Chapter Five: Dead

A lot of soldiers were bitten, in the early days of the war. The Taliban would do this thing where they recruited werewolves, particularly young ones, from local villages and gave them money for their families.

In return, the wolves would get as close to Army bases as possible and, on the full moon, attack.

The US learned how to deal with it pretty quickly, but not before losing entire camps.

Jess remembers those days. Some of those camps look a lot like this room does now, and she might actually throw up.

Alejandro Cruz has been torn apart.

There's really no other word for it.

Blood splatters across the floor and the walls, dragged from pools and slashed in intricate lines leading from the body to the bathroom door. It looks like the wolf played when it was done, and Jess's stomach rolls.

James paces claws in his fingernails. Jess wonders if this bothers him as much as it does her. Probably not, because he's an old wolf and a CIA assassin. Blood, even this much, won't bother him.

"We have to call it in," she says. She doesn't want to. The public is already panicked over Sarah Greene's death, and this, a wolf attack outside of the full moon?

"I know," James mutters.

"Do you think this is the same werewolf that killed Sarah Greene last week?"

He doesn't answer right away, instead carefully picking his way through the soaked bathroom to get a closer look at Cruz's body.

"Yes," he growls. "It has to be the same wolf."

"You sure?"

"There won't be more than one sick wolf in the city at a time," he says flatly, stepping back. His eyes, normally blue, are flecked with gold.

"A sick wolf?" She's heard that term before, she thinks, but she can't remember"

"One of us who hunts humans."

She frowns again, wrinkling her forehead. "Why only one at a time?"

"The sick are killed," James says. She can't read his face between the gold flashes in his eyes, but he's not happy, not at all.

Her stomach rolls again.

"This one doesn't have pack," he continues, pacing again. "If it did, they would've killed him after moon night."

"This is the man you've been watching, right?"

He nods.

"The werewolf warned him before he came," she mutters. It doesn't make sense. "It wanted him to be afraid, to know that it was coming."

James shakes his head like a dog trying to rid its ears of water. "The blood from the warning will be Sarah Greene's," he says. "And the wolf took some from Cruz."

"He changed here?"

James nods, running his fingers over the bed. "Fur and blood," he mutters. He holds up a few strands of long black fur. "And then he changed again and left by the window."

He's right"the window is shoved open and the sill is gouged, the imprint of claws left forever. Dark, wiry strands of fur are snagged in the window, just like some were left on Sarah Greene's coat.

James sticks his head out of the window. "He jumped onto the fire escape, probably ran through the back alley."

-------------------------

"When was Cruz killed?"

James's shoulders go tense and he seems to shiver. His fingernails gouge into the windowsill. "If Cruz was in the bathroom, around four-thirty."

"Were you watching?"

Frustration ripples from him in waves. "I'd just left. The wolf would've been right there"" A deep, angry snarl escapes from his clenched teeth and she almost takes a step back. She stops herself just in time, though, because James isn't going to hurt her, no matter how angry he is.

He softens. "My wolf hates bad hunts," he explains. "And it hates missing its prey."

Jess thinks back to all the times a suspect has gotten away from her, and how angry that makes her. "I can understand that," she says.

He almost smiles.

"This wolf will keep killing until he's caught. Call it in. Have the labs analyse the fur, see if there's any prints left. The wolf had to have taken a container or something with it, for the blood."

Jess nods, taking one last look at the carnage before reaching for her phone.

"Jess," he says. She turns back around. "Will you keep my shoes?"

"Your shoes?" It's so out of place here that she can't help but laugh a little, and he kicks off his shoes. "Yeah, okay. You gonna try and track him?"

James nods. He's shedding his shirt now, and she's surprised to see that there's a fresh, blackened line scarring an arm. He's taken some silver recently.

"Be safe," she says, and he gives her a wide, toothy grin.

"Close your eyes," he says; his own bright, wolfish amber.

Jess does, and when she opens them again, James is across the room in one bound and out the window.

Jess sighs and flips open her phone. "Hello, yeah, this is Detective Walker; I need to report a homicide…"

-------------------------

Drake wakes up with a killer headache and a very large werewolf sitting on his chest.

"Jesus Christ," he chokes, throwing his hands up, and the wolf snarls thinly, leaping off his chest and growling to itself.

Drake sits up. There's a knot the size of his fist sticking out of his forehead and dried blood cracks when he tries to move his face.

Ow, crap. He'll just sit here for a bit, then.

Once the world stops spinning, he can get a good look at the wolf. He relaxes a little. He knows this wolf, and it probably won't kill him today.

The wolf fixes the detective with bright, fierce amber eyes. It growls.

"Nice of you to show up," Drake says. "Where were you when I was getting ambushed, huh? You didn't say nothin' about running into crazies with baseball bats. Just some surveillance, you said."

The wolf ignores him, sniffing the bloodied edge of the bat. He sneezes, a snarl lifting his muzzle, and paces in front of Drake.

"You hunting?" The only times Drake has seen his 'friend' in wolf shape have been during a hunt, which makes him feel almost bad for the poor guy at the other end of the line, but if the wolf's hunting Mr. Baseball-bat-from-nowhere, well, Drake can't really feel bad for that guy.

His head f*****g hurts.

"Look, man, I didn't see it comin'. He blindsided me."

The wolf eyes him flatly, and, not for the first time, Drake wonders if he can smell emotions. It wouldn't surprise him.

The wolf jerks its muzzle upwards, at the high rise and Alejandro Cruz's apartment.

"Aw, hell," Drake mutters. "Cruz is dead?"

The wolf nods, growling quietly.

Drake holds up his hands. Isn't there some rule about not making eye contact with wolves? Like it pisses them off, or something? He looks at the wall behind the wolf just to be safe. "I didn't see who got me, I swear," he says. "Think he killed Cruz?"

The wolf barks, which Drake thinks means yes. Damn it.

"I'll pull security footage, see what I can find," Drake offers, which the wolf seems to find okay. He gives the detective a look that promises they'll talk later, and then he's gone.

Drake rubs his head gingerly. He doesn't think he'll stand up just yet, but he squints up at Cruz's apartment.

"F*****g werewolves," he mutters.

-------------------------

"Police have issued a blanket house arrest on all werewolves today after a second victim was found dead in his apartment a week after the full moon... All wolves are to stay in their homes and wait for the police to check their alibis. Citizens are warned to avoid any and all wolves they see on the streets. If you see a werewolf outside of his or her home, call the police immediately.

"Citizens are also advised to stay indoors after dark, especially in the Brooklyn area, where Sarah Greene was killed, and Queens, where Alejandro Cruz lived."

Octavian turns off the TV with one quick, awkward jab. He doesn't break the remote, this time, and he drops it before he can.

He paces.

Alejandro Cruz is dead. Octavian pulled James off of him and now he's dead"

Killed by a werewolf, too. The same one who slaughtered Sarah Greene on moon night. The city is in an uproar. It's one thing to lose someone on moon night, but a week later? Werewolves aren't supposed to be able to change past the moon, let alone kill people"

In the depths of the library, a door opens and James's now-familiar scent"tinged, this time, with something awful and burning that his wolf shies away from"hits Octavian's nose.

"James," Octavian says quietly, forcing his voice to stay steady and calm.

"Octavian."

"I have a problem," Octavian says, and shows James his hands. He has, instead of normal fingernails, sharp, black wolf claws, and it's kind of causing him to panic.

James, however, doesn't seem that concerned. "How long have they been like this?"

"A few hours." Four hours and twenty-eight minutes, to be exact. So far, Octavian has broken his keyboard, clawed a hole in the wall, and shredded the only book on lycanthropy he had in the library.

He doesn't know what to do. The claws have gotten worse. When he broke through his keyboard, they were still human-looking, but now they're not"

He can't work if he has werewolf claws. He can't read, or go over files, or dial a phone. He can't do anything"

The claws are worse than they were four hours ago. It's probably the panic, but Octavian just"

"Relax," James says, slow and even. Octavian doesn't, but the wolf in the corner of his mind does, settling down with a sigh. It suddenly feels safe and a whole blur of other things he can't get a hold of, despite Octavian’s anxiety. "This happens sometimes, especially if you're distracted. What were you doing?"

"Digging through Talia Mason's information," he says.

"That'll do it."

At Octavian's raised eyebrow, James explains, "you were hunting. The wolf felt that and reacted to it, that's why you have the claws."

"And that happens often?"

"You'll learn to control it, “James says, in that same low, steady voice. "The wolf reacts to emotions. It feels your anger or your fear or your hunt and it wants to see what's happening, which causes partial changes."

"How do I reverse it?"

"Be calm," says James. "Don't fight it. Just relax."

Octavian breathes, pulling his clawed hands away. Easier said than done, he thinks. How the hell is he supposed to be calm when this is happening to him?

But no. He can do this.

"It's normal," James says. "You'll notice other little changes, especially after moon-dark. You get used to them pretty fast."

"And these changes are?"

"Sharper hearing, sense of smell, stronger fingernails. Old injuries, especially bad ones"" here Octavian gets a meaningful look""will heal. You'll start to hear the wolf, too."

Octavian closes his eyes briefly. "And what exactly is 'hearing the wolf?'" He already knows, of course. He's heard his own, but James doesn't know"

"It"talks to you. The longer you live with it, the easier it is to understand. And first you'll just feel it"anger, happiness, the urge to hunt, the need to run." James looks away, out the big, dirty windows. "Have you heard yours yet?"

"No," Octavian says.

James snaps back around, eyes flashing, and he grins widely. His teeth are sharper than any human's should be. "Right. Don't try and smother it."

That is not what Octavian has heard. All the articles and emails that he's sifted through have said the same thing; block out the wolf, suppress it, don't let it bleed into yourself.

"The more you try and cage it, the harder it fights on moon night," James warns. He meets Octavian’s eyes and the wolf snarls, bristling in the corner of his mind. He flexes his hands instinctively; matching James's gaze, and sees a gold-flash of wolf eyes"

Octavian looks away, the hairs on the back of his neck sticking straight up.

"Alejandro Cruz, thirty-five, was found dead in his bathroom today, the victim of a wolf attack…"

"Do you know what happened to Cruz?"

James seems to accept the change of subject, leaning back on his heels with a sigh. "The wolf attacked Drake before he got Cruz"knocked him out with a baseball bat. It came up the fire escape, through the window, then transformed and killed Cruz. Or something like that. Why the hell didn't we install a camera inside the damn apartment?"

"I have security cameras on all sides," Octavian says, already running through his mental list. He hadn't been watching those cameras because he was focused on Mason instead"he thought the threat to Cruz had slackened.

He won't make that mistake again.

"Which side of the building did the wolf come in on?"

"Eastern side, in the back," James says.

Octavian "gingerly"types a few lines of code into one of his backup keyboards and brings up the feeds. He and James lean in, frowning at the grainy quality. It was, unfortunately, still rather dark at four-thirty, but they can see a smudge that is Detective Drake lurch forward, and a dense shadow"human-shaped, but strangely contorted"dart up several flights of stairs, pause at Alejandro's window, and then disappear inside.

"That'll be the wolf," James murmurs, squinting. His eyes flash gold and Octavian’s wolf hums a growl. His skin itches.

Octavian fast-forwards the footage to where the dark misshapen figure leaps out of the window again, lunging on all fours down the ladder, where it hugs the side of the wall, clinging to the shadows before reaching the ground and flying off a computer screen.

Octavian rewinds and pauses it, zooming in on the blurry shape. It's a werewolf, it has to be. Black-furred and huge, bigger even than James's long-legged wolf. Octavian can make out a tail and a pair of ears, and what looks like a massive paw, but it's off, somehow.

"Is it possible to be both at once? Wolf and man?" Because that's what this thing looks like, a cross between a person and a wolf like the movies.

James curls his lip. "Like The Wolfman? No, not that I've seen. The best we can do is claws, fangs, and eyes before we go all wolf. The in-between only lasts a second."

This is strangely comforting, because he's been having this nightmare where he gets stuck halfway through the transformation and ends up half-wolf for the rest of his life. It's good to know that he's one or the other, never both at the same time.

But it does not explain their strange murderer.

"Alejandro Cruz is thought to be the second victim of the werewolf that killed Sarah Greene last week," the TV drones. "Both were working on a""

"I'll have Jess look into the blood," James was saying, his voice a rumbling growl.

"Shh," Octavian hisses, holding up a clawed finger, his ears straining to hear the TV.

""which, if passed, would make the cure mandatory for all werewolves."

"Cure?" James stiffens, turning his attention to the TV. "What cure?"

Octavian hits a few keys and Alejandro's name and company, Imaginum Health Care, it's always the pharmaceutical company, pop up in the Wall Street Journal.

"New 'Miracle Cure' in development by Imaginum Health Care," Octavian reads aloud. "The engineers behind this new experimental cure seek to solve the problem of lycanthropy with medicine. A Vice President of Imaginum, Alejandro Cruz, has been campaigning for months to get government funding for this research, and has been in contact with several lawmakers and lawyers to make the pill mandatory""

"Sarah Greene," James mutters, reading over Octavian’s shoulder. He points, and sure enough Sarah Greene is in the article, mentioned as the young up-and-comer who was drafting the bill.

"And it's written by Talia Mason."

Octavian leans back in his chair, his mind whirling. Mason, Cruz, and Sarah Greene, all connected to the same thing"a new drug for werewolves that would "cure" them over their furry problem.

"Sarah's death must have been unplanned," he says, already up and limping over to his board of faces. "A spur-of-the-moment attack. But the others…"

"He saw the others in the paper and decided to hunt them," James finishes. He paces, back and forth, back and forth.

A werewolf serial killer, Octavian thinks. He wants to laugh hysterically because this whole thing is like something out of a bad horror story, except he and James are the good guys and the wolves never are.

"I'll stick to Mason," James says. "She'll be safe for another week at least. It doesn't matter how strong he is, no wolf can turn on moon-dark. He's killing on cycle patterns, so the next kill night will be""

"The waxing quarter," Octavian murmurs.

James raises an eyebrow. "Very good, Octavian. Been doing your homework?" He's almost smiling, eyes glittering amusedly.

Octavian ignores him, but the corner of his mouth turns up. "Stay on Mrs. Mason, James. I'll see what I can do about this security footage."

"Call me if anything comes up," James says, already on his way out the door. "And Octavian?"

"James?"

"Remember to breathe."

Octavian smiles at that, and looks down at his hands.

The claws are gone.

James crosses the street and casts one last look up at the library. He can't see Octavian through the grimy windows, but he knows that his partner is up there. Pacing, probably, worrying, running through a hundred different scenarios in his head.

James wonders how that's going, now that Octavian has a wolf in there with him.

Run-hunt-seek, his own wolf growls. It bristles, claws extended. It hates a botched hunt, and this strange werewolf killer sparks something deep and furious inside of it, and inside of James too.

Ours-to-protect, the wolf tells him.

James closes his eyes, ducking inside an abandoned building and, for the third time today, kicks off his shoes.

The wolf hums, singing blood-hunt-kill. It remembers the Other's smell"sharp and acidic, like sewer mixed with forest musk. That's a good place to start, the sewers. Dozens of unregistered wolves live around them. There's a good chance he'll find some leads there.

Ours-to-protect, the wolf snarls, thinking of Sarah Greene and Cruz and Mason.

Ours, James agrees, and shifts again.