Snow: The White Crow (2 page)

She quickly glanced down at my credentials then hissed as she holstered her gun. “A god damn Wolf Hunter?  What the hell are you doing here?  This is a kidnapping, you could have gotten the boy killed.”

I had brought Jamie around and hoisted him to my hip as I explained, “Recovery specialist.”

She whistled. “You're one of the crazy ones?”  Then she squinted at the silver knife hilt sticking out of the sheath on my leg, then my unburned hand.  Her nostrils flared and she drew air in through her nose and over her tongue, tasting the air in a very wolf-like manner.  “And a Clean Blood?”  Her eyebrows arched in surprise.  But then she answered her own question. “Well obviously, an infected Hunter would be worthless since they would change on the full moon too.”  She inhaled again, her nostrils flaring and she squinted in confusion.  I think she was smelling the part of me that was something other than human.

I shrugged as she pulled her goggles up on her helmet and I blinked.  She had white eyes.  Her irises were such a pale blue that they were hard to distinguish from the whites of her eyes in the moonlight.  I have never seen anything like them.  She seemed to slump slightly in resignation then said, “Specialist Rachel Paige.”  Then she repeated, “So you going to tell me how you did that?”

I swallowed, I hated revealing my affinity for magic to anyone.  With the werewolves terrorizing the world for centuries, most of us magic users and supernatural beings liked to hide in the shadows.  Whenever humans found out about us, they usually hunted us down like the wolves, because obviously anything different has to be evil right?  And they hunted down or dissected them.  I choked on the venom of that thought.

I played it off by saying, “I don't know what you are talking about.”

She exhaled as she reached up for her coms.  “I'm not an idiot, I know what I saw.  That ivy grew up to the window as you climbed it.  And that bed of moss you landed on wasn't there when you went up.”  Then she said into her mic, “Bravo three.  Package is secure.  Returning to rendezvous point Victor Two.”

She motioned her hand toward the east and we started walking.  I looked at her. “Trick of the moonlight.”

She arched her head back and let loose an amused smoky laugh.  Then she grinned at me. “Whatever you say golden eyes.”

Oh shit.  I concentrated and let my magics go back to sleep.  I could feel it drain from my eyes.  I shrugged like I didn't know what she was talking about and she snorted when I grinned at her. “Trick of the moonlight.”

She said, “I like you, Snow.  Don't worry, your secret is safe with me.  I'm just glad you got the boy out before Sargent Frieze did that stupid Rosenberg assault and got the kid killed.”  This surprised me and I looked back over at her, but she had her eyes firmly on the faint deer trail we were following that was dimly illuminated by the moon.

When we finally made it to the SWAT base camp, a medic started checking Jamie over.  A Sargent  Frieze joined us, and they started debriefing me.  They took my silenced M4 for ballistics, to match it up with the bullet that killed the fourth kidnapper.

After making my statement and going over the sequence of events three or four times, Frieze said gruffly, “Be where we can contact you for the next few days in case we have more questions. Damn civilian, sticking your nose in where it don't belong.  What did the Killians pay you for this?  You could have got the boy killed for a payout.”

Then he growled... a wolf growl.  I was in his face instantly, I had no patience for fools.  I borrowed the voice of a nearby grey wolf who was awakened from her den by the gunfire earlier, and growled fiercely back at him.  Then I snapped, “He's just five years old!  I didn't take a single penny for the job!  Your God damned John Wayne maneuver down there was the only threat to the boy's life!  Didn't you read the intelligence on this group?  They leave more dead or cursed behind them than any other group of kidnappers this side of the Rockies... just for spite.”

He didn't back off, I could smell his breath on my face, and knew he was overly fond of peppered beef jerky.  I continued, “If I were you I'd worry less about the person who rescued the boy and worry about cleaning my own house. Or didn't you notice they knew you were coming?  You have a mole problem.  They have an informant in the department.”  I added another growl from the wolf who was now watching the camp from a good distance away.

He blinked and backed off a half step.  I caught Paige lifting her eyebrows.  Frieze looked rattled. “Where did you hear this?”

I shook my head as I cooled down and stepped back to let him keep a little dignity after being backed down by a woman half his size.  I replied, “That isn't important.  You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”

He got a predatory grin on his face.  “Try me.”

I shrugged and said in an even tone, “A grey squirrel told me.”

He shook his head and muttered a “Smart ass,” as he turned to stalk away with the smooth movements of someone who has been a wolf for a very long time.  In my observation the longer a person is infected by the lupus contagion, the more their wolf aspect comes through in their human lives.  By his moves, he is one of the older ones, maybe eighty years or so with the curse, locked in his current form.

He called out as he went, “Keep yourself accessible until we sort this clusterfuck out.”

I glanced over at Specialist Paige, she had Jamie on her hip.  She was grinning like a loon as she rasped out, “Never thought I'd see someone back Frieze down.  He's an old wolf.”  She was thinking the same way as me.  Then she chuckled. “And it was a tiny slip of a woman in some inappropriate shoes for the forest.”

I looked down at my black Giuseppe Zanotti, nero suede thigh highs with their three-inch heels.  I grinned back at her. “What?  Can't a girl look good when she's kicking some ass?”  I shrugged. “Besides, they give me a little more height.  It is hard for someone five foot three to look intimidating.”  I didn't mention that nature takes care of me, and my footing is as sure in the forest as if I were walking across a floor.

She rolled her eyes, then she looked down at Jamie.  “Well, the medic has cleared Jamie.  Frieze has contacted the Killians and he has me tasked to transfer him to them at the gates of Seattle.  Come on, I'll give you a ride to your car?”

I smiled and said, “Actually no to both.  I was hired to rescue the boy and return him to Nancy Killian.  I did rescue him and you took him from me.  I'll take Jamie... and the offer of a ride.  I don't have a car and this will save me calling a cab to the convenience store two miles west of here.”

She looked genuinely amused.  “Well you know the first one isn't going to happen, but you are welcome to tag along.”

She was baiting me, I forced down a smile and rose to it, I was in a good mood, after all, Jamie was alive and not infected.  “My contract with the Congressional Subcommittee in charge of Lupine Defense says I have jurisdiction since the kidnappers were of the infected.”

I could hear the low subsonic rumbling of a growl from her and it was starting to scare Jamie as he started squirming on her hip.  “It wasn't a full moon, they weren't in wolf form.  You had no jurisdiction at all!”

I shook my head. “Special dispensation... Recovery Specialist, remember?”  I held a hand out and patted the air toward the ground in a calming gesture.  “Let's talk about it in the car.  You're scaring Jamie.”

She looked down quickly at the little boy who was crying now and trying to get out of her grip, his hands grasping toward me.  She blanched and handed him to me, he latched on and buried his face in my jacket.  I gave her an apologetic look as she looked at herself like she was something she despised.

She nodded absently and took off her helmet.  She had flame red hair that contrasted her unique pale eyes so much I had to double take.  It was pulled up into a tight, professional, ponytail.  That's when I realized her face was so thick with freckles that I had mistaken it for a tan earlier in the moonlight.

She motioned her head and I got in step beside her and said to her softly, “It's just the curse, don't worry about it.  I shouldn't have pushed.  I doubt Jamie had ever met an infected before this happened to him.  I shouldn't have prodded.”  She squinted at me at the admission I was trying to get a rise from her.  The I added, “It's just so much fun sometimes.”

She stepped up to a pickup with Issaquah Police Department markings.  She stared at me as she opened the driver's door, shook her head with a bemused smile, and then squinted her eyes. “You sure you're not wolf?  You sure act like it.”

I chuckled and opened the passenger door.  She dug around in the back of the club cab and came up with a booster seat and lashed it in the middle seat and I clipped him in.  Then we buckled up and started down the dirt road toward Issaquah and Seattle.

Within a couple minutes, Jamie was asleep, laying his head on my arm.  The poor little guy was exhausted after such a traumatic couple days.

Specialist Paige glanced over at me with a studious look, then asked, “You really pulling that jurisdiction shit on me?”

I nodded slowly.  “I'm afraid so.  When I get hired for a job, I follow through.  Call it professionalism, or ego, or both.  I told Jamie's mother I would bring him home safely to her.”

She squinted at the road, not turning to me and asked incredulously, “You made a promise like that when you knew the odds were slim?  That was a little reckless don't you think?”

I shrugged and looked down at the sleeping boy, then choked back some emotion. “He's only five.  I... I had to do something.  Promise anything.”

There was a long pregnant pause then she just nodded once as we turned onto a paved road heading toward Interstate 90.  Then she glanced at me then pulled air through her nostrils and over her tongue.  “I know you aren't wolf, but you aren't quite human, there's something odd with your scent.  I smell bird, and trees, and earth, just what are you, Snow?”  She could smell all of that, her wolf was closer to the surface than I thought.  Maybe she was a lot older than I had guessed, maybe even older than Frieze.

I shrugged. “Just a recovery specialist, sent to retrieve a scared child.”

She smirked but didn't look at me. “Fine, play it that way.”  Then she squinted. “If you have no car, how did you get to the chateau?”

I shrugged and smiled internally at her circuitous attempt to get more information about me.  Well, she was a cop, so I guess the need for information was ingrained into her.

I told her the truth. “I walked.  Well, jogged really.”

She blinked, and this time did glance at me.  “From Seattle?”

I nodded. “Yes, from Seattle just a few hours ago.”

She looked at me. “Dressed like that?  In those shoes?  Twenty-six miles?”

I nodded again. “Yes.”

She chuckled.  “Pull my other leg why don't ya?”  Then she assessed me again and then squinted.  “You look like a model from a leather fashion magazine.  That all looks custom fit.”  She paused. “It would have taken you the better part of a day in this terrain, more in those shoes.”

I shrugged and grinned at her. “Like I asked before, can't a girl look good when she's kicking some ass?  And it only took a little over two hours for me to get into position.”

She appraised me again, more intently than the other times.  “You're serious aren't you?”

I sighed and said, “Yes.”

Then she surprised me. “Okay, bird girl.  I get it, a girl has to have her secrets.”  She was silent as we got onto the on-ramp, heading west.

The silence was pressing down on me like a weight, I knew she was doing it on purpose.  I broke first and as soon as I started talking, the corner of her mouth quivered as she restrained a triumphant smile, damn wolf games.  “You have some unusual eyes, they are striking.”

Her brow knitted slightly as if she were thinking about how to respond.  Then she grinned at me. “I'm an albino.”

I looked at her fire red hair and freckled face.  “Bullshit.”

Her grip loosened on the wheel a bit and she said in a voice full of reflection, “I lived in Seattle back when the wolves had somehow made it to the Americas in 1899.  We were arrogant back then, thinking that the wolf contagion was a problem for Europe, Asia, and Africa.  We never saw the need to fortify our cities, werewolves were the problem of other countries, not America right?”

She gripped the wheel tighter as she continued, “I was twenty-three, and unmarried.  That was almost akin to a spinster back then.  But no man would have me.  I suffered from Albinism, I was half blind because of my affliction.  The eligible men taunted me with names like the ghost of Seattle.”

Albinism?  But she had plenty of color.  Then the realization hit me and she continued, “In ought three...” She clarified, “...nineteen oh three, not two thousand three.  We were constructing the great walls of the city as the lupus curse was spreading like wildfire through the Americas.  I was a mason's assistant, hauling the silver ore stones.”

She took a breath.  “A pack had come over the Cascades and were terrorizing the area.  The city gates were not quite completed.  They got into the city and found me in the relief area where I was feeding the workers of the wall.  I was mauled.  I remember thinking that that is how I would die while I watched in horror as a wolf was eating my intestines.”

She didn't look at me as she whispered, “My mother stabbed the werewolf with a silver blade, trying to get it off of me.  It turned on her and tore her throat out with a dying effort.”

Then she took a deep breath.  “To my horror, I lived.  I watched my flesh start to re-stitch itself and realized my fate as the curse took hold and I started to change into a wolf.  I don't know how many I killed or infected that first full moon.”

She took her hands off the wheel for a moment to stare at her palms as if she could still see the blood.  Then she exhaled and gripped the wheel again as we passed through Issaquah.  “In the morning, I was not allowed back into the city.  I was one of the cursed, and I was terrified.  I wandered aimlessly and tied myself to a tree the following night.  It was the last night of the full moon and I wanted to keep the monster I would become from killing more.”

She was lost in the memory.  “It didn't work, I awoke naked and covered in blood the next morning near Issaquah.  Some nuns from the Issaquah Mission took me in as well as any other cursed they found.  They cared for us and locked us away in silvered cages during each full moon.”

Then she said, “The only good thing to come from becoming one of the damned was that the contagion cured me. My eyesight sharpened and my white hair grew out red, and I turned into a living freckle farm.  Color came to everything but my eyes.”

Then she shook it all away and all the emotion I could see warring around inside her at the ancient memory.  Then she grinned, showing her teeth, I could see the elongated canines of the very old wolves as she said, “So yeah, not bullshit.  I'm an albino.”

I nodded and smiled back. “Okay, okay, I stand corrected.”  Then I got serious.  “But really, I think they are lovely.”  Then I added because it seemed appropriate, “And, I'm sorry about your ordeal.”  I spend so much time in the forest and don't deal with people on a regular basis, I sometimes find it hard determining what is and isn't appropriate to say.

She just shook her head and said with practiced ease, “Ancient history.  Now I spend all my time atoning for the evils I committed those two nights.”  I blinked.  She was doing penance?  For something that was thrust upon her?  For something, she has no way of controlling?

It was getting warm in the truck, I knew she didn't need the heat, I figured she was trying to keep the boy warm.  I took off my reinforced leather jacket and placed it beside me as we passed through Mercer Island.  I looked at the sprawling refugee camp, all of the poor souls cursed to become killers three nights a month, who had no home outside the walled cities.

It has been almost two years since they were freed from the compulsion and only half of the thousands of men, women, and children have reintegrated into the cities outside the gates.  My heart ached the most for the children, they were innocents who should never have to bear a curse like that.