Lois slept fitfully that night.
It should have been wonderful. For the first time since she and Clark had met, they were together in New Orleans enjoying the luxury of an excellent hotel, feasting on the finest French cuisine she’d ever imagined, and now she was lying in the arms of the most wonderful man in the world.
But there was the chance – a good chance, now that she’d thought about it – that someone or some – thing – was listening to them while they lay in that delicious bed. And because of that, not only was Lois not sleeping well, Clark wasn’t sleeping at all. He was lying on the bed, his head propped up under several pillows, and using his senses to probe the rooms near theirs. She could tell because the tension in his shoulders hadn’t lessened since they’d turned off the lights.
Just before four o’clock, she sat up. “You need to get some sleep.”
“I can stay awake for several days at a time if I have to.”
“Yes, but you wouldn’t be at peak efficiency.”
“My less-than-best is still pretty good. I can stay awake.”
She leaned down and kissed his forehead. “You don’t have to. You can sleep while I sit up and watch.” She reached for her robe and belted it on without leaving the bed. “Besides, I think I’m done sleeping tonight.”
He reached out and brushed her hair once. “I’m sorry.”
A soft smile she knew he’d see, even in the dark, floated out to him. “Don’t be. None of this is your fault. And this is how it needs to be this time. We’ll have to take care of each other.”
He sighed softly. “All right. But you wake me by eight, okay?”
A gentle chuckle accompanied a ruffling of his hair. “If you insist, my dear. You just relax and let Mama Lois take care of you.”
He pulled two of the pillows from under his head and wrapped his massive arms around one of them. “Good night, Lois.”
“Sweet dreams, Superman. I’m going to get dressed, so don’t listen too hard. Trust me, okay?”
She heard his voice relax into a sleepy smile. “I trust you.” He nestled his head deep into the pillows and muttered, “See you in the morning.”
Instead of keeping the banter going, she rose and moved into the front room, carrying an armload of clothes. As she dressed she realized that she was hungry. Breakfast was too long to wait, so as she buttoned her shirt she decided to make a call to room service.
“Hello?” she whispered. “This is Lois Lane in room—”
“Ah, Ms. Lane,” the woman said. “This is Audrey at the front desk. I hope you and your husband are enjoying your stay.”
“We are, yes, but I’d like to order something from the kitchen.”
“Oh, dear. I’m sorry, but we won’t have a cook here for another hour. Would something from our deli menu be acceptable?”
Lois frowned, then said, “Yes. Bring me a steak sandwich, rare, with a Cobb salad and a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew. Oh, and make the sandwich double-meat.”
“Ah – one moment, please.” Audrey covered the phone and spoke to someone to one side, probably another desk clerk. Lois could hear every word the girl said as she asked if they had what it took to complete Lois’ order. Funny, thought Lois, the girl sounds almost afraid for some reason. She almost smell the apprehension over the phone.
But that was ridiculous. Smells aren’t carried by phone lines. Must be the excitement of the previous night and her heightened imagination brought on by meeting not just one werewolf, but an entire – what, pack? Coven? Herd? Club? Confederation? What was the proper term for a gathering of werewolves?
She smiled to herself. If she had any sense, she’d be terrified.
Audrey chose that moment to uncover the phone again. Lois caught part of a sentence in the background, something about rogue carnivores that Audrey apparently didn’t think was funny, then the young woman said, “Ms. Lane, we’ll have that in front of your room in ten minutes. Will that be okay?”
“Of course,” Lois whispered. “But my husband’s still asleep, so please don’t knock. Just slide a sheet of paper under the door when you get here. I’m in the front room and I’ll see it.”
“Oh, of course! I will bring it to your door myself. I hope you enjoy your early breakfast.”
*****
The meal came and the paper slid under the door. Lois opened the door and signed the receipt, then smiled at Audrey, who whispered, “Thank you, ma’am. Enjoy your meal.”
Lois inhaled deeply, relishing the scents. “It’ll do for a snack until something more substantial comes along.”
The young woman’s smile faltered for a moment, then she nodded and turned to the elevator. Lois closed the door behind her and sat down to eat.
The meal surprised her – or maybe it was her perception of it which surprised her. The deli sandwich was fresh and loaded with trimmings, most of which she discarded as she tore into the steak. She picked out and ate the chicken and egg from the Cobb salad, then smiled as she remembered past meals when she had done the opposite. The Mountain Dew had been delivered in a bowl of ice, so she simply pulled the top off and drank from the bottle.
When she finished eating she felt better, though not completely refreshed, as if something had been missing. Then she realized that the steak had been cool, not warm, and it had been cooked. Raw would have been better. Next time she would order the sandwich with the steak uncooked—
Her eyes bugged out and she jumped to her feet as she realized what she was thinking. Alphonse Thibodeaux’ scarred left hand burst into her mind and she snatched her own hand to look for wounds.
A small scab on the back of her left wrist stared back at her. It was the same wrist Jane had grasped at the street bistro. Neither of them had noticed the blood at the time, nor had they noticed it when Jane had dressed her elbow scrapes at Arthur’s place, but her skin had been punctured.
Her elbows—
Lois yanked the wrappings off her left elbow and ran to the bathroom. In the mirror she could see that there was no evidence of any scrape on her arm. A quick check revealed that her right arm was also smooth and unmarred.
She was a quick healer, but nobody healed that fast.
No normal human did, anyway.
There was only one logical conclusion. She’d been infected with whatever virus or bacterium or microphage or magic spell transmitted the affliction to others. She was now a Turned One.
In the words of Alphonse Thibodeaux, Lois Lane was starting to become a werewolf.
*****
Arthur sat in one of the oversized chairs in the room where Lois Lane had been interviewed earlier that night, the room where Superman had demonstrated his complete dominance over their pack. Now Arthur was left to deal with the fallout of the incident, and it was apparent that he needed to give these disparate personalities a common thread of purpose.
But it wouldn’t be easy. There was Alphonse and his smug smile, Lancelot and his bruised ego, Gwen with her hackles raised at all of them, Teresa fondling a glass of brandy and thinking hard about something and giving no hint of what it might be, Jane flicking her flinty eyes across each of them in turn, and Gawain glancing nervously at each of them while trying hard not to be noticed. During the best of times they didn’t always get along smoothly, and this was surely not the best of times.
It was a recipe for disaster.
Leaders lead, he reminded himself. Sometimes a leader must lead in order to remind his followers who that leader really is.
He rose to his feet. “Everyone prepare to leave. We must move our base of operations immediately.”
Jane frowned. “Andre and Roger aren’t the only sentries out there. We load up to move and the Patriarch will know it almost as soon as we walk out the door.”
“We’re going underground. We’ll use the old sewer system to move to the safe house across the river.”
Guinevere shook her head. “That house is too small for all of us. We’ll be found out in days, if not hours.”
Arthur gave her his best trust-me smile. “Not if we don’t reveal ourselves. We won’t go outside at all for several days. We have enough food here to tide us over.”
Teresa downed her brandy in a single gulp. “So we run away again.” She placed the snifter on the table beside her chair and folded her hands together. “That’s prey behavior, Arthur. We might as well hang a sign on the front door inviting the Patriarch’s clan to have us for dinner.” Her voice hardened. “Literally.”
Lancelot spoke from his seat in the corner. “Arthur is correct. We must move. And the house on Delaronde will function as a base of operations.”
Jane frowned more deeply. “You sound like you want to fight them.”
“Oh, I most certainly do want to fight them.” Lancelot rose to his feet. “But not like the old days, Jane. No pitched battles in alleyways or bars or empty warehouses. We don’t have the manpower – or, perhaps, the wolf-power – to win a muzzle-to-muzzle war. I was thinking more about a guerilla campaign.”
Arthur hated to give credit to others. He especially hated to give any to Lancelot, his chief rival in the pack. But the idea of making slash-and-run attacks against the Patriarch not only appealed to him, it dovetailed nicely with his own still-developing plans to fight back against the Naturals.
He smiled. “That’s actually a good idea, Lancelot, provided we can operate with a minimum of risk. We must all participate in the planning, though, or we’ll be picked off one by one. And we mustn’t be operating solo, either, not if we all want to survive this conflict.”
“As long as we remember what happen out in Prescott,” Alphonse said. “Story is that the Patriarch and his bunch wipe out the whole pack of Turned Ones there, and they was four o’ three time more’n what we be.”
“We are deficient in numbers only,” replied Arthur. “We are more intelligent and cunning than the Arizona band was, and we will act as a team. But this will remain a vague plan unless we arrive at our new hideout undetected.”
“Almost anything’s better than just sitting here waiting to be attacked,” Jane offered. “Let’s get going.”
*****
The Patriarch stalked down the alley where Andre had directed him. He closed his eyes and let the scents of the place wash over him. His eyes drifted shut and his nostrils flared.
For a moment, the stench of humanity that he imbibed almost overwhelmed him. He could picture the hookers, the pimps, the drug dealers, the muggers and their victims, even the occasional police presence, all vying for supremacy in the narrow passage. Their terror and passion, their anger and desperation, all swirled together to form a pastiche of scent images that both disgusted and thrilled him. It was as if an ever-changing work of art was floating by, tantalizing him with the promise of the hunt to come.
The thought reminded him of his purpose here. He needed, if he could, to isolate the scent of the man who had fought off both Andre and Roger. The statement still sounded unbelievable to him, but he was certain that neither Andre nor Roger was lying. A being who could do that had to have a distinct and readily identifiable musk about him.
Perhaps he was a newcomer to the Patriarch’s territory, looking for a pack to take over instead of building one on his own. Some Purebloods behaved that way, and it was necessary to remain wary of them. He’d never met one who could defeat him in one-on-one combat, but he refused to believe that he was the strongest werewolf who had ever lived. No one ruled forever, either in the human world or in his. One day, like an aging lion beset on all sides, he would go down fighting, defeated by a younger and more powerful challenger.
That day was not today, however.
He took off his hat as he drifted along the alley and pulled his hair back from his face. Another lungful of air told him other tales of greed and corruption and man’s cruelty to his fellow man. Humans were weak, no better than frightened sheep. No wonder they were prey to the Patriarch and his kind.
He sifted through the various smells until—
There! He’d found it!
He’d found Roger and Andre. And there was another spoor, fainter yet more distinct than the others. In Andre’s musk, there was more than a hint of hunger and thrill of combat. In Roger’s, a touch of anger and surprise. In both of them, he sensed sudden shock and quick pain.
The third man’s scent told him almost nothing, except that he had recently bathed, probably in one of the better hotels in the city. There was no fear, no shock, no sudden burst of adrenalin, no fight-or-flight reflex – he might as well have been performing a yoga routine.
That made no sense to the Patriarch. Any man suddenly attacked by two other men would be surprised, at least, almost surely afraid, and would leave traces of excitement and tension in his sweat. Yet this man displayed none of that. It was as if a martial arts master had entered the alley expecting this fight to go just as it had.
Or if an amazingly powerful werewolf were sizing up his opposition.
Whoever this man was, he was a danger to the clan, a wild card in the deck which might show up in any hand at any time. The stranger had to be brought to heel, had to be contained before he incited dissension in the pack. The Patriarch’s rule must never be questioned, never be challenged, especially not by a family member. It would be the prelude to dissolution of everything he’d worked so hard to construct. And no one – not the mysterious stranger, not the resourceful but baffling Jane, nor the effeminate but surprisingly effective Turned One Arthur – would be allowed to interfere with his plans.
He looked back and signaled for two of his human slaves to follow him. Neither of them could stand and fight the stranger, but they could cover his back as he tracked the man’s spoor through the alleys and streets. And they couldn’t blow the pack’s cover as normal humans by suddenly shifting form in a moment of surprise.
With his flat-brimmed hat back in place and his duster billowing around his legs as in a Western movie, the Patriarch began tracking the stranger. The man had rarely taken a straight course, nor had he stopped anywhere for any length of time, so following his sign wasn’t difficult even in the dim light of early evening—
Wait. What just happened?
He’d lost the trail. Impossible, but he had.
He reversed his course until he detected the scent again, then sought for an alternate trail. He checked to be certain that the man had not been picked up and carried from that point – no. There were no other trails intersecting his, only the stranger’s weak but definite scent overlaying everything else. The trail ended in the middle of the alley. It didn’t fade, it hadn’t been erased or covered up.
It – simply stopped.
How could it have just stopped?
There were two walls within leaping distance of the scent’s terminus, although after examining both he knew the man hadn’t climbed either of them. There had been no branching off from the main trail, and it didn’t feel as if his target had doubled back on his own path. There would have been some indication of a second spoor, some previous branching of the trail. No other scent masked that of the stranger. And there was no fresh evidence at all of a vehicle into which the man might have climbed.
It was as if he could fly.
The Patriarch backtracked several yards and knelt down to examine the trail more closely. There was something in the stranger’s spoor, something almost inhuman, something that eluded the hunter. The man might have been a daywalker, except that there was no hint of bloodlust in his scent, not even back at the fight with Andre and Roger.
And a new thought prodded him back on his heels. Why had the stranger allowed his victims to live? Had the Patriarch been the intruder, he would have crushed the life from both men as a statement of his strength and power. Was this new player a coward who had been surprised? Was he simply very cautious? Or was it possible that the intruder was making a greater statement – that he feared no one, whether human or Lycan?
He stood and glanced around him. His two human companions had each taken up a position behind and to one side of him, watching both his back trail and his flanks, just as he had trained them. Either one was a match for nearly any other human in the city, with or without the weapons they carried, and together they could slow down an attacking werewolf long enough for the Patriarch to turn and defend himself. They would not survive such an encounter, of course, but they were compensated well enough in money and physical pleasure to ensure their loyalty to him. It was the only positive item in his day thus far.
He considered going on blindly to look for Arthur’s pack’s residence, but decided against it. He didn’t want to precipitate an incident with them, not yet, not without backup and not without more planning. He didn’t fear the Turned Ones, but he was cautious enough to decline a fight he knew he couldn’t win by himself and which would not further his plans to dominate the entire city.
He liked New Orleans. It was a good hunting ground, and he wanted it all for himself and his followers. As much as he looked forward to killing Arthur and his mate, it was too early in the timetable for that move. There were still loose ends to tie and revenges to take before he took total command of the Crescent City and its surroundings.
He considered shifting to his lupine form, but quickly discarded the notion. He could learn nothing else by doing so. Nor would changing to his intermediate form, the wolf/human/monster hybrid give him any new information. And since his human followers had never seen him in that guise, it might frighten them into fleeing – or worse, betraying him to the authorities. He was not yet ready to face the city’s police force. Soon, certainly, but not today.
It was time to leave. He would learn no more in this place on this day.
*****
Their hotel suite was comfortable but too small for pacing the floor, so Clark simply floated over the table, the couch, the desk, and anything else in his way. After a few minutes he began walking on the walls, and made one complete circuit of the room on the ceiling.
Without consciously thinking about it, Clark waited for Lois to decide whether to laugh or complain, but she did neither. In the same tone she used when he dragged his dirty cape across the floor, she said, “I hope you aren’t leaving footprints up there where the maids can’t reach.”
“Huh?” He stopped and looked around, then righted himself as he floated down to the floor. “Sorry. I kind of forgot where we were.”
“Did you sleep well?”
Her calm question threw him for a moment, but then he decided to behave as if nothing utterly bizarre had happened the previous evening. “Uh, yeah, I did. Not long, but I do feel refreshed. Thanks for watching over me.”
She stood and walked toward him, her eyes troubled. “There’s something I need to tell you, but I don’t know how to say it.”
He took her hands and guided her to the couch. “The best way is to just say it, Lois. I’m a big boy and I can take it.”
She shook her head. “No boy is this big. I think we need to talk to someone about – about what happened last night.”
A strong impression that she’d been about to finish her sentence differently pressed on his mind, but he pushed it to one side. “Okay. Whom do you recommend we see?”
She smiled thinly and patted his cheek. “That’s my grammatically correct Clark.” Her smile faded. “We need to talk to that cop, the guy with the French name.”
Clark nodded. “I have his card in my wallet. Do you want me to call and let him know that two big city reporters from the frozen North are about to invade his quiet little life?”
Her eyebrows bounced once and her smile made a comeback. “Sure. Just let him know somehow that we’ll be talking about werewolves. That ought to make his day.”
*****
Robert Gautreaux put down the sheaf of notes from the previous two nights police reports, thankful that no one else had been found torn to shreds. But he knew that it only meant a delay in such deaths, not an end to them. Or, perhaps the manner of Evelyn Carstairs’ murder had been an outlier, a blip in the city’s normal ebb and flow and not to be repeated.
He dropped his face into his palms and leaned on his desk. The probability of that being the truth was so low that, like Spock and the Royal Fizzbin, he couldn’t compute it.
He blew a wet raspberry at his hands and straightened. Star Trek was an escape for him, not a lifestyle, and the threats the Federation had faced were imaginary. The possibility that the Patriarch was back in town was all too real.
A knock on his door startled him and the attractive young female detective in her late twenties, assigned as his administrative assistant, leaned into his office. “Excuse me, Inspector, but there’s a call for you on line two. Something about a pair of travel writers from Metropolis.”
“Travel writers? You know that I have not the time to squire travel writers around the city, Melody. Tell them to get a map from the tourist bureau.”
She sighed and gave him a sympathetic smile. “They mentioned that Dr. Walter Smith suggested that they contact you personally, sir.”
Robert frowned at her. “Walter? What on earth could he be thinking, sending them to me? I need distractions like that right now like I need another ulcer.”
“Yes, sir,” Melody replied. “Shall I give them a very polite brush-off or make an appointment for them?”
Robert sighed deeply. “What time is it, anyway?”
“You’re in early again, sir. It’s just three minutes after eight.”
“Very well. Tell them – do you know where they are staying?”
“Dr. Smith booked them into the Omni Royal.”
Robert’s eyebrows rose and his eyes cleared. These were the people he’d asked Perry to send.
He couldn’t let Melody know that, though. “Let’s see, they’re close to the French Quarter, so how about Jimmy J’s? It should not be too Cajun for them.”
She smiled softly. “I’ll tell them, sir. What time will you meet them?”
“Let’s say – hmm. Eight-forty-five. That is a good compromise, I think, for all of us.”
“I’ll relay the message, sir. Will you need backup? Or a sudden emergency back at the office to tear you reluctantly away from your newest best friends?”
Robert smiled despite his exhaustion. “No, I think not. I am sure I will be fine. Thank you for the offer, however.”
“Yes, sir. And – don’t hesitate to call me if you need me.” She started to close the door, then paused. “For anything.”
The door clicked shut and Robert smiled to himself. If only Melody Brennan were ten years older. Or if he were ten years younger.
Or – maybe their age difference didn’t really make any difference. He’d have to review the department regulations on officers dating other officers, especially those within the same precinct.
His eyebrows drew down again and he frowned at himself. That would have to wait until after the current mess was over and done with. He couldn’t risk being distracted by a possible romance right now, or even a misunderstanding about romance. Something like that would hamstring him when he most needed to be free to act, both from within the law and without it.
*****
Usually, the band members spoke to each other in a kind of pidgin shorthand that mixed English, Cajun French, and a kind of mixed patois descended from several African languages and Caribbean tribal tongues. It added to their performances by shortening their necessary interchanges and amused the customers, and amused customers tipped better, especially when they were slightly inebriated.
Tonight, however, they were not performing.
The ritual was mainly for their own peace of mind and they all knew it. The half-sung, half-chanted words of the 145th Psalm floated out of all of their mouths, each one trading harmony for melody effortlessly and almost unconsciously, until it rose to the final verses and resonated against the walls and rafters of the old chapel.
The LORD guards all those who love Him, but He destroys all the wicked.
My mouth will declare Yahweh’s praise; let every living thing praise His holy name forever and ever.
The bass player was the first one to take off his instrument. “That was good, Jolene, that was very good. I think we are as ready as we can be.”
The slight keyboardist nodded. “I agree, Dorian. I only wish we had been more ready that night at the café. We might have prevented some of this.”
“We could not have stopped it,” said the guitarist. “All we may do now is pray that the intentions of the evil ones rebound upon them and harm them instead of their intended victims.”
Jolene shook her head. “We can do more than that, William. We can stand in the gap between evil and good. We can encourage the warriors for righteousness and actively oppose those who battle for their unrighteous master. And we can say more than whispered warnings to men whose loved ones fall into danger before our very eyes.”
The drummer grunted. “Can’t fight a werewolf. Human or lupine, any one of them would take all of us without breaking a sweat.”
Dorian turned and faced his bandmate. “This is not a physical fight, Bruce. This is a battle on a higher plane, one where the weapons of war are not physical but spiritual. You’re right, we can’t fight them, but we can support those who do.” He put his hand on his hips and slowly turned to look at the other two in turn. “I was a paramedic in Iraq during Desert Storm. I lost some patients, but I never refused to go after anyone, no matter how hot the firefight was. And I’m not changing now.”
William lifted his hand. “Peace, Dorian, please. I agree with you wholeheartedly. All I meant was that we are not physical warriors. Bruce is right, we can’t put up our fists to fight the bad guys this time, but we can do lots of other things.”
Jolene nodded. “And one of the things we need to do, gentlemen, is help that tall young man who thwarted our Aryan friends the other night. He is much more than he appears, and before this is over he will need our help.”
Bruce stood and put out his right hand, palm down. “I’m down with that, y’all. How about it? All for one and one for all?”
William, Dorian, and Jolene put their hands atop his. William nodded. “This is the most dangerous thing we’ve done together as a group, people. We may not all come through this.” He turned as if seeking some sign of hesitation in the eyes of the others, but seemed to see nothing but determination. “Very well. Together.”
“Together,” they intoned.
“Ready?” asked Dorian. “One-two-three—Disciples!”
Their hands lifted together as if they were about to run onto a football field and win one for the Gipper. But each one knew that their unity originated in a loyalty for someone who was far more than a mere human.
They were Disciples of the King of Kings. And they were totally committed to their mission.
