Kitty Goes to War

Chapter 6

THE NEXT morning I called Dr. Shumacher to set up an appointment to talk to her patients. That afternoon, I returned to the hospital at Fort Carson.

Shumacher, clipboard in hand, led me to the elevator, and we descended to a basement level, all concrete and fluorescent lights. Flemming’s basement office and laboratory at the NIH in Washington, D.C. had looked a little like this, tucked away and secretive, promising dark secrets I’d rather not discover. The hospital smell, antiseptic and haunted, was pervasive and inspired anxiety. Intellectually, I could rationalize that hospitals were good places where people got better. But on a gut level, hospitals meant people were hurt. I braced for horrors.

Several doors along the hallway were open, showing infirmaries, hospital beds, storage closets, laboratories. It was a little comforting; this was all normal, nothing to be frightened of here. Then we came to the closed door at the end of the hall. Shumacher put her hand on the knob and gave me a grim look. Maybe a look of warning. Or a look of despair—she was at the end of her options.

She opened the door, and I followed her inside.

The room was large, all off-white walls and tile, sterile government issue. The lights in the ceiling were dimmed. A few chairs were placed facing a Plexiglas wall that divided the room. The back of the space, maybe fifteen by twenty feet, was a specialized prison. I recognized the Flemming-designed werewolf holding cell: silver shavings embedded in the paint on the walls, giving them a dull patina. A silver-lined door was cut into the Plexiglas, along with a silver-lined slot to shove food through. Theoretically, a werewolf was strong enough to break down the walls, given time and patience. But most werewolves would stay as far away from the silver boundary as possible.

The three men in the cell had, in fact, positioned themselves away from the walls. They’d been given clothes, fortunately. I was afraid they hadn’t been, that their keepers had entirely given up on thinking of them as human. More encouragingly, the men were bothering to wear the clothes. On the other hand, they had beards started, and their military crew cuts had turned shaggy.

I recognized Joseph Tyler, who sat on the floor, hunched over, his back to the door, apparently asleep. Or maybe just indifferent. He wore fatigue pants and a T-shirt, like when I’d seen him before.

In the middle of the cell, a smaller white guy lay on his side, curled up, definitely asleep. I recognized Sergeant Ethan Walters from his picture. I was used to seeing werewolves wake up after shifting looking just like that, in a shape that recalled a sleeping wolf, fetal, limbs tucked in. But he was wearing pants. So maybe he just slept like that all the time. I’d pegged him as the weakest of the three, at least as far as the pecking order went. It may have been that he was just the most vulnerable, the farthest gone, the one needing the most help. I tried to be sympathetic, even though he’d been the one to attack Becky. I still wanted to beat him up for that.

The third soldier paced the window in front of me, back and forth. He kept his gaze outward, to the door, even as he changed direction. Back and forth, about five steps one way and five steps the other. The neurotic habit of a caged predator. He’d worn a clean streak on the tile floor with his pacing. I’d never seen him in this form, but I knew him by his movements, by the rage in his eyes, a focused burning. I could feel the force of it almost as soon as I entered the room. This was the alpha male, the huge shadow wolf. Sergeant Luke Vanderman. He was in his late twenties, over six feet tall and more than solid. Forged and tempered. He went shirtless, showing off a sculpted chest, shadowed with brown hair.

He was more than a little impressive. I didn’t know whether to tremble in fear or in awe. Now there’s an alpha . . . Down, girl.

When Dr. Shumacher moved aside and I came into sight, Vanderman lunged forward. He all but pressed himself to the glass, his teeth bared. His right hand slapped against the partition, his fingers bent into claws.

If I had flinched, if I had stepped back, it would have been all over. I’d never have been able to talk to him. But somehow I held my ground. My heart was racing, and Vanderman would be able to hear it, be able to smell the anxiety in the sweat breaking out on me, the ventilation system drawing my scent into his cell. But I didn’t look away, I didn’t slouch, didn’t cringe. My tail, only imaginary at the moment, stayed up.

I just kept thinking that I had faced worse than this. And there was that wall between us.

When he hit the window, Tyler looked. Walters sat up, his gaze wary. Tyler turned to face me and his eyes widened. I gave him a thin smile. He seemed shocked to see me.

“I know you,” the alpha sergeant said. His voice was low, threatening, as if he was talking through clenched teeth.

“Yeah. We met.” I tried to stick to my soothing talk-radio-host voice. My NPR voice. “It’s nice to finally talk to you.”

“What do you want?”

“To help,” I said, but it sounded kind of vague and lame. Help how?

“Maybe she’s a bribe,” said Walters. He crouched now, balanced on his fingertips, ready to spring. He watched me, his lips parted, and I’d have sworn he was drooling. “We get some ass, calm us down—”

“Grow up, Walters,” Tyler said.

“Is that why you’re here?” Vanderman said. Growled. He looked like he was going to burst out of his skin any minute.

“Nobody is touching my ass,” I said.

“Sounds like a dare,” he said, lips parting in a hungry smile. He leaned right up to the wall, his breath fogging the glass.

“I’m just here to talk. Werewolf to werewolf.”

“Bitch.”

“Yeah,” I said.

He snarled and returned to pacing. Back and forth, glaring at me the whole time.

“Sergeant, we can’t release you until we’re sure you’re not going to be a threat to yourself and others,” Shumacher said, entirely scientific and rational.

Vanderman slammed against the Plexiglas, pounding it with hands bent like claws, as if he could scratch his way through and get to her.

Startled, she stepped back, fear rattling through her. Vanderman was the boss here and everyone knew it. He’d kill Shumacher if the wall wasn’t there.

Calmly, I stepped between Shumacher and Vanderman, blocking his view of her. Protecting her, showing that he’d have to go through me to get her. He was a bully, and I’d dealt with bullies before.

“Could you leave us alone for a few minutes?” I said over my shoulder to Shumacher.

“Are you sure?” She clung to her clipboard like it was a shield.

“I’ll be fine, and I’m sure you have a million closed-circuit cameras in here, so you’re not going to miss anything, right?”

“Call if you need anything,” she said. She pressed her lips in a frown and left, heels clicking on tile.

The door closed behind her, and the air went out of the room, as if we were now vacuum sealed.

For a second I panicked. What the hell did I say to these guys? What could I possibly say that they’d take seriously? But they weren’t just badass Green Berets who’d been through a hell I couldn’t imagine. They were baby wolves without their alpha. They’d been floundering since Gordon was killed.

Tyler faced me now. “Captain Gordon didn’t tell us there were any female werewolves.”

Vanderman pointed at him. “Don’t talk to her.”

“I imagine Gordon didn’t tell you a lot of things,” I said. They were just babies. I’d talked down baby wolves before. That was how I’d have to approach them. “Sergeant Vanderman, what do you want?”

“I want to rip out your throat after I fuck you hard,” he said.

“Okay, that’s helpful,” I said, sarcastic. “Now I want to hear from your human side. Ignore your wolf for a minute and tell me what you really want.”

“Maybe that is my human side,” he said, baring teeth. And yeah, maybe he was right. He wouldn’t be the world’s first misogynistic homicidal bastard. I couldn’t forget, he’d already killed three of his own teammates.

I smiled. “Then I get to tell Colonel Stafford to pull the trigger on you guys.”

They cringed. All of them. Even Vanderman, and I thought I knew why—at some level, their human sides were still observing the army chain of command. Stafford had power over them and they knew it.

“Let’s back up a minute,” I said. “You guys are in serious trouble. Unless you start pulling yourselves together, you’re going to be locked up for a very long time. Shumacher and Stafford are the ones who get to decide whether you’re safe enough to be let out of here. I may be the only one who thinks there’s a chance you might ever be safe enough to go free. You need to start talking to me.”

For a long time, none of them spoke. I kept my gaze on Vanderman—the dangerous one—but could see the others in the corners of my vision. They watched Vanderman as well—looking for cues, waiting to see what he would do before they reacted. Maybe I should have talked to them separately.

“What is there to talk about?” Vanderman said finally. And off to the side, Tyler relaxed. He wanted Vanderman to talk.

“Yarrow. Crane. Estevan,” I said. “What happened?”

Vanderman grimaced. “They wouldn’t listen to me. They put us all in danger.”

“You lost control,” I said.

“I’m the alpha, they had to listen—”

“The alpha is supposed to keep his pack safe,” I said.

“I’m trying,” he said, voice low, snarling.

And I believed him. He really did think he was leading, being the alpha, by smacking down the lesser wolves who dared to challenge him. He was doing what his wolf told him to, and his wolf was angry and afraid.

“I know.”

“I didn’t want to hurt them,” he said.

“You’re going to keep hurting people until you can learn to control your wolf. Before you can take care of anyone else, you have to get yourself under control. So let’s talk about you for a minute. What do you want? What do you want to do next?”

“I want to go back. Finish the job.”

“Back—to Afghanistan?” The answer baffled me. Why would anyone want to go back there? But Vanderman nodded, and I saw the determination in him. It was the first time he hadn’t looked murderous. He was focused on his job. “Then you have to get this thing under control. You know that, don’t you?”

“Who are you to tell me that? What do you know about it, you bitch, you fucking bitch—” He threw himself against the glass. I would have flinched if I hadn’t seen it coming, in his bared teeth and bloodshot eyes. He really did seem more animal than human. He must have known he couldn’t hurt me, but he kept driving at me, trying to scare me.

And okay, I was scared. For him as much as of him. But I was the one in control here, which made me the alpha, which was a little gratifying. He hadn’t figured that out yet. He thought beating people up made him the alpha.

I turned away, showing him that he wasn’t worth my time, and studied Tyler and Walters.

“What about you guys?” I said to the other two. “What do you want?”

Vanderman moved in between them and me. “We’re a pack. We have to stick together.”

“That doesn’t mean anything here,” I said. “You’re human beings with free will. I want to hear them talk.”

Walters looked back and forth between Vanderman and me, shivering almost, trying to decide whom he was more terrified of. I wanted to yell at him to straighten up, to grow a spine, to stop cowering. But he was scared. Screaming at him wouldn’t change that.

“I want to go home,” Tyler said, frowning, sad. “I want to be normal.”

“Sergeant, what the fuck are you doing?” Vanderman said around gritted teeth.

“Van, we can’t keep going like this,” Tyler said. “They’re going to keep us locked up here forever if we don’t figure something out.”

“Shut up!”

“This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Gordon wouldn’t even recognize us with how messed up we are.”

“Shut the fuck up!”

“Van—”

Vanderman sprang, bowling into Tyler, driving him across the room and shoving him against the far wall. Tyler clawed at him, digging his hands into the skin of the man’s back looking for purchase. Twisting his body, he wrenched out of the sergeant’s grip. They fought, grappling at each other, locking arms around shoulders and trying to get the other to show belly. I was glad to be on this side of the glass.

I hoped Shumacher was taking notes, because from a behavior standpoint, this was fascinating. When Tyler answered my question, he essentially transferred authority to me—he decided he was going to listen to and obey me rather than Vanderman. And boy, did that piss Vanderman off. But it felt like progress. Sort of.

“Stop it!” I said. Of course they didn’t listen. So maybe I didn’t have all that much authority. “Vanderman, Tyler! Back off! Back down!” This was how the other men had died. Any minute now, they’d shift and start tearing each other to bits.

A keening, high-pitched electric siren blared through the room, rattling the concrete walls, vibrating up through my feet. I doubled over, hands to my ears to block the noise. Not that it worked, because the noise streaked along the inside of my skull and made my nerve endings shrivel up.

In a couple of seconds, it was over. Though it had seemed to drag on and linger in the way my teeth suddenly felt like Jell-O, it had probably only been a short blast. And it had been effective. When I looked in the cell, Tyler and Vanderman had separated, and were slowly unfolding themselves from protective crouches, hands over their ears, much as I was.

Huh. Dog whistle. Werewolf siren. Whatever.

The room’s door opened behind me and Shumacher entered.

“That totally sucked ass,” I said. My voice was kind of shaky. I tried to glare aggressively, not sure if I pulled it off.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think there was a choice.”

“What was that?” I demanded, trying to regain my composure—steadying my breathing and putting my heart back into my chest.

“It’s the fastest way to get their attention,” she said, nodding into the cage where the wolves had, in fact, calmed down. At least they weren’t fighting anymore. Vanderman started pacing again, a half dozen steps back and forth along the glass. Walters retreated to a corner where he sat, hunched in on himself, and Tyler settled into a crouch and glared out at us.

We were right back where we started.

“Kitty?” Shumacher said softly, indicating that I should come back outside with her.

In silence, we went back to the conference room from my first visit. Colonel Stafford had arrived in the meantime, and I was betting he’d witnessed the whole exchange between me and the others via video monitor. So much for convincing them I could be successful.

“That’s what we’re dealing with,” Stafford said. “Any bright ideas?”

Frowning, I sat next to Shumacher. What could I say? “Vanderman’s setting the tone. A really negative tone. You might try separating them, dealing with them one-on-one to get away from the pack mentality.”

“Or I could just court-martial them all on murder charges,” Stafford said.

That probably seemed logical to him. But it hardly seemed fair, at least not for Tyler and Walters.

“They’ll plead insanity because of the lycanthropy,” Shumacher said, as though they’d had this conversation before.

“They’d still be locked up. That may be as good as they’re going to get.”

In Vanderman’s case, it was maybe even the right thing to do. I remembered the look in his eyes, his single-mindedness. He was a fighter and he couldn’t shut it off.

“But the others?” I said. “Is there any evidence that they directly participated in the murders? Tyler and Walters may not have had anything to do with it. The pack dynamics mean they’re submissive to Vanderman, deferring to him.”

“Evidence says it was all Vanderman. I’m willing to consider that the others were coerced. But as much as I’d love to put Tyler and Walters back in the field, if you can’t help them, they’ll have to stay where they are.”

“There has to be a way,” I said, but of course it wasn’t that easy. “They’ve never seen functional werewolves living in society. They’re like those wild children living on their own in the woods—”

“Raised by wolves?” Shumacher said wryly.

Except wolves were more civilized than they were. “If we could show them, give them an example to follow . . .” They needed to be taught. I wondered if it was as simple as that. If they could be taught, if they would just listen . . .

Shumacher leaned forward. “Could you arrange that? If we moved them to Denver? Exposed them to your pack, acclimated them.”

I wanted a moment to consider the implications. I didn’t particularly want to bring my people into this any more than I already had. They weren’t therapists or guinea pigs. But then neither was I.

“Kitty?” Shumacher prompted.

“Tyler and Walters, maybe,” I said finally. “Tyler is listening to me, and Walters is submissive. He’ll follow my lead if we get him away from Vanderman.” Vanderman was the killer. He was the one we had to worry about. If we got the others away from him, maybe we could influence them.

“Colonel?” Shumacher asked.

He thought a moment, tapping fingers on the table-top. The easy thing to do would be for him to throw away the key. But maybe he would take a chance.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s try it.”

Shumacher sighed, relieved. “Then it’s settled. I’ll find facilities for them and we can get started as soon as we can.”

“And Vanderman?” I said.

“I think Vanderman’s finished,” Stafford said.

So they were giving up on him. And I couldn’t honestly say I was sorry to hear it.