“All off the radar, I’m guessing?”

  “Circumstances compel us to work underground, yes.”

  I’d seen a few of the headlines over the past year—the investigations into Centurion’s programs, the massive downsizing. It was a shadow of the corporate behemoth it had once been, translating into billions in lost revenue. I was guessing more than a few people wanted Purdy’s head on a pike. No wonder he’d gone underground. I couldn’t help but chuckle, though. Sarah “By the Book” McKinnon, the teammate whose reaction to my secret alliance with Purdy I’d been most worried about, was now doing the same and then some. That explained her nervousness, anyway.

  “I believe in the work too,” she said defensively.

  “I know you do, and I respect that. Is that why you’re here?”

  “I’m delivering a message.”

  “For Purdy?” My voice bordered on a growl. Though his actions had ultimately spared the world a doomsday invasion, he had still manipulated me. He’d made me believe I could be cured through science. And he’d done it time and again, right to my face. I steeled myself against Sarah’s next words.

  “He’s found a cure for you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s not through biogen.”

  “What, then? The Make-A-Wish Foundation?”

  “He’s located a woman in Cairo, a deity. She can undo complex bindings.”

  “What’s the catch?” I asked. “I lead another team, and in a year I get to visit this woman who, it’ll turn out, never existed?”

  “No catch, and he wants to send you immediately.” I could tell by her firm tone that she’d grown close to Purdy in the last year. It was the same tone she used to assume when she would defend me.

  “So he claims.”

  “He considers it a debt payment,” she said. “He’s already made the bargain.”

  “What bargain?”

  “The teeth of a seer are highly sought after.”

  I stopped and looked at her. “Purdy gave this woman his teeth?”

  “Yes, he wears dentures now.”

  I barked a laugh that made the dogs look over from their beds. The whole thing sounded absurd. So absurd that I believed her. Sarah reached across the table and grasped my hand.

  “I understand your feelings for him are conflicted,” she said. “That’s part of the reason I haven’t been in contact. I didn’t want to tell you or the others I was working for him. I knew you’d look on my decision negatively. But he’s a seer, Jason. He acts on what he sees for the greater good, and sometimes that means being less than truthful. It’s not something he enjoys.”

  “It’s still manipulation.”

  “And when he can, he puts it right. Like now.”

  Having made her point, Sarah released my hand and sat back. There was a certain vulnerability in her questioning gaze, and for a moment, I saw the girl who had lost her parents to a zombie attack.

  “Look, I don’t blame you for joining Purdy’s group,” I sighed. “I’ve always admired your commitment to helping the innocent, and that hasn’t changed. In fact, I’ve missed that about working with you.”

  “I’ve missed that about you too.” Though she said it curtly, moisture glimmered in her eyes.

  “So, I go to this woman, and I’m no longer the Blue Wolf?” I said. “That’s how it works?”

  Her head tilted. “Isn’t that what you’ve wanted?”

  I considered her pointed question. What would it be like to lose the entity I’d been for the last two years? To become Jason Wolfe again?

  “How much time do I have to decide?”

  “Purdy said she’s fickle, so not long.”

  39

  Five days later, I was clearing a path through a night market on the edge of Cairo. Vendors swarmed Sarah and me, shouting in broken English about their “one of a kind” plastic souvenirs and fake antiques. When an aggressive vendor seized Sarah’s arm, I shoved him into a textile display. The others backed off, but it was desperate times, and like scrawny jackals competing for scraps of meat—or in this case, tourist dollars—they came crowding in again, shouting lower and lower prices.

  “How much farther?” I growled at Sarah.

  She consulted her tablet, batting away a volley of grasping hands. “The turn is here.”

  As we passed under an ancient stone archway, the vendors fell away at once, several looking on with spooked faces. A young man began shouting what sounded like a warning, but a bearded man took his arm and led him away, as if we’d already chosen our fates.

  I peered down the desolate lane, which stood in stark contrast to the lights and activity of the market. The smells of spices and perfumes gave over to the foul stink of a slum.

  I drew my sidearm as Sarah and I started down its length. Crumbling stone buildings lined the crooked way, some looking as if they’d been bombed. Rag piles in doorways became skeletal men who scampered inside, while the silhouettes of vultures perched on rooftops. Ahead, the lane dead-ended.

  “Are you sure this is it?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Sarah insisted, consulting her tablet to be sure.

  “This place doesn’t exactly suggest powerful deity.”

  “According to the map, she lives there.” Sarah pointed at a faded door with an elaborate symbol scratched into the wood. The building that grew around it could have housed minor royalty at one time, with its balconies and intricate stone work, but it was in serious disrepair, even collapsed in places.

  “Let’s find out.” I clasped the metal knocker, part of me still having my doubts, and banged several times.

  After a minute, the door opened and candle light glowed out. A young woman appeared, and my first thought was princess. Her black hair was held back by a gold headdress, revealing sharp cheekbones and large kohl-lined eyes. She stepped forward. Silk robes shimmered around a svelte body. But I was focused on her necklace. It featured twenty-eight human teeth, the roots stained with blood. Purdy’s teeth. Purdy’s blood.

  “Imen?” Sarah asked.

  “I am called this,” she said in a thick accent. “But I do not consort with mortals.”

  A chill force closed around my throat. Beside me, Sarah gagged. I tried to talk, to explain who we were, but no words came.

  I snapped off my hologram. The strangling force ceased. Imen took in my wolf’s face, then looked me up and down. Her gaze returned to mine, the unblinking stare like fingers exploring my soul. But I also sensed danger, as if she could twist suddenly and rip her blade-like nails through something vital.

  When she reached for my face, I resisted the urge to flinch back. She stroked the hair over the symbol on my cheek. When she smiled, a graveyard stink wafted from her rotten teeth. Imen was a deity of decay.

  “You are him. The one the seer has traded for.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Her mouth straightened, restoring the illusion of a beautiful princess. “Many threads bind you to the beast. I can wither the threads, break them away, but it will not be pleasant.”

  “And I’ll be permanently released?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said, caressing her tooth necklace. “For this, I can release you.”

  I turned and signaled. A figure who had been covering our six appeared from the shadows. “Then unbind her,” I said.

  We had managed to reach Takara in Japan and arranged to meet in Cairo. At first she refused to accept my offer. For me, though, the calculation was straightforward. I wasn’t in danger of being overpowered by my being; she was. She was also a friend I’d gone to war with. I wanted this for her.

  As Takara arrived beside us, I squeezed her shoulder.

  But Imen was frowning. “This was not the agreement,” she said coldly.

  “I’m making it the agreement,” I said. “Unbind her from the dragon.”

  “Her binding is stronger, fused by fire. The seer’s teeth will not suffice.”

  “What more do you want, then?”

  “It’s all right, Jason,” Takara said, but I waved her back.

  Imen’s eyes fell to my gloved hands. “A Blue Wolf’s talon.”

  Before Takara could protest, I pulled the glove off my left hand. Imen’s eyes took in the line of glossy talons greedily. She stroked them, arriving finally at the thumb, the shortest talon, but also the thickest.

  “This one,” she said, producing a blade. “But once you grant it, it will not come back. It is mine.” The slender black blade she wielded absorbed the surrounding light and gave off a cold, wicked energy.

  “Are you sure?” Takara whispered from behind me. “Purdy meant this for you.”

  “I’m sure,” I said, and nodded for Imen to proceed.

  She worked the blade around the base of the nail. I hissed as the flesh throbbed and withered. The talon came away with a rag of dead tissue. Imen held it up, rotten teeth peeking through her purple lips once more. As she placed the talon in her gown, I grimaced, my healing slow to repair the bloody mess.

  “Come,” Imen said, extending a hand toward Takara.

  My former teammate glanced at me once more, as if giving me a final chance to take the cure for myself. I guided her forward until she accepted the deity’s hand. Imen led her through the doorway.

  When Sarah and I tried to follow, a chill wind cut through the night, flickering the candles beyond the doorway, and slamming the door closed. I pulled the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. Magically sealed.

  “Can we trust her?” I asked.

  “Purdy did,” Sarah said, as if that were insurance enough.

  A high chant sounded beyond the door. Flames roared, and the upper story windows glowed crimson. Vultures broke from their perches and circled the sky overhead. When I heard Takara scream, I wanted to breach the building, but Sarah talked me down, her faith in Purdy much stronger than my own.

  One hour became two. The chanting and screaming continued at intervals, both turning more piercing, more insane. I paced the lane, my thumb still raw where my talon had been. A prolonged roar of fire sounded. Then the building went quiet. I listened, but a deathly silence had fallen over the entire lane.

  “We need to get in there,” I said.

  The door opened suddenly. Takara stumbled from an impenetrable darkness and collapsed over the threshold. A smell of smoke and death rose from her body. We rushed up, and I rolled her onto her back. Tear tracks ran down a smoke-blackened face. The hair that spilled to either side was streaked with silver. She looked as if she had aged twenty years. But she was breathing.

  “Takara?” I said.

  Her eyes opened and dark irises searched my face. Where crescents of fire had once shimmered were bands of scar tissue. She wrapped her arms around my neck. I lifted her gently, as I’d done after hitting her with the lumina round a year earlier. Back then, I could feel the power of the dragon thrumming beneath the surface. Now, I felt only a strange calm and a steady heartbeat.

  “Senshika is gone,” Takara whispered. “Thank you.”

  And then she began to sob.

  We spent three days in Cairo to give Takara time to recover. No longer host to an immortal dragon deity, some of the suspended years caught up with her. Fresh sets of crow’s feet joined the silver streaks of hair, giving Takara a more dignified look, but she had also slowed. Her peak ninjitsu days were past.

  Regardless, I had never seen her more at peace. She wouldn’t talk about the ceremony with Imen, but her smile told me that whatever tortures she’d endured had been worth it. Her eighty-year nightmare had ended.

  On our final night together, I treated the team to a meal brought up to our room. Servers arranged platters of the local cuisine on the floor, and the three of us sat around the spread on plush pillows.

  “After more than a year, this was the closest I’ve come to a mission,” I said. “I’m glad to have had one last run with you guys. I needed this.”

  More than a mission, the week had felt like a mini reunion. And as the meal progressed, we revisited our first days in training. I brought up the time an insubordinate Takara and I had gone one-on-one at the Vegas compound and she’d brought an entire building down on our heads. She covered her face with her hands and laughed.

  I teased Sarah too, for wanting to spend an entire day on Centurion’s policies and procedures. The two then ganged up on me, Sarah recalling the time I’d lost my grip while scaling a mock building, Takara miming my flailing three story plummet. I laughed until I was wiping tears from my eyes.

  Our reminiscing turned to our missions, from vampire clowns in Mexico to a Wendigo in Canada to snake people in the rain forests of Southeast Asia. With the missions now safely in the win column, we could talk easily, without the insane pressure we’d been under. I no longer had to be their captain, either. It was remarkable what we’d accomplished, and that was to say nothing of Houston, which still felt recent and raw. During one of our walks through Cairo, Sarah had conceded that I’d been right about Olaf, but I waved it off. At the end, he had gotten to choose, and that was what mattered.

  As our meal and reminiscing wound down, Takara and Sarah glanced at one another.

  “Something on your minds?” I asked.

  Sarah cleared her throat. “How are you doing? I mean, with everything?”

  Except for the day she’d turned up at my ranch house in Beaumont, Sarah hadn’t mentioned my wife. Neither had Takara. But they’d obviously been discussing it. They watched me carefully now.

  “Coping,” I admitted. “It still goes pretty deep.”

  “Do you know what you’re going to do?” Takara asked.

  Needing a moment to gather myself, I said, “You first.”

  Her gaze turned introspective, suggesting it was something she’d been weighing. “When the bomb struck Hiroshima and I was bonded to Senshika,” she said, “I lost the capacity to have children. I also lost what was left of my own childhood. It’s something I’ve felt my whole life. There’s a girls’ orphanage outside Hiroshima. Now that Senshika is no longer a danger, I want to work with the girls, teach them a form of martial arts to help grow their confidence, their independence.”

  “I can’t think of a better teacher,” I said.

  Sarah agreed.

  Takara smiled. “Your turn.”

  I drew in my breath to answer. But before I could, Sarah blurted out, “Come work with me, with our unit. We’re still in the data-gathering and system-development phase, but if action is ever needed, you should lead the force. Honestly, I wouldn’t want anyone else in that role.”

  I could see in her earnestness that her feelings for me had never quite gone away.

  I placed a hand over hers. “I appreciate that, Sarah. I do. If it hadn’t been for you showing up when you did, I may never have left my house. But I made a couple promises, and it’s time I started fulfilling them.”

  She nodded solemnly. “I understand.”

  “Where will you go?” Takara asked.

  40

  Two weeks later

  My heart beat like a bass drum as I stood in front of the triple-bolted door.

  I’d put the house on the market, said goodbye to Dani’s parents, and loaded my truck with the essentials and some mementos. I’d driven the fifteen-hundred miles in twenty-four hours. I could still undo all of that. But once I knocked, that chapter would close. The spaces I’d shared with Dani would pass to someone else.

  You promised her.

  I nodded. The truth was I’d made my decision when I gave my cure to Takara—I just hadn’t realized it at the time. By choosing to remain the Blue Wolf, I’d chosen to become a protector for life.

  I knocked on the door.

  Pulling out the wedding band that hung from a chain around my neck, I clenched it for support. Maybe it was the energy coming off the door, but I suddenly felt Dani’s presence as clearly as if she were beside me, supporting me. On my other side, I sensed a large shadow standing proudly. It belonged to the Great Wolf, defender of the Kabadi people, who had passed his essential qualities to me.

  With both, I knew I’d made the right decision.

  The bolts released and the door opened. A tie hung loosely from Professor Croft’s collar, as if he’d just gotten home from work. Pleasant smells of dinner drifted out. Domestic sounds, too, including an infant gurgling his or her pleasure. He stared for a moment, trying to make sense of my presence.

  “Croft,” I said with a nod, the threshold thrumming between us.

  “Jason, it’s great to see you,” he stammered. “What are you doing in New York?”

  Realizing I was still clutching my wedding band, I tucked it back inside my shirt. “I’m sorry to just show up like this, but you’d once mentioned putting together a team. I wanted to see if you still needed warm bodies.”

  “The warmer the better,” he said with a guarded half smile.

  “Well, if you’ll have me, I’d like to be added to the roster.”

  Croft’s smile broke all the way free. “If I’ll have you? Are you freaking kidding me?” He pumped a volley of punches into the air and released a delirious laugh. He rushed out and embraced me around the waist.

  I couldn’t help but laugh with him. “Is that a yes?”

  “That’s a hell yes, a hundred times over. We could so use you.” He backed away. “Have you eaten?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, come in. We were just sitting down ourselves, and there’s plenty. I’ll introduce you to the family. Which, like it or not, is your family now too. That includes Tabitha,” he added in a whisper.

  “I heard you,” the cat called from inside.

  Croft spoke a few words at the defensive magic over the threshold. By the time it relented, he’d already turned and was announcing me to the room. Dani’s presence had remained by my side, but now I felt her separating, as if encouraging me to go on without her. That was also part of my promise.