The Wolf in His Arms (The Runes Trilogy) (24 page)

Tears
welled in Alec’s eyes. “What if I can’t control it now?”

Jared
cut his eyes to Lucy before arguing, “But I think you did control it...for
months.” Jared reached for Alec, but Alec pulled away. “I said I felt it, but I
also controlled it.”

“Can we
count on that?”

“So
we’ll all be locked up on the next full moon,” Lucy said cheerily. “Good thing
we have Maxwell and Haley.”

Alec
nodded resolutely. He waved to the papers scattered over the table. “Let’s get
to work. If we all translate a different page, we can make some real headway.”

*
         
*
         
*
         
*

With
dinner in the oven, and a semblance of pulling herself together, Ilene sat at
her computer to wait for Jason to come home. She wondered how she would tell
him that he could not go over to see his children tonight without hurting him.
The lies seemed to line up like dominoes, waiting for a finger. Perhaps the
truth—all of it—is the only hope, she thought. Her mind in a flurry of
thoughts, she noticed her camera next to her computer and remembered the photos
she had taken in the cemetery.

Ilene
uploaded and flipped through her images of the headstones and trees, of the
lonesome cemetery gates. Her face twisted with conflicting emotions—at the joy
she had always felt while taking pictures; at the torment of feeling joy amid
the sadness that defined her life. She closed her eyes, fighting the gloom that
embraced her. She concentrated on the photos again, thinking she would take her
35 mm camera next time. It had been so long since she had used the darkroom.

She
flipped to her photo of the mausoleum. She opened a search engine and typed in
Homo homini lupus est. “Man is a wolf to his fellow man,” she said
aloud. A slow shiver trailed down her body. She typed in Rathborne.

A
series of historic articles appeared in the browser, dating to the 1920s. She
scanned the headlines: Largest massacre in American history; The Wolf of
Detroit; Millionaire philanthropist monster. She clicked on an article; tears
formed in her eyes as she read:

Gruesome Find at Rathborne
Mansion

Police
discovered numerous bodies in various stages of decomposition in secret tunnels
under the Rathborne estate on the city’s north side. Investigators received a
call from a traumatized broker who made the discovery after the sudden death of
millionaire philanthropist Samuel Rathborne. The deceased’s son, Samuel
Rathborne II, is at university at Oxford and was not available for comment.

“The
nature of the crime prohibits discussion at this time,” stated Chief of Police
Marlin Mays. The name of the broker has not been released and no further
details were available at the time of press.

Ilene leaned
back in her seat, digesting the information in the article.
The man was a serial murderer,
she
thought. She closed the article and clicked on another link. The article was
dated two months later:

Rathborne
Mausoleum Vandalized

Watchmen hired for
fear of burial desecration

Last night, an unknown vandal
etched the words “Monsters for a Monster” into the steps of Samuel Rathborne’s mausoleum
at Garden of Rest Cemetery.

Rathborne, a prominent local businessman
and philanthropist, died of injuries sustained in a car crash on March 3. Following
Rathborne’s death, a real estate agent notified police after discovering
numerous bodies in the basement of the estate. Police have identified numerous
missing persons, including 13-year-old Heidi Andersen, whose disappearance
inspired a city-wide search. Many bodies remain unidentified.

Rathborne’s mausoleum has been
vandalized numerous times since the bodies were discovered. Due to the numerous
bodies found under his estate, Rathborne has been dubbed The Wolf of Detroit.

Heirs of the Rathborne estate
have hired night watchmen after the most recent defacing. Police are
investigating the vandalism.

The
black and white photo accompanying the story showed the words etched deep into
the stone steps. Ilene closed the article and typed in “Wolf of Detroit.” She
clicked a blog link and read the entry:

The
Wolf of Detroit is the moniker the press assigned posthumously to Samuel
Rathborne after an officer commented, “The bodies looked chewed by a wolf.” Rathborne
was believed to have slaughtered more than 30 men, women, and children in
hidden caves under his mansion in Detroit. The case became a national sensation
at the time of the discovery in 1923. Prior to his death, Rathborne was a noted
industrialist, an early millionaire, and a beloved philanthropist, who donated
to the arts, built libraries, and funded a school for wayward youth, known as
the Rathborne Academy.

Authorities
never identified many of the bodies found in the chambers under his estate. Among
the bodies identified was that of 13-year-old Heidi Andersen, who had gone
missing while walking home after work.

Public
outrage led to numerous desecrations of Rathborne’s mausoleum in Garden of Rest
Cemetery. Rathborne’s son, Samuel Rathborne II, hired guards for his father’s
tomb after a vandal etched the words “Monster for a Monster” into the steps.
The younger Rathborne never returned to Detroit after being deposed for the
investigation into the murders.

The
Rathborne Estate was burned during Hell Night after decades of disrepair.

Ilene
clicked through the numerous images scanned from old newspaper articles
accompanying the blog post. The black and white photos bore the tale in gruesome
detail: bodies piled, rotted. Another close-up photo displayed the rendered
flesh of one body draping onto the body beneath. Yet another photo captured a
long cement corridor with a bare light bulb. Claw marks gouged the walls. Seeing
the story come to life in aged, black and white newsprint chilled her.

She
next flipped through images of the buildings that Rathborne funded. His name
had once covered the city.

Ilene
closed the browser and turned away from the computer. She remembered, vaguely,
the tale told in the school yard like an urban legend. The name given to the
murderer—The Wolf of Detroit—had been spoken like the maniac with a hook for a
hand—yet it was true. Ilene suddenly couldn’t catch her breath. The images from
the tombs under the estate mingled in her mind with Adam’s torn body, and she
knew, somehow, they were related. Ilene’s hands shook violently, and she tried
to take deep breaths, tried to stop the panic attack that was overcoming her.

Her
mind continued to race, the images mingling, repeating, merging in a horrible,
suffocating montage. Ilene stood and stumbled to the bathroom. She fell to her
knees at the toilet and fought the urge to vomit. She reached for a washcloth
folded on the shelf. She leaned over the tub and wet it and then patted her
forehead with it. The story clung to her, like the chill on her damp skin,
because she
felt
that it was somehow
related to the current danger.

I have to learn more about The
Wolf
, she told
herself in a calmer voice.
You can do
this.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*

“Am I
translating this right?” Alec asked, startling Jared and Lucy. His brow
furrowed in concentration as he looked at the page.

Jared
leaned over and checked the translation. “Looks right to me.”

“What
are Tutelars?”

Jared shook
his head. He turned to face Lucy. “Doesn’t that mean guardian?”

“Yes,”
Lucy said, laying her pencil down.

“From
what I gather, Tutelars are like the opposite of werewolves,” Alec continued.

“How do
you mean?” Jared asked.

Alec
read: “The Tutelars are the guardians of humanity, wolves who walk in human
skins, impervious to the bite of the Lycans, who are humans punished to walk in
wolf skin.” Alec looked from Jared to Lucy. “That’s all I have translated so
far.”

“Keep
working on that,” Lucy said. “I almost have this page called Project Conflagration
done.”

“And
I’m almost done with a page entitled Shamanic Doctrine,” Jared added. “There’s
a lot of information on herbal effects.”

“Any
‘cures’?” Lucy asked, working her fingers like quotes.

“I’m
still working on it.”

They
each turned back to their papers, working in silence. Alec jotted feverishly,
checking and rechecking each rune to avoid mishap.

Jared
was slowed, realizing his mind was wandering from his own work to the mysteries
on Alec’s and Lucy’s pages. He chided hi distraction, due to the importance of
a cure, and refocused on the work before him.

Lucy
pushed the beating wings of hope for a cure down as she translated the arduous
page in front of her. The page included schematics, coordinates, and other
numbers that seemed meaningless even in translation. Lucy scratched her head,
looking at the numbers. Are some of these altitude and longitude? She wondered.
She made a note to check into it later.

“I’ve
never traveled this much in my entire life,” Maxwell griped to Haley as they
climbed into the rental car at McCarran International Airport. He fought with
traffic as he navigated his way onto Swenson Street, heading toward downtown
Las Vegas.

“And
with no time for sightseeing,” Haley agreed. “We barely had time for a coffee
in Portland.”

“And no
time for gambling here,” he lamented without taking his eyes off the road. He
listened for the GPS to tell him if he made any mistakes, and relaxed a little.
The traffic was nothing compared to Chicago.

“Whatever.”
She sighed. “At least everything we own now fits in a bag.”

Maxwell
shook his head in frustration. “We’re kinda homeless, aren’t we?”

“It
hasn’t crossed your mind that were depending on the kindness of strangers?”

“Take
the drama down a notch, Scarlet,” Maxwell mocked, his eyes cutting to her from
the road and then back. “They trust us enough to let us investigate.”

“True.
And, I scored major points discovering that Jared was still alive,” Haley
needled.

“How
many times must I say that you were right?”

“I’ll
let you know when you reach it.”

“Anywho,”
Maxwell dragged out, “I think it’s going to be weird seeing him alive for the
first time.”

“Is he
going to be a zombie?” Haley asked, her eyes wide.

“No,”
Maxwell shrilled. “He’s—well, I don’t think so.”

“Brains...”
Haley mocked.

“You
know better than to behave this way back in Detroit.”

“Yes,
Papa Bear.”

The
conversation lulled as they navigated through the streets. As they neared their
destination, Haley said, “So, we’re just planning to try to talk to them after
one of their shows, right?”

“That’s
the idea.”

“I wish
we were better at this.”

“I
thought we handled Portland pretty well.”

“Truth.”

Maxwell
found parking, and they walked up to the venue where the Dazzling Demeters
headlined. As they approached the booth to purchase tickets, they saw the
billboard featuring the act with a giant CANCELED sign slapped over it. “This
can’t be happening again,” Maxwell moaned. “I am so tired of being the universe’s
favorite punching bag.”

“Dial
the drama down a notch, will ya?” Haley returned his quip as she approached the
ticket booth. She knocked on the glass to get the attention of the attendant
inside. “What’s up with the show being canceled?”

“I
don’t know,” she sighed, glancing up from a magazine. “I just sell tickets. If
the shows canceled, I don’t sell tickets.”

And I thought I had a bad
attitude
, Haley
thought. “I want to talk to the manager.”

The
young woman gave Haley a whatever eye roll but called over an intercom to the
manager’s office. “It’ll be a minute.”

A
heavy-set man with smarmy, slick-backed hair burst through the theater doors a
few minutes later. Can I help you, Miss?” The man’s tone suggested he would be
anything but helpful, and Haley quickly realized where the ticket girl learned
her customer service skills.

“I sure
hope so. We came all the way to Vegas to see this show.” She jabbed her finger
at the sign promoting the Dazzling Demeters.

“Yeah,
well, it’s canceled.”

“I see
that. What’s going on?”

“What’s
going on is the show’s canceled until further notice.” He turned to walk back
inside.

“Wait!”
Maxwell called, stepping forward. “Helena’s my aunt, and I wanted to surprise
her by showing up at a show.”

“You’re
aunt my ass,” the guy scoffed, and Maxwell knew he was pushing his luck for the
lie to work twice. The man scrutinized Maxwell. “Oh, wait, kid, I see the
resemblance to Nadia. You have her eyes.”