No Such Thing As Werewolves (46 page)

The old man circled the table, coming to stand next to the Brit. He stared calmly at the Director. “I sealed those records personally, but Mark’s question is valid. As of right now, I’m unsealing them. It’s time you all had the truth.”

Jordan didn’t know what shocked him more, Mohn’s candor or the fact that Director Phillips had a first name.

Chapter 65- Object One

Jordan wasn’t any sort of orator, but even he recognized when he was in the presence of a master. Mohn’s words had stunned the audience, shocked some of the most powerful people in the world. He’d dangled information that many had probably spent years trying to acquire, and he seemed to be asking nothing in return. It was without a doubt an ambush of some sort. Jordan had walked into enough to recognize the signs.

“This,” Mohn said, tapping a button on his tablet and turning to face the gigantic screen, “is Gobekli Tepe, in what is now Turkey. The ruins were constructed in the tenth millennium BC. This is nearly five millennia before ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia, long before archeologists claim we discovered agriculture, which would have been required to create such a vast complex.”

He paused to allow them to study the screen, which showed a number of simple stone monuments. Many had to weigh multiple tons, and construction must have taken decades.

“The entire complex was buried roughly two thousand years after it was created,” Mohn continued, drawing most of the room’s eyes back to him. “We don’t know why, but that act is part of what preserved the ruins long enough for us to discover them.”

Mohn tapped the screen of his tablet again, and the giant screen showed a new image, this one far more recognizable. “All of us have seen this one, many in person. The Sphinx. College textbooks will tell you it was built during the fourth dynasty of ancient Egypt, by Pharaoh Khafre, the man who built the second of the three Great Pyramids. There are two problems with this theory. First, Khafre never claimed credit. Pharaohs loved to claim credit, and a structure like this would have been recorded all over the annals he created. It wasn’t.”

The old man paused dramatically, delivering a wolfish smile. “That’s not the only problem with the theory. Any modern geologist will tell you that the Sphinx and its entire enclosure appear to have suffered thousands of years of water erosion. Egypt hasn’t seen enough rain to cause that since at least ten thousand BC.”

“Is this history lesson going anywhere?” a woman’s voice rang out, clear and melodic. The room’s attention fixed on a statuesque woman in a simple black dress.

“Yes, Marlene, it is,” Mohn said, eyes narrowing slightly. He stalked over to the table and set his tablet down in front of the woman. “The point of both stories is simple. Mankind’s understanding of our past is incomplete. There are entire cultures we know nothing about, cultures that have disappeared entirely. The pyramid that appeared in Peru belongs to a culture that predates even those.”

He turned from her and returned to the spot near the Brit. Then he turned again to face the room. “My grandfather knew this. He devoted his life to finding evidence of this culture. In the 1920s he found it. Tell me, ladies and gentlemen, how many of you believe in magic?”

Polite chuckles sounded through the room. Jordan was awed. Mohn held the emotions of the people here in the palms of his hands, sculpting them like an expert craftsman might a block of stone.

“A few of you have heard rumors of Object Three and the recent tests we’ve run on it,” Mohn said, unbuttoning the top button of his white dress shirt. He withdrew a simple golden pendant with a scarlet gem in the center. Even at this distance, Jordan recognized the stylized Eye of Ra. “This is Object One, the evidence my grandfather found. It looks innocuous enough, doesn’t it? At the time my grandfather found it, the object was anything but. The ruby glowed with its own inner light, and the pendant was reputed to bestow a number of abilities. Abilities my grandfather verified.”

Whispers rustled through the room, but Mohn held up a hand to forestall them. “I know what you’re thinking. If such objects exist, why has the existence of magic been disproved in every test, every magician proved to be a charlatan of some form or another? Let’s suppose you are an ancient culture with technology not unlike what we have today.

“Your technology is based on solar power. Not just any solar power, but a specific wavelength of light emitted by the sun. This wavelength comes and goes in millennia-long cycles,” Mohn explained, allowing the chain to swing back and forth. All eyes were on the pendant. “Your astronomers warn that the energy your entire culture is based on will soon fade. It will be gone for thirteen thousand years, during which none of your fabulous technology will operate.”

Jordan’s jaw dropped as he began to understand. The pyramid suddenly made sense.

“If you were the rulers of this hypothetical culture, might you consider building Arks to preserve your way of life? Much like biblical Noah? Places where your culture could survive until the energy you depended upon returned,” Mohn said, a predatory smile slipping into place. He knew he had them. “When I first came into possession of this pendant, it still possessed power. I watched that power drain away as I used it until it was nothing but a dormant hunk of metal. Then, one day in 1987, I woke up to find the ruby glowing faintly again.
 

“The next day, I took the wealth my grandfather had bequeathed me, and I founded this company,” Mohn continued, striding toward the wide bay windows. The setting sun bathed the carpet on that side of the room. “I did it because I realized that the power this ancient culture had depended on for so long was returning, that our sun was changing. I set up HELIOS to monitor it. I built a global empire to gather archeological data.”

He held up the amulet, and it shone in the sunlight, gleaming richly in a way normal gold could never match. After several seconds the ruby began to glow. “Each of you helped me in this process. Aided Mohn Corp. in finding pieces of the puzzle. No single one of you understood our true purpose or what it was we faced, but all of you were participating in a war you didn’t even know existed.”

He lowered the amulet, tucking it into his pocket and crossing back to the space next to the slack-jawed Brit. “Before we call this vote, I will lay out the facts very simply. I learned that a catastrophe was coming, and that Arks like the pyramid in Peru will begin to return. I don’t know how many there are, only where the first would be. I also know that our sun is about to emit the largest coronal mass ejection in known history. This wave will devastate the world’s power grid. Only those very close to the equator will be unaffected, a green zone, if you will.

“Every satellite orbiting our world will be destroyed, except for the twelve that Mohn has launched in the last three years,” Mohn explained, expression now grave. “We will be blind and confused, naked before the onslaught of an enemy we cannot understand. I didn’t understand the nature of this enemy until the first werewolf attack, but we all understand it now. Mankind has only us to shield it, something we can only do if we husband our resources and strike from a position of strength. That can only occur if we retreat temporarily, hiding our existence in our Syracuse facility. There we will watch and plan, saving who and what we can of our world.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I call for a vote. Will we be the saviors of mankind, or will we squander our strength in a vain attempt to stave off the inevitable?” he roared, looking every inch the conquering king. The applause was thunderous.

Chapter 66- Fight for Alpha

The whine of the propellers softened to a lower pitch as the plane dropped from cloud cover, weaving a tight arc toward the Tarmac below. The windows were instantly spattered with rain as the storm buffeted them about. Liz hated small planes to begin with, but they were even worse during a storm.

She leaned forward in the seat to get a better look at the city below. She’d spent two weeks in Cajamarca, taking an advanced Spanish class, and she still remembered how hard adjusting to the altitude had been. Cajamarca was at almost nine thousand feet, as high as Half Dome, back home in Yosemite.
 

A sea of tightly packed buildings surrounded the airport, mostly obscured by the rain. Here and there, the steeple of a church jutted over the rest of the buildings. The locals took their religion seriously and had for centuries. It took Liz several moments to realize what was wrong. The streets were largely empty. No people. Very few cars, and none of them moving. This place was deserted. A city of over two hundred thousand people.

“Ahh shit,” Garland muttered, tapping at the fuel gauge. The red needle had been hovering a bit above the
E
, but his tapping knocked it down below. “Sometimes it sticks. Henrietta likes to play games with me.”

“We’ve got enough to land, right?” Liz asked, bracing herself against the console with one hand, and the chair with the other. She knew this thing was a death trap.

“Oh, sure. We’ll be fine. I could probably coast in with no fuel at this point,” he said, taking a swig from the dregs of the forty he’d been working on for the last hour. He offered her a swig and then shrugged when she shook her head. “We’ll come around in one more turn to put us on a straight shot down that runway. Probably a little slick from the rain, but it’s designed for much larger aircraft. We’ve got all the time in the world to slow down.”

The plane tilted sharply, moving Liz’s window so it was almost parallel with the ground. She fought off vertigo as her knuckles went white. She felt metal bend under her hand as her fingers sank into it. Oops. The plane righted itself, and then it began to drop sharply in elevation.

“Make sure you’re buckled up back there,” Garland yelled over his shoulder. He gave Liz a friendly smile and waggled his eyebrows. “Gonna be a bumpy landing, but I promise we’ll be just fine. Still, if you want to give me a kiss for luck, I won’t turn it down.”

Liz just gave him a deadpan stare. Adjusting to the smell had taken hours, though at some point she’d stopped noticing it. The bad jokes and mostly incoherent stories had been much harder to deal with. To his credit, Garland hadn’t tried anything more than light flirting, but she had newfound respect for her brother. Working with this guy must have been excruciating.

“Here we go,” he said, eyes finally focused on the rapidly approaching runway. He brought the nose up at the last moment, allowing the rear wheels to touch down first. The plane fishtailed wildly, but somehow Garland fought the motion and kept it in a mostly straight line.

Then the front wheels were down. The whole plane shook as it rattled down the runway, but an eternity later the plane shuddered to a halt. Garland unbuckled his seat belt and polished off the bottle. He cracked open his window and hurled it out into the rain, where it shattered.

“Woooo,” he yelled, giving Liz a maniacal grin. “Hell of a ride. Told you we’d make it. Now lets see about finding that shaman of yours.”

An eerie howl sliced through the wind, low and deep. Then another. It became a chorus, coming from all directions. Some howls distant, some alarmingly close. Liz resisted the urge to add her voice to the chorus, unbuckling her seat belt and ducking through the cockpit’s narrow door into the cargo area.

Blair and Trevor had already left their seats and were shouldering packs. Trevor knelt next to a blanket-wrapped bundle and removed his Remington, glancing up at her as she entered. “Looks like our entrance drew some attention. Don’t suppose one of you can give the werewolf howl-ee handshake to call them off?”

“If anyone can do that, it will be Liz. Werewolves are a matriarchy. There’s a reason females are larger and stronger,” Blair said, moving for the door. He turned the wide metal handle, and the door opened with a heavy thunk. The wind immediately swept a sheet of water inside.

Great. So not only had she been consigned to throwing her life away trying to rescue this Mother she’d never even met, but now she was also expected to lead this lunacy.
 

“I’ll do what I can, but we aren’t exactly given a manual when we’re, uh, recruited,” she said, following Blair out into the rain. She hopped to the Tarmac, shivering as the rain sluiced over her. She’d never even considered the need for a jacket when leaving San Diego.

Trevor hopped down after her, tugging on a green Yosemite cap to shield his face from the rain. He turned to face the plane, cradling his shotgun as Garland’s bushy face appeared in the doorway.

“New plan,” the pilot said, cracking a nervous grin. “I’m gonna wait here. I’ve got two cases of beer, and I figure that will last me about three days. If you can make it back in that time, you’ve got a ride back to the states. If not, Henrietta and I are going home.”

“What about your ayahuasca?” Liz asked, shielding her face with an arm. It didn’t help much.

“You didn’t tell me I had to be an extra in
The Howling
if I wanted to get it,” Garland replied. He pulled the door most of the way closed. “I might be crazy, but I ain’t stupid.” The door jerked closed with a thunk.

“Guess we’re on our own,” Blair said. His hair was already plastered to his head, and water dribbled from his chin. “The howls have stopped. My guess is we’re about to meet the welcoming committee.”

He was right. Beyond the keening wind and the splatter of raindrops, Liz heard feet. A lot of feet. Shapes began to emerge from the rain, a wide cluster maybe a hundred yards away, near the fence bordering the Tarmac. Most of the shapes were four legged, a variety of dogs in all shapes and sizes. Three were two legged, the largest a midnight-furred female.