Blue Howl (Blue Wolf Book 3) Read online

  “We exploited a loophole, and he closed it,” Sarah said matter-of-factly. “If you consider it from his position, it makes sense. His mandate is to establish Legion as a profitable arm of Centurion.”

  “And ours is to protect those we’ve been sent to help.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Beam is higher up the chain,” I interrupted. “Yeah, I get it. I was in the military too, remember? Doesn’t mean I have to like it.” I pushed myself up from the table. “All right, we’ve got a lot to do in only a few hours. If you want to start reviewing the mission info, I’ll wake up Takara and Yoofi and call Rusty back to base. We’ll have to arrange Olaf’s transfer to the main campus. He can be flown up once he’s healed. Let’s schedule the mission briefing for 0100.”

  Sarah nodded and we went our separate ways. En route to the barracks, I pulled out my phone and called Reginald Purdy. He’d agreed with my decision to finish the mission in El Rosario, despite Beam’s objections. I refused to believe he was cool with Beam taking control of our equipment.

  “Captain Wolfe,” he answered in his old-time lawyer’s voice. “How are you?”

  “I’m sorry to be calling so late, but we just got off a call with Director Beam.”

  “Yes, I understand he has a mission for you. How do you and the rest of the team feel?”

  Though Reginald Purdy carried a mysterious air, he had yet to give me a reason to treat him with anything other than respect. “The team has come a long way since El Rosario,” I replied. “The extra weeks of training have helped. We’re not where I want to be yet, but we’re getting there.”

  “Excellent,” he said with what sounded like sincerity. “Now, is there something I can do for you?”

  “Did you know Beam has root control over our equipment?”

  Purdy chuckled. “I didn’t suppose that was going to go over well.” A pause followed in which I imagined him touching his folded handkerchief to the corners of his mouth. “Sometimes, Captain, one must cede a battle or two in order to prevail in the larger war. Let me handle things on this end. You just focus on the team and mission.”

  I interpreted that to mean he would keep Beam out of our way. “I appreciate that.”

  “Was there anything else, Captain?”

  “Any updates from Biogen?”

  It had been over three weeks since my last stay in the biogen building, and I had no idea how close or far they were to a cure. The most I’d gotten was that we were still in testing.

  “I’ll make it a point to speak with the head engineer this weekend,” Purdy said. “Perhaps I’ll have some favorable news upon your return. Good night, Captain. And good luck with your mission.”

  I ended the call just as I reached the barracks. Inside, I knocked on Yoofi’s and Takara’s doors and informed them we were in mission planning and prep. Once I heard them moving, I dialed Rusty. Down the hall, a phone rang. It was coming from Rusty’s suite.

  “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered.

  A moment later, his voicemail came on. I ended the call and accessed the app to locate him via GPS. Pulsing icons came up, showing everyone’s position on the team. Everyone was supposedly on base, including Rusty. I knocked on his door to be sure he hadn’t returned. When he didn’t answer, I went in. Immediately, his stale scent told me he wasn’t there. In a pair of pants he must have changed out of at the last minute, I found his phone and GPS locator.

  I thought back to Beam’s smartass comment: You’ll be ready, right?

  “Dammit, Rusty,” I growled. “Not tonight.”

  4

  I’d only seen the Vegas Strip in movies, and as I looked around at the flashing lights, drunken tourists, and too-obvious call girls, I wasn’t impressed. The Strip, never glamorous to begin with, had tumbled since the Crash. Most of the casinos had been taken over by elements even more criminal than the ones running the show before—some of them supernatural, according to Sarah.

  Beneath the bright lights and thousand-watt smiles, I could smell strange, dark energies and cold vampiric currents. I wasn’t thrilled about Rusty’s trips down here, but he insisted it was the only way he knew to relax. As long as he was back before curfew, I let it fly. Of course I thought he possessed enough common sense to bring his phone and locator with him.

  I sniffed for him through my cracked-down window as I steered, but there were too many competing odors. In the past, Rusty had mentioned the Paradisio Hotel and Casino. He liked their blackjack tables. Specifically, he liked one of their dealers, a young woman he called “the Russian.”

  A few blocks later, I was swinging the SUV in front of the Paradisio, a gaudy building lit up in multi-colored lights. I donned my helmet before stepping from the vehicle and swapped my keys with a fleet-footed valet for a ticket. My bulky seven-foot frame drew a few stares, but with the Strip already considered a place where just about anything went, the stares didn’t linger.

  Ducking through the hotel’s front doors, I made my way toward the casino. Amid smells of perfumes, colognes, carpeting, various body odors, and the warm currents from a buffet drifting down from the mezzanine level, I picked out a few threads belonging to Rusty.

  Hopefully this’ll be quick.

  At the blackjack pits, I scanned the tables. I didn’t see anyone in a trucker hat with rust-colored mutton chops, but my hearing picked up a woman’s voice with a distinctly Russian accent. I honed in on a young dealer with dark hair and pouting lips: Rusty’s girl.

  I walked over and waited until she had finished paying out the chips from the last hand before leaning toward her. “Hey, I’m looking for a friend of mine named Rusty. Has he been here tonight?”

  “Oh, him,” the Russian said in a thick accent, collecting the cards now. “He left about an hour ago.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “No, but when he drinks so much that he cries, he usually goes to the Pit.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Lower level.”

  I grunted and headed to the elevators. A poster beside the doors showed a woman in lingerie wearing angel wings and devil horns. The text at the bottom read, THE PIT – FIND SALVATION IN SIN.

  My jaw tensed. Not hard to guess what kind of club Rusty had ended up at.

  I rode an elevator car down to the lower level and joined a line made up mostly of middle-aged men. Ahead, a large doorman was patting down customers before allowing them inside. Every time the door opened, the eerie glow of black lights and the slow, deep thumps of an electronic beat escaped. I was also getting bourbon-soaked drafts of Rusty.

  When I reached the front of the line, the doorman patted me down mechanically. I’d brought two guns, but they were safely stored in a locker in the back of the SUV. My lupine form was usually weapon enough. When the doorman finished, his deadened eyes took in the bulky breathing apparatus that hid my muzzle before moving up to my visor.

  “You have to take off your helmet to enter.”

  I didn’t care for his tone. Ditto his scent, which emanated from him in a cold, stale mist. It identified him as a blood slave. Somewhere, probably close by, a vampire controlled him.

  I hated vampires.

  “I’m not here to cause trouble,” I said. “I just want to pick up a friend. Twenty dollars to get in, right?” When I reached for my wallet, the doorman seized my wrist. His grip was solid.

  “I said take off your helmet.”

  A growl grew in my chest, and before I knew it, I had twisted his arm behind his back and slammed his head against the floor. Superhuman strength or not, he was no match for my wolf. Startled voices rose as the men in line behind me shuffled back. Unable to push himself up, the doorman shook and snarled. The vampire who controlled him wasn’t used to being manhandled.

  “I’m paying you twenty, and I’m going in,” I told the doorman.

  With my free hand, I picked a twenty from my wallet, and set it beside his head. Shoving myself off him, I went through the door an
d entered a lounge with a bar at one end. Women in sheer nightgowns and red plastic devil’s horns reclined on sofas or drifted beneath the black lights. A techno beat thumped hypnotically. The customers who had entered before me had already made their selections and disappeared. I caught sight of the last man just as a woman led him around the corner and down a corridor.

  That’s where Rusty’s scent was coming from.

  The hell are you doing, man? I thought at him in disappointment.

  I looked over a shoulder to make sure the doorman wasn’t coming, then headed for the corridor myself. I expected the women in the lobby to cut me off. Though most were human, several carried the same cold scent as the doorman. But they only watched as I passed.

  I imagined I wasn’t like most men who came in here.

  Just grab Rusty and get out of here, I told myself.

  Doors lined the garish, carpeted corridor, leading to what I guessed were private rooms. The place reeked of perfume and sex. I followed Rusty’s inebriated musk to a door midway down the corridor and threw it open.

  A plush couch bordered the small room on three sides. Across from me, and sunk between two well-endowed women wearing the barest threads of lingerie, was Rusty. The women had been running their hands over him like a favorite pet, but now they stopped and turned toward me. My teammate, whose eyes were closed, continued to smile dreamily.

  “Hey, don’t stop now,” he murmured. “We were just starting to connect.”

  “Rusty!” I barked.

  He blinked his eyes open and stared at me for a moment as though trying to place me. “Boss?” he asked.

  “We need you back home.” I pulled him from the couch by an arm. He sagged in my grip like a rag doll before his legs stiffened with enough life to support his weight.

  “What about Buffy and … What was your name?” he asked the other one.

  “Let’s go,” I said, pulling him out the door. The corridor had been empty a moment ago, but now the doorman and three beefy blood slaves filled the end between me and the lounge. They were holding large revolvers. I moved Rusty behind me. I could handle bullets, but absent armor, he couldn’t.

  It took effort to talk the Blue Wolf down. Man, did he want a fight.

  “We’re leaving,” I announced. “Let us pass, and no one gets hurt.”

  A woman’s laugh sounded, and I turned toward an opening door at the end of the corridor. A tall woman in a black business suit with a stylish pile of white hair stepped from a stairwell going up, probably to an executive office. Her skin was pale, her pretty smile highlighted by slender canines that ended at needle points against her lower lip. When her cold scent reached me, I knew she was the bloodsucker running the show. She released another throaty laugh.

  “Something funny?” I growled.

  “‘Let us pass, and no one gets hurt’? Considering the circumstances, yes, I find that quite funny.” Her humorless black eyes flicked past me. I could hear the blood slaves moving forward.

  “I paid the cover,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

  “The problem is decorum, Mr.…?”

  “Wolfe,” I said before realizing I’d done so. Her gaze was having a mesmerizing effect. I swore at myself as I dropped my eyes from hers. I’d known that about vampires, dammit.

  “Wolfe,” she repeated, smiling slyly. “Well, we’re a gentleman’s club, Mr. Wolfe. And your behavior at the door was hardly becoming of a gentleman. Now, Calvin kindly asked you to remove your helmet. I’m going to request the same.”

  “Why?” I demanded.

  “Because we like to know who visits our club. We have competitors, Mr. Wolfe, and some of them aren’t very friendly. Why, just this past summer, one sent a man in here with an incendiary device. When the device went off, it claimed the poor man and six of our girls.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “But like I told you, I just came to pick up a friend.” Rusty moaned as I gave him a shake. I was pretty sure he’d passed out on his feet. “And now I have him.”

  “Then what’s the harm of removing your helmet?” the vampire asked.

  The harm was that she’d see what I was. If she took an interest, she could have a minion tail us back to the Centurion campus. With enough persistence, she might even learn about Legion, specifically that it was designed to hunt monsters like her. I couldn’t risk compromising the program.

  “No point,” I said. “You’ll never see me again.”

  “Afraid of what might be revealed?” she asked, easing closer. I could hear the blood slaves closing in from behind. Without Rusty, I could have taken them. I wanted to take them.

  When the vampire stopped two feet away, a new odor exuded from her. Perfume like, but with a biting aftertaste. I held my breath. From Sarah’s lectures, I knew I was picking up a powerful pheromone meant to weaken my resolve. Seeing what I was doing, the vampire’s face tensed.

  “Remove your helmet,” she repeated, but without the etiquette of a moment ago. The words emerged like a frigid blast.

  When her eyes flicked past me a second time, I shoved Rusty into the room I’d pulled him from. The two girls recoiled as he stumbled between them and landed head first into the couch. Gunfire exploded. Rounds thumped my helmet and drilled the Kevlar shirt I was wearing underneath my coat. Deep bruises opened over my back that immediately began to heal.

  Vampire first, I told myself.

  She flashed in, her face a terrifying mask of blood lust and death. I met her with a hard kick to the midsection. She flew into the door she’d emerged from, her back arching upon impact, but she bounced off and landed in a nimble tripod stance.

  I was on her instantly, my left arm wrapping her upper body and pressing her flat. I hooked a finger into my Centurion belt buckle. When I pulled, a stiletto-like blade slid from the leather and locked into place. The gunfire intensified—and hurt like a mother.

  Seeing the blade, the vampire thrashed and tried to twist away. I eyed a spot on her back, just to the left of her upper vertebrae, and drove the blade home. The tip penetrated her heart, shearing off her shriek. Her body locked into something like rigor mortis. Behind me, the shooting stopped.

  “I know you can hear me,” I told the stunned vampire. “As much as I despise your kind, I was willing to grab my friend, leave, and let you live another day. I was going to be a gentleman. But you chose to escalate this. Remember that when you’re burning in Hell.”

  As part of my contract with Centurion, I had agreed to refrain from extreme force outside missions, even against monsters. It was to protect Legion’s secrecy.

  But the same cold evil I’d felt on the day the vampires had murdered my boyhood friend now oozed from the creature pinned beneath me, making my skin crawl. I pulled my glove from my right hand and extended my talons. The vampire’s eyes strained toward them. With two hard hacks, I removed her head.

  Rising, I turned toward the former blood slaves. Freed from their vampire mistress, the men began to age, their suspended mortality catching up to them in a horror show of bending and wrinkling. Calvin shriveled into a mummified corpse and fell over. The remaining three staggered from the corridor, decades older, but free.

  Screams sounded throughout the club as more former slaves regained their mortality.

  I ducked into the room for Rusty. He sat slumped on the couch, trying to convince the two girls to take up where they’d left off. Only they weren’t girls anymore. With their gray hair, sagging bodies, and prune-like faces, they could have been his grandmothers. They blinked at one another in shock while Rusty smiled in dopey oblivion.

  “C’mon,” I said, seizing his arm.

  I carried Rusty from the hotel, and the valet brought the SUV around. Rusty’s head lolled as I buckled him into the passenger seat. “Buffy?” he called, looking around blearily. “Bunny?”

  I climbed into the front seat and took off. Security cameras at the hotel had captured our ride’s make, model, and license plate—not that the vehicle was re
gistered anywhere. Regardless, I didn’t know what kind of undead network the vampire belonged to and didn’t care to find out.

  I accelerated several blocks down the strip, then turned onto a side street. As I glided into the shadow of a broken streetlight, I entered a code on the control panel and selected an option. Outside, a chemical reaction took place, altering the vehicle’s color, detailing, and license plate. The sleek black SUV from California that had pulled in front of the hotel was now a beat-up burgundy model from Michigan. As I resumed driving, I looked over at Rusty.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  He peered around with slitted eyes, his hair and mutton chops a shaggy mess. “What’d I do?”

  “I thought you were going to play cards, maybe have a drink or two. But I find you propped up between a pair of prostitutes in that vampire den, drunk as a skunk? And without your phone or GPS? The rule is that you’re mission ready at all times, goddammit.”

  “The Russian was being mean,” he whined.

  “Who the hell cares?” I roared. “We’re leaving for a mission at 0600. We have a briefing scheduled in ten, then we’re supposed to pack. You’re in charge of weapons and equipment, but because you’re in no condition, I’m going to have to pull double duty while you sober up.”

  He waved a hand. “I can pack that stuff in my sleep.”

  “What you did was selfish and stupid. You hurt the pack.”

  His head bobbled around to face me. “The pack?”

  “The team—you know what I meant,” I snarled. “On top of that, you’ve got a wife back home.”

  I couldn’t help but think of Daniela and how badly I wanted to make her my wife. I’d never been able to understand the reckless behavior of some of the married men I’d served with. Marriage was the most sacred of commitments between two people. You didn’t fuck with that.

  “I told you,” he mumbled. “The thing with the missus is broken.”