Red Hood: The Hunt (4 page)

He led her out to our unmarked cruiser like she was royalty, helping her into the back seat.  He was shooting me his aggravating grin the whole way.  I growled out, “I hate you old man.” I hopped in, and he laughed his gravelly laugh as he started the car, and we headed toward the main gates.

Like the past few full moons, there were already people gathering on the outside.  It had never been like this as long as I can remember.  Any walled city is usually hit by wandering packs on a full moon, maybe twenty to thirty wolves.  But lately the entire city would be surrounded by thousands of wolves.  Nobody had any clue why.

Dozens of uniformed officers were taking their places.  I checked the time, fifteen minutes until the sun set.  The moon was already up over the horizon, and the people outside the gate were pacing around in an agitated manner, staring at the moon.  I did what I have done the past few full moons and walked out of the gate, Victor stayed behind the line, he was such a namby-pamby about his own blood he only left the city when he absolutely had to.

I noted that the beguiling woman in red followed me out.  She seemed to be looking into the eyes of every male she passed.  I stopped in front of a woman who looked terrified as she watched the moon.  I got her attention by placing my hand on her arm.  “Miss?”

She looked at me then at the moon, she looked like she wanted to flee.  “Miss?  Why are you here?  It's obvious you don't want to be.”

She looked at me almost pleadingly. “I don't know.  I should be home with the children, in our safe room for the night.”

My brow furrowed, this wasn't the first time a Lycan infected told me that.  I tried to be non-threatening in my riot gear.  “Then go home.  Can you make it before sunset?”

She looked back over her shoulder, “I want to.  I can't.  I... I have to be at the gates.”  She looked truly terrified.

Maireni stepped up to her and put a hand out, tilting her head, her eyes questing at the woman who nodded at her.  Damaschin looked directly into her eyes, her gaze so intent I almost got lost in it.  Then she put a hand on her arm and gave it a squeeze then turned to me.  “She is under a compulsion.  It is not her decision to be here.  Someone is making her.”  She looked around and her voice sounded resigned. “As I am sure the majority of the others are, as well.  Though I do see some who are wild, being drawn into the pack.”

Compulsion?  Like, hypnotism or something?
  I looked at the woman. “Who is making you come here?  You know you will probably die here tonight if your wolf attacks the gate?”

A tear rolled down her cheek and she nodded once as she stared at the moon.  “I... he... I can't.”

He?  Ok, that was something.
  Red looked concerned.  I thought Hunters reveled in the hunt, in the kill.  Yet she looked concerned for the infected.  She looked at the silvered holding cages outside the city gates that had been placed there in recent months.  Then took her hand and almost dragged her to one.  The woman tried to fight, but Maireni easily moved the woman into a cage.  The woman grabbed the bars of the door as it closed then hissed and pulled back when her flesh sizzled.

Maireni leaned her forehead against the bars and gave the woman a smile.  The woman looked so relieved as she looked at the moon and Red.  She whispered, “Thank you.”

Red just smiled reached through the bars and gave the woman's hand a little squeeze and said, “You will be safe tonight, go home to your family in the morning.”  The woman nodded her thanks.  Then Maireni turned to me.

I must have been gaping.  She tilted her head, and her brow furrowed. “What detective?”

I shook my head.  “Nothing.  You're not what I expected in a Wolf Hunter.”

She smiled at that like it was a compliment. “I'm not your average Hunter.”

I caught myself smiling back. “Apparently not.”

Then I turned and went about the task with other officers of finding any underage children and ushering or dragging them into the holding cages.  Nobody wanted to kill a child, they would be safe and away from the gates until morning like this.  It was odd I felt no remorse killing an adult wolf knowing a human lay beneath.  Maybe I was worse than I had assumed Red to be.

Maireni was collecting children faster than the rest of us, moving in that silent, faster than human manner.

I thought about this compulsion thing she spoke of.  If it were real and not a pile of steaming platypus shit, were these children compelled too?  What kind of monster would send children to their deaths?

The two-minute warning air horn sounded at the gates, and I looked around. I could still see a few children in the mix, and I hardened my heart and headed back inside the gates, getting my finger pricked by a silver needle.  I looked around in the crowd but didn't see the billowing red cloak anywhere as the massive gates swung closed.

I looked out to see Maireni's red cloak heading toward a small girl about fifty yards from the gates.  Good god, she was locked on the outside with thousands of wolves.  I glanced at the sun as the last rays disappeared into the shimmering waters of Puget Sound.

Maireni was grabbing the girl as all of the people outside the gates started writhing as their skin started sliding and pulsating, fur sprouting all over as clothing tore away.  The screams of agony as they changed accompanied that acrid sulfur smell of the transformation.

Seconds later, Maireni was running toward the gate with a thrashing and snapping young wolf in her hands.  And hundreds of inhuman predator eyes swung to her as her red cloak billowed out from behind her as she moved with wolf-like speed.  They attacked as she reached a holding cage and tossed the wolf into it, slamming the door shut.  She was swallowed up in a sea of slicing claws and snapping teeth, accompanied by the inhuman howling, growling, and snarling of werewolves.

My blood ran cold as Victor pulled me back a step from the gates as that same sea of wolves impacted the gates.  I stared at where Red went down as I absently pulled up my shotgun with dozens of the officers and started shooting the most violent of the wolves slamming against the gate.

A second later, my eyes went back to the frenzy where Maireni fell.  There was yelping and blood flying.  The bodies of two dead wolves were flung dozens of feet, slowly changing to human as they flew.  And with a scream that was more a primal challenge than anything I had ever heard, Maireni stood up from under the onslaught.  Flinging wolves from her body.  The silver blades in either hand were gracefully cutting swathes through the beasts.

She cleared an arc around herself and then took a single step and leapt before more attackers could move in.  She sheathed both knives somewhere in mid-leap, snagged a bar on the main gates about twenty feet up with one hand, and yanked to keep her momentum going to sling her body in a high.  She landed impossibly balanced on top of the main gate.

A couple wolves who tried to make the leap, slammed into the gate two-thirds of the way up, then yelped as their flesh and fur sizzled on the silver before they fell into the mass of snarling wolves below.  Maireni simply jumped the thirty feet to the ground, landing almost silently in front of me, the only noise came from the billowing and rustling of her cloak.

Instantly, my shotgun, Victor's, and about a dozen others were pointed at her.  She tilted her head in an animalistic manner then smiled... almost sweetly, to me.  She held a hand out to me, her index finger offered.  I hesitated, then looked at her finger and her sparkling blue eyes.  I lowered my shotgun and slung it over my shoulder as everyone covered me.  I pulled from my belt pack a silver needle, and pricked her finger.

Her smiled doubled, almost in challenge as I watched her blood do what blood does, absolutely nothing.  She wasn't infected.  I put the needle away and everyone relaxed and turned their attention to the gates.  I asked in disbelief, “Red?”

She made a girly motion, grabbing her cloak with her hands and swishing it side to side almost playfully. She repeated what she had said to me before, “There isn't a lycanthrope whose claws or teeth can puncture the fabric of my cloak.”

I grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the other officers and whispered harshly, “What did you think you were doing?  I thought they had killed you!”  I don't know why but I was truly worried when I saw the wave of wolves crash over her, I relived the knot in my stomach at the sight.  She was just a complete idiot, cloak or no cloak.

She actually looked down at that and said, “I needed to get the little girl to safety or else...”  She flinched at the sound of shotguns firing which made her point for her.  I closed my eyes, thankful she had got the little wolf into a cage.

I shook my head at her not knowing what to think of the woman.  “You're not like any Hunter I've ever met, Red.”

She smiled at me with that crooked half smile of hers, then said mischievously, “You were doing the same.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and clarified. “Yes, but I had the common sense to get back inside the gates before sunset.”  She grinned at the subtle reprimand then her grin faded when I repeated my unanswered question.  “What are you, Red?  No human can move like you or leap like you.  And what are you looking for?  It is like you are on the hunt for something in particular.”

She shrugged. “I'll tell you sometime.”  Then she asked in a normal tone, like she was dismissing the conversation, “So last night, was it a fluke that you were away from the gates?  Is this what you normally do here at the gates?”

I squinted an eye at her as Victor joined us.  Then I replied, “Up until the end of the shift, then I do a perimeter sweep.  I got the short straw for this quarter.”

She nodded as she looked back at the carnage at the gates.  “So just about everyone in your shift knew you'd be alone on the perimeter sweep then?”  It was half statement, half question.

I nodded.  What was she leading up to?  She looked maybe a little disappointed at my affirmation.  Then she muttered under her breath, “That doesn't narrow it down then.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Narrow what down?  A random breach?”

She shook her head. “Not so random.  I'm sure your reports from your breach containment engineers will verify that breach was aided by human intervention just a hundred fifty yards from the wall.  To bypass the security grates at the sewage outlets, someone had purposefully dug down to the concrete tunnel pipes and smashed a hole in them with sledgehammers to allow wolves a way into the city.”

I stared at her and interrupted her. “How do you...”

She shrugged. “I went out to see for myself today after you left the station.”  Then she added, “So it occurred to me, that obviously someone meant for those wolves to get into the city last night, at that location.  It begs the question, why?  What could someone possibly gain doing that?  And if the wolves are under compulsion, what were they told to do?”

Then she locked eyes with me. “I don't believe it is a coincidence that it happened to be where at least fifty men and women knew you would be patrolling.”

Victor held up a hand and said in his rough growling voice, “Wait a second!  Are you saying someone was targeting McQueen?”

She shrugged in response without breaking eye contact with me, her eyes questing for something.  “Let's just say that I am not one to believe in coincidence.  Wolves are not organized, they are nothing but killing machines.  So for the same thing to happen to the same person... twice...”  She left it unsaid that she knew about my past.

I squinted, perturbed that she had looked into my history.  “That was seventeen years ago, just a random breach.  Are you...”

She stopped me with a raised hand, still making eye contact.  It was starting to freak me out, yet a tiny part of me was fascinated by how pretty her ice blue eyes were.  “Wolves bypassed your FMBs and dug through your roof, showing intelligence that wolves just don't have.  You survived the encounter because of your panic cage.”

Then she finally broke eye contact, and I felt like a weight had been lifted from me as her gaze turned toward the attack site last night.  She spoke from miles away, “And from what I saw as I watched yesterday evening, the wolves, after encountering the FMBs started trying to get through the siding instead, similar to your attack all those years ago.”

I opened my mouth. She kept talking, like she was assembling a puzzle that had no picture on it, “So what did they have to gain in the attempt, assuming someone who could think was guiding them?  The entire family had made it into their panic cages, there was no point.  Except they were all screaming, when one lone officer was doing a routine perimeter sweep in an area where the perimeter had never been breached in over a hundred years.”

Then she finished. “A lone officer who had survived a similar wolf attack when she was a child.”  Then she grinned like the puzzle pieces were starting to fit together, and said, “So detectives, you are trained investigators.  Coincidence or no?”

Victor and I exchanged unhappy glances.  I was frustrated that she was making a little sense, but I still didn't get it.  If her hypothesis was correct, then what was the motive, what could I possibly have that the wolves or whoever was guiding them; if there were such a person; want?

She read all of that in my face, then all of the animation bled from her voice and her expression became stoic as she queried, “So the question Detective McQueen is, what did the ten-year-old you see all those years ago that you haven't told anyone?”