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Synopsis

The last fight between the werewolf clans spilled onto the streets of New Orleans - and now the whole city's on red alert. Martial law has gone into effect. Mediums, ghost hunters, and other supernatural pundits have taken over the media, swarming the Big Easy to expose the hard truth about lycanthropes. And to make matters worse, a beastly killer is clawing up humans...

Secret government operative Sasha Trudeau doesn't like what she's seeing - a series of brutal and bloody slayings that appear to be wolf-like attacks. It might be the work of a copy cat killer - vampire or Unseelie or some other enemy of the Seelie clan. But while Sasha races to find suspects and motives, the panic level is rising - and the city's human population is clamoring for an all-out wolf hunt...

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

NORAD... Denver, Colorado

It was surreal, really. Captain Sasha Trudeau stood at attention in the war room with her gaze focused on a point on the wall. She was two thousand feet below the surface of the earth again and surrounded in a granite-encapsulated city. There were no shadows within this fluorescent hell to escape into. Twenty-five-ton steel doors had closed behind her and her team. This was just another one of the military's citadels, but today it felt like a prison.

Now she understood what Doc had meant: A political schmooze trip on Air Force One to meet the president and the first lady had nothing to do with what was about to go down. The military was, in essence, its own government and its own country. It didn't matter if a civilian president was the commander in chief, there would always be things known by the Pentagon and the military intelligence community that flew under the radar. This meeting was obviously one of them.

What the president knew and understood was so far removed from the tactical realities of what the Joint Chiefs had cooked up that Sasha felt numb. The new president had been excited to talk to her, curious, and awed by the knowledge that the supernatural existed. They'd met at his insistence. His wife had warmly embraced her, and Sasha had vowed to never wash the shirt that had the first lady's elegant touch on it. Never in Sasha's life had she been so proud to serve as in that moment when she was told "job well done" by two people who seemed to have it all... intelligence, honor, love for each other, their children, and their country. They were world leaders in her opinion, had respect for other nations, and yet kept it all together as a couple and a family despite the stress that went along with that leadership. Simply being in their presence had instilled hope. Maybe she and Hunter could have that, she'd thought for all of two days... until now.

She hated these sessions. Sasha's mind had latched on to the positive, clinging to it in military silence as her entire mission was lambasted as a complete failure. Talking heads on the video teleconference made her swallow a snarl. She hated VTCs. Old bastards. What did they know about this kind of war? The Cold War didn't have jack on a confrontation with the supernatural, if the Unseelie or Vampires decided to retaliate.

Sasha looked at the stern expressions that appeared on the huge screen at the end of the war room. The broadcast was coming from multiple sources--the Pentagon and USSOCOM at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida--and everything that was being said made the hair on the nape of her neck bristle as she cut Doc a sidelong glance. He never returned it. That was probably best. One didn't blink or stutter in the face of U.S. Special Ops Command.

Before the inflexible scrutiny today, she'd been complimented by the president on her brave handling of the situation in New Orleans, despite the human casualties that couldn't be avoided. The president, a man of reason, had spoken to her frankly, openly, asking her opinion about how they could address potential future threats, as well as her best guess at how they could do PR damage control--knowing the public would freak out.

Down here in the bowels of NORAD was another world. The Pentagon was broadcasting from the tank, their situation room. The whole array of brass was on the teleconference--the freaking secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the vice chairman, the army, as well as the air force chiefs of staff, plus the chief of naval operations and the commandant of the marine corps. Sheesh. All of her general's chain of command was present--starting with the U.S. Army Special Ops Com commander from Fort Bragg. This was so not good. She wouldn't be surprised if General Westford didn't just retire after this fiasco. Her general was getting his ass chewed out by the secretary of defense... and as always, the shit would roll downhill.

But the next words spoken drew Sasha's full attention to the screen. Disbelief made her slack-jawed.

"This is why we've always had a backup team in waiting," the bulldog-jowled General Rumsford said, glaring into the screen. "Ever since the tragic death of General Donald Wilkerson, we knew there was potential for this project to get out of control, and it finally did."

Sasha felt her lip beginning to curl but took a slow, steady inhale to keep her cool. Is this the same cleanup squad that mowed down Rod Butler's entire squad in Afghanistan? Same SOBs that tried to drop Woods and Fisher!

"Now, wait just a minute," General Westford said, the crimson spreading up his neck to begin to color his ruddy face. He dragged his fingers through his damp blond crew cut and narrowed his hard blue gaze as he leaned forward, slapping a meaty palm down on the polished mahogany. "Yes, there were civilian casualties during this particular operation--but as you well know, and have all experienced in any battle theater, that is bound to happen when dealing with urban warfare. Collateral damage is regrettable but often unavoidable. That is the price of urban warfare. So don't act like this is some new outcome! With all due respect, each of us in our long careers has experienced this. I stand by my Paranormal Containment Unit. These men and women did an outstanding job in keeping this entire thing from escalating to a level that might have otherwise been catastrophic."

"Paranormal Containment Unit," the bulldog reiterated with disdain. "It wasn't contained, Westford."

"And neither was Iraq or Afghanistan!" General Westford shot back. "I've only got Trudeau, Holland, plus a biotech crew of three hired civil service specialists backing her up, with two soldiers, Lieutenants Fisher and Woods, to keep a lid on a threat that is bigger than all the bull going on in the Middle East and Pakistan combined! Give me more resources, and we'll have the threat contained."

"That's precisely what we intend to do--Colonel Madison and his squad will be the new boots on the ground. This time out we want an all-human squad on this, one that cannot be compromised by potential interspecies affiliations or that we have to worry might flip out under duress--or given the phase of the moon... no offense to Captain Trudeau. We would like to offer you an opportunity to continue your fine work in an army staff position, General... while Colonel Madison takes over command of PCU."

"You're burying me in the army bureaucracy," General Westford said, pushing back from the table. "You might as well draw up my retirement papers, then. This is an outrage."

"General," the secretary of defense said in a conciliatory tone. "Let's allow cooler heads to prevail before you make such a monumental decision. We value you. Know that. You are not being buried. We need a man of your skill and knowledge on the policy end of this very new threat--because, believe me, the president wants smart people making smart decisions about how to handle all of this. We need a military liaison to the secretary of state, given the potential international issues this paranormal problem raises."

General Westford didn't respond but released a guffaw as his noncommittal answer for the moment.

Sasha just stared at the screen, now so angry that she was seeing spots before her eyes. They were replacing her general and pulling her team off the mission? All of the uniforms and the colorful braid on the high-definition-broadcast stuffed chests began to bleed together, but she didn't blink.

"Sirs, I have to interject," Doc Holland said, bracing his aged ebony hands against the table. "There are delicate--no, fragile relationships down there in the paranormal community. Have you read Captain Trudeau's full report? If you send an unfamiliar human team down there with a shoot first, ask questions later mentality, you are asking for military casualties. Even worse, you have no idea what long-standing retaliatory aggression this course of action might create."

"It has already been decided," the secretary of defense said calmly, gaining a grim nod from the other Joint Chiefs. "This was a rogue project under the late General Donald Wilkerson, as you are aware, Doctor Holland... and while we know that it is difficult to bring closure to your research, the time has come where we must shut down the PCU in its current form in favor of a more strategic, and more secure, way of interfacing with this threat. The moment we all learned about it, a phase-out strategy was set in place... but as long as the PCU showed signs of viability, we were willing to go along with the experiment and learn what this new environment--or rather, this new universe--actually held. But with rising political pressure and the growing public alarm, there is only one solution. The PCU has to go dark, and if there are still any targets of value out there in the New Orleans area--on North American soil, for that matter--they have to be eliminated."

Now Sasha knew they were crazy.

"Permission to speak freely, sirs," Sasha said as respectfully as possible.

"Permission granted," the bulldog on the screen barked back.

Sasha hesitated for a moment. She wasn't directing her comments to Rumsford, but rather toward the more reasonable new secretary of defense, who'd clearly come under General Rumsford's sway. For a second she wondered how the hell some of the old political hacks got to remain at the decision-making table when there was a fresh, new administration--but there wasn't time to dwell on that. It was what it was, and the Pentagon didn't do change well or quickly. Drawing on all the politi...

Copyright © 2010 by L. A. Banks

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