The Frenzy War (2 page)

“Welcome to the Brotherhood of Torquemada,” Tudoro said as Valeria drove away from the blacksmith's house and shop.

Her pulse raced. “I never dreamed it possible.”

“Because you're a woman?”

She nodded.

“You've proven yourself more than skilled enough.
You've earned this honor. And the requirements for serving as a knight in this order are different than those of a priest serving the church. Never forget: we're an entity separate from the church despite our obvious relationship to it.”

“What will I do now?”

“First, you'll travel to Greece, where you'll join your fellow warriors in our crusade. We've identified several enemy strongholds there. Once you've eliminated them, you'll take the war to America.”

America,
Valeria's mind echoed.

Piraeus, Greece

Elias Michalakis paced the cool, shadow-laden living room of the two-story house he had rented for the fall. The first floor served as a garage and storage, with a small back room that Arsen used for his bedroom. Upstairs, two bedrooms flanked the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Elias and Damon shared one room, Otis and Adonia, the group's only female, the other. Galen, their newest recruit, slept on the living room sofa. The landlord had renovated the curved stairway and upstairs in marble before his wife had suffered a stroke and mounting the stairs had become too difficult for her. Such extravagance was wasted on the Wolves.

Elias peered through the sheer curtains at the vast seaport on the Saronic Gulf. Neoclassical mansions covering the hillside gleamed white in the afternoon sunshine. As far as he knew, the only Wolves left in Greece belonged
to this cell. They had lost contact with the other cells and had been unable to track down their members. Last night Elias had assigned Otis to stake out a house that might have been rented to a team of agents from the Brotherhood of Torquemada. Otis had failed to return and had not called in, though he knew the importance of protocol. A sick feeling grew in the pit of Elias's stomach. Because Wolves were monogamous and Otis and Adonia had mated, Otis's importance to the group had increased.

I should never have allowed him to go out on his own,
Elias thought.

“They took him,” Adonia said from the sofa. She wore her dark hair short, like the men. “Say it.”

Elias knew she was right. “No. It's too soon.”

Adonia sprang to her feet. “Bullshit! Those Torquemadan dogs have probably eviscerated him by now.” She wore a blue tank top, and the muscles in her slender arms grew taut.

Elias sensed the others in the room tensing. “Calm yourself. Getting angry at me won't help Otis. We have to stay clearheaded until we know what's happened.”

Damon took Elias's place at the window, which freed Elias to deal with Adonia's frustration. Damon had helped Elias form the cell. Otis was their first recruit. The three of them had grown as close as brothers.

Adonia's brown irises expanded, blotting out the whites of her eyes. “We're the only ones left. We should be making plans to escape, not continue this futile—”

“Escape to where?” Elias said.

Adonia's teeth elongated as spittle flew from her mouth. “America! Canada! Anywhere but Europe. This continent is
lost”

Elias took a breath. “And what would we do if we migrated? Hide like rabbits?”

“At least we'd be safe. If we'd left earlier, Otis would still be alive.” Adonia caressed her swollen belly. “And my pups would have a father.”

Elias measured the woman with a patient stare. He knew she needed to vent.

“Someone's coming,” Damon said.

Elias joined his comrade at the window, feeling the others crowding behind him.

“Who is it?” Adonia said.

A dark van stopped in front of the house. Elias tensed his muscles, ready to Change. Then the van's side door slid open, and unseen arms pitched a body to the sidewalk. Elias recognized Otis's black army jacket, if not the figure's discolored features.

“Hurry!” When Elias turned, he saw the others already making for the door, and he ran after them.

Adonia led the charge down the marble stairs, followed by Arsen and Galen, with Damon and Elias bringing up the rear. Their feet scuffled concrete as they raced through the garage, emerging in the sunlight outside as the van drove off.

The five of them huddled around the still figure. Adonia rolled the body over, exposing Otis's dead, swollen features. She cried out and Galen gasped.

Elias turned numb. The van rounded a bend ahead, hidden by trees. Adonia's wail filled Elias with anguish. But
something troubled him more than his friend's death: Otis's face had turned a deep shade of purple, while his hands retained their fleshy hue.

As if reading Elias's mind, Damon tugged at Otis's turtleneck. Large sutures circled Otis's neck, and a thick line divided the differing colors like a chasm.

“Oh no,” Adonia said between tears.

Elias's pulse quickened. The Torquemadans had cut off Otis's head and sewn it back on. But for what purpose?

Damon unsnapped Otis's jacket, revealing explosives secured to the corpse's chest with wire.

“No!” Elias seized Damon's shoulder, intending to jerk his friend away.

The concussion struck him before he registered the flash of light and the roar deafened his ears, and then wet carnage stung his face.

R
honda Wilson leaned against the back counter, facing her cash register, arms folded as she observed two men browsing opposite sides of Synful Reading. One was a regular, but she had never seen the other man before. She and Jason had just opened the bookstore an hour earlier at 9:00 A
M,
and Monday was always the slowest day of the week. Jason stood on the sliding ladder, moving older titles spine out on the upper shelves to make room for Tuesday's new releases.

Steam hissed from the radiator, warming her chilled bones. Rhonda looked forward to the holiday season but disliked early December, with its cold wind and rain. At least Gabriel Domini, one of the occult bookstore's owners, allowed her and Jason to keep the heat at a comfortable level. She got so cold in human form.

At eighteen, Rhonda did not know what to do with her
life. She desired to see Europe, and she had taken this job to save money, but she did not know what to do
after
Europe. She had no career goals, and she was mature enough to realize that her interest in writing poetry did not consume her soul to such a degree that it could ever become more than a hobby. She supposed she would attend college down the road when she had an inkling of how she wished to spend the rest of her life.

“You have to set goals for yourself,” her mother had told her. “Even if you don't achieve them, you'll find other interests along the way.”

Rhonda doubted her mother's wisdom. Right now she liked things as they were. She enjoyed living at home with her parents, the only pup of the litter to have survived childbirth, and she liked working alongside Jason. She liked Jason a lot. They had become close friends the summer after high school graduation because of the time they spent together in the store, and they had just started dating in the fall when most of their friends had gone off to college. Now, with winter coming, she sensed another change on the horizon. She hoped it would be positive.

The customer she recognized—middle-aged, balding, wearing a tan corduroy jacket—approached her and laid a book beside the register. He offered her a polite smile but didn't say anything.

Rhonda glanced at the dust jacket of the hardcover as she rang it up.
The Wolf Is Loose: The True Story of the Manhattan Werewolf,
a true crime book by Carl Rice, author of another true crime book she knew all too well
—Rodrigo
Gomez: Tracking the Full Moon Killer.
Seeing the author's new book caused her body to tighten. The store had become unexpectedly successful in the wake of the Manhattan Werewolf slayings two years earlier when the rogue Wolf Janus Farel had caused such a stir, but she wished Gabriel and Raphael Domini did not stock such material.

“They never caught him,” the man said. “He's still out there somewhere.”

“I know.” But Rhonda knew better. According to the leaders of her pack, Angela Domini, the sister of Gabriel and Raphael, had slain Janus and then fled the city. Rhonda collected the man's money and stuck the book and receipt in a plastic bag, which she handed to him. “Have a nice day.”

“You too.” The man left, and the bells on the door jingled.

Here I am, a teenage werewolf working in an occult bookstore in the Village,
she thought. She did not really consider herself a werewolf—the term carried a negative connotation among her people—but she was a Wolf, and she belonged to the Greater Pack of New York City.

Now she watched her other customer, a tall man wearing a long coat and a knit cap. He seemed determined to examine every book in the store.

Rhonda glimpsed her reflection in the convex mirror mounted high in one corner to help catch shoplifters. She wore her dark hair short, like a boy, but her slender neck and angular shoulders were decidedly feminine. Her mother told her she was too skinny, but she was perfectly happy with her pixie-like body, which was just her human shell after all. Unfortunately, living in the city rarely afforded her the
opportunity to assume her Wolf Shape. She wore a navy-blue hoodie over a black T-shirt and tight, faded jeans tucked into short boots.

Jason pressed his feet along the outside of the ladder and slid down it to the scuffed wooden floor like a sailor on a ship. Wearing loose-fitting carpenter's pants and a New York Giants football jersey, he came behind the counter and retrieved the bathroom key, which was secured to a wooden block so it wouldn't get lost.

Rhonda felt his free hand slide around her waist. His touch sent a tremor of excitement through her body, but she swatted his hand away. They stood the same height, and when she looked at him, she saw straight into his brown eyes. She had to admit her heart skipped a beat as he grinned at her. They had not had sex yet. Wolves mated for life, and they agreed they were too young to make that commitment, but they had pleased each other in other ways.

“You want to see a movie tonight?” Jason said.

“What movie?”

“I don't know …”

Rhonda smiled. He never had a movie in mind; he just wanted to spend time with her in the dark. “Sure.”

She watched him hurry to the back of the store, admiring his butt as he unlocked the office door. They intended to go to Europe together, and she accepted the possibility that they might sleep together then, whenever
then
was. She fantasized about seeing him in his Wolf Form.

The customer turned and exited without saying anything. His abrupt departure caused Rhonda to raise one
eyebrow, but she shrugged it off. She had long ago become accustomed to strange behavior from her fellow New Yorkers, especially those humans who frequented Synful Reading. She glanced at the clock beside the register—10:05. Shit, time was crawling.

The bells on the door jingled. The customer who had just left returned, followed by two men garbed in similar long coats. They wore knit caps of different colors, and Rhonda estimated their ages ranged from twenty-five to thirty-five. One had black skin, and he twisted the lock on the door and strode across the store. The fine hair on Rhonda's body prickled. The other men stood before the counter, their eyes locking on her. The black man removed a can of spray paint from his coat pocket and unleashed a hissing black mist at the lens of the security camera mounted on the wall.

“Hey!” Rhonda wanted to scream for Jason.

The man closest to her had a black beard. He reached inside his coat and withdrew a gun unlike any Rhonda had seen in movies or on TV: a pistol with a wooden grip and two barrels, one of them more than a foot long.

She felt her eyes widen as her heart raced. “What do you want? Money?”

No. They know what we are.

The bearded man pulled back a spring-loaded mechanism on the gun, cocking it.

Rhonda reached for the alarm button beneath the register. She heard a muffled sound come from the gun—not a shot, really, more of a snap followed by a rush of air. Pain
needled her chest, stopping her forward momentum, and when she looked down, she saw a dart protruding between her small breasts. Curling her fingers around the dart, she jerked it out and felt a burning sensation in her chest. The dart slipped from her fingers in slow motion and clattered on the floor. The room rocked back and forth, and the bearded man lowered his gun.

Rhonda's mind clouded, and her body undulated.

Jason emerged from the back of the store. At first he looked puzzled, then concerned.

Help me, Jason!

Jason charged forward, and suddenly Rhonda realized that might not be such a good thing after all. The black man and the man who had been in the store first drew identical tranquilizer guns. Jason opened his mouth to scream, but Rhonda could not hear him. He leapt into the air, wild-eyed, just as the men fired their guns. His body twisted in midair as the darts penetrated him, and he crashed on the floor between the men.