Prey

W
ILLIAM
W. J
OHNSTONE

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn.

—H.G. Wells

He was born in the Transylvanian Alps in Romania and christened Vlad Dumitru Radu. On the night of his birth, the wolves came out of the dark woods and circled the village, howling until no other sound could be heard. When the first wavering notes of the wolves' song reached the infant's ears, his birth crying ceased and the baby's eyes became bright and attentive.

Holding the child to her breast, Vlad's mother sensed that this baby was special, very different from other babies.

She would soon find out just how different he was.

It was December 25, A.D. 1300.

The house was built of native stone and sat in the middle of two hundred and fifty acres of land, mostly in timber. It was not a large house, but was suitable for the new owner's needs. A spring-fed creek flowed through the center of the property. The nearest town was several miles away. A new chain link fence encircled the house and several acres around it. A satellite dish brought in dozens of TV stations.

This was an area of the country where people would be as friendly as you wanted them to be ... and would leave you alone with no hard feelings if that was what you wished.

It did not take people long to learn that the new owner of the property, while not a bit unfriendly when encountered at the store or the gas station or the post office or the bank, wished to be left alone when he was home.

The sheriff of the county took note of the new resident and, out of curiosity, checked him out. Barry Cantrell had no criminal record. As a matter of fact, his past was very nearly blank. But he had passed the test for an Arkansas driver's license, and had new Arkansas plates on his pickup truck. He had opened a checking account at a local bank. Money was electronically deposited in his account every month, coming in from some attorney's office in San Francisco. The same attorney had handled the purchase of his home and acreage. His driver's license listed his age as thirty, height five-ten. The sheriff knew from observing Barry that he was very muscular, and moved with the grace of a dancer. He felt that Barry Cantrell would be damn hard to handle if angered.

The sheriff would occasionally go up into the high country with a lunch packet, a canteen of water, and binoculars. He had found a nice secluded place where he could watch Barry Cantrell. The very first thing Sheriff Don Salter noticed were the two dogs.

“Dogs, hell!” he muttered. “Those are
wolves.”

He was part right. Pete and Repeat were hybrids: a cross between husky and wolf. But more wolf than husky. Each weighed over a hundred pounds, and they were fiercely loyal to Barry. They had linked up with him when he was living out in the Idaho wilderness.
¹

The sheriff watched from his hiding place for several hours each day, but the only thing out of the ordinary was that one day instead of two hybrid wolves, there were three.

“Now where the hell did that one come from?” the sheriff whispered.

The new hybrid was much larger than the other two. And Sheriff Salter noticed something else, too: the new and bigger hybrid seemed to be the boss.

That was the only time he saw the third wolf. At least in that form.

Barry knew he was being watched. He had sensed that the very first day. Barry could see and hear and smell far beyond the capacity of a “normal” human being. He could sense danger before it could happen. He could smell fear in another human. His eyesight was far superior to any human's vision. For while Barry was certainly human, he was also several other things.

He was immortal. He could not die. He could not be killed. He could be hurt, but he healed rapidly. When he was fourteen years old, he discovered he could shape-shift at will, moving between human and animal form, although he did that only in moments of great danger and stress. Over the centuries, he had traveled the world. He had fought by the side of Joan of Arc, Napoleon, George Washington.

Barry Cantrell was the world's consummate and eternal warrior.

And he had been for seven centuries.

* * *

“He's in Arkansas.”

Robert Roche, one of the five richest men in all the world, swiveled in his chair and smiled, his back to the man who stood before his desk. “Going under what name?”

“Barry Cantrell.”

“I suspected he might do better than that,” Robert muttered. “From Darry to Barry. Not very original.”

A year past, in Idaho, when Robert Roche had sent a dozen mercenaries after him, Barry had been going under the name of Darry Ransom.

“Have you located the other one?”

“Yes. He's living in Ireland. Just outside of Cork. He is now using the name of John Ravenna.”

“Has he been approached by others, and what was his reply to their offer?”

“Yes, sir. He has been approached, and he is mulling over their offer.”

“Go to Ireland. Talk to this John Ravenna. Tell him whatever the others have offered him, I'll triple it if he'll come to work for me. I do not want Cliff Madison assassinated. Go!”

After the man had left, Robert Roche rose from his chair and paced the huge office. “Those idiots,” he muttered. “Don't they have sense enough to know that if I thought political assassination was the route to go, I'd have taken it years ago?”

* * *

Sheriff Salter had slipped into his hiding place and had been watching Barry for about fifteen minutes, when suddenly he lost him from view.

“Where the hell did he go?” the sheriff muttered. “He was right there and now he's gone.”

But the two big hybrid wolves were still on the porch, dozing, apparently unconcerned about their master's disappearance.

“I ought to be back in the office,” the sheriff said. “I have a thousand things to do before the Speaker gets here next month.”

The Speaker of the House of Representatives was coming to spend a week's vacation in North Arkansas, fishing, hiking, and river rafting along the Buffalo River.

Sheriff Salter lifted his binoculars and scanned the area below him. Barry Cantrell was not in sight.

The sheriff decided he was being just a little bit silly. After all, the man had done nothing. There certainly wasn't any law against minding one's own business and living a very quiet life.

Still . . . the guy was far too young to be retired. So how did he live? What had he done to earn this money he got every month? It wasn't a government pension. So . . . ?

Maybe he'd come here to join one of those damned survivalist groups that were all over the area. The sheriff shook his head. No, the survivalist groups were all right. He knew a lot of the men and women in those. But there were several very racist groups in the area, hard right-wing organizations that preached hate. And one neo-Nazi group.

Was this Barry Cantrell a part of those groups?

The sheriff almost stopped breathing when the voice spoke from behind him. “Something I can do for you?”

Sheriff Salter dropped his binoculars and knocked over his canteen getting to his feet. Barry Cantrell stood about two feet away, smiling at him.

“Jesus, man!” Salter blurted. “You move like a ghost.”

“So I've been told. Sorry I startled you.” Barry held out his hand. “Barry Cantrell.”

The sheriff took the greeting, noticing that the hand was hard and callused. “Don Salter. I'm the sheriff of this county.” God, he felt like a fool. He'd been caught on private property without a warrant.

“If you want to know all about me, Sheriff, why don't we go on down to the house and we'll have some iced tea and talk? I'll introduce you to my dogs. If you plan on coming out here often, it's best you get to know them.”

“Might be a good idea.”

“Come on.”

At the gate, Barry said, “Let me go in first, Sheriff.”

“I wouldn't have it any other way,” Don said drily.

Barry laughed and stepped into the fenced area.

Don noticed that Barry spoke no words to the huge hybrids. He just looked at them. After a moment, he waved for the sheriff to come on in. Being careful to close the gate behind him, Don let the animals sniff him.

“Pet them,” Barry said.

Don looked down at the two hybrids. Their teeth were about twice as long as those found on full-breed dogs. Don inwardly shuddered at the thought of how much damage they could do ... in a very short time.

“That's Pete, and that's Repeat,” Barry said, pointing out the dogs as he named them. “Come on in the house. Where is your car, by the way?”

Don pointed. “Other side of the ridge. On the south side of the county road.”

“I'll drive you over there after we talk. That's a good hike and the day is getting warm.”

Pete and Repeat slid under the high porch, and Don and Barry went into the house. The air conditioner was humming softly, cooling the air to a comfortable level. Barry waved the sheriff to a chair. “I'll get the tea. You take it plain or sugared?”

“Two sugars, please.”

Barry disappeared into the kitchen, and Don looked around. The living room/den was clean and neat and sparsely furnished. One chair, a recliner. A couch, a coffee table. An end table by the chair. A new television against the wall. Two prints on the wall: a seaside print and one of the mountains. No pictures on the mantel above the fireplace. Don sat down on the couch.

Barry returned with two large glasses of iced tea. He put one glass on the coffee table, the other on the end table by the chair. He sat down in the recliner and looked at Don.

The sheriff sipped his tea. Good. “I should apologize for spying on you, Mr. Cantrell.”

“Call me Barry. No apology necessary, Sheriff. I'm a stranger in your community. No visible means of support. I live alone, except for two hybrid wolves. Don't socialize. I don't blame you for checking me out. What did you find out?” That was asked with a slight smile.

“To be honest, nothing. You don't have a past, Barry.”

“Oh, everybody has a past, Sheriff. Mine just isn't very interesting, that's all. I'm a recluse. I like living alone. I really prefer the wilderness areas, but they're getting hard to find.”

Sheriff Don Salter hesitated. He'd been a cop all his adult life. Started out as a deputy, then chief deputy, then ran for the office and to his surprise was elected. He was just starting his second term. Not bad for a man in his late thirties. Don was on very shaky legal ground with Barry Cantrell, and he knew it. He had no warrant to be here, had not apprised the man of his rights, and knew that anything he might learn, more than likely, could not be used in a court of law.

“I came here from out west, Sheriff,” Barry said. “Idaho, to be precise. I was homesteading a piece of land in the wilderness area. You might recall there was a lot of trouble out there last year . . . ?”

Don nodded. “I sure remember seeing that on the TV and reading about it. You were there?”

“I was close enough to it to get real nervous. I could sure hear the gunfire, and there was a lot of it. I decided to move to a more peaceful area.”

“I don't blame you for that. That was a real mess. But some good did come out of it.”

“A lot of shake-ups in the FBI and ATF. And the IRS got its nose bloodied, too.”

Don smiled. Like a very large percentage of Americans, he had absolutely no use for the IRS and the dictatorial way in which they operated. He looked at Barry. He couldn't push this much further, not without stepping off into a very chancy area.

“We have several survivalist groups in this area, too, Barry.”

“They don't bother me. Most of them are Americans who just don't like the direction this nation is heading. And I sympathize with them. It's the hate groups that I try to avoid.”

“We have a couple of those in this area, too,” Don said softly.

“I didn't know that. But I am very sorry to hear it.”

Don believed him. He didn't know why, but he did. Something in Barry's tone, he guessed. “Jim Beal is the leader of the larger, but not necessarily the more dangerous, of the two groups around here. Victor Radford ramrods the second bunch. They re much smaller, but much more dangerous. They're neo-Nazi. I'm surprised you haven't been approached to join one or the other.”

“I don't get out much, Sheriff. Maybe they don't know I'm here.”

“Oh, they know, Barry. Believe that. Beal has at least one man in my department, but I don't know who it is. It's the same in many, if not most, departments all over the nation.” Don hesitated, picked up his glass of iced tea, and leaned back. He smiled. “You're a very easy man to talk with, Barry. Why am I telling you all this?”

Barry shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps you don't have anyone else to talk with, Sheriff.” He matched Don's smile. “I do know the feeling.”

* * *

President Richard “Dick” Hutton had weathered many a firestorm in his relatively short political career. He had been a lawyer, had run for state representative as a very young man, been elected, then after three terms, when he was just old enough to do so, had been elected to the United States Senate. Twelve years later, he was elected president, just squeaking by the sitting president.

He was starting the second year of his first term, and knew he was in big political trouble. To his mind, it all started with the opposition party gaining control of both houses, followed by scandals that he had not been involved in but took the blame for anyway. Then last year all that trouble out in Idaho with rogue federal agents running wild, killing innocent people. Then right on the heels of that, all that mess with IRS agents and the killings in Texas and New York. Then the Coyote Network started a news department and sank its teeth into the government and wouldn't let go. Now anytime the IRS froze a bank account or seized property, there they were, filming and interviewing people and in general making the entire government look like heartless bullies and bad guys.

His ratings were the lowest since he'd taken office. Some in his party were already talking about dumping him, and unless he did something to turn those ratings around, he was through. After the disastrous four years of his predecessor, his party was in trouble.