Soul of Fire

Chapter 4

AJ wanted to howl, to put his head back and let loose with a drawn-out noise that would cut through everything and bring everyone to a dead, cold stop. He didn’t.

It would be satisfying, yes, but it wouldn’t solve anything. The chaos of so many different supers living and working together was barely held under control, creating a constant low-level rumble. Only tightly held control allowed him to orchestrate that rumble into something like a symphony.

Having one of your remote teams drop out of sight for a week and resurface with a report that focused on the brewpubs rather than the hunt they were supposed to be on...

“Pack is easier,” AJ muttered almost under his breath. “I can just knock them over and they listen to me.”

Elsa didn’t laugh. The jötunndotter was a steady, steadfast second in command, but her kind weren’t known for a sense of humor. “Too far to reach, too many of them.”

“I can hit you and you can hit someone and they can hit the right person. That’s called delegation.”

“You would break your paw if you tried to knock me over.”

He wasn’t sure if that was an actual statement of fact or her attempt to respond in kind. He decided to take it as fact.

“Fine. If I send you out to Oregon to sit on these idiots, will you do it?”

“By the time I get there, they will have already done the damage,” she responded. Jötunndotter did not fly. Even if she could get through security without raising eyebrows—improbable—the mass of her stony body would probably ground the plane. And the thought of her trying to fit into a narrow coach seat...

“Yeah, all right, I’ll save you for a local fuckup.”

AJ rubbed at his face tiredly, shoving hair away from his forehead. It felt as if he hadn’t slept, really slept, in months. Maybe he hadn’t. Not since all this had started, the first reports of preternaturals where and when none should be, his own curiosity drawing him to investigate, and then the sharp fear, the need to draw forces together to keep his pack, his territory safe....

AJ hadn’t wanted this, the responsibility of so much, so many. He hadn’t asked for it. But he had been the only one to see the danger, the only one to step up and shove people into paying attention. So he was stuck with it, apparently.

“Boss.” Someone handed him a clipboard, and he signed it, noting as he did so that it was for a shipment of car parts, not anything Farm related. The old warehouse might be gone, burned to the ground during the gnome attack, but the business went on.

Somehow, that made him feel better.

AJ handed the clipboard back and looked at the larger whiteboard hung on the wall. He let his eyes scan the place names written there, all the reports that had come back of where the preters had been spotted, trying not to think of anything in particular or force a pattern on them and hoping that something would stir on its own. Instead, all he could hear, all he could sense was the never-ending swirl of bodies and voices around him.

In the weeks since Martin had brought the humans back from the preter’s realm, since the turncoats had attacked the old warehouse, swarming them in an attempt to take out the ragtag defenders, nearly two dozen more supernaturals had found their way to the Farm. Some of them wanted to defend their home against a threat that had suddenly become real, some of them just wanted a fight, and some of them were bored and thought this might be some interesting mischief. AJ’s job was to make use of them all.

“Mathias.”

A dog-faced super looked over at him, ears pricking in anticipation. “Yah, boss?”

“Go to Oregon. Take Lurcher. Sit on whoever needs to be sat on so I’m getting regular reports. And keep them out of the blasted strip joints.”

“Got it, boss.” He knocked at his companion’s shoulder, rousting him from his newspaper. “We’re on point,” he said. “Grab your bag.”

“One problem. Two—” Something pinged, a soft, muted noise, and then his pocket vibrated. AJ looked at the offending pocket with the sort of loathing most saved for a worm in their meat, and reached into his jacket to retrieve the smartphone he’d finally, grudgingly, agreed to carry.

There were seven text messages from the Florida team, one after another, with the results of their hunt. Complete with photos of... He squinted and determined that, yes, that was his search team hanging out in front of a giant upright shark wearing a neon lei.

Strip joints, tourist traps... The stories that painted supernaturals as flighty, irresponsible creatures were not, regrettably, far off the mark.

AJ sighed and passed the phone over to Elsa, who glanced at the display and then passed it on to another super without comment. The third super, a juvenile lupin from a different pack than AJ’s, scrolled through the texts and barked out information to be added to the charts.

“Teaching them how to text may not have been your best idea ever,” Elsa said, her voice dry.

“Email would have been worse. Trust me,” Jan said from the doorway. “More attachments, more viruses from bad-choice web surfing...” She shook her head, an odd smile twisting her face.

“You know us so well,” AJ said. He liked the human female, much to his surprise, but more than that, he was learning to respect her. All the human strengths—loyalty, imagination—but without the worst of their weaknesses. More, she could make her team focus and pay attention, and that, he knew firsthand, was a daily battle.

She came into the room, and he saw that Martin was lurking behind her. Of course. Ever since the human had discovered the truth about her leman’s disappearance and had—unwillingly, perhaps—joined them, even before the two of them had gone through the portal, the two had been forming a bond of some sort. Since they’d returned, that bond seemed almost unbreakable. AJ was certain that the friendship was a terrible idea and likely to get someone killed, but it wasn’t as though they weren’t all likely to die in the next week anyway.

“The supernatural community tends to veer wildly between deadly serious and utterly incapable of seriousness,” he said now in response to her comment. “It’s not really a useful life strategy.”

Behind him, Elsa snorted, the way only trolls could, and Jan’s eyebrows rose. She almost smiled, a real, amused smile, looking back over her shoulder at the kelpie. “You have a life strategy?”

“Lupin are a little more focused than most,” AJ admitted, ignoring the wounded expression on Martin’s face and the burst of laughter from someone in the room behind him. Everyone else was very pointedly ignoring the exchange, even as they eavesdropped as best they could without being called out for slacking. The supernatural world’s reputation for gossiping like a pair of nannies was pretty accurate, too.

“Do you have a few minutes?” the human asked.

“No,” AJ said. “But sit down, anyway.”

“Jesus Christ,” the cop said, turning his head away. But everywhere he looked, there was blood and broken furniture. But no bodies. Where were the bodies? “What the hell happened?”

“Bear,” the man on his hands and knees in the kitchen said, his attention focused on the evidence in front of him more than his answer.

“Bullshit. Bears don’t do this.” Patek forced himself to take a better look at the damage, his expression unhappy but resigned. There were deep scars on the walls, from around waist-high, dragging down to the ground. He touched one with a gloved finger: it went at least a quarter-inch deep into drywall. “Okay, yeah, bears could do this. But inside a house? Who the fuck lets a bear inside their house?”

The first thing you learned living in the Adirondack Mountains area was to keep an eye out for bears. Make noise when you went outside in the spring, make sure your garbage was locked up and out of reach, and generally don’t be an idiot, because black bears might look cute at a distance or in the zoo, but up close they were several hundred pounds of muscle, teeth, and claws. More, especially in spring, they saw nearly anything as food, and what wasn’t food was easily seen as a threat.

Patek had seen a bear claw up close during training. Their instructor had used it to scare them, and it had worked. You didn’t want that thing anywhere near you, not when attached to living bear muscle.

“City folk,” his partner said in disgust, shifting back to his haunches. “Who the hell knows what they’ll do? Feed bears. Try to pet cougars. And leave us the mess to clean up.” He pulled off his now-bloody latex gloves and put them into a plastic Baggie and sealed it, then pulled on a clean pair. “Better put in a call, let the DEC know we’ve maybe got a mean-ass bear out there.”

They tried not to say man-eater or killer anymore—the media ran with it, and while the department would want the public to use caution, too often caution turned into crazed hunting sprees that got more people damaged than the bear in question.

And god help any other bear innocently in the area.

Patek nodded, still studying the scene. Elsewhere in the house he could hear Michelle taking photographs, documenting the damage. The three of them were half the on-duty force for Little Creek. They were going to have to request outside help on this, and wasn’t that going to thrill the town board?

“How many people were in the house?”

“Just Mike and David.”

The couple owned the local bakery, had moved north from New York City near on four years ago. Long enough to have learned better, Patek would have thought. Leave the damn bears alone!

“Nobody’s seen either one of them since yesterday afternoon, when the bakery closed. I’m sending samples of the blood over to County but...” His partner looked around, his expression sour. “This ain’t bear blood.”

“Well, it’s either bear blood, human blood, or little green Martian blood, Joe. Either way, there’s enough of it that someone died here.”

“Yeah, fine, so then, where’s the body? Even bears don’t eat everything.” Joe looked around, obviously cataloging the broken furniture, the torn upholstery, and shattered china. “No bits, no bones. What kind of bear eats all that?”

“Kind that’s moving fast,” a third voice said, and both of them jerked upright, instinctively pulling shoulders back as though someone were taking roll. In the doorway, a solidly built man wearing a state trooper uniform leaned against the frame, his hat off and sunglasses pushed up onto his forehead. “This is the third site like this reported.”

“Jesus, Saul, way to give me a heart attack. Knock next time?” Patek scowled at the trooper, his body relaxing back into a slouch again. “Wait—other killings, here?” If there’d been other killings in the area, they would have heard about it. Probably faster through gossip channels than the officials ones, but they would have heard.

“One down in Virginia three month ago,” the trooper said. “They thought it was an isolated case at the time, but the system kicked it out when your report came through this morning. The other...” Saul Varten dropped his gaze, then looked up again, and Patek’s stomach hurt, already anticipating the news. “There was another report as I was heading over. In May’s Creek.” That was about twenty miles north, up into the hills. “A family of five. Four, actually—the husband went missing about a year ago.”

“Jesus.” Ian Patek felt his stomach clench, and he tasted that morning’s coffee in his mouth again, stale and bitter.

“That’s one fast-moving bear all right,” Joe said. He’d been a lifer in the city, two dimes in uniform before he’d come here; the man made a point not to be shocked by anything. But his hands were fisted, as if he wanted to punch something, hard. “A bear with transport.”

Patek ignored his partner and studied the trooper. “This your case now?”

“Hell, no,” Varten said, sounding both annoyed and relieved. “Your bear crossed state lines. The Feds are coming.”

“Send me out into the field.” Jan crossed her arms across her chest and looked at AJ, waiting for his reaction.

“No. Absolutely not.” The reaction was immediate. AJ’s jaw was set, his eyes hooded, and his brow drawn down. Jan could see the tension practically knotting his body, and she suspected that in his other form, he would have been growling at her. Actual growls, not just low-voiced anger

Unlike Martin, who seemed to change at whim, lupin were either bound by the moon or had taboos against showing their furry side out to other people. So AJ didn’t growl, didn’t show teeth or claws. He only glared. She was okay with that—she didn’t really want to see the lupin side; the human form was scary enough. But she couldn’t walk away from this argument, not even if he had changed.

“Why not?” She was trying to be reasonable, practical. That was always her strong point, not to rush in with passion but lay out the reasons why something would—or wouldn’t—work. With diagrams, if needed. She eyed the whiteboard off to the side of the room, then decided that would be a particularly bad idea right now. “I’m not needed here. I’ve done my bit, bringing you the people who are needed, who have the right skills to figure it out.” It still stung, but Galilia was right. “I’m a designer, not a tech, not really. The others know what they need to do now. They can do it without me.” She paused, trying to think of any other objection the lupin might make. “And before you say it, I’m not helping with Tyler, either.”

They were inside, with walls and bodies between them, and she could still practically feel the shed, looming at her back like a personal failure.

Martin, who had been quiet throughout her entire presentation to AJ, made a noise that might have been a protest, or a laugh. “Jan, you don’t know—”

“Yeah, I do. You haven’t gone to see him, not once. I have. And it’s never good. I’m a reminder of...of everything, and that sends him back down into a spiral. It’s...it is what it is.” The shrug she made seem effortless was like pushing through broken glass, tiny shards drawing tiny drops of blood, and the image was too close to her nightmares of the preter realm for comfort.

AJ didn’t say anything. He’d handed Tyler over to the Farm’s healers but hadn’t made an effort to follow up after that, either. Jan understood; Tyler hadn’t been their friend, their lover. A good manager put the right people on a problem and then moved on to the relevant battles. That was what he needed to do here. She just needed to convince him that she was the right person with the right solution.

“Let’s face it, the only time I’ve actually been useful to all this was when I was out in the field. Where, I might add, you sent me.” Let AJ try to wiggle out of that. “And because of that, Martin and I, we know preters, better than anyone else right now. We’ve been there, seen that, got the T-shirt and the firsthand experience.”

“And that’s why we need you here, to answer—”

“Bullshit.” She cut AJ off with an irritated swipe of her hand, finally too exasperated to be either cautious or polite. “You’ve sent Martin out, and he knows as much as I do. And everything I knew, or had figured out, you know now, too. So that’s bullshit. Let us find out more.” A sudden thought occurred to her. “And if you’re trying to protect me because of what happened, I... Don’t.”

The lupin scowled at her then, and she thought maybe she’d hit it. Oh, AJ, she thought, almost fondly. He’d dragged her into this at the start, had used her love for Tyler for his own purposes, had teamed her with a kelpie he had good reason to believe would kill her, however randomly or unintentionally, because that was what kelpies did. And now, for all that, AJ was feeling guilty.

As guilty as a supernatural could get, anyway.

How did you tell someone that it was okay that they’d totally used you, screwed up your life, and broken it into a thousand pieces? That you knew they’d do it again without hesitation—and you wouldn’t do anything different, either?

“Seriously, AJ...” Her voice faltered, and she hesitated, trying to pick through the words that would express what she was thinking without screwing it up. “Don’t. You tried to send me away once before, remember? And I wouldn’t go. I’m not going to back down now, either. Stubborn human being stubborn.”

He snorted, but some of the glare was fading from his eyes, and his body language was less opposed.

“I need to do this. I don’t...I don’t want to be protected, shielded.” Supers—friends—had died to protect her. Her life, and Tyler’s life, had been utterly upended: jobs lost, apartments lost, god knew what else. If AJ apologized, if he tried to keep her out of it now, that would make it worse, not better. “I know you think I’ve been through enough, but it’s not enough, not until this is done.” A deep breath, and then she went for the hard hit. “And I can’t stay here and do nothing, watch Tyler fade, knowing that’s going to happen to more people if we don’t stop this, now.”

AJ wasn’t the type to turn away or even blink; he just changed his attack. “You don’t have the ability to detect preters, the way we do.”

“Not at a range, no. But I can recognize them now.” She was better at it than other humans, anyway. Experience would do that to you. She smiled now, because he’d given her the perfect opening for her final shot. “And they can’t detect me.”

That was one of the major drawbacks of both the attempt to find preters and the progress of Operation Queen Search: supernaturals could scent out preternaturals into this world, but preters were aware of supers in the same—or similar enough—way. Humans, though...they slipped right through.

It could have been insulting, but she was going to make it work for her.

“That’s why you’re going to send me back out into the field. Because I can do something there that your people can’t.” Having grabbed that opening, she was on a roll now, the way she would have been back on the job, explaining why her way of doing something would work better.

“Listen to me, all right? Just...listen. Originally, you were chasing after missing humans, because that was the link between preters and this world. Because that was how you were going to find out what the preters were up to. Right?”

He nodded once, listening.

“And that’s where my team’s been looking, to see what, if anything, ties them all together, how they’re controlling the portals, suddenly, after generations of them being opened only at random.”

Not random, exactly. Tied to seasonal effects and specific rituals. But never on call, the way the preters could open them now. They knew that it took a human—and presumably the more humans they had, the more portals they would be able to open—but not how. That wasn’t the point she was trying to make, though.

“Meanwhile, your team’s been pinpointing areas where supernaturals have been living, specifically where species that didn’t respond to your call have strongholds, that kind of thing. Because your kind don’t just up and move without a reason, so if they’re ignoring you or gone, that means something.”

She paused just long enough for him to nod acknowledgment. “Gone missing, or where there were areas of known...well, less-human-friendly enclaves.” AJ was never going to be a diplomat, but he was trying; she’d give him that.

“That might potentially be preter-welcoming, where she might have set up shop. Right. My point is, you’re looking for patterns, traditions, established routines. So I had a thought. Okay, I had a couple of thoughts, but they all tied up in a nice neat bow. You—everyone—keep telling me that supernaturals can’t deny their nature—and that preters are all about tradition. You’re all hidebound—once you get set in something, you don’t leave it. Only humans zig as well as zag. Right?”

AJ just watched her, waiting for her to get to a point.

“Only, that’s not true.” She waited, half expecting AJ to protest or object. He didn’t. Martin, lurking behind her, gave her a faint poke, encouraging her to go on.

“Okay, for example, take Martin...he’s a kelpie. His entire shtick is pretty much cold-blooded murder. See human, entice human, drown human. And by the way, I have not forgiven you for not telling me all that up front.”

A lupin smile was unnerving as hell, even when you knew what it was.

“But the thing is, I’ve been on his back, in his other form, a bunch of times now. Not-drowned.”

Martin had refused to change form when they’d been in the preter realm, warning her that the magic there might overwhelm his control. She wasn’t going to think about that right now.

“You thought he might be able to control himself because of the mission. I get that.” Her life, personally—anyone’s life—meant less to AJ than the success of the mission. She got that, too. He’d do it again if he had to. “But why is he still hanging around me? Waiting for another try? Or because he’s actually managed to overcome enough of his basic nature to be friends with a human?”

“Or both,” Martin threw in over her shoulder. “Let’s not overlook that possibility.”

Jan thought Martin might have been trying to help. From the look on AJ’s face—and when had she learned how to read lupin body language so easily?—he wasn’t helping. Definite hint of guilt on that muzzle, yeah, and the way his eyes tracked on her, almost sorrowfully, as if he regretted even seeing her there.

That just made Jan more certain she was on the right track.

“My point is, you—supernaturals—can change when there’s a...an environmental change. Something big enough to shove against your inbred and innate whatevers. So, why are we assuming that the preters can’t? I mean—” and she flailed her hands a little in exasperation “—we already know they’ve moved from a seven-year plan to dealing in binary terms of ten after being exposed to computers!”

Her team’s conjecture, based on the fact that the preter consort had given her a binary deadline rather than one in a base of seven that preternaturals had adhered to for centuries, but it felt right to her.

“We don’t know that for certain,” AJ said. “It’s a theory, based on one piece of evidence. And basing anything off what one preter does is insanity.”

“It’s a pretty damned good theory, thank you muchly,” Jan retorted. “But the thing is, they did change their magic. They changed their entire mode of hunting, from wait-and-watch to active predation. That’s adaptation!”

It wasn’t enough; she could see that.

“Fine, let’s look at another piece of evidence—the queen came here not because she hated this world but because she was fascinated by it. The court confirmed this, and believe me, they were grumpy enough about that fact that it’s got to be true.”

“Is there a point here, human?” AJ asked, but his voice was actually curious, not annoyed. She was getting to him, finally.

“The queen came here. She stayed here. Something in this world fascinated her enough that she abandoned everything she knew, everything she had. Does that sound like a creature that can’t change its nature?”

“She might simply be insane,” AJ pointed out. “And what does this have to do with our plan to use her as a bargaining piece?”

“You mean other than the fact that you haven’t been able to lay paw on her?

“Think about it. She came here. And her people are having a serious mad-on about her leaving—as in not taking any of them with her. And none of you have been able to find her, going by what used to be true. Might she, as insane as it sounds, and I know that to you it’s going to sound seriously crazy, but might she be setting up a court of humans?”

There was a long pause, and Jan held her breath, waiting for AJ to respond so she could go on to the second part of her pitch.

“A court is a gathering of...of peers,” AJ said. “Ranked peers, and none of them her equal, but peers nonetheless. You said it yourself in your report—the consort was above the others, even those on the dais with him. The queen would be even more so. Supernaturals, at least, are...lesser but of the same stuff. Humans? They think of humans as toys and pets, sometimes as tools, but never peers. I’m not sure they’re even capable of that sort of a break.”

His muzzle wrinkled, and Jan waited, hoping that he might be willing to consider her proposal anyway.

“You think we should be looking for more human disappearances and that those will lead us to her?” He shook his head. “You know as well as I do how difficult it was to find humans who’d been preter-napped. It’s not as though the police are willing to share their records, and chasing after a maybe—”

“Not chase,” Jan interrupted. “Bait. You already used me that way once before, so it’s not like you can claim it’s a bad idea.” She wasn’t going to use that as a club over him, because no matter what he might or might not regret doing, AJ didn’t do guilt that way. But he would do what was needed, no matter who got used. She was counting on that. “And not to look for disappearances, no. Bait to see if she wants humans who understand that she is the queen and who don’t need, I don’t know, training or indoctrination.”

Brainwashing. They’d tortured Tyler, played mind games on him, until he broke. But if a mortal came to her willingly, knowing what she was and wanting that, without glamour or coercion...

“You know, that would appeal to her ego,” Martin said, finally joining in on the conversation usefully. “Jan’s right about that. When we were over there, when she challenged them, the consort wanted Jan to give in to him, without having any claim on her obedience. They consider human servants their right, and the more interesting the human, the better. The queen is going to be worse, ego-wise. If she is building a court, having someone looking for her, wanting to serve, would be irresistible.”

“No.” AJ shook his head, dismissing the idea entirely.

“What?” Jan was annoyed; she’d given him a perfectly logical buildup, and he was still saying no?

“You two know too much,” AJ said. “I’m willing to send you out on one of the teams, Jan, because you’re right, you’ve proven yourself useful there. You think quickly and without the prejudices we carry, and having a human viewpoint is useful, much as our more stubborn members still want to mutter about it. But sending you out as bait like that, practically hanging a sign over you—Tasty Treat, Come and Get It? No. You have interesting theories—work on them here. Liaise with the search teams, and help us direct them.”

Martin snickered. “You seriously just said liaise?”

Jan pivoted and hit Martin on the chest once, hard. Even she knew better than to argue—or sass—when the lupin used that voice. AJ was pack leader, for however a mangy pack they might be, and he had made his decision. She would have to settle for being part of a scouting team.

“Jan?” His voice was soft, but there was still a hint of a growl underneath, waiting for her to agree. Her mouth twisting in disappointment, Jan dropped her chin and let the tension leave her shoulders, as close to the “throat baring” move she’d seen other supernaturals give him when they lost an argument as she was willing to get.

AJ might be on the side of angels, so to speak, but she still wasn’t going to bare her throat to a werewolf.