“A few months ago, she began making startling requests. She wanted to close down the programs and terminate all specimens.”
“You mean kill all the werewolves?” Shark frowns.
“Yes. She said a new strain of the disease had developed and spread. We couldn’t tell which were infected. If left to mutate and evolve, the strain might be passed to ordinary humans. She wanted to remove them to a secure area of her choosing, where they’d be safely disposed of.
“Nobody believed her.” Antoine’s face is grave. “There were too many holes in her story, no facts to support her theory. She argued fiercely, threatened to resign, called in every favor. But we weren’t convinced. We insisted on more time to conduct our own experiments. Prae was allowed to continue in her post, but I was assigned to monitor her and approve her decisions.
“Just over six weeks ago, Prae Athim disappeared. She left work on a Thursday and nobody has seen her since. That night, operatives acting on her behalf subdued regular staff, tranquilized the specimens, removed them from their cells, and made off with them. We’ve no idea where they went. We’ve devoted all of our resources to tracking them down but so far… nothing.”
Antoine smiles shakily. “I hoped she’d followed through on her plan to destroy the specimens. That would have been a tragic loss, but at least it would have meant we didn’t have to worry about them. Now it seems my fears — that she had an ulterior motive — have been borne out. If some of them were sent to attack Dervish Grady, we’re dealing with a far greater problem. We have to find the missing specimens as swiftly as possible. The consequences if we don’t are staggering.”
“I’m not that worried about the werewolves,” Shark sniffs. “They’re secondary to finding Prae Athim. I mean, how many are we talking about? A few dozen?”
Antoine laughs sharply. “You don’t understand. I told you earlier — Prae Athim has worked in this unit for twenty-six years. But this is just one unit of many. We have bases on every continent and have been running similar programs in each. Prae didn’t just take the specimens from this complex. She took them from everywhere. There’s not one left.”
Shark’s expression darkens. “How many?” he croaks.
“I don’t have an exact number to give,” Antoine says. “Some of the projects were under Prae’s personal supervision, and records have been deleted from our system. It’s impossible to be accurate.”
“Roughly,” Shark growls.
Antoine gulps, then says quietly, so that we have to strain to hear, “Somewhere between six and seven hundred, give or take a few.” And his smile, this time, is a pale ghost of a grin.
TIMAS ON THE JOB
SIX or seven hundred werewolves on the loose, in the hands of a maniac most likely in league with Lord Loss. Nice! Demons rarely have time to kill many people because they can only stay on this world for a few minutes, while the window they crossed through remains open. But hundreds of werewolves, divided into groups of ten or twelve, set free in dozens of cities around the globe…
If each killed only five people, I make that three and a half thousand fatalities. But it’s more likely they’d kill ten times that number, maybe more.
We’re in Antoine’s office on the eleventh floor. It used to be Prae Athim’s. It’s a large room, but with twelve of us it’s a tight fit. Nobody’s said anything since we came in. We’ve been looking through photos of the specimens that Antoine gave us, studying the data that he has on file.
I know from my own brush with lycanthropy that werewolves are strong and fast. I felt like an Olympic athlete when it was my time of turning. But I’m still seriously freaked by what I’m reading. I never knew they were this advanced.
I shouldn’t let it matter. The Shadow must remain the priority. If it succeeds in uniting the demon masses and breaking through, the world will fall. The damage a pack of escaped werewolves might cause is nothing in comparison.
But how can I ignore the possibility of tens of thousands of deaths? Beranabus could. He’s half-demon and has spent hundreds of years subduing his human impulses. We’re statistics to him. He’d take the line that a few thousand lives don’t make much difference in the grand scheme of things, that we have to focus on the millions and billions — real numbers.
I can’t do that. Even if we find out that the attack in Carcery Vale has nothing to do with the demon assault at the hospital, that Prae Athim isn’t working with Lord Loss, I have to try and stop her. I won’t let thousands of people die if I can prevent it. Especially not when the killers are relatives of mine.
Perhaps crazily, I still think of the werewolves as kin, even those bred in cages. They’re part of the Grady clan. That makes it personal.
“We have to find them,” I blurt out, without meaning to. All heads in the office bob up and everybody stares at me. I’m sitting by one of the large windows, the city spread out behind me. Any of the people on the streets, eleven floors down, could fall victim to the werewolves if Prae Athim unleashes them.
“We have to stop this.” I get to my feet, discarding the p
hotos I’d been mutely studying.
“Maybe there’s nothing to stop,” Meera says unconvincingly. “Maybe Prae was telling the truth about a new disease and took them to dispose of safely. Perhaps the few who were sent to attack Dervish were simply being used to settle an old score, and were then executed along with the rest.”
“Bull!” Shark snorts. “If she’d wanted to kill them, she’d have slaughtered them in their cages. It would have been a lot simpler than smuggling them out.”
“Probably,” Meera sighs. “I was just saying maybe…”
“What will she do with them?” Marian asks.
“I guess she’ll drop them off in a city somewhere,” Shark replies. “Let them run wild. Maybe collect them at the end and take them on somewhere else.”
“But why?” Marian frowns. “Why not build bombs, poison a city’s water supply or develop chemical weapons? Hijacking hundreds of werewolves to use as crazed assassins… it’s like something out of a Batman comic!”