Nikolai thought about it. “The liaison officer at Special Task Force Unicorn?” He seemed dubious. “Unlikely.”
“I don’t know who he’s worked for since the war, but he was some kind of spook. He’s the one that told me you’d be here. He roped me into this, and I trusted him like a sucker. I don’t know how he hid it, but he smelled human, and he appeared to have aged like normal.”
“We met…briefly, but that was long ago. Why would he have attacked my family?”
“He had a special hatred for you. His wife had nightmares about you until the day she died.”
“She would not be the first.” Nikolai scowled. “Who was this woman?”
“Your side would probably have known her as Sharon Mangum. Girl had a human father and a siren mother. She was with me on STFU. I found an old photo of Kirk and Sharon at the Alpha’s home. It was the only personal effect in the whole place.”
“Ah, yes. The Singer. She was right to be afraid. She was considered a very high-value target. Anyone that can so confuse a man’s mind is an extremely dangerous asset.” The Russian seemed unconvinced. “But there could be other reasons the photograph was there. Could it have been planted to throw you off?”
“Maybe, but it don’t feel that way. I don’t know. It’s the only thing that makes sense. I haven’t seen the Alpha yet, but I’ve spoken to him. He broadcasts his voice somehow, probably using magic. He sounded younger, but he talked like he knew all about me. I didn’t get too many details, since you interrupted and drove a snowplow through the wall and blew me up.”
“Yes, that was a good one,” Nikolai said smugly.
“He didn’t sound like Kirk, but he’s using magic, so who knows what else he’s altered. The Alpha said he’d lured us both here. Kirk lured me here. He despised you, knew enough about your history to manipulate you, and had the resources to find you. You got any other ideas?”
“If Conover is the Alpha, then when did he become a werewolf?”
Earl tossed his partially smoked cigarette into the red snow. “I don’t know, but when the Alpha was ripping the curse out of me, he called me father.”
“Ah, now I see.” Nikolai smirked. “So that is why you asked me if you’d spread the curse to anyone during our last battle. It seemed odd that you would not recall having given one of your comrades the curse.…” He trailed off, as if lost in thought.
Earl could tell Nikolai was holding something back. “What?”
“You really don’t remember? What’s wrong with you? I did not know werewolves could become senile.”
“Stick it, you vodka-swilling Commie asshole. A demon stole some of my memories a while ago, okay? All I remember is your bomb going off and then waking up on a medevac. I’ve got memories from before, and memories from after, but not those. Quit screwing around. What do you know?”
“Earlier, you asked me if you’d spread the curse to anyone, not if you’d bitten anyone on your side.”
Now it was Earl’s turn to be confused. “What’s the difference?”
“Only humans can be cursed. A divine, or even a half-divine, cannot turn into a werewolf. Only bitten humans can be transformed. Surely you knew that.”
“Of course…But…” The memories just weren’t there, but there was only one person on the task force that fit that description. “That’s impossible.”
“Now you see. In your injured confusion, you did bite someone that day, but it was not Conover. That event would have had dire repercussions, and surely you would have memories of the aftermath, of costing your leader his life. No, you don’t recall this, because for you there was no aftermath. Instead it was a minor injury against one to whom the curse meant nothing, who could heal rapidly, and had no fear of being turned. You bit the Singer.”
“You’re lying.”
“Tell me, did you associate with your teammates after the war? Did you keep in touch? Tell me, Harbinger, doesn’t Unicorn hold reunions?” Nikolai turned away and gave a cold laugh. “And to think that I’d doubted the reports all this time.”
“That’s enough!” Earl strode over, grabbed Nikolai by the collar and jerked him around, heedless of the fact that the Russian could kill him in the blink of an eye. “What do you know?” Earl snarled. “What happened?”
“You know nothing.” Nikolai met his gaze evenly. “I know now who we face. After the war, we kept tabs on the surviving members of all four of the American special task forces. I know more about the fates of your former teammates than you do.”
That was obviously true. Earl hadn’t even ever had a confirmation that there were any other teams active.
“Of the survivors, most, like you, went on to become PUFF exempt and lived normal lives, a few were still considered too dangerous and were liquidated, and one went on to become a rather legendary MCB asset. Nothing particularly interesting to my superiors, except that two of the survivors disappeared completely within a few years of your return. One special, one human. They married, had children, and held uninteresting government jobs under an alias. Then one day they just vanished into thin air. It was a precise operation. Their existence was totally scrubbed. But before that, we had watched from a distance—”
“Who are you talking about?” Earl asked, exasperated.
“You must not have received the wedding invitation. The Singer had a child eight months after our last battle. It was a healthy baby boy.”
Understanding came like a kick to the gut. Earl let go of Nikolai and turned away.
Nikolai continued without mercy. “A half-siren? The curse could never take hold in such blood. On a quarter-breed? Perhaps, perhaps not. We do not know. But what of a seed, barely taken hold in its mother’s womb, suddenly introduced to the curse through the mother’s blood? The mother would be fine, but the child…Oh, what an awful fate to inflict on a child.”
It was too horrific to comprehend. Normally, small children inflicted with the curse grew sick and died, but if the child was already supernaturally strong, then it was possible they could live through the change. “What have I done?” Earl whispered.
“Can you imagine? A being already blessed with monstrous gifts and a werewolf from birth? Such a creature would be a remarkable asset in the right hands. Surely, when such gifts began to manifest, that would be worth whisking a family off into top-secret obscurity, to be protected, to be…cultivated.”
“You don’t know this.”
Nikolai shook his head. “There is no confirmation. Only half-whispered legends. You are not naive enough to believe that your special task force was the last time your government would dabble in such things? Such a being could be very capable if he were to be raised and trained to control his gifts.”
A werewolf from birth, but instead of being tempered by a human side, he would have been a conglomeration of two monstrous halves. “Dear God. What have I done?”
“Now, what if this already remarkable being were to go astray, off the reservation as you would say, and found an ancient talisman that magnified his lycanthropic power tenfold?”
“He’d be unstoppable.” Earl looked at the carnage around them and felt nauseous for the first time. All of this had been caused by someone he’d created. Biting a pregnant woman…He’d cursed an unborn child and created a monster. “This is all my fault.”
“Yes,” Nikolai answered. “Now that I don’t need you, I was debating what to do when we are finished with this Alpha. But now? You should live. Knowing that you are responsible for such madness will wound you more than anything I could do. Your curse is gone, but it lives on through the damage caused by your line. No matter what you do, you are damned. You should have known there is no escape for men such as us.”
Nikolai didn’t understand. It wasn’t about escape. It was about penance. Sometimes the best thing a man could hope for was to set things right. Earl looked to the hills, dense forest stretching for miles, and he knew that somewhere out there, this Alpha, his bastard hybrid creation, was waiting.