The Passion (2 page)

A spray of blood glistened on the oak paneling of the foyer and darkened the pale blue Aubusson. It smel ed cold, dark and clotted. They moved through the arch into the hal way, where another, paler blood smear on white silk wal paper testified to a struggle. Sprays of blood on the ceiling. Bloody fingerprints on the glossy ivory woodwork around the doorway. The smel from the death chamber was dark and compel ing and lured them on.

Once, in the fine high days of the Rockefel ers and the Astors, the room had been a sunny parlor, with tal clerestory windows, ornately molded ceilings frescoed with pale clouds and cherubs, and two marble fireplaces. The ceilings were stil frescoed and the fireplaces stil marble, and the col ection of careful y chosen and tasteful y arranged antiques lent an air of subtle elegance and warmth that defied the decades. But these days the room was used as a reception area for the executive offices and laboratory facility of Research Concepts, a whol y owned subsidiary of the Devoncroix Corporation. Tonight it had been turned into a slaughterhouse.

Others had already arrived: trackers, analysts, the cleanup crew. They stood aside respectful y as the two high-ranking males entered, but the smel of their shock, outrage and simple astonishment intermingled with the violence and death-rot that fil ed the room until it was difficult to separate the savagery of the scene from the horror of its discovery.

A heavy bookcase had been overturned, spil ing Camus and Tolstoy and Milton in a broken-spined jumble onto the floor. A puddle of blood on the big oak desk had turned black and congealed in mid-drip over one edge. Lamps were broken. Chairs overturned. There was a dark stain just above the wainscoting, accompanied by a starring of the plaster, where a body had been crushed against the wal .

The smel of the human was sick-sweet and nauseating. It was everywhere.

The three corpses, having reverted to their natural state in death, were crumpled on the floor in various stages of mutilation. The blond man knelt beside the nearest of these, a female, and touched the thick auburn fur gently. "Moria," he said quietly. Her neck had been snapped, her throat torn open, both forelegs broken and matted with blood. She had not gone easily.

Beneath the north-facing window was Tobias, a magnificent black wolf who in life had been one of the most bril iant biochemists of his time. His spine was twisted into an unnatural position against the wal , his entrails, pink and glistening, spil ing out of a wound that split his rib cage. Rene, who was old and sometimes had trouble seeing, was nonetheless a gifted researcher who had been in charge of three of the most important development projects in the corporation. He had been the first to die, his skul shattered by a single blow.

The smel of the human was on their fur, in the carpet, lingering like a miasma in the air. Spatters of human blood were mixed with theirs.

The blond man dipped his fingers in the blood on Moria's muzzle and brought them to his nostrils, forcing himself to inhale, extracting every nuance of the hated scent from the serum. His head swam with images; revulsion shuddered through him. And he said hoarsely, "Human. How could a human have done this?"

He got to his feet and swung his eyes around the room, scanning for details he might have missed before. There was wildness in his gaze, fever in his eyes. The blood inside his veins was as cold as hate, but pulsed hot enough to burn his skin. He shouted, "No human could have done this!"

He was shaking, quivering with rage and pain. The others in the room could feel his heat and smel the acrid haze of his anguish; a responsive quiver of savagery leapt within them which they control ed only with great effort. His eyes moved from one to the other of them, the guards, the trackers, final y Alexander himself, seeking an answer or a chal enge; but al remained silent, as was their place. Only in Alexander's eyes did he see compassion, but it was too little, far too late.

He strode past them, his face marble white and his breath roaring, and in the wake of him the air was electric. He pushed out of the room toward the back of the house, to the French door that opened onto the cold dark garden, strode through it with a powerful kick that snapped the lock and ruptured the hinges and sent glass spraying like a fine misty rain over carpet and patio; he burst onto the stone courtyard and into the night where he lifted his arms and threw back his head and released a cry, a scream, a howl of torment so intense that it seemed to chil the very marrow of the earth.

In the luxury high-rise two blocks down, lights came on and dogs barked, glassy-eyed with hysteria, at shadows on the wal . On Lexington, a man sleeping in a doorway sat up, his heart pounding in his throat, as the sound pierced the night. Across the East River a child whimpered in her sleep from a dream gone bad, and a wife awoke abruptly in her husband's arms, chil ed to the soul. Al ey cats crouched low, fur bristling, and rats that were bold enough to nibble at shoe leather in the subway tunnels fled for the safety of their dark holes. The night shuddered and writhed with the depth of his pain and when the sound died away the emptiness reverberated.

He dropped his arms and his head, and, alone in the shadows of the winter garden, he stood until the quaking subsided.

His name was Nicholas Antonov Devoncroix, and he was the head of an industrial and financial conglomerate so vast and so complex that no business in the world operated completely independent of it. Should the Devoncroix Corporation and its ancil aries suddenly cease to exist, so too would most of the world's major industries, banks and stock markets; technology would be set back half a century, research would grind to a halt, science and the arts would languish.

He was the figurative and practical leader of over half a mil ion of the brightest, most inventive minds ever to grace the planet; he alone was responsible for their moral, spiritual and physical wel -being. He was a werewolf, and those were his people who had just been slaughtered. He felt the loss as keenly as he would have felt the amputation of one of his own limbs.

After a long time he lifted his head to acknowledge the presence behind him. From inside the darkened room the voice spoke softly, reflectively. " 'Kil ers al until we say/I vow I shal not kil today… I shal not kil today.' "

It was from a child's poem, a jumping-song that any wolfling with language skil s could recite. Nicholas had often reflected that that, then, was the essential difference between humans and themselves: what they taught their children. But he was not thinking that now.

Nicholas turned slowly. A distant reflected light caught his face and gave it an otherworldly sheen.

His eyes glittered like coals. He said lowly, "Wrong."

Alexander said nothing, nor did he al ow any change of expression to register on his face.

"We have the blood scent. My trackers wil find him by dawn." Nicholas's eyes narrowed. "But the pleasure of kil ing him wil be mine."

Alexander commented neutral y, "It has been five centuries or more since one of us kil ed a human in anything other than self-defense."

"You don't cal this self-defense?" Nicholas gestured brutal y toward the slaughterhouse they had left behind them. "They were scientists, researchers,
humanitarians
, for the love of al that's holy! They were murdered without warning, without reason.

And not just murdered but—" His voice hoarsened and one fist clenched as he ground out the word.

"Savaged. Eviscerated. You would have me ignore this?"

Alexander asked reasonably, "And how wil you explain the execution of this human to the authorities who come searching for his kil er?"

"What's one dead human more or less to them?"

Nicholas's voice reflected impatience and contempt.

"Let them dare try to bring us to account. Are you suggesting the weakest of us couldn't handle a dozen or more blundering human policemen?"

Alexander nodded. "So you would kil the policemen. Then you would kil those who came looking for the policemen. Then you would kil to protect those who kil ed before, and then because some human annoyed you and final y for the sake of kil ing itself. Where wil it stop?"

Nicholas scowled fiercely and made a dismissive gesture with his hand. "Your exercise in hyperbole is irrelevant. It would never come to that, and if it did, what does it matter? Haven't we been hiding our dead and keeping our secrets long enough?

Haven't we turned a blind eye to human atrocities once too often? Maybe the Brothers of the Dark Moon are right. Maybe it's time to put the balance of power where it belongs."

"And al for the sins of one human."

Nicholas's eyes glittered. "One human who, one time, went one step too far. That's al it takes."

The elder's face remained shadowed, and his silence, this time, went on too long. His voice was careful y devoid of accusation or judgement when he spoke, but nonetheless seemed weighted down with both. "A moral code, once broken, can't be repaired. Think careful y before you plunge us al into war."

"
He
has started the war!" roared Nicholas. "It is done, can't you see that?"

"I think," said Alexander quietly, "you let your passions overcome your judgement."

Nicholas drew in a sharp breath and released it slowly. It was a moment before he spoke, although the beat of his heart was loud in the ears of the other werewolf. "You were a wise and compassionate ruler," he said stiffly. "I, perhaps, am neither. But I wil do, as you have done, what the times demand."

He moved back into the room, footsteps crunching loudly on broken glass, and toward the door in long, control ed strides. As he passed him, Alexander said quietly, "It wasn't a human."

Nicholas spun on him, his shoulders square and his nostrils flared. The fire in his eyes leapt brightly for a moment with shock and disbelief, then was ice again. "You are insane, old man." His voice was barely above a growl. "The human scent is everywhere. Even you cannot have failed to read it.

You're trying to distract me from what you know I must do—"

Alexander said harshly, "A human was here and three of our own are dead, so natural y it must have been the human who kil ed them? You are a fool and a pup, so certain in your notions you ignore the obvious." His voice took on a note of contempt as he chal enged his son. "Try again, O mighty werewolf, and this time use your senses, not your prejudices. You wil find you were wrong on two counts."

Nicholas stared at him, but already, as the rage and grief began to release their paralyzing hold on his senses, he could catch the scent of the truth.

Humiliation, mixed with an equal amount of horror, seeped into the empty spaces left by departing certainty.

With his own pulses rushing like a sea in his ear, he moved out of the room and down the corridor, fol owing the olfactory trail of blood and violence that was as clear as tracks in the snow. The last corpse was crumpled in the shadows against a wal , the shattered lamp he had dragged with him when he fel toppled on its side a few feet away. Nicholas approached hesitantly, then knelt beside the werewolf.

It was a male, unknown to him. His coat was rough and mottled, his muzzle sharp, his eyes, slitted open in death, yel ow. He had a feral scent upon him that spoke of rough wild habitats and a diet of living things. It caused Nicholas to catch his breath, for he knew of no such creature in the pack. The blood of al three victims was on his fur, embedded in his nails, staining his teeth. He himself had died of injuries sustained in the battle; blood from a ruptured spleen bloated his bel y and a snapped rib actual y protruded through his flesh. He must have fought for some time knowing he was dying; the destruction of the others was that important to him.

The only reason Nicholas had missed his scent before was because the stench of the human had distracted him. That, of course, was no excuse.

A werewolf, kil ing his own kind for no discernible reason. What kind of madness was this? How could such a thing be? Perhaps Nicholas could be forgiven the rashness of his assumption in blaming the human before even looking for another perpetrator, for this—this insanity, this senseless, mindless slaughter of innocent victims by another werewolf… it was unheard of. It was beyond imagining.

And yet it had, undeniably, happened. Nicholas's head swam with the impact of what he was seeing, and beginning to understand as the truth, even as a cold sickness fil ed his stomach for the magnitude of the error in judgement he had made. He demanded hoarsely, "Who is this creature? What can possibly be his purpose in doing such a thing?"

There was a significant pause. It occurred to Nicholas for the first time that his parent was as deeply affected by al of this as he was, if not more.

But being the older—and, as recent events had just proved, stronger—werewolf, he showed none of his feelings. That was as it should be.

"I know him." Alexander's voice was low, and the surprise of the words caused Nicholas to look up at him quickly. Alexander's face was, as ever, implacable, though his eyes were dark with remembrance, or sorrow, or perhaps even horror.

"He hails from a time long ago… a past I thought was buried. I don't know his name. But I remember him."

Then, with an effort, he seemed to force his attention back to the present. His gaze, and his voice, sharpened."As for his purpose… perhaps it was nothing more than to manipulate you. into blaming a human for his crimes. And he almost succeeded, didn't he?"