Blue Curse (Blue Wolf Book 1) Read online

  “What’s going on?” he repeated.

  “Turn around and lead me back to my room. Do it,” I said when he hesitated.

  Even though I was acting out of character, he complied. I waited until his back was to me before following. I ducked into the bunker behind him, passed through the large room where the men had created a makeshift barracks, and entered a smaller back room where the torn sleeping bag, ripped-out IV lines, and burst saline bag told the story of my departure.

  “Wait,” I said as Mauli removed his night-vision goggles and reached for a battery-powered lantern hanging from the wall. “Radio the team and tell them I’ve returned. They’re to come back to base immediately but no one is to see me except for you. I’m back under quarantine.”

  While he relayed this to Segundo, I closed the door behind us.

  “They’re on their way back,” he said. “But, geez, what happened, man? One minute you’re laying here on death’s door, and in the next you’re taking off like a man possessed.”

  That must have been when the transformation began, I thought. “I’m hoping you can tell me.” I turned the lantern on now and dropped the emergency blanket from my head.

  When Mauli saw my face, he pressed himself flat against the wall behind him. “Oh, fuck no.”

  “I look like the men on the pallets, don’t I?”

  Mauli stopped staring long enough to dig into his medical bag and hand me a small mirror. I took a breath, then raised it in front of me. The men on the pallets had looked human with animal features. The face staring back at me looked like an animal with human features—especially with the Mujahideen fighters’ blood matting the blue hair around my nose and mouth. I examined my face from several angles before handing the mirror back to Mauli.

  “You look like a… a…”

  “A wolf,” I finished for him. “Could I have contracted—”

  “Hypertrichosis?” Mauli shook his head. “That’s not an infection, it’s a genetic condition. Whatever this is, it’s not hypertrichosis. Hell, it’s not anything I’ve ever seen. We need to get you to a hospital. I can give you a basic exam, but it’s going to take experts to diagnose and treat you.”

  I pulled my right sleeve up over my shoulder, the blue hair knotted and stiff with blood. “You can start with my shoulder. In addition to turning into this, I took a bullet earlier.”

  “So all that AK fire we heard was directed at you?”

  “Actually, most of it was directed at them. They’ve been neutralized.”

  As Mauli donned a pair of latex gloves I sank to my haunches. Even so, we were almost the same height. I tensed as he began probing the wound, but all I could feel was the pressure of his fingers. “There’s scarring,” he said, “but nothing fresh.” His fingers moved to the front of my shoulder. “And here’s where the bullet exited, but again, just scar tissue.”

  “Are you saying it already healed?”

  “Yeah.” He gave a snort of disbelief. “First Olaf’s arm, now this.” He donned his stethoscope and listened as he moved the metal disk around my chest. “Your heart’s still going a mile a minute. How do you feel?”

  I thought for a moment. I was stronger, faster, and with the knowledge the bullet wound had already healed, damn near invincible. But it was all wrong. “I feel like my brain’s been scooped out and dropped into an animal’s body,” I replied. “An animal with reflexes on a hair trigger that can react without thinking. An animal that’s really fucking lethal.”

  “And this has never happened to you before?” He showed his hands when I narrowed my eyes at him. “Hey, I had to ask. And don’t look at me that way. I feel like you’re gonna take a bite out of me.”

  “Are there any conditions, any at all, that could explain this?”

  Instead of answering, Mauli leaned forward, eyes squinting at my face.

  “What?” I said.

  He pulled a pair of scissors from his bag and began snipping the hair over my right cheek. “When we got back here earlier today, your face was bloody where that old woman scratched you. I gave you the antibiotic, but after you passed out, I cleaned and disinfected the wound. I expected to find a nasty gouge, but there was a design or something.” He lowered the scissors and brushed the hair away with his fingers. “Yeah, it’s still there.”

  “Can I see?”

  He handed the mirror to me again and I held it up. He was right. There was a complex arrangement of gashes—almost like a Chinese symbol, but cruder. A circle around an inverted triangle around what looked like a crescent moon. And unlike the gunshot wound, it hadn’t healed. I could see subcutaneous layers of flesh, and the spot still burned.

  “I started feeling like crap right after she did that,” I said, touching the wound with the pad of a finger. “Is there any way she gave me something? An infection or…?” My voice trailed off.

  Mauli raised his eyebrows. “Or what?”

  I was thinking about the green tendrils of light that had been moving around her like tentacles. I remembered how she’d flung my men down the staircase and then subdued me with little more than a hand around my wrist. And all without eyes. I didn’t really believe in witches, but…

  “A curse,” I said grudgingly.

  “Hey, I don’t know about any of that stuff.”

  I described both of my encounters with the witch, pacing the room as I did so. Whatever animal intelligence possessed my body it was starting to feel hot and restless, shut in.

  “Here’s the thing,” Mauli said when I finished. “I don’t know about any of that stuff, but I have this aunt who swears it’s all true. She lives in Staten Island, New York, writes me all the time. She used to have an apartment in the Lower East Side, but the place went to pot after the Crash. She claimed ghouls were coming up from the subway lines and scavenging the streets. Got so bad, the mayor called in some wizard dude to help exterminate them.”

  Despite being the one to bring up the supernatural, I cocked a skeptical eyebrow.

  “I know how that sounds, but this isn’t coming from the National Enquirer. My aunt was sending me clippings from the New York Gazette, the city’s main paper. This was all going on last summer. Goblins in Central Park, vampires in the Financial District. Crazy shit.”

  “I did hear about that. Some sort of political stunt for the mayor’s reelection.”

  “Hey, you were the one that asked,” Mauli countered, peeling off his latex gloves. “All I’m saying is that if any of that stuff is true, then maybe a curse isn’t out of the question.”

  “I might have some information on that,” Parker said, stepping through the door.

  11

  I grabbed the emergency blanket when I heard Parker’s voice but was too slow pulling it over my head. My interpreter stood in the doorway, eyes large behind his glasses as he stared at me. At last, he blinked twice.

  “Hello, Captain,” he said quietly.

  “You were under orders to remain outside,” I grunted, dropping the blanket.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I came in to get a battery for my night-vision goggles, and I heard you talking.”

  “How much did you overhear?”

  “Um, pretty much all of it.”

  I turned to Mauli. “Do you think this is contagious?” When Mauli shrugged, I waved for Parker to come the rest of the way into the room. I then listened for any other eavesdroppers before closing the door behind him. “You were saying you might have some information.”

  Parker sidled over to Mauli. “Yes, sir.”

  “All right, you need to relax. I know how I look, but it’s still me.”

  But was it still me? I remembered the bloodlust I’d felt when I was ready to hunt down the child soldier.

  Parker nodded and inhaled deeply, but when he exhaled, he remained ramrod straight. “I heard what you were telling Mauli about the witch, and it jibed with some of what I came across during my research into the Kabadi yesterday. As I said, there wasn’t a lot on them. They inhabit this isolated cor
ner of Waristan, and Waristan has seemed content to let them have it.”

  As I often did, I circled a hand for him to get to the point—only now my hand was giant and featured lethal talons that glinted in the lantern light. Parker swallowed and nodded quickly.

  “Well, Waristan has also seen wave after wave of invaders, so I started digging into some of their accounts. The armies of Alexander the Great avoided the Wari Corridor after an attempted incursion in 300 B.C. Ditto the armies of Genghis Khan a thousand years later. No records as to why, though, not until the Anglo-Waristan Wars in the eighteen hundreds, when England invaded the country three times. I came across the journal of an English Army captain who was responsible for Wakhjir province during the second Anglo-Waristan War. He described contact with the Kabadi in an attempt to take control of the Wari Corridor. Following the encounter, his entire unit came down with a strange illness. ‘My men became racked with muscular pain,’ he wrote. ‘They writhed and babbled and began throwing up copious quantities of blood.’ Wolves attacked their encampment that night, dragging off several soldiers. Blue wolves,” Parker added, looking pointedly at me.

  “The English retreated from the valley shortly after. Something very similar happened to the Soviets. In fact, the soldiers who built this outpost were wiped out by dysentery and wolf attacks. Their replacements abandoned their post after two nights, insisting the valley was cursed.”

  “So bad things happen to those who try to impose their will on the Wari Corridor,” I said in summation.

  I thought about yesterday’s bombing and my encounter with the old woman. Had she cursed me? It was the craziest damned thing I’d ever considered, but there was nothing sane about what was happening.

  For the first time, I allowed myself to think about Daniela. I turned my hands over, examining the black-padded palms, then the backs: bulging knuckles the size of walnuts, lethal talons. When Mauli carried me inside earlier, he’d removed my pack, tactical vest, holster, and boots and set them in the corner. I stalked over to them now and began pulling on the vest.

  “Um, sir?” Mauli asked. “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t know much about curses, but it stands to reason that the person who puts one on you can take it back off, right?” I made adjustments to the ballistic plates so the vest would fit over my enlarged chest. Though I could heal from bullet wounds to the extremities, I didn’t want to test a shot through the heart.

  “So you’re just going to go down there and ask the witch to take it off?” Parker asked.

  “Pretty much.” I racked the slide on my SIG Sauer to make sure the first round was in the chamber, then stuck the pistol back in my hip holster.

  “Should I radio Segundo?” Parker asked.

  I shook my head. “This is a solo mission. If I’m not back by 0700, you make sure you and the team are on those birds and you take off without me. That’s an order. I’ll radio for a separate ride.”

  “But you’ll need an interpreter,” Parker pressed.

  “I’ll use Nafid. You heard her. She speaks English.”

  “I don’t like the idea of you going back there alone,” he said.

  “I’m with Parker on this one,” Mauli put in.

  “That doesn’t change anything. What I’m doing falls outside the mission parameters. There’s no way in hell I’m going to put the rest of the team at risk.” I dug into my pack until I found the balaclava and pulled it over my head. The mask was too small, smashing my protuberant ears flat and barely fitting over my muzzle, but it did the job of concealing my face. I considered my boots, but there was no way my feet would fit inside them now.

  “We don’t leave fellow soldiers,” Parker said, reciting a mantra that had been drilled into us during training.

  “We do this time. What happened to my rifle?” I asked Mauli.

  “It’s in the other room,” he said, stepping out to retrieve it.

  “Grab the strap too,” I called.

  When he returned and handed them to me, I could hear the rest of the team trudging up the base of the hill toward the bunker. Crap. I needed to get past them without being seen; otherwise, I’d have to explain what was happening, which was going to be hard enough, and then discourage them from coming with me, which was going to be next to impossible.

  I clipped the strap to my M4, which I slung across my back, then turned to Parker and Mauli. “We’re going out together, but I want you two to head off the team. They don’t need to know about this,” I said, gesturing to my face, “so I don’t want you mentioning it. Tell Segundo that I returned to the village to discuss compensation for the victims. Depending on how long I’m there, I may require a separate lift, but the rest of the team is to leave when the birds arrive. You’re not to tell him or the team anything else we’ve discussed here. Understood?”

  “He’ll want to talk to you,” Parker said.

  “My radio will be off to conserve battery power. Now let’s go.”

  Mauli and Parker led the way reluctantly. When we arrived outside, I split toward the deep shadows of the valley wall while they continued straight ahead. I took off, my claws digging into the rocky ground, muscles propelling me forward in powerful bounds. The animal in me rejoiced at the freedom.

  By the time I heard Parker talking to Segundo, I was dropping into the valley hundreds of yards away and breaking into a full sprint toward the village.

  The building Baine had bombed continued to smoke. A suffusion of lantern light shone above the compound wall, illuminating the rescue effort, which had been going on more than twelve hours now.

  I descended to all fours, which enabled me to run faster, and sped through the pasture and village. At the gate to the compound, I found the door locked again. Though I now possessed the strength to smash through the wood, I leapt instead, grabbing the top of the wall, slinging myself over, and landing inside the compound.

  My M4 remained on its strap as I walked toward the damaged building, where scores of villagers continued to labor. A large portion of the debris was in piles now, beams separated from heaps of rubble and dirt. More than twenty dead lay in a line to one side of the crater, their bodies covered by blankets. Women knelt beside them, weeping and chanting prayers.

  With a hard swallow, I turned from the bodies and scanned the crowds for Nafid.

  “Gurgi Kabud,” a woman whispered as she passed me, fear shining in her dark eyes. Whispers and murmurs proliferated, spreading in a wave as more and more of the villagers took notice of me. The sound soon reached rescuers perched around the smoking ruins. They stopped working, tools limp at their sides, as they stared at me.

  “What are you doing here?” a sharp voice said.

  I turned to find Nafid glaring up at me. She was the only one who did not appear cowed by my presence.

  “We need to talk,” I said.

  “No talk. I told you to leave.”

  “Which I was preparing to do until your witch did this.” I yanked off the balaclava, revealing my lupine face.

  Nafid’s green eyes bore into mine, unflinching. Then she looked me over, her gaze eventually arriving at the trimmed spot on my right cheek where the old woman had etched the symbol. I could see it meant something to her by her compressing lips. “It is a mistake,” she spat.

  “Good, then tell your witch to change me back.”

  “It is not possible,” she said as she spun and strode away.

  Villagers scurried from my path as I caught up to Nafid. “Why not?” I demanded, seizing her arm.

  “Let me go.”

  “Not until you start talking. What did your witch change me into? Why are you saying she can’t change me back?”

  She rounded on me sharply. “What? Did you think there would not be consequences? Look around you, soldier. Look at the ruin and death you have brought. You take from us, but we cannot take from you?”

  “If this is about vengeance,” I said between my teeth. “You’ve got the wrong person.”

  She lo
oked past me. “Two of my nephews were killed this morning. Boys I helped raise. Honorable men.”

  I followed her gaze to the covered bodies, then glanced around. Since arriving in the compound, my senses had remained alert to an attack, but the villagers were simply watching. Some touched the wolf tooth pendants that hung from their necks. My jaw clenched as I imagined Baine sitting in a climate-controlled office somewhere, filling out his kill report.

  You’re gonna pay for that, you son of a bitch, I thought.

  When I turned back to Nafid, I realized I was still squeezing her arm. I let my giant hand fall away.

  “I can’t pretend to know your pain right now,” I said, “but I can promise you that I will not stop fighting until the person who ordered the attack is punished. In the meantime, we will give you just compensation plus whatever else you need. But you must change me back.”

  “That is not for me to decide.”

  “Then take me to your witch.”

  “The woman you call a ‘witch’ is my great-grandmother. And that is not for Baba to decide either.”

  “She’s the one who did this, and you know it.”

  Nafid shook her head. “She conjures at the will of Gurgi Buzurg, and he has spoken.”

  “Who’s Gurgi Buzurg?”

  “He is the Great Wolf.”

  I remembered the monstrous, rotting wolf head mounted above the old woman’s shrine. A strange charge detonated from my core, seeming to heighten all of my animal senses at once.

  “If your great-grandmother is in touch with him, then have her tell him to remove the curse.”

  Nafid flinched back as though I’d slapped her. “A curse? You believe you have been cursed?”

  “What would you call it?” I shot back.

  “Buzurg has selected you to be the Gurgi Kabud.”

  That word again. “And what the hell is that supposed to be?”

  “With the death of our warriors, he has named you Blue Wolf. You are the Principal Protector now, second only to the Great Wolf himself.” She spoke in a kind of reverence. But then seeming to remember herself, her lips thinned along with her voice. “Like I said, a mistake.”