Kitty Steals the Show (Kitty Norville 10)

Chapter 7

CORMAC GOT back to the town house even later than we did and was gone in the morning before I had a chance to ask him if he’d had any luck finding Amelia’s family. I hoped he was all right.

For my part, no matter what the vampires had said, or the implications of last night’s macabre presentation, the conference was important, did mean something, and I was going to treat it as such.

Dr. Elizabeth Shumacher and Joseph Tyler’s presentation on lycanthropes in the modern military focused on the case study of a group of werewolves who formed an Army Special Forces unit that had served in Afghanistan. The unit had been entirely unofficial—a captain and lone wolf took it upon himself to create other werewolves in order to form a squad uniquely suited to the challenges of battling extremists in the mountainous wilderness of Afghanistan. The experiment had started well—the unit had an impressive record of accomplishing its objectives—and ended disastrously. When the captain, the alpha of the pack, was killed in an explosion, the rest of the pack lost its moral compass and all control. They began fighting each other for dominance until only three remained. Those three returned to the U.S. damaged by post-traumatic stress and trapped by their wolf sides. It was assumed they’d never be able to leave their cages, much less rejoin human society. Shumacher called me in to help. I did what I could to teach them how to live with lycanthropy, the monster inside. Mostly, I failed, and two more died in a violent escape attempt. Sergeant Joseph Tyler was the only survivor of the original unit.

They’d gotten permission from the army to tell their story. Tyl

er was no longer active duty, and Shumacher’s scientific sensibilities wanted the information made public, so no one else would make the same mistakes. She felt that Captain Gordon couldn’t have been the first person who ever thought of using werewolves for combat.

I sat in back and listened to the story, told clinically and professionally, which made it seemed detached from my experience of it—it had all happened to someone else, and I’d never seen those men whose faces appeared in the photographs on the slide show.

The conclusion she left the audience with had been my own—taking soldiers and making them werewolves was ill-advised. They had training that made them excellent warriors, but none of the skills they needed to control the terrors that came with lycanthropy. A more successful project was taking werewolves, people who had already successfully adjusted to lycanthropy and had learned to deal with the drawbacks as well as the abilities, and training them to be soldiers.

Even that left something to be desired, I thought. Probably because I wished we didn’t need soldiers at all.

Tyler answered questions at the end.

Joseph Tyler was a solid black man, tall and broad, with a stern expression and distant gaze. He held himself apart, and his quiet strength was intimidating. At first, the questions came slowly, as people hesitated, unsure of him. He loomed over the podium. But he was articulate, and met the gazes of everyone who spoke to him. People were able to talk to Tyler the person and not Tyler the big scary werewolf. They asked personal questions about his choices, his emotions, the fallout, his recovery. He answered calmly—or politely declined to—and even said “yes, sir” or “no, ma’am.” I wondered how much of his military training was keeping him upright.

At the end of the session, I hung back to watch as people mobbed Tyler. Some asked questions, some tearfully thanked him and expressed sympathy—pity—for his predicament. They seemed to be thanking him for his simple existence. A few handed him business cards. Tyler handled it all with grace, though he kept glancing at the exits as if looking for escape. As she put away her presentation, Shumacher looked on like a proud teacher.

Finally, my turn came. Tyler saw me and smiled wide. “Kitty! Good to see you.”

“You look great!” I said, opening my arms and feeling gratified when he stepped forward into a hug, which wasn’t at all a wolfish gesture, but he was special. One of my extended pack members—family, practically. “You’re pretty popular, I see.”

He winced at the handful of business cards people had given him and drew more from his suit pocket. People must have been mobbing him all day.

“Recruiters, can you believe it?” He handed the cards to me, and I read them: private security firms, foreign militaries, government offices. “Mostly consulting jobs. At least that’s what they say now.”

“You think you’d ever go back to that? Take up one of these offers?”

“I’ll tell you, I’d never go back, and I wouldn’t even be here, except I’m pretty sure some of these outfits have already tried recruiting werewolf soldiers, who may be sitting in a cage somewhere, out of control and miserable like we were, with nobody there to help them.”

“And you want to help them.”

“Not even because they’re werewolves, but because they’re soldiers.”

I squeezed his arm, a gesture of solidarity. Tyler was one of the good guys.

As I shuffled through the last of the cards before handing them back to him, a name caught my eye. The card itself was simple, just words on white stock, no logo, no affiliation, no business name or government listed. But the name blazed forth: DR. PAUL FLEMMING.

I held the card up. “Where did this come from?” The edge to my voice was sharp.

“Same as the others, some guy wanting to recruit.”

“Describe him.”

“Kind of mousy, bookish. Didn’t wear his suit well. He smelled like he doesn’t get out much. Kitty, what’s wrong?” His brow furrowed with worry.

“He’s here? At the conference?” I looked around, scanning the few faces remaining in the lecture hall.

“Yeah—”

“Dr. Shumacher?” I called over his shoulder.

She’d put away her laptop, collected her things, and brought them over to join us. She was a contrast to Tyler: a prim white woman with short dark hair, glasses, and a focused expression. She wore a cardigan over a blouse and skirt. “Yes?”