* * *
Get up! Get up and fight!
Despite the screams of desperation and the muzzle of the big American revolver pressed against his head, Nikolai was strangely calm. The Tvar was helpless. The voice was fainter, and he knew it would stay that way until the moon pushed it to the top. In the meantime, Nikolai was in control. It had no choice but to obey. It would fight, but now it was nothing more than a petulant child.
He’s not even a werewolf anymore. Harbinger is a pathetic human! He’s food. Food can’t lead.
Stalin had only been human, too.
Silence.
The Tvar had no response to that. Nikolai smiled inside. After being captured by the NKVD Hunters, he’d declared his loyalty to the Soviet Union. It was strong. It had beat them, and therefore it had become his Alpha, and the Motherland, his pack. Instinct had been satisfied, and Nikolai had functioned well that way for a long time. Nikolai craved order. Despite its protests, the Tvar needed structure. Having someone else make the decisions for them gave them both purpose. It was only when they were on their own that they struggled to see who was in charge.
We always made a very good soldier. Nikolai was not sure which of them had thought that.
Harbinger was a man of convictions. There was no doubt that if Nikolai failed this test he would die. Death was a frightening prospect, as werewolves desired survival above all, but Nikolai was a man of his word, and he knew that Harbinger, despite his ruthlessness, was not without mercy. He’d thought of that as weakness before, but now he needed that mercy. They would prove themselves, then he would avenge Lila, and the Tvar’s fury would be quenched in the blood of Harbinger’s enemies.
“First question, did you kill Van Huong?”
Nikolai did not know that name. “Who?”
“Wrong answer,” Harbinger stated. “Pull the trigger.”
When not fighting for control, his human mind was extremely analytical under stress. One in six. A seventeen percent chance. It was a reasonable sacrifice to make for peace.
CLICK
The hammer fell on an empty chamber. He slowly exhaled. His finger creeped forward, and the trigger reset.
“Van was my translator. Disappeared during your attack, was listed as MIA. Ringing any bells?”
Nikolai remembered now. They’d put together an extensive dossier on all of Special Task Force Unicorn, supernatural and normal, before the assault. “Yes. I did. I killed him myself.”
Harbinger’s eyes hardened behind the iron sights of the old Thompson. “He was a good kid.”
“If it is any consolation, I snuck up on him and snapped his neck. It was quick. He never felt a thing.”
“Neither will you. Wrong answer. Pull the trigger.”
“But that wasn’t even a question—”
“Pull the trigger!” Harbinger bellowed.
Two of six. Thirty-three percent. Or to look at it another way, one of five remaining chambers was loaded. Twenty percent. Nikolai held his breath.
“Pull the trigger,” Harbinger ordered. “Or I will.”
He could hear the cylinder rotate. CLICK.
Harbinger sounded grudgingly impressed. “Who betrayed us? How did you find the task force?”
It wasn’t like it was a state secret any longer. “We brought in a Kazakh orc tracker. All orcs have a specialty, and nothing could elude this one. It took him some time to acclimatize to the terrain, but once he did, he led us right to you. ”
“Orcs sure can be talented. I inherited a bunch of Uzbeks. Good folks.”
“You still gave us quite the chase.”
“That we did.” Harbinger’s lips turned up slightly, in a semblance of a smile. “It was a hell of a fight.”
“Admit it, you enjoyed the challenge.”
“A bit.” Harbinger chuckled, then he grew deadly serious. “Oh, and by the way…wrong answer.”
Third of six. Fifty percent. Even odds of death; flip a coin. Or one live round in the remaining four chambers. Only a twenty-five percent chance.
That is not helping.
Nikolai’s voice cracked a bit. It made him ashamed. “I am beginning to believe there are no right answers in this test of yours.”
Harbinger shrugged. “Maybe.”
Enough of this. This is madness. Turn it on him! Kill Harbinger! Kill them all—
CLICK.
He was shaking badly. His mouth was dry. His stomach ached with nervous acid. Going back was not an option. Only Harbinger or the other Alpha could defeat them, and the other Alpha had murdered Lila. Masterless, he was nothing but an animal. Death was preferable to failure. Nikolai forced himself to speak. “Next?”
The nub of Harbinger’s cigarette dangled from his lip, forgotten. “Impressive. I want you to know that. You may be an evil man, Nikolai, but you’re an impressive man. I’ve got one last question.”
Four of six. Sixty-seven percent chance that this question would bring a silver bullet. Or one in three remaining possibilities. Thirty-three percent.
“What do you regret?”
It seemed an odd question, but not to someone like Harbinger. He was, above all, a creature of moral absolutes. He pondered on the answer. Nikolai Petrov had taken so many innocent lives over the decades that numbering them seemed like an impossibility. He’d committed atrocities, followed madmen, murdered, burned, tortured, destroyed, and wrecked his way across half the world. He’d fed the gulags, hammering down the nails that stuck out. He’d killed the dissidents, ripping them from their homes and leaving the half-eaten corpses in the streets as a warning to the others. A cog in the greatest death machine ever, he had lived a life free of mercy, compassion, or accountability. And most of that had been done with the full complicity of his human mind. He couldn’t even blame it on the curse.
You named me Tvar, the word for feral beast, but which of us is the real animal?
There was only one true answer. “I regret only one thing.…I regret meeting Lila. She showed me a world that I never belonged in. I tried, oh, how I tried for her. I am a corrupter, but I was loved by an innocent. How many like her did I hurt throughout the years? I do not know, but one, just one good person forgave me. Only…” Nikolai’s voice fell to a whisper. “Only, by becoming part of her life, I condemned her to death. It would have been better if she’d never known I existed, or perhaps it would have been better if I had never existed at all.…”
Nikolai did not wait for Harbinger’s judgment. He pulled the trigger.