THE cool evening air brought the sound of wolves howling in the distance and the nerve-racking yipping of coyotes. Goose bumps pimpled Radek’s skin at hearing them so close to the encampment with the arrival of night.
“Filthy beasts,” he muttered, casting an involuntary glance at the concertina wire stretched along the tops of the walls. It, and the threat posed by machine gun-carrying humans, was the primary defense against being overrun by Weres.
By law, this area was his now to salvage in—as long as he could hold it. But he was well aware of being deep in hostile lands.
Anger flashed through Radek. He shouldn’t have to scurry around like a man afraid of his shadow. By rights the entire encampment should be bright with light. He shouldn’t have to pay the Ivanov militiamen premium wages to patrol by lantern light in groups, gossiping and joking at his expense.
Radek purposely slowed his pace, not wanting to show any fear to the conscripted criminals and poor human trash who made up his workforce, or to the militiamen who answered to his father, or to the handful of guardsmen who probably spied for the other Founding Families of Oakland.
The scent of fresh-cut timber drew him to a shored-up opening leading downward, into space no human had been in for hundreds of years until he was responsible for it being unearthed. Pride filled him. Satisfaction coursed through his veins.
He’d done what he’d set out to do. After years of collecting and studying texts created in the days before The Last War, he’d identified the site of a laboratory dedicated to energy-related technology.
The bitter taste of having to grovel for money to fund this expedition into Were lands filled Radek’s mouth for an instant, only to be replaced by the sweetness of success as he relived the moment when the overseer’s shout called him to where tons of broken concrete had been cleared to reveal a hollowed-out spot and a safe still set in what had once been a wall.
It took a full day and almost every laborer in the encampment to get the safe out. Another to get it open and locked in the privacy of the building he’d claimed as his own. He was still going over the contents on the computer storage drives, the files upon files of schematics and designs for harnessing energy.
Much of it was useless, the technology no longer in existence to produce the parts or even the plants necessary to create them, but some of it, enough of it, was clearly viable—not in his hands; he had no desire to manage a commercial empire, but in a buyer’s . . .
A surreptitious glance and Radek found Captain Nagy, his brother’s loyal dog, leaning against a building, cigarette tip glowing red in the growing darkness. No doubt he’d already managed to get word of the safe to Viktor.
Radek laughed softly, imagining Viktor’s face turning furiously red as he desperately tried to outbid those gathered at an auction—only to lose.
Or perhaps not.
It would be immensely satisfying to sell whatever information and physical items were salvaged here to the family, taking back a share of the profits they later generated by it and making it a condition that each month, Viktor, his father’s smug, condescending heir, had to personally deliver Radek’s due.
With a smile on his face Radek turned away from the opening. There was plenty of time to consider the best way to handle the gold mine of information contained in the safe. This was only the very beginning of the discoveries. So far his workers had excavated just a small part of what he knew lay beneath the rubble of the valley floor.
As he neared the building housing the prostitutes whose contracts he’d purchased from a vice lord in the red zone, the guard captain, Orst, emerged. Radek braced himself. It was too much to hope he was there to make use of the women.
When Orst hailed him, Radek stopped rather than be followed back to his quarters and have his work interrupted. He didn’t trust anyone in camp when it came to the contents of the safe, wouldn’t have allowed the guard’s presence at all if it hadn’t been a requirement attached to using the convicts. That it had been a requirement only served to make him more suspicious.
If his brother-in-law Felipe were still running the guard—
But then Felipe and Ilka had played one time too many in the Oakland red zone. They’d become part of the entertainment when they were tossed out of Sinners, the club they favored.
A fitting end, Radek thought. They were savaged by werewolves and feral dogs as the gathered crowd sipped brightly colored drinks and watched from the safety of the old Victorian house.
Another strain of coyote song pierced the evening air. Radek shivered before he could stop himself. “What is it?” he snapped, irritated at having shown any reaction.
Captain Orst’s expression remained flawlessly neutral. A feat in itself , Radek thought sourly, considering the pole that must be rammed up the man’s ass.
“The prostitutes tell me one of them has been missing for over a day. Apparently she was called from their quarters to service a convict yesterday morning and didn’t return. The man in question is also absent. His foreman says he reported it to you. Under the terms of the conscription contract you were supposed to inform the guard immediately.”
“It slipped my mind. Consider yourself notified. The workers and prostitutes were warned not to leave the encampment. The fate of those who do is not my concern. One might even consider it a validation of Darwin’s principles. Now if that’s all, I have work waiting for me.”
“I will return to Oakland within the next day or so and file the necessary paperwork.”
Orst turned away, heading in the direction of the building housing the guardsmen. At the sight of the man’s straight back in its neatly pressed uniform, Radek allowed himself the small fantasy of the captain encountering a pack of coyotes in the woods and being ripped to shreds as a reward for conscientious duty. Sanctimonious prick.
Irritation flashed to anger in Radek. If his father had been willing to give him more money instead of calling this venture a pipe dream and turning over what little was officially Radek’s inheritance, then he wouldn’t have needed to supplement his workforce with criminals. He wouldn’t need to tolerate the guard’s presence and, worse, pay for it as insurance that the conscripted men were treated fairly and not thrown to the Weres as the situation warranted it.
Radek snorted at the ludicrousness of it all. Civil rights for criminals. Concern for whores and the worthless poor. Ridiculous. If there’d been enough of his brother-in-law left to bury then Felipe would have spun in his grave at the direction the guard was taking as the various factions, including the Iberás, fought for control of it.
Radek paused long enough to turn on his personal generator before entering his quarters. He double-checked the locks on the windows then took a seat at his desk, turning on the computer so he could resume his study of the files.
It was a tedious, mind-numbing process.
Open the file.
Read through pages filled with complex words and ideas.
Decide whether any of it needed further study or not.
His alertness faded quickly, though it returned for an instant when he stumbled upon mention of a top secret government-sponsored project being worked on elsewhere in the laboratory complex currently being excavated.
Radek’s eyes grew gritty, the lids heavy. The drone of the generator outside and the increasing stuffiness inside made it difficult for him to stay awake.
He succumbed to sleep, to a favored dream.
In it he smiled as he surveyed the reclaimed valley that was his domain. Where there was now rubble and ruin, much of it covered in tangled vines and rot-created dirt, a city stood.
Its entrance and the roads leading to it were controlled by him. And like the city itself, they were patrolled not by guardsmen or the private militia answering to his father and Viktor, but by men who owed their allegiance to him and wore a crest of his own design rather than the one created by an Ivanov ancestor.
His wealth surpassed that of all the Founding Families of Oakland combined. It rivaled that of the Tassone vampire family who ruled San Francisco.
In his sleep Radek smiled as he stood at the entrance of a grand estate and watched the motorcade containing his father arrive.
A chauffeur emerged from a sleek black limousine to open the back door. His father exited, pride wreathing his face as his gaze encompassed the city and the mansion behind Radek. “You’ve done well, son. Better than your brother, Viktor.”
There was a short, pain-filled hesitation. “And God rest her soul, your sister, who was taken from us too soon.”
Radek aped his father’s sadness over Ilka’s death even as he pressed his lips together tightly to keep from pointing out she’d brought her fate on herself. Death made saints of grasping bitches and sinners alike, and his sister was both.
He escorted his father along a hallway filled with priceless artwork and into his study. Poured two glasses of expensive, imported brandy as his father claimed a plush chair covered in jaguar hide so black there was only a hint of the rosette pattern present in the fur.
The sleeping Radek frowned, recognizing a deviation in the recurrent fantasy. But the thread of concern dropped away when his father said, “I’ve arranged a parade through Oakland celebrating your achievement.”
His father lifted his glass in salute, pulling Radek more firmly into the altered dream. “To your vision. And to your courage for pursuing it when few would have dared.”
Radek touched his glass to his father’s and the scene changed, veering into new territory but making his chest swell with pleasure. He was riding in an open-topped jeep through the wealthiest section of Oakland.
Flags bearing his standard fluttered on the vehicles in front of him, as well as the one he was in. Men and women and children, all of them members of the elite, waved from their balconies while their servants lined the street. Even his sour-faced brother tipped his head as the motorcade passed, while at his side, Viktor’s tight-lipped wife regretted turning Radek down when he had expressed an interest in her first.
Oh how sweet it is, Radek thought, accepting his due as he reflected on the long nights he’d spent locked in the tiny quarters of the original encampment, the generator droning as he painstakingly went over the items salvaged by a crew made up of society’s dregs.
The computer screen he’d been staring at before falling asleep slipped into the dream, a sinuous thread working its way into his consciousness.
Numbers and letters rearranged themselves like a divine gift for the worthy, giving up the details of the government-sponsored project being conducted in a separate lab.
A thrill swept through Radek, followed by a chill. The scientists had known about the existence of Weres. They’d anticipated their emergence and thought they would one day attempt to rule over humans. They’d made plans for that day, to wipe them out using viruses tailored to individual species and tied to nanites.
Fear nearly woke Radek. He’d grown up viewing the stark images of plague and anarchy, the nightmare masterpieces hanging on the walls of every Founding Family to glorify their part in restoring order to Oakland and reclaiming it for mankind.
Before icy horror could force him from the dream, the dark, hungry place in his soul pulled at him, and he was once again in the jeep. Next to him, his father murmured, “Nothing can bring your sister back, but by freeing us forever from the threat the Weres present, you’re a hero to the human race.”
It was a golden dream of power and wealth and glory, a temptation so sublime there was no turning away from it. “I did what needed to be done,” Radek said, drinking in the sound of the crowds calling his name.