87

When they left, I whispered to him again. “It does no good to fight them, they’ll drug you or beat you. Cooperate when you can.”
Things settled down on the wing over the next few weeks. Charlie and I got to know each other pretty well; he was a good kid, from northern Pennsylvania. His parents had seen a werewolf while they were driving, and his father had taken a shot at it with his rifle. The shot missed, and the werewolf attacked and killed them. He changed, frightened, and was running through town when he got hit by a car. He woke up in a truck, locked in a cage in wolf form.
I didn’t have the guts to tell him he would never be free again. They were still experimenting with him, trying to figure out why he could change others and not me. When they knew, he would become a liability to them, and he would be eliminated. Just like me.
I was deluding myself if I ever thought I was getting out of here. My secret, if they ever found it, was that the antibodies only existed because my wolf had been killed. They had taken gallons of my blood, and did plenty of experiments. They even transfused my blood directly into both werewolves and humans, but it neither killed the wolf nor protected the human. Being bitten was the last test, and she could sense they didn’t know what do next with her.
It was the next Meatloaf Monday when the man arrived. He was wearing an expensive suit and carried himself like he was important. They brought him to me during my exercise hour, an hour a day I could run around an enclosed courtyard. I almost regretted the interruption to my private time.
“Ella, a word please.” The guards locked him in the exercise area with me; he was unarmed, and apparently unconcerned. I walked over to him, my face still sweating from the hard run I was using to keep my body in shape.
“And you are?”
“You may call me Al.”
I looked at him. “Well, you can call me Betty then.” He smiled, he caught the reference. “What do you want?”
“I think I can use someone with your talents, Ella, both what you are now and what you can be. Alpha.”
I raised my eyebrow at him. “And why do I think I would help you?”
He reached inside his jacket, removing a photo and handing it to me. “Because you have people you want protected, and I can help you with that.” I looked at the photo and almost collapsed to the ground. It was a photo, taken with a telephoto lens. Craig was walking barefoot along the beach, board trunks and a T-shirt on, and on each side of him was one of my boys, holding his hand. Craig was smiling and the boys were laughing as they looked up at him.
“What do you need?”
“An agreement. You do what I need, and I make sure they stay safe and out of the war.” “That’s kind of open ended,” I said. “How do I know what either side of that entails?”
“Let’s talk over lunch.” He knocked on the door and it was opened. He handed me a bag and walked me to the bathroom in the hallway. “Change and come on out. We’re leaving.”
“What? How?” I looked in the bag, inside was a summer dress, underwear and low heels.
“The Company has been given wide latitude in dealing with certain things. You came highly recommended.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I went in the room and changed. The clothes felt almost foreign after being locked up so long. I came out and he gestured to the door. “Wait,” I said. “What about Charlie?”
“Who?”
“He’s a boy, he’s locked up across from me. He was bitten and changed, and I’m afraid they are out of uses for him. He’s Pack now.” I looked up at him, pleading. “He can be my responsibility, or I can find a Pack to take him in. He’s a good kid, he doesn’t deserve what they will do to him.”
He pinched his nose, thinking hard. “All right, we’ll figure it out later. You owe me for this, Ella.” I nodded. He talked to a guard, and a few minutes later Charlie was in my arms, dressed in his orange overalls.
“Come on, we have places to be.” I held Charlie to my side as we walked out of the facility behind Al. I was elated to be freed, yet in the back of my head I kept thinking back to that scene in The Americans, where the Russian jailers make you think you are getting a pardon right before they put a bullet in your head. It wasn’t until we were outside, being tucked into a black Suburban with tinted windows, that I let myself relax. I hopped up into the seat, only to freeze when a voice I didn’t expect caused me to look up.
“We meet again, Ella.” My blood turned cold as I saw who it was.
I froze, and I felt myself get pushed in to the car farther towards the one person I never expected to see. I moved Charlie onto my lap as Al got in, pushing me into the middle of the bench seat.
“Marvin.” I looked over at him, hatred in my eyes. “I didn’t expect you to crawl out from under the rock you have been hiding under, Alpha.”
“Well, I didn’t have a choice.” He went to move his hand, I could see it was handcuffed to the seat. “I find that when you have two million, you are outvoted by the one who has three. My so-called ‘protector’ gave me up.”
“Sucks to be you. I suppose I’m not getting my money back either?”
The privacy window to the front seat lowered, and I was face to face with Black Ker. “No, Ella, you won’t see your money back. In fact, Craig paid the three million to get him turned over to me.”
“Why?” I looked between her and Marvin. “He didn’t even know I was alive.”
“True, but he felt he owed it to you to finish what you started.” The car began to move. “He loves you so much, Ella. When I told him I had found Marvin, he didn’t hesitate.”
“So what now? Are we going to my Pack? To his Pack?”
“His Pack no longer exists, Ella. It was discovered about six months after you were captured, and wiped out.”
“You won, Ella,” Marvin said. “I should have just killed you in the hospital when I had the chance.”
I set Charlie down in the seat next to me and whispered to him to look at Al. When I turned back, my hands shot out and grabbed the back of his head and his chin, and using all my strength I twisted my shoulders. His reaction time was slow, and with one hand cuffed in silver he had no chance. There was a sickening crack as his neck broke. I twisted farther, ensuring the spinal column was severed, then let him go. He sagged to the floor, his eyes wide open in shock. I watched them cloud over before I looked away.
“You got a place to get rid of the trash?” I looked over at Al, he hadn’t even responded when I did what I did.
“Steve, go to the Cleaners.” He nodded and worked his way to the freeway. I tuned so my back was to the dead Alpha; maybe I shouldn’t have done what I did when I did, as he lost control of his bowels as he died. It was bad for me, so I knew it would be tough to take for Charlie and Ker with their enhanced noses. Even though it was loud, Steve rolled the windows down partway and opened the sunroof. Al produced a blanket from under the seat and I covered him up so Charlie wouldn’t have to see this. I was all too familiar with death and pain before my twenty first birthday, there was no reason Charlie had to see more. I hugged Charlie to my shoulder, making him look the other way out the window at the passing city instead.
Twenty minutes later, we pulled into a garage in an industrial area. “Look at me,” Al said. “The rest doesn’t concern you.” I studied his suit, trying to figure out where he had gone to school and what his background was based on his fashion. I heard the door open behind me, and the SUV shifted as the dead weight was removed. Ker handed a case back to Al, and he looked down at Charlie. “I need to put these in your eyes, they will block the UV light used to identify werewolves. It will help you travel without detection.”
He looked back at me for permission, I nodded. “Thank you for that suggestion, Ker. We bought a bunch of them, but we never had to use them.”
“Not while you were free,” Ker said, “but I know they have since then. Our friends in Homeland Security are convinced the Midwest region has been cleansed, but in actuality, it is because the werewolves have gotten better at hiding. I suspect your mate got word to your allied Packs and helped them blend in.” I certainly hoped so. I had a lot of time to think in captivity, and I was never allowed to watch or read the news. I really had no idea how the war was going, or what had happened to my people.
Al bent the boy’s head back and lifted his eyelid, then carefully placed the UV filtering contacts in place. He blinked a lot. “You’ll get used to them,” I said. “Let me know if they are still bothering you in an hour.”
“What if I shift,” he asked.
“They will stay on your eyes during a shift,” Ker said.
I heard a machine turn on, it was a carpet cleaner. A few minutes later the smell of urine was gone and in its place was the smell of soap and bleach. The door closed, and Steve backed out of the building again. “You can look around again,” Al said.
Steve kept the windows where they were as we got back on the freeway, trying to flush the smell out and dry the carpeting. “Where are we headed?”
“Baltimore-Washington International Airport,” Al said. “We need to talk to you and your mate. We need things from you, and there are things we can do to protect your Pack.”
“Like what?”
He smiled. “Not until we can talk to you both.”
“What about Charlie?”
“He’s coming with, obviously. He’s your Pack, your responsibility. I wouldn’t dream of taking him away.”
I looked out the window at the world I’d been taken from two years ago. “Who are you, Al? Central Intelligence Agency?”
He nodded. “We’ve always taken a more nuanced view towards shifters. Black Ker, for example. She and her panther had been known to me for years. I was smart enough to recognize her unique talents and find a way to use them. She’s been a valuable asset for me.”
“But I’m not CIA,” she said. “I am part of a team, we work for Al, he is our boss at the Company. With what we do, they need plausible deniability. Al is the only one at the CIA who knows my true nature, and knows I work for them. If I need help, like that cleaning service back there, he provides it without involving me or my name. Jobs like I took for you help keep our operations off-budget and out of sight.”
“Lucrative?” I looked down at Charlie, he had fallen asleep.
“Some parts are. You would be surprised at how much we have to spend, though. Overhead is a killer.”
I laughed, here was Black Ker, the most feared assassin in the world, talking that way about how much it costs to run her team. I looked out the window, we were passing the car rental lots. We passed the exit for the main terminal and kept going. “Where are we headed?”
“Private aviation section. Don’t worry, the charter flight is being expensed to your account.” I smiled, I really didn’t care. I had more money from my parent’s estate than I could find a use for.
We pulled into a hanger section and drove straight to where a Learjet III was parked. The door opened and Al helped me out, I was carrying Charlie. It was the first time I saw Black Ker below the shoulders; I almost stumbled when I saw the baby bump. “You’re pregnant,” I said. “Congratulations.”