated to keeping watch over the intricate roadway. In one huge room, employees sat bathed in the glow from over a hundred monitors, dominated by blue images of light gleaming off ceramic tiles lining miles of tunnels. It felt like walking into a missile command center. It was running on a skeleton shift of three employees.

"I don't understand," the nominal supervisor stuttered as Kyle made nice with the two techno geeks. "What exactly is the nature of this alleged emergency?"

Obviously this guy was in charge because he had a degree in political babble.

"We've been dealing with a dangerous religious cult, the Temple of New Reason." Ru wove his half-truths. "We believe they're linked with the bombings that took place earlier today. We've learned they might have plans to attack the tunnel system."

The man gasped and waved toward a bank of monitors, all of which seemed to be dead. "The camera system on the ventilation buildings went out this morning. We've been running diagnostics on it all day. It looks like some kind of virus."

"There's a possibility, then, that they've gotten into the maintenance access areas," Ru said, as if he knew for certain there were such things.

"We've pulled together some undercover agents who are familiar with the MO of these perps," Atticus said, using copspeak to confuse. "I'm going to lead a team of them to sweep for signs of forced entry and sabotage. We're going to need your full cooperation."

"Yes, of course."

Kyle held out a headset to Atticus. "Here, this is ready to go. I've added a low-light camera to our two-way radio, in case I need to see what you're looking at."

Atticus clipped the headset onto his ear.

Indigo took a sharp breath, but said nothing.

What was that about? No time to ask, though.

Ru walked him to the door, murmuring, "I still say I should come with you."

"Ru, if these were humans, I'd want you with me. But these monsters—it's like trying to stop floodwaters with bullets. You'll be in over your head and dead without making a scratch on them."

Ru looked away so Atticus couldn't read any hurt or resentment on his face.

"Ru, you're a last line of defense here. I think Indigo kept silent all this time about what she knows because of my brother, but I don't want to count on her alerting the right people if the shit hits the fan. Kyle wouldn't be able to do it. You'd be able to make people listen to you."

Ru looked at him then, eyes full of pain.

"Besides," Atticus forced himself to joke, "you know how Kyle is at giving directions."

And Ru forced himself to smile. "Yeah, there is that."

***

They avoided the Ted Williams Tunnel so as not to give warning to their approach, instead going the long way around the bay. The Pack raced before him on motorcycles, like hounds before the hunter, while Ru murmured in his ear.

"OSHA inspections—got to love them. Apparently our friends haven't been able to infiltrate them or block them, so the inspectors had full access to the construction site. After every inspection, new areas are added onto the as-built drawings. Unlike the other ventilation buildings, the one you're heading to—VB-Seven—has a rat maze under it. No wonder this project is so overbudget and late being completed."

"You've got an entrance for this rat's nest?"

"Yeah. Here." Kyle demonstrated the need for Ru on his end.

"Take the next left," Ru clarified, giving detailed instructions for the desired door. "The electrical as-built schematics show a camera on that door, but there's no monitor for it. It's possible, though, that someone rerouted it for their use."

"Understood."

***

The entrance was a heavy steel door on the blind back corner of the building.

"We're going to need a battering ram," Atticus called to Rennie as he got out of the Jaguar.

"We've got a battering ram." Rennie worked the pump on his shotgun as a tanker truck with a steel I-beam welded to its prow turned the corner and roared toward the door. "Get ready; we're going in."

The Pack gathered around the doorway as the truck sped toward it, weapons ready. The ram slammed into the steel door, which folded under the blow, its hinges popping. The bent door fell inward, followed by the frame and parts of the wall around the opening, revealing a dark stairwell. The Pack flowed into the jagged hole. Muzzle flares strobed the darkness.

The stairwell was bare cement with two flights of steel stairway. The gunfire thundered and echoed in the close confines, the ricocheting bullets sparking as they whined off the walls. By the time they hit the bottom, the steps were slick with roiling blood. Atticus sensed that the fight continued on that cellular level, Pack blood fighting Ontongard. Even as the dozen Gets on the stairs lay dead, the blood-spattered walls and steel seethed in anger.

They needed another ram for the door at the bottom. As a police-issued ram was passed down from above, Atticus noticed that the bodies, body parts, and forming rats of the Ontongard Gets were being dragged back up to ground level.

"What are they doing with them?" Atticus asked.

"We're putting them in storage," Stein, one of the Dog Warriors, told him as the Pack male reloaded. "We're sticking them in the tanker so we don't have to fight them a second time."

"Is there an opening on the tanker large enough to shove a body through?"

"Does it matter?"

"Forget I asked."

The leather of Stein's jacket was chewed away by shotgun blasts to expose body armor. Atticus glanced around him, noticing that others who led the charge wore bulletproof vests, all heavily damaged.

"Body armor?"

"Keeps you kicking butt longer." Stein grinned. "A little trick we learned off the Cub."

The ram reached the door and Atticus tensed, readying himself for the upcoming fight.

The door smashed open into a large, bare cement room, cold as a grave, littered with sleeping bags, heavy with the stench of sickness and death. Another twenty Ontongard Gets tried to stand against the flood of Pack.

"Get the doors!" Rennie shouted. "We've managed to take them by surprise, but we're about to lose that advantage!"

As the Gets disappeared under the snarling Dog Warriors, the other fighters sprang to the other exits from the room to bar the doors shut. All around them, the Ontongard gathered in an angry swarm, like bees from a kicked hive.

Atticus cupped his earpiece to lessen the noise of the fighting. "Ru, we're down the steps! Can you tell which way we should go next?"

"Big room, six exits total?" Ru asked, and then clarified with, "Counting the door you came in?"

The door directly in front of him boomed as Ontongard threw their bodies against it.

"Yes!" Atticus shouted over the din.

"They're in this room," Ru murmured to the others with him.

"Which way?"

Some of the dead had been there before they arrived. Atticus recognized the cultist Ether, stripped of her clothes, sprawled in a puddle of vomit. Mice had chewed holes out of her abdomen, the transformed flesh escaping the dead body.

"Looking, looking, looking," Ru chanted.

"This area is deeper, more extensive." Kyle's voice carried over Ru's side of the connection. They had to be hunched close together, poring over the same architectural drawings.

"No, I say this way," Indigo countered. "That area had work done by noncompromised contractors, whereas this area was totally done by the Ontongard."

"Ru?" Atticus trusted his partner.

"Okay, with your back to the stairs you just came down, to your left, on the same wall as the stairway, is a door," Ru said. "It leads to a long hallway with lots of doors off it. Ignore them all; go to the end."

"You sure?" Atticus said.

"No," came the answer from all three federal agents on the other end.

"All the other doors lead to fairly small areas," Ru explained. "At the end of the hall, though, is another stairway into an large area isolated from everything else."

"Look at these electricals." Indigo must have produced drawings to support her theory; paper rustled loudly.

"Oh!" Ru was convinced. "Atty, there's a shitload of power lines going into that area. It has to be the right place."

Atticus hurried to the door, aware of Rennie moving to join him. The Pack leader had been shot in the left arm; a gaping hole punched through the muscle and the arm hung useless at his side. The wound, though, was already healing closed. A mouse clung to Rennie's shoulder.

They'd lost ten of the Pack fighters to the thirty-two Ontongard dead, which was surprising, since they seemed so equal in strength.

"We value our hides." Rennie tucked his shotgun under his useless arm to load, doing it with an ease that suggested it wasn't the first time he had had to work one-handed. "So we're better at protecting them. But there's only a hundred of us and they've got us outnumbered two or three times over. We have to get this done before they overpower us."

Atticus nodded and indicated the door. "We think the transmitter is this way."

Rennie's mouse took advantage of the moment of stillness to scurry down into Rennie's coat pocket. "Let's do it then. Dogs, to me! The rest, seal those doors and get the dead contained."

A four-foot-square steel plate barrier was brought forward. With speed and efficiency no human team could match, the Dogs readied around the doorway and behind the shield wall. No sooner was the last person in place than they battered down the door and opened fire. Gunsmoke formed a cloud.

It was an expensive win. Of the fifteen Pack who pushed their way down the hallway, only Atticus, Rennie, and Stein were left standing at the end. Yet Atticus couldn't sense any Ontongard beyond the last door. He cautiously opened the heavy steel door and found an empty stairwell.

"Wait!" Rennie caught Atticus's shoulder before he could step forward, pulling him back away from the door.

"What is it?"

Rennie pulled out a handful of loose coins and flung them at the open doorway. With a crack and the sudden smell of hot metal, the coins rebounded to the floor at their feet, blackened and twisted. "They've got an energy field up."

"Oh, cool," Kyle said over the radio. "But that's not on the as-built."

OSHA wasn't going to like that. "How do we get through it?"

"We don't." Rennie shot one of the slightly dead Ontongard who had stirred back to life. "Nothing on Earth can penetrate it."

"Where the hell did it come from?"

"The scout ship; Hex stripped out the armory. See if there's a way around it."

With that Rennie and Stein worked back down the hall, stomping on hapless rats and shooting the fallen Ontongard in the head and chest—anything to keep them dead. Fighting broke out in the large center room, an endless thunder of guns backed with the snarls of the Pack. Atticus noticed for the first time that neither side shouted or cursed or screamed other than short yelps of pure animal pain.

"Ru, is there any way around this?"

"Actually, there is, but you're not going to like it," Ru said.

"How?"

"Go back to the first door. There's a small odd-shaped room that doglegs around the fresh-air ventilation shaft leading down into the Ted Williams Tunnel. There's an access panel into the air shaft. On the other side of the shaft is an air duct into that area."

The room was a supply closet, stacked haphazardly with construction supplies and tools. Atticus pushed through the equipment to the far back corner and unburied the access panel. The metal panel was secured to its frame with screws; he shot them out and pried off the panel.

Night air rushed out of a pitch-black shaft.

He found a flashlight in the clutter. He turned it on and discovered that its battery was nearly dead. He tried shining it into the shaft. The darkness swallowed the feeble beam. By holding on to the edge and leaning through the opening, he could make out the opposite wall. The shaft seemed to be about ten feet square. Fans roared somewhere overhead, and the sound of traffic echoed up faintly from the darkness below.

"Are you sure, Ru? I don't see anything."

"Opposite wall. It's smaller, and maybe to the . . . to the left."

He played the light across the far wall and found it. "Oh, shit."

"What is it, Atty?"

"It's like two and half feet, maybe three feet wide."

"It's the only way, Atty," Ru said.

"I know." He fixed the spot in his mind and pitched the flashlight aside. "Here goes nothing."

Atticus leapt into the darkness. He hit the wall hard, clawed at the darkness, found the edge of the air duct, and scrambled madly to haul himself up into the tiny crawl space. "I'm in!"

The only response to his news was a relieved sigh over the radio link and the thunder of guns behind him.

***

Ru told him that the air duct went only fifty feet, but it seemed longer, crawling on his stomach through the tight, square passageway. The other end opened onto a vast room filled with a bewildering array of equipment. Pipes from an inch to a foot in diameter bisected the room into grids. Besides pressure gauges and meters, nothing was labeled. Scattered around the room, in seemingly random order, were racks of computer equipment. Nothing seemed centralized. Nothing looked like the heart of a machine. No convenient big red switches.

He dropped lightly down onto a catwalk that ringed the upper level of the room and stared around him, suddenly feeling like a caveman asked to stop an aircraft carrier. No, worse—like a flea inside a supercomputer, whose only possible act of sabotage would be throwing himself on a random circuit and hoping that his death would fry an important chip.

Unfortunately, the room wasn't empty of Ontongard, and he'd been noticed. Three Gets started up the catwalk toward him. One was the missing Iron Horse from the DVD of the Ontongard attack on the Buffalo DEA team, the big, black, sleepy-eyed David Toback. The two others looked like construction workers, and were nearly as big and muscular. They carried short lengths of pipe; apparently they were loath to fire guns in this room. They split up, heading for the two ladders up to the catwalk, planning to catch him between them.

This was going to hurt.

"Can you see this?" he asked his team.

"Yeah, we're picking it up." Ru sounded as disheartened as he felt.

"I'm open to suggestions at this point."

"I don't know what to do," Kyle admitted while the other two remained silent.

"Not a clue?"

"Atticus," Kyle whined. "It's not like I can download a user file on this in PDF format with diagrams. It's an alien machine!"

"Shit!" Atticus charged toward the first construction worker to the right as he climbed the steep ladder to the catwalk. He did a flying kick, connecting with the Get's head as it cleared the top step. He heard the crack of bone, and the Get dropped backward.

Catching the handrail, Atticus let momentum spin him around and landed back on the catwalk. On the second-floor landing below him, the Get lay in an awkward sprawl. Atticus pulled his pistol and took careful aim. Fighting alongside the Dog Warriors had taught him how to maximize his damage. Two bullets into the skull kept a Get down the longest.

Toback had climbed the other ladder and rushed him now. The second construction worker was close behind him. Atticus aimed at Toback and fired. Even as he squeezed the trigger, the Get dodged aside, the bullets whining past harmlessly.

Damn, he read my mind!

And then Toback slammed into him like a linebacker. They tumbled, Atticus struggling to clear his mind even as he fought to break away from Toback. The construction worker swung at his head and he ducked. Still, the glancing blow rocked his consciousness, flashing darkness through him. He sensed a second hit coming and threw up his right arm to ward off the blow. He felt the blow shock-wave through his body and his hand flew open, releasing his pistol. It went skittering across the catwalk, just out of reach. From the numbness of his arm he knew the bone was broken. The Get swung his pipe upward.

I am void. I am nothing.

He twisted on his left shoulder and heaved Toback's head into the pipe's path just as the pipe came down. Blood scented the air, and Toback went limp. Rolling, Atticus kicked out, shattering the Get's kneecap. Pain as brutal as someone driving a spike into his bone lanced up his broken right arm. Snatching up his pistol with his left hand, he turned and fired awkwardly.

He missed with the first two bullets. The third and fourth took the construction worker in the chest. He put two more in the Get's head, just to be sure. Then he shot Toback twice, leaving himself three bullets. The three Gets were down, but that was bound to be temporary.

He had to destroy the transmitter before the Ontongard recovered. He reached out mentally to the Pack. They were far fewer in numbers than he'd hoped. " Rennie!"

" I can hear you. No need to shout."

" What part of this is the most critical to it working?"

" Let me see."

Rennie pushed into his mind. Atticus resisted automatically, and then, gritting his teeth, let the Pack leader in. Rennie leaned against the cold cement wall of the central room, panting in the gunsmoke, ribs bruised from shots taken by the body armor. He ached in his heart and soul as those he loved died around him—they were losing. If they had to pull out, anyone left behind would be at the mercy of the Ontongard.

Rennie closed his eyes, shutting out distractions, focusing on Atticus.

" Turn your head, Boy."

Atticus carefully scanned the room, and Rennie gazed out over the equipment, recognizing it, knowing how it was built and how to take it apart. Knowledge transferred to Atticus. The three-story cylinder housed the dimensional containment field for the exotic matter. The faraday cage, waveguides, and EM pumps extracted exotic matter as Earth moved through space. The long corridor lined with waveguides was used to puncture a pinhole in the M-brane, the exotic matter bleeding into the hole to keep it open long enough for interstellar communications.

Rennie focused on the tall cylinder. " Hex must have salvaged most of the exotic matter from the sled's drive. Crack the housing open and not only will you destroy this setup, but there won't be any rebuilding."

" Okay."

" First take the barrier down." Rennie picked out the field generator, and knowledge of how to turn it off filled Atticus. " You'll have, like, a minute, maybe, to get out of this rat maze, and then the fireworks will start."

" A minute?" Atticus shut down the barrier.

" If you're lucky."

The tide of the battle turned for the worse. Rennie dropped the mental link to fight. Atticus felt strangely alone and hated it.

An acetylene torch sat in one corner of the room; he wheeled it to the containment housing.

Backing up to the door, he took careful aim with his left hand. He had only three shots to get it right, and then he'd have to get closer to set the stupid thing off. He wasn't sure what the dark matter would do once the containment field went down.

"Atty?" Ru whispered. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." And then, because it was dawning on Atticus how desperate their situation was, he added, "I love you, Ru. You've kept me sane."

"Oh. Oh, Atty, no."

The first bullet ricocheted off the cement floor.

The second shot hit and the acetylene exploded in a hot white flash. He was flung backward on a wave of flame into the stairwell, and an instant later everything went pitch-black and the grave-cold air of the maze rushed back over him. He scrambled to his feet and stumbled up the stairs.

There was a great howl of white noise, and it felt as though he were moving through heavy surf, invisible water trying to drag him backward. A deep, ominous rumble grew louder as the staircase quaked underfoot. The rumble changed to a roar of rushing water, and the smell of the ocean raced before the floodwaters. The first wave slammed him off his feet, and he tumbled into the black water. It swept him into a corner, smashing his broken arm against a cement wall, jolting agony through him. He flailed, disoriented.

Suddenly someone had a hold on him, dragging him against the current.

" This way, Boy." Rennie guided him through the raging seawater.

Wild, dark minutes later, they heaved up onto the steel stairway to the street. Hands pulled them upward as Atticus coughed up all the silt-filled water he'd swallowed.

The Pack waited on the street outside, guns aimed at the door, ready to shoot anything that crawled out of the water that wasn't one of their own. Most of them were battered, bleeding, and bruised, but only the dead weren't armed.

Atticus lay on the cold asphalt, panting.

"You okay, Boy?"

"Yeah. You came back for me?"

"You're our Boy. We wouldn't leave you behind."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Boston Harbor Hotel, Boston, Massachusetts

Friday, September 24, 2004

In all the confusion, Atticus managed to forget his brother until they'd dragged themselves back to the hotel and slept for a few hours.

A knock at the door woke him. "Housekeeping."

"Need towels," Ru grunted.

So he got up, padded to the door, and after verifying that it was indeed the maid, opened the door. "We just need fresh towels."

The maid handed him a stack and he bolted the door. It felt very wrong to return to normalcy after so much madness. He put the towels on the shelf, feeling numb, and used the toilet. Ru came into the bathroom for a glass of water.

"What's with the rock?" Ru indicated a small pebble that had been sitting under his toiletry bag.

Atticus grunted his ignorance and picked it up. For a moment he thought it innocent of all human traces, and then realized Ukiah had dropped it there. Why? There was nothing special about the stone except that he found it pleasing. A child's treasure.

"Atty?"

Atticus blinked to clear his eyes. "I need to go find my brother."

***

The address listed in the Pennsylvania Department of Motor Vehicles for Ukiah led them to a huge house in an affluent city neighborhood.

"This can't be the right place." Atticus eyed the stone house, all gables and ivy.

"Bennett Detective Agency," Ru read from the bronze plaque by the hand-carved front door. "Business must be good."

Pressing the doorbell sounded eight muffled tones inside, an impressive door chime to go with the impressive house. After three tries with the doorbell, Atticus walked around the house, peering into the windows. The decor matched the outward appearance of the house—cherry-wood desks, silk drapes, chestnut burl paneling, granite countertops in the kitchen with stainless steel appliances, and a security system keeping all of the above safe.

"You've got to be kidding me," Atticus growled when he rejoined the other two. "This is a fucking mansion."

"I'm just getting an answering machine." Ru paused to wait for a tone and said, "Yes, this is Hikaru Takahashi; can you give me a call?"

Kyle sat on the porch step, Web surfing on his PDA. "Max Bennett's driver's license lists this address too. It says he's thirty-eight to Ukiah's twenty-one. Maybe he's Ukiah's father?"

Father or not, they'd last seen Ukiah with the Pack. There was no reason to think he wasn't still with them.

As Ru left his number on the answering machine, Atticus reached into that empty place he'd been avoiding. No whisper of his brother pressed against his senses.

He closed his eyes and focused. He should be able to feel the Dog Warriors protecting Ukiah.

"Atty?"

Atticus lifted his hand and pointed in the direction of a faint something."Let's head that direction."

***

Going in a straight line proved to be impossible. There were rivers, gorges, hills, valleys, and one-way streets to contend with. They climbed an impossibly steep hill with a street pretending to be two lanes, but it was actually just one lane with haphazard parking. Downtown Pittsburgh lay across the river and far below, providing a view that was stunning but, judging by the dogged appearance of the houses around them, too common to raise property values. The Jaguar drew stares; it was out of place in this blue-collar neighborhood.

The Pack presence led him to a house on the overlook, seemingly abandoned and boarded up. He followed local custom and parked by mostly blocking the right side of the street. The boards on the front door had been pried up and then pulled back into place, to give the appearance that the house was still unoccupied. The house had been built with its back to the street to take advantage of the view, so the front door actually opened to the kitchen. Someone had been renovating recently, and plaster dust scented the air and covered the floor. The vinyl flooring matched that of his adopted parents' playroom, a pattern of random terra-cotta-colored squares. The street-side windows were boarded shut, the kitchen and the hall were night dark, the living room off the hallway was a distant rectangle of light. No one came to greet him, so he stood in the darkness, reexperiencing the night of his adopted parents' death.

He'd never gotten completely over that loss. He braced himself and walked into the darkness.

The living room been remodeled and painted before the house had been closed up. The wall overlooking the city was mostly glass, drenching the room with sunlight. The floor had been swept clean, and a gypsy camp of futons, quilts, and bright-colored pillows had been set up. By the floor-to-ceiling window, wrapped in blankets and propped in a battered leather chaise lounge, Ukiah slept.

Relief punched through Atticus, making him breathe out a surprised laugh, which he instantly regretted. He didn't want to wake Ukiah. Quietly, he crouched beside the chaise to watch his brother sleep, hoarding this last perfect moment.

What juxtaposition: the mansion and this abandoned house. Atticus wasn't sure what he would have thought if he'd seen only this ruin without the manicured luxury of the mansion, but witnessing both, he realized that from the moment Kyle pulled up the FBI database on the Dog Warriors, he'd assumed the worst for his brother. He'd let suspicion poison every word between them. He recalled all that he'd said—what he now wished he could take back. Ukiah opened his eyes to peer at him in mild confusion. "Atticus?"

What should he say? Could he even breach the gap he'd created between them?

" Don't be stupid." Ukiah reached out to pull him into a hug. The sense of "this is right, this is good" resounded through his soul. " Between us, we don't need words."

Praise for Wen Spencer's Ukiah Oregon novels

Bitter Waters

"An engrossing, thrill-filled adventure, full of fascinating alien—and human—weirdness."

— Locus

"The series is worth the price."

— VOYA

"Wen Spencer's Ukiah Oregon stories owe more to the Detective genre than to Science Fiction, which is what makes them so compelling. Oh, sure, Ukiah is half alien, a hundred or so years old, once lived as an Indian, ran with wolves, and can't be killed short of incineration, but every PI has baggage. . . . The SF aspects of it are fun. . . . But take away the alien parts and you've still got a great action/detective story, which is why you should pick up Wen Spencer's trail wherever her literary muse takes her next."

— SF Revu

"The rocketing pace . . . had me glued to the pages."

—SF Site

"An exciting science fiction thriller that stars a vulnerable and powerful hero who is impossible not to cherish . . . a must read."

—BookBrowser

"[Spencer] has blended private investigation, science fiction, and fantasy into a rip-roaring tale. . . . More books like this would probably expand the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre's readership. . . . A book that keeps going from strength to strength, the action just won't stop, and it will appeal to fans of a wide spectrum of fiction."

—The Alien Online

"The continual character development adds another dimension to the story. . . . The tension builds nicely. . . . An exciting chapter to the continuing adventures of Ukiah Oregon."

—Rambles

"Ms. Spencer has a mighty fine imagination."

—Science Fiction Romance

Tainted Trail

"Spencer continues to amaze, cranking up both suspense and wonder."

—Julie E. Czerneda

"A fun read, definitely worth checking out."

— Locus

"Spencer's skillful characterizations, vividly drawn settings, and comic exploitation of Ukiah's deceptively youthful, highly buff looks make the romp high light entertainment."

— Booklist

"A unique and highly entertaining reading experience."

— Midwest Book Review

Alien Taste

"Each and every character is fascinating, extraordinarily well-developed, and gets right under your skin. A terrific, memorable story."

—Julie E. Czerneda

"Revelations ranging from surprising to funny to wonderfully inventive. A delightful new SF mystery with a fun protagonist."

— Locus

"Spencer has written an intriguing contemporary science fiction tale. Her characters come alive on the page and their uniqueness will grab and hold you."

— Talebones

"The characters are fully developed and understandable. This novel is keeper shelf material."

—BookBrowser

"Spencer takes readers on a fast-paced journey into disbelief. [Her] timing is impeccable and the denouement stunning."

— Romantic Times (4 star review)

"A fabulous mix of science fiction, suspense, romance, and the nature of wolves, in a story like none you've ever seen."

— Science Fiction Romance