"Besides, if things went sour, you would totally spring to my rescue. I'm sure if you did some ferocious growling..."
Sean stopped and peered down the alley. I listened. A quiet melody floated on the breeze, beautiful and sad. It came from the dark archway just ahead. Sean pushed the cart forward, forgetting I was there, and stopped before the door.
A man leaned against the doorway. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a mane of graying hair, he watched us from the shadows. The light caught his eyes and they flashed with telltale yellow. A werewolf.
Next to me Sean went really still. He wasn't afraid. He just waited, loose and ready, watching, listening.
"What unit?" the man called out.
Sean didn't answer.
"I asked you a question, soldier. Where were you stationed?"
"Fort Benning," Sean said. "I didn't fight for your world in your war. I fought for my country in mine."
The man stepped forward. Weather and age had chiseled his face. He looked grizzled, scuffed around the edges like an old gun, but no less deadly. He inhaled deeply.
"Alpha strain. You can't be more than thirty. That would make you Earthborn." He slumped a little against the doorway. "Well, how about that. We achieved viable offspring after all. Come inside. You're my life's work. You have nothing to fear from me."
Chapter Fifteen
The inside of the shop was neat, its wares arranged under glass, along the counter, and on the walls with military precision. Knives in wooden display stands, curved crescent weapons, metal canisters of unknown purpose, leather harnesses and belts, boots, jewelry, boxes filled with dark orange powder, vials with turquoise liquid... Stepping into this place was like walking into another world.
"Gorvar!" the older werewolf growled.
An enormous blue-green animal padded through the other door. The creature's head, even with massive ears and a thick dark mane, came up to my chest. The lines of its head and the long body said wolf, but the difference between an Earth wolf and this creature was like the difference between a puppy and the leader of a pack. On our world, it would be the king of all wolves.
"Go watch the cart," the werewolf said.
The wolf padded out the door.
The older werewolf took a glass cup filled with small round spheres, each about the size of a walnut, from the counter, plucked one out, and held it between his index finger and thumb. "Know what these are?" he said to Sean.
"No."
"Cluster bombs."
The werewolf gently placed the sphere back in the glass, looked at the cup, and hurled the contents at Sean.
Time stopped.
My chest began to rise as my lungs sucked in air in panic.
The shiny glass spheres flew through the air.
Sean moved, a blur slicing through the room like a knife.
Some invisible omnipotent being pressed Play on the remote. I exhaled and blinked. Sean's left hand held the spheres. His right pressed a knife to the older werewolf's throat.
The older man raised his hand slowly and checked his wrist. Blue symbols glowed under his skin.
"Point six seconds. You are the real thing." He grinned, baring white teeth. "The real thing."
"I think you might be crazy," Sean said.
"You have no idea how amazing it is that you're alive. Sorry about the scare. They're not armed. No detonators. I just had to know." The werewolf took a sphere from Sean's hand and tossed it on the ground. It rolled harmlessly on the floorboards. "I sell them as souvenirs. Own a piece of tech from the dead planet. The tools of our own destruction available for twenty credits each to the discerning shopper."
He smiled and took a slow step back. Sean let him go and dropped the knife back onto the counter. I hadn't even seen him pick it up.
The older werewolf crossed the shop, slid open a panel in the wall, and took out a glass pitcher filled with dark purple liquid.
"Go ahead, look around. This is as close as you'll come to Auul. Like it or not, this was the planet that breathed life into your parents. Your heritage."
Sean slid the spheres back into the cup and turned, scanning the surroundings. He looked like a man who'd just found out his much-admired ancestor was a serial killer and was now standing in his tomb, unsure how he felt about it.
"Name is Wilmos Gerwar, 7-7-12," the older werewolf said, adding three ornate glasses to the pitcher. "Seventh Pack, Seventh Wolf, Twelfth Fang. Gerwar stands for Medic."
"No last name?" I asked.
"No. Used to be more complicated than that. Used to be you had a tribe and would list your ancestors for four generations after your name. But when the war started, it was decided that short was best. Besides, it didn't matter much who you were anymore. People died so fast it only mattered what you did. I was the thirty-second Gerwar in my Fang. It was a long war."
Wilmos took the glasses and the pitcher to a small table and invited me to sit. I slid onto the padded bench. Beast curled by my feet. Wilmos filled the glasses and pushed one toward Sean.
"No thanks," Sean said.
Wilmos took a swallow from his glass. "This is Auul tea. I know a former Boom-Boom—that would be heavy-artillery gunner—who owns land in Kentucky. He's got five acres of this stuff. Exports it to a half dozen dealers, what few of us are left in the Galaxy. I wouldn't poison you. And I would never poison an innkeeper." He held the glass out to me. "We all need a refuge once in a while."
I took a sip. The tea tasted tart and refreshing and strangely alien. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but there was a hint of something not quite Earth-like about the flavor.
Sean took the third chair and tasted the tea. I couldn't tell by his face if he liked it or hated it. His gaze kept going to a spot in the corner. There, under the blue glow of a small force field, lay a suit of armor. Dark gray, almost black, it looked like a chainmail made of small, sharp scales, if chainmail could be thin like silk. On the shoulders, the scales flared into the plates. The faint image of a maned wolf marked the chest, somehow formed by the lines of the interlocking scales. It looked like a suit of armor, but it couldn't possibly be one—it was too thin.
"I'm fourth generation," Wilmos said. "My parents were werewolves and their parents and theirs were also. When I was young, I never thought I'd have to serve. We had beaten Mraar. I was looking toward a peaceful future. I was a nanosurgeon. Then the Raoo of Mraar reconstructed the ossai and made the Sun Horde. Damn cats. Our secret weapon was no longer secret and we knew the end was coming. It would be long and bloody, but it was inevitable. Most people turned to work on the gates. I was working on those who would keep the gates open."
He drained his glass and refilled it. "There were two dozen of us, geneticists, surgeons, medics. We bred the alphas from scratch. Anybody ever call you probira?"
"No," Sean said. His gaze darkened. "Maybe. Once."
"Before the war, Mraar's main export was cybernetics. You know what Auul's was? Poets." Wilmos laughed. "We were big on arts and humanities. It was all about family and proper education. Our civilization had produced thousands of books on how to properly rear your offspring so they would become 'beautiful souls.' If a child hadn't composed a heroic saga by age ten, the parents would take him to a specialist to have his head examined. Even in war, we'd win a victory and then spend twice as much energy writing songs about it. Moon-gazing and soul-searching was highly encouraged. When I was a little younger than you, I spent a year alone in the wild. Only took a small backpack with me. I felt like I was too soft and wanted to see if I could be hard. Almost like I needed to punish myself, you understand?
Sean nodded. I guess maybe he did. I'd never had an urge to live in the wilderness by myself, so he was on his own there.
"Your parents were conceived and brought to term in an artificial environment. What's the saying on Earth?" He glanced at me.