Natural Consequences (12 page)

A long, loud belch interrupted him. Jimbo put down his beer can. “Sorry,” he muttered guiltily.

“—but that don’t mean he ain’t worth his place at the table. Or the campfire, as it happens. Just remember, we’re all family here. We’re a pack. Do what you want when you’re out wandering, but when we come together like this, we’re all on the same side.”

“Seems less like family when we’re missin’ someone,” noted Red. He didn’t look Caleb in the eye as he spoke, nor anyone else, gazing instead into the fire. “Been almost two months now.”

“Now, Red, you know I’m worried about Diana just like the rest of you,” Caleb told him.

“Are you?” Red asked. “I’m startin’ to wonder. Been three months we been stayin’ clear of them dead little bitches, all the way from Tacoma to Everett, just to keep them happy, and ain’t one of us done shit to get her back ‘cause you told us not to. Said you’d handle it.”

“I am handlin’ it, Red,” Caleb assured him. “I’m surprised you care so much. Last I checked, you an’ Diana didn’t exactly get along.”

“I care enough to wonder if this is how you’d handle things if it was my ass got snatched away,” countered Red. “She’s pack, right? Family. You always said so, weird as she was.”

“What’s weird about Diana?” wondered Sally.

“She talks funny,” answered Jared.

“Course she talks funny,” snapped Caleb, “she was a goddamn poetry an’ theater major when I found her! And a Canadian!” He turned his attention to Red. “Goddammit, boy, I told you before, we ain’t got no way of just bargin’ in there an’ gettin’ her back when we don’t even know where they’re keepin’ her.”

“We could
look
,” Red shrugged sullenly.

Caleb stormed over to Red, pushing Jimbo out of the way before slapping Red out of his folding camper’s chair onto the ground, sending his beer flying. “That’s enough outta you!” Caleb snarled. “I’m the father of this pack! Me! You think I taught you all to be like family so you could turn on me?”

“No, father,” came a calm voice from the shadows beyond the fire, “you taught us to be family to prevent that.”

Heads turned.
Downwind and obscured by the conversation, Diana managed to sneak right up on the group undetected. Spotting her in the darkness was no trouble for the others now that they knew to look. She walked into the light of the campfire, her eyes moving from one adopted family member to the next. From one shoulder hung a backpack; from the other, a tie-dyed hobo bag. Tucked in her hair just over her ear was a big red flower.

“Did I hear your name was Sally?” she asked. “You’re with Jared?”

“Yeah,” the other woman nodded. “Are you… are you Diana?”

“I am,” Diana nodded. “I’ll
endeavor not to sound too weird. Welcome to the pack. Hello, Jared. Red. Jimbo. Everyone.”

Grunts and mumbles of greeting from the others filled the silence for only a moment, but soon all they heard was the crackle of the campfire. Everyone watched as Diana and Caleb stared at one another.

“You got out,” observed Caleb.

“I did.”

“What’d you give ‘em?”

“Nothing at all,” Diana shook her head slowly. “Just like you.”

“So, what, you escaped all them vampires all on your own?” he asked. “You know I’ve always had faith in you, but that seems a might unlikely.”

“I did nothing to buy my way out,” Diana said, “nor did anyone pay ransom for me. They didn’t release me. I found an opportunity, fought and escaped.”

Caleb’s mouth spread into a grin. “I imagine you’ve got a story, then.”

“I do. And
an agenda.”

“Oh?”

Diana nodded. “I’ve found a mate. I will claim him and make him one of us. The pack will help.”

“You’ve decided that for us?” Caleb scowled. “For me?”

“I have, father.”

“You know you don’t give the orders around here. That’s my job.”

Again, she nodded, and dropped her backpack and purse at her feet. “You’re right. I agree one hundred percent. You’re in charge. I’ll have to kill and eat you.”

Not a sound was heard after that; it was as if even the crackling fire had gone silent. The world continued to turn around the makeshift family—
burning wood split, insects chirped, cars rolled on down the highway past the rest stop—but not a single one of them noticed any of it after that. As far as the others were concerned in that moment, the entire world was comprised of Caleb, Diana and the challenge she had just leveled.

He was equally angered and stunned. He opened his mouth to speak, but Diana calmly interrupted him. “I owe you everything. You are strong and proud and you have taught us well, but you abandoned me to our enemies. You will not talk your way out of this.”

Caleb charged. He exploded into towering muscle and fur as he moved, shifting so quickly it surprised the youngest among his adopted “children.” Claws swept out to either side, ready to slash into the woman before him. His jaw opened wide, revealing sharp, frightful teeth.

The single second it took Caleb to cross the ground between them seemed to happen in slow-motion for the others, because Diana hardly moved. She placidly waited to be demolished. Her hand shot out at his snout as the monster closed in, releasing a handful of a fine white powder. How she could do this and also slip down and around him fast enough to get away none of the others could follow. In one instant, she gave him a face full of powder; an eyeblink later, she was down low, one leg outstretched, tripping him and sending him sprawling down on the ground.

Caleb quickly recovered, or at least tried. Nothing about the move or his fall left him stunned, but as he spun he seemed to wobble and swoon. He snorted once, then again, his head turning this way and that as if unable to see. Diana swung a wide left hook directly into his nose.

Though by no means a small woman, her move seemed comical when performed against such a huge foe. Yet Caleb clearly felt it, reeled slightly, and swung back with his wide claws. Again, he missed, for Diana had already stepped back. Caleb slashed around and around, left and right, moving forward, turning and snapping his jaws at nothing, trying to catch her.

The moment repeated itself: Caleb sniffed and Diana punched, hard enough to make him feel it despite the discrepancy in size. This time, though, Caleb swung back quickly enough to bat her away with his forearm. Diana fell under the powerful blow, grunting in pain before she landed on her back. Caleb’s other arm slashed down on her, tearing a downward slash across her shoulder, chest and abdomen. Diana let out a cry of pain.

Caleb roared, reaching back with both arms to bring down a killing blow, and left himself wide open. Diana lurched forward as she became a similarly frightful beast, clawing up into and through his groin while she tumbled between his legs. Caleb’s triumphant cry turned into an animal shriek of pain as his knees buckled.

She recovered behind him, bleeding but still formidable, spun and leapt upon his back. Her clawed hands slammed down on his ears, digging in mercilessly until they came away with rent flesh and fur. Caleb made no secret of his pain as he howled and thrashed.

Partially blinded, largely deafened and unable to smell anything but the powder in his nose, Caleb could hardly fight. For all Diana’s impressive strength, the older werewolf was larger, stronger, more experienced… and none of that helped him. She stayed out of his reach, slashing whenever she found an opening.

Diana knew her final opening when she saw it. She lurked behind him, watching his strength wane, and leapt forward to clamp her jaws down on his left arm just below the shoulder. She caught his right with hers and kept chewing through muscle and blood. When he fell, little kept his arm attached other than exposed bone.

She rolled him over onto his back and slashed at his face a few more times out of sheer viciousness before her clawed hands began to dig into his massive chest.

The entire audience was comprised solely of killers and sinners. Wanton acts of savagery marked each of them as candidates for “adoption” in the first place. Such deeds became second nature once they had been initiated into the pack. The werewolves were monsters in contrast to both animal and man; normal wolves killed and ate out of hunger. Werewolves did so out of enjoyment.

The others looked on with discomfort as Diana’s snout pushed into Caleb’s shredded, broken chest… but also with envy. Much as Diana had said, they all felt a great debt to Caleb. He had made them stronger. Tougher. More than human. But to see their mentor and father figure laid low and mauled in such a way inspired an arousal none would freely admit. Blood spurt in every direction from Caleb’s chest. Diana’s jaw closed on her goal, tearing it free while her audience watched with heavy, hungry breath.

Billy came rushing back, slower and clumsier in his human form than his other options thanks to his girth. He stopped at the edge of the campfire’s light, huffing, “What’s goin’ on? What’d I miss?”

Diana straddled the broken and mangled wolf-man that had brought them all into their power. She returned to her natural form, naked and covered in blood. As she chewed on the mass of muscle in her hands, blood spilling all over her, the terrible lesions left in her by Caleb’s claws began to slowly close.

“You gotta be kiddin’ me,” Billy breathed.

“Someone please take a walk and make sure no one comes to check out all the noise,” Diana asked. Her eyes swept the group to ensure they did not confuse her command for a request despite her polite tone. “I would rather not be disturbed while I’m eating.”

* * *

“That’s the one. Alex Carlisle.
” Amber leaned back from the computer screen to rub her eyes. It had been a long day and a long night. Neither school nor her evening at a pool hall were physically taxing, but doing it all while maintaining a cover created plenty of mental stress.

“Funny how he deleted his whole profile page the
week after the mansion fire,” noted Matt Lanier. He’d had to work to dig up caches of Carlisle’s online life, but the Internet was an archive. It wasn’t like Carlisle could truly erase himself.

“No link to the girlfriend, though?” Hauser asked. He sat on the couch, reviewing info on his own laptop computer.

“Nope,” Lanier shrugged. “Even the stuff he had posted was pretty guarded. This is someone who paid attention to Internet safety lectures in school.”

Hauser grunted. “
Presuming he’s a real boy in the first place.”

The whole task force—all six of them—sat in the apartment’s living room. Empty pizza boxes, discarded soda cans and laptops abounded.
The apartment one floor up from Amber’s lodgings was minimally furnished with cheap chairs, couches and a couple of coffee tables.

“You think he’s a vampire?” Amber frowned. “He didn’t seem pale enough, or… I dunno. None of them did. Something I can’t put my finger on.”

“Not douchey enough?” offered Keeley from the kitchen.

“Yeah,” Amber said. “That.”

“Doesn’t mean much,” Hauser shrugged. “But this woman doesn’t fit with these kids. Not at all.”

“Boss,”
Lanier said, “check your email. Sent you the records sweep on Reinhardt.” He busily tapped away at his keyboard, muttering, “Running one on the Carlisle kid now.”

Hauser nodded. He said nothing right away, though Amber immediately saw their leader’s eyebrows rise. “What is it?”

“Gimme a second to digest all this,” Hauser murmured.

“Be nice if we could just
talk to the local cops to see what they know,” sighed Colleen Nguyen. She had more or less sunk into the couch, her head tilted back with a soda in her hand. “Kind of ridiculous having to skulk around like this.”

“Why can’t we?” asked Amber.

“Vampires generally make a point of getting their hooks into local police departments,” she explained. “It’s useful in covering up all their bullshit. One of them slips up, kills a victim or whatever, it helps to have the cops there to make it all go away, y’know?”

“How bad does that get?”

“Bad enough,” said Keeley. “Sometimes it’s straight bribery or intimidation. Other times they use their woojy supernatural mind tricks on people to bring ‘em in line. Even the ones in LA and San Fran don’t own whole departments or anything, but all it takes is one dirty cop knowing that the FBI is in town snooping around. He calls up his vampire sugar daddy and suddenly the whole batch scurries underground.”

“But we had local cops in LA helping us,” Amber pointed out.

“Hand-picked,” Keeley nodded. “Every one of them learned about the boogeyman on their own. It happens. Usually the ones who know the truth feel all alone and just shut up about it rather than getting checked into a padded cell. I like to think there are more of them than there are dirty ones, but…” he shrugged. “It’s not like we can take a survey.”

She shook her head, troubled once more by the whole thing. The Bureau encouraged its people to work with local authorities, not hide from them. So much of this assignment was all about unlearning everything she’d ever been taught.

“Wow,” grunted Lanier. His eyes didn’t come up from his screen.

“What?” Hauser asked.