The Frenzy Way (44 page)

Then why is the hair on the back of my neck standing on end?
With his footsteps echoing, he enhanced the mental profile. Short, wavy dark hair and a hard mouth—smiling? He recalled the face he had seen in the surveillance footage of Patty’s murder, and he compared that to the man he had just glimpsed, his heart pounding faster. Emerging from beneath the overpass, he looked up at the concrete retaining wall but saw nothing. He continued to run until he had gone far enough to get a good view of the overpass. Slowing to a fast walk so as not to trip, he turned around again.

No one stood on the overpass.

What the hell?
Had the man been a figment of his imagination?

No.
His mind didn’t play tricks.
Then where is he?

The man could have been crawling behind the concrete barrier leading to Seventy-eighth Street …

Or running there on all fours.

An uneasy feeling gripped his stomach, and he glanced around in all directions. The only way to reach the overpass was to run to the steps a quarter of a mile away, then run down East End Avenue to Seventy-eighth Street. Instead he ran home, showered, and looked up flights online. After finding the flight he wanted, he emptied his wallet and searched through the business cards he had collected.

“This is crazy,” Cheryl said on the drive to JFK.

“I don’t blame you for thinking so,” Mace said as he raced the Impala along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. “But I’m sure I saw him. More to the point, I’m sure he saw me.” He had booked her a flight to Albany, where her parents lived.

“How could he have known that was you?”

“I’ve been on TV plenty, even though I haven’t given any interviews, and the papers sure included me in their coverage.”

“Okay, let’s say he knows who you are. How could he also have known where you’d be this morning?”

“Maybe he followed me from our place. He’s playing games. He wanted me to see him, to know that he knows where we live.”

“And you believe this man turned into the wolf that killed that Indian?”

He knew how crazy he sounded. “I don’t know what I believe, except that you and the baby could be in danger.”

“I’ve never seen you paranoid like this before.”

“Chalk it up to impending fatherhood.”

“Can’t you just order someone to keep an eye on us?”

“Our unknown subject has killed six cops so far, and no one in the department seems willing to believe what I witnessed, so they’re not likely to take me seriously on this, either.”

“Then why aren’t you coming with me?”

“Because I need to keep working this.”

Her voice rose. “Why, when you’re off the case?”

“Because I
am
the only one who believes what this thing is.”

“If there’s danger I don’t want you involved. Don’t you understand that? You can’t run around like some rogue cop.”

“I’ll join you in a few days.”

Raindrops spattered the windshield, and he switched on the wipers.

As the 1:00
PM
tour boat departed from Pier 83 on West Forty-second Street, Mace gazed at the churning wake from its aft. A strong wind blasted the Hudson River, and he shivered. The rain that had fallen in Queens had not yet reached Manhattan but threatened a deluge at any moment. The two-hour semicircle cruise would take him downriver, around the Battery, up the East River, underneath the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges, and to the United Nations building and back. Seagulls slashed the sky before him, and helicopters flew overhead. He pitied the tourists.

Making his way to the second level, he saw a woman standing at the railing with her back to him. Just over five feet tall, medium-length dark hair wrapped in a scarf, her long dark coat obscuring her figure. A family of Asians stood at the forward end. Otherwise, all the passengers occupied the boat’s interior. Joining the woman, he grasped the cold metal railing with his left hand.

Facing him, Angela Domini removed her sunglasses. Her eyes exhibited an age and weariness they had lacked before. She had cut her hair shorter, giving it a more conservative appearance.

“Disguise?”

Angela nodded. “I’m a wanted woman. Other than your killer and you, I have the most famous face in the city right now.”

“I’m sorry about that. We needed to find you.”

“I have to disappear now for my own safety and my family’s.”

“You think the werewolf’s after you?”

“I know he is. That’s how John was able to set that trap for him. But the police pose just as big a threat to me now.”

“Why? You’ve done nothing wrong. You’re just a person of interest.”

“I’m a witness, but I can’t say what I saw.”

“Why not? I did.”

“My people won’t allow it. They can’t. Proof of our existence would mean our extinction.”

An icy chill inched down Mace’s spine. “Your ‘people-’?”

“The Greater Pack of New York City.”

Mace narrowed his eyes at her.

“What you call werewolves.”

He blinked. “You don’t look like a werewolf to me.”

“What makes you think you know what a werewolf looks like? This is my human form, the body I was born into. But I have two other forms: that of a wolf and that of a hybrid. My people are shape-shifters. We’ve walked this land”—she nodded at Manhattan—“longer than yours have.”

“A secret society?”

“A secret species. Living in the shadows. The Indians worshipped us as gods, and we cohabitated this land, if not in harmony, then at least with balance. The White Invasion changed everything. Your kind practiced genocide on mine, and we were forced to take on human forms and hide our true selves. Over time, we lost the ability to adopt other shapes.”

Mace looked her up and down and shook his head. “I find this hard to believe.”

“Even after seeing what happened to John?”

“Especially
after that. You can’t be like that creature.”

“Like I said, I was born in this body. But my parents taught mybrothers and me to Change shape, as their parents taught them. Our pack is cosmopolitan, but we’ve tried to preserve aspects of our heritage without exposing ourselves. We own a retreat where we’re encouraged to get in touch with our true selves. Other packs have differing philosophies. Some forbid Transformation; others embrace it even more than we do. And then there are those who have lost their identity and who don’t even realize what they are.”

Like Gomez
, Mace thought. “How many packs are there?”

Angela forced a smile. “I won’t tell you that, and I won’t tell you how many members belong to mine. But I will say that we’re an endangered species, which is why it’s essential that we don’t take any unnecessary risks regarding this Berserker.”

“Is that what you call him?”

“It’s what we call any Wolf who turns rogue.”

“Who is he?”

“Before I tell you, let me tell you who he isn’t. He isn’t a member of my pack—or hasn’t been for some time. In fact, he isn’t a member of any pack. A rogue operates on his own, without any regard for the laws of our society.”

“A lone wolf …”

“Yes.”

“What rules?”

“We have many, but the most critical are these. ‘Do not kill man.’ ‘Do not reveal your true self to man.’ ‘Do not endanger yourself or your pack.’ This Berserker is deliberately breaking our laws and throwing his actions in our faces.”

The boat headed downriver.

“He left messages at the scene of most of his murders,” Mace said. “We managed to keep some of them from the public. He scrawled the messages in his victims’ blood: ‘skinwalkers,’ ‘nahual,’ ‘
ulfheonar
.’ ‘
Okmiohtoki.’
‘
Loup-garu.’
I thought the messages were meant for us.”

Angela shook her head. “They were for us, but he wanted you todiscover them. Those words have a derogatory meaning among our kind. To be a ‘skinwalker’ is to choose the flesh of Man over Wolf Form. To an extremist like this Berserker, a sign of weakness. He’s been taunting us, challenging us to prey on mankind. At the same time, he wants to expose our existence to your kind.”

“For what reason?”

“To provoke open warfare between our species.”

“Surely that would be suicidal …”

“He doesn’t care. He’s a terrorist willing to die for his cause. Fear and anarchy are his allies. Look how he’s turned this city upside down in just one week’s time.”

“Was Stalk a Wolf?”

“No. He saved my life once, and we became lovers.”

“Is that against the law?”

She nodded. “‘Do not reveal your true self to man.’ The pack wanted to kill him. My father persuaded them that breaking one law to protect another was morally shaky.”

“What about Peter Danior?”

“He was a member of our pack.”

Mace tried to hide his surprise. “I assume his wife is human.”

“She is. But Peter honored our laws. She didn’t know he was a Wolf.”

“I think she figured it out.”

“Peter underestimated her superstitious nature.”

Mace needed more. “Does the name Rodrigo Gomez mean anything to you?”

Angela held his gaze for a moment. “Your Full Moon Killer.”

Mace nodded.

“He’s one of my kind, but he never belonged to our pack. He’s one of those born in human form who grew up never knowing the truth about himself. The Full Moon Killer had us worried. We thought he might be a Wolf but didn’t know his identity. Gomez came into the shop once—that’s its purpose, to serve as a beacon of sorts. My fatherspoke to him. He sensed something off about Gomez. We were about to abduct him when you arrested him, and we learned our suspicions were correct. The trial was a tense period for us; we had no idea what would come out. It was a big relief that he knew nothing. You did us a favor.”

Some favor.
“Who’s the Berserker, Angela?”

“His name is Julian Fortier, though he calls himself Janus Farel.” Reaching into her pocket, she withdrew a piece of paper. “This is his address.”

Taking the paper, Mace read the address scrawled on it.

“I tracked him there myself. The married couple who owned that brownstone died in a terrorist attack almost twenty years ago. Their name was Fortier, and they left their estate to their eleven-year-old son. Julian was sent to live with his mother’s father in Colorado, with rent on the building supporting him. The Fortiers belonged to our pack.”

“And two decades later, Julian has returned to the henhouse?”

“The Berserker lives in the Fortiers’ old home. It has to be Julian. The name on the mailbox says Janus Farel. An alias, using his real initials.”

“And your people can’t stop him?”

“They don’t know where he is yet, and I won’t tell them. My brothers would risk great danger to the pack in order to kill him. I can’t allow that to happen. For similar reasons, I can’t help you do what must be done.”

Mace fixed her with an even stare. “What makes you think I’m going to do your dirty work?”

“You’ve seen the Berserker. You know he’s real. Even if you believe nothing else I’ve told you, you know he has to be stopped. It’s why you’ve been looking for me, why you went to the shop or my apartment when John was murdered, why you agreed to meet me here today.”

Mace glanced at the darkening sky. “I’ve been discredited in the police department. My bosses would rather believe I’m crazy than believe what I told them I saw. So I’m all on my own. I can’t just break into this building without a warrant and arrest a guy you say is a werewolf.”

“I never said anything about arresting him.”

He didn’t miss the meaning of her words. “I don’t even have a gun anymore. I can’t exactly go in blasting silver bullets.”

“You don’t need a gun,” Angela said. “You need the Blade of Salvation.”

“The magic sword? That’s a little hard for me to swallow. Besides, it’s broken.”

“The Berserker’s parents belonged to our pack, but he was raised by his grandfather. At some point, he must have moved to Europe and joined a cell of extremists there. He became a religious fanatic. The Blade can destroy him because he
believes
it can.”

Mace thought of the broken blade he had seen in Central Park. “What makes you so sure?”