The Frenzy War Page 7

  With her night vision goggles, Valeria saw Henri open the flimsy door leading into the kitchen, and as she trailed him, she heard the keening of the alarm keypad. The noise would probably awaken the house’s inhabitants, but at least a police patrol would not be dispatched in response to an actual alarm.

  Henri moved swift and silent, like a shadow, and she did her best to follow suit. She disliked wearing the mask, goggles, and duster, which restricted her senses and movements. They entered the dining room, then emerged into a great room, where a figure joined them, causing her to jump. She had known Michael would be here, had expected to see him, and yet his sudden appearance had still startled her. The alarm pad in the next room stopped keening.

  The three of them continued into the living room, where they saw Myles and Eun standing side by side. Framed photos on an entertainment unit showed Jason Lourdes and his parents at various events and on vacation: just a normal American family. Michael motioned to Myles and Eun, who crept up the stairs. Then he and Henri approached the banister to do the same.

  Valeria heard a sound like heavy breathing. Spinning on one heel, she saw three hulking shapes rise before her in unison. She registered their pointy ears and ferocious snouts, and she noticed distinct musculature beneath their fur. The werewolves stood seven feet tall, their gleaming eyes focused on her.

  They can see in the dark, Valeria thought. “Company!”

  When Samuel saw the black passenger van decelerating near the house, Tim notified Kyle, who watched the backyard from the kitchen window. The three of them ran into the basement, where they stripped off their clothes and stood naked, waiting.

  When they heard the side door open and saw the male and female assassins enter, Tim nodded to his companions and all three of them Changed. Then they ascended the stairs in dead silence and followed the pair into the great room. The humans joined another male and then a male and a female in the living room. They wore night vision goggles but carried no discernible weapons, though Tim assumed they were armed to the teeth.

  The Wolves moved unnoticed along the floor until the first female turned around. Fearing she was seconds from discovering them, Tim reared up on his hind legs, startling her. He knew that Samuel and Kyle did the same behind him. When the woman called out to her comrades, Tim flexed his muscles, showing her just how magnificent a specimen he had become. It was important to keep the element of surprise on their side.

  Michael turned at the sound of Valeria’s panicked voice and saw three werewolves towering before her, their ears almost touching the ceiling. All three were males, which meant there had to be at least one more creature—a female— somewhere in the house.

  A trap. They were expecting us!

  Using one hand, he eased Valeria out of his way. “Don’t let them box us in. They want us to go upstairs.” He drew the Blade of Salvation from his coat and wielded the heavy weapon in both hands.

  The werewolves snarled at the sight of his sword but showed no fear otherwise. Upstairs, he heard the thumping of feet—paws!—and the growling of at least two more beasts.

  Five on five.

  Moving to his right with the stairway behind him, Michael formed a triangle with the werewolves at one point and Valeria at the other. “Take them!”

  In response to his command, Valeria and Henri drew swords of their own. Silver swords. Blades of Salvation. He heard Myles and Eun draw their weapons as well.

  Five strong.

  The werewolves looked from human to human, their bestial countenances exhibiting equal parts confusion and rage.

  Surprise!

  Michael charged forward, cocking his Blade over his shoulder and swinging it deep into the first monster’s neck. The werewolf howled in agony and sank to his knees. When Michael wrenched his Blade free, blood sprayed out of the gaping neck wound with such force that it splattered the ceiling. He swung his sword again, separating the monster’s head from his shoulders. The head rolled across the carpet, followed by gushing blood as the carcass pitched forward.

  Inspired by Michael’s courage, Valeria charged at the werewolf on the left with Henri behind her while Michael swung at the one on the right.

  Both beasts dropped into defensive postures and roared like lions.

  Valeria’s Blade sank into her target’s right shoulder, Henri’s into its left arm, severing the claw, which spun through the air. Blood from its open wrist splashed their legs. Valeria jerked her sword free, and she and Henri buried their weapons into wolf flesh, their Blades butting against each other inside the beast’s neck.

  The werewolf’s eyes rolled in its skull, and it opened its jaws to howl but only heaved blood. Its front right claw encircled Henri’s Blade, and Valeria worked her weapon through sinew.

  Then she turned her body sideways and flung the creature’s head at the stairway. Her momentum caused her to sink to her knees in the blood-soaked carpet, and as she used her Blade for leverage to stand, she saw a werewolf crash into Eun above and send her flying down the stairs, the beast atop her.

  The second monster Michael attacked nearly knocked the sword out of his hand, and he pirouetted to regain his balance and fend the beast off. He swung the Blade with great chopping motions, driving the beast across the room and away from the others.

  We have to spread out or we’re finished.

  As the werewolf roared at him, he sensed the beast’s frustration. The Blades were heavy and sharp, their deadly embrace almost impossible to evade. Michael had trained for this purpose for a decade and a half, and he did not intend to show his prey any mercy.

  The creature planted its left leg behind it, dropped to its haunches, and seemed to pull itself inward. Then it launched at Michael, who dropped to one knee with his Blade raised in both hands and his head bowed forward. The werewolf’s momentum drove its body into the tip of the Blade, which split it open from chest to groin.

  Feeling hot blood paint his back, Michael stood and pivoted on one foot, holding his Blade as a baseball player would a bat. The werewolf rolled across the floor, entangled in its own guts. Michael crossed the soggy floor as the beast managed to work its way up on its claws and knees, and he swung his Blade downward with grim accuracy.

  The werewolf sitting atop Eun closed its powerful jaws over her face and snapped them together, shredding her mask. It threw its head to one side, spitting out her goggles, then fastened its fangs over her face again. Eun screamed even as Valeria buried her Blade into the back of the beast’s neck. The Korean flailed for the hilt of her own sword, but her frantic movements proved useless.

  When Valeria jerked her Blade free, blood splashed her goggles and mask. Blinded, she wiped the lenses of the goggles with one forearm, smearing the crimson. She raised her Blade again and brought it down with less ferocity because she did not wish for her weapon to injure Eun as well. The wounded woman continued to scream in agony.

  The werewolf spread its front arms out, geysers of blood spraying out in multiple directions from the violated neck.

  Valeria stepped back and kicked the beast, which rolled over. She did not know what sickened her more: the sight of the creature’s head barely attached to its neck or Eun’s face dangling in strips from her skull. She swung her Blade in a powerful arc that disconnected the werewolf’s head.

  Eun clapped her hands over her face, which only caused her screams to grow louder.

  Valeria heard another scream above her: Myles. The remaining werewolf had clamped its jaws over his left forearm, making it impossible for the man to swing his Blade. The muscular warrior stood with his feet braced on different stairs, using his right hand to beat at the beast. The werewolf released his mauled arm and chomped on it again, and Myles dropped his Blade, which slid down the stairs. He threw his right arm around the monster’s head, putting it in a feeble headlock as the creature’s teeth split his bone. Myles screamed as his hand and wrist struck the floor, followed by spraying blood. With what must have been the last of his strength, he dove toward Valeria
, dragging the beast with him. They rolled down the stairs together, a tangle of human and lupine limbs.

  Valeria dropped her Blade, seized Eun’s hands, and pushed the wounded woman out of harm’s way.

  The werewolf crashed upside down against the metal front door, and Henri and Michael fell upon it with their Blades, hacking the howling beast to pieces.

  Valeria removed a small first aid kit from her coat and kneeled beside Eun, who continued to scream. She took out a syringe, pulled off its cap, and squirted the clear liquid, checking for air bubbles. Unable to discern such fine details in night vision, she took a chance and drove the needle into Eun’s throat, injecting the morphine.

  Eun grimaced, groaned, and whimpered, her once beautiful face a tattered and grisly mosaic.

  The green glow of her night vision dimmed, and Valeria realized someone had switched on an overhead light. Tearing the goggles off, she stood. The door, walls, and stairs glistened with blood.

  Michael and Henri turned toward her, their clothes drenched and their Blades dripping gore. Myles lay motionless on the floor between two decapitated werewolves. Valeria’s comrades removed their goggles.

  “Look,” Michael said, staring past Valeria.

  Spinning around, she gasped. Lying on the bloody carpet, the three werewolves first killed had changed shape: they no longer resembled manlike wolf hybrids but enormous black wolves. Jerking her head back, she saw the remaining two werewolf corpses changing before her eyes: drawing into themselves, assuming more recognizable lupine dimensions.

  “Sacred Mary,” she said.

  Michael retrieved his headset from the floor and spoke into it. “Come get us. Fast.”

  “Help me,” Eun said in a strangled voice.

  Valeria helped Eun to her feet. In the light, the woman’s face appeared even more ghastly, like a melted crimson candle.

  Michael removed a can of lighter fluid and squirted the stairs, walls, carpets, and corpses.

  “What about Myles?” Henri said.

  “Tonight we honor our dead with fire.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A wakening to the sound of his cell phone’s ring tone, Willy glanced at his alarm clock, which flashed 4:20 at him. He switched on the light and answered the call without checking the display. Only someone from the department would call at this time.

  “Diega.” He rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

  “This is Sergeant Huntley from Night Watch Command,” a female voice said. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I have an urgent call from Detective Faherty from the Arson squad in Queens.” ] Arson? “Yeah, that’s okay. Put him through.”

  He heard a click, then a male voice. “Diega?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Faherty, Arson. We got a house burning in Rosedale. Call it a lost cause. When I entered the address into the system, it spat out your name as the primary on a case involving the owners: Rodney and Jennifer Lourdes, Jason Lourdes’s parents.”

  Willy sat up. “Are they okay?”

  “I doubt it very much. We got neighbors all up and down the sidewalk, but no one claiming to be a Lourdes. If they’re in there, they’re not coming out alive.”

  Fuck. “Is it arson?”

  “Too soon to say for sure, but between you and me, I’d say that’s a big affirmative.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “You’ll be wasting your time. The fire isn’t out yet, and even when it is it won’t be safe to walk around in there.”

  “I need to see it. What time should I come?”

  “What time does your shift start?”

  “At 0800.”

  “I’ll see you then. Grab another couple of hours ifyou can.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” Closing his phone, Willy climbed back under the covers, but he did not fall back asleep.

  An hour later, his phone rang again. “Hello?”

  “This is Sergeant Huntley from Night Watch Command again. Detective Faherty from Arson would like to speak to you.”

  Déjà vu. “Put him through.”

  A click. “Diega, you’d better get over here as fast as you can.”

  Angelo drove the passenger van through the security gate and into the warehouse parking lot, where he backed it up alongside the cargo van. The occupants had removed their goggles as soon as he drove away from the inferno they had left behind. Eun continued to wail even with the morphine Valeria had given her. Despite their victory, a pall hung over them because of Myles’s death.

  Michael hopped out of the van first, carrying Myles’s sword, and opened the loading bay door. Valeria supported Eun as Henri and Angelo helped them out. Inside the loading bay, they placed Eun on one of two gurneys they had left there, and Angelo and Henri rushed her to the steel door, which Angelo unlocked, and into the gloom.

  Michael locked the door behind them. “What can you do for her realistically?”

  “I can reduce her pain, and I can sew as much of her face back together as possible, but she’ll be disfigured for the rest of her life.”

  “But she’ll live.”

  “Yes.”

  Michael slapped her so hard that she cried out. She turned to him, her cheek stinging. It never occurred to her to strike him back.

  “You dropped your Blade to pull her away from the stairway.”

  “I was trying to keep her from getting harmed.”

  “Don’t ever drop your Blade. You risked the life of every other man in that room.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Michael raised the extra sword between them. “Look what happened to Myles. The moment he dropped his Blade, he was a dead man. Now go do what you can for Eun.”

  Feeling tears form in her eyes, Valeria ran after the gurney.

  After awakening at 5:00 AM, Mace dressed in layers of sweats and went for his morning run with his dog, Sniper, a daily ritual. They followed Fourth Avenue up to the Verrazano Bridge, crossed over to Fifth Avenue, ran down to Sixty-eighth Street, then back up to Eighty-first Street. Mace no longer ran for speed or distance but simple cardiovascular. It had taken him a while to grow accustomed to the Brooklyn terrain, but he now loved it, and so did Sniper. The cold air filled his lungs, and he walked back to his house, cooling down, and peeled off the top sweatshirt as they climbed the stairs.

  When he emerged from his shower, clad in a terry-cloth robe, Cheryl waited for him with Patty in her arms. “Jim Mint called. He says to call him back. It’s important.”

  Mace grunted. They hadn’t spoken since he had been reassigned to the K-9 Unit.

  Cheryl set Patty down on their bed and booted up her computer while Mace dialed a number stored in his cell phone.

  “This is Jim Mint,” a familiar voice said on the other end.

  “It’s Tony.”

  “I need to see you this morning. How’s 0800?”

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, Mace drew a finger across Patty’s stomach, eliciting laughter. “I still have a unit to run.”

  “The dogs will run just fine without you.”

  Mace pressed his teeth together. “Your office?”

  “Make it the Bonaventure. I want to keep this meeting under the radar.”

  Of course you do. “Okay, I’ll see you there.” Mace shut down his phone and stood.

  “The parents of that kid who was decapitated died this morning.” Cheryl looked up from her laptop. “Their house burned down. Do you think it was arson?”

  Quite a coincidence, Tony thought. “I have to leave early.”

  Cheryl smiled. “For a meeting at One PP?”

  “Nope, for a meeting at a secret location. Jim doesn’t want anyone to see me going into his office.”

  “Wear a nice suit anyway.”

  Willy parked the SUV he had signed out from the Detective Bureau a block away from the fire engines. The sun hadn’t risen yet, and Karol yawned in the seat beside him.

  “Welcome to the big leagues, where sleep is a rare commodity,” he said.

  Karol said n
othing.

  “Are you that tired, or is this getting to you?”

  She stared ahead through the windshield. “I’ve seen plenty of DOAs, but we were in that house yesterday. We spoke to those people.”

  “It’s unusual.”

  They got out and walked to the smoking house. A dozen neighbors stood on the sidewalk across the street, and Willy spotted Sharon King, the woman who had comforted Jennifer Lourdes. She had tears in her eyes.

  They stopped at a RMP car, and Willy spoke to the uniformed PO drinking coffee inside it. “I’m looking for Faherty from Arson.”

  The PO nodded at the house. “Blond guy dressed like a fireman.”

  “Thanks.”

  Willy and Karol moved closer to the house, where they spotted Faherty standing with a pair of firefighters. Ashes covered the neighboring homes, and smoke continued to rise out of molten furniture.

  “Diega?” Faherty said.

  “Yeah. This is my partner, Detective Williams.”

  “You made good time.”

  “Can we go inside?”

  “Follow me and watch your step.” Faherty led them through the frame where the front door had been.

  The house had been reduced to cinder and ash, though the collapsed roof had protected the scorched stairway. Crime Scene Unit detectives photographed several objects on the floor. Karol coughed.

  “We expected to find two DOAs. We found six. Only one of them was human.” Faherty pointed at the blackened remains on the floor. “I’m not a medical expert, but if you ask me, this one’s missing an arm.” He jerked a gloved thumb at the ruined stairs. “And it’s back there.” He stepped sideways. “Now these two look like they were dogs to me.”

  Willy stared at the long black shapes, charred and headless, on the floor. “They’re too big for dogs.”

  “You ever seen an Irish wolfhound?” Faherty pointed at two smaller shapes. “Their heads were cut off.” He nodded at the CSU detectives. “There’s three more over there.”