How could they have thought this would work? This isn’t a plan, this is anarchy. And I endorsed it, if only by being here.
“Keep y’self safe,” he told Sam. “I mean to repay this debt.”
“Deal.” He leaned down, kissed Sue on her grimy forehead. They were all grimy, smoke-smudged and worse to come, no doubt. “Get better.”
“That’s the plan, Sam,” she replied, and then they were gone.
Chapter 53
Now.
“Scuttled off to save yourselves, I knew it,” Gulo snapped. “My father died that night. My big brother. And you ran off and left them.”
So that’s why they’re letting Berne narrate. They want to know what happened, too, not just the stuff that made the papers, or the theories the survivors spun to explain what happened. Sam and his mysterious bosses managed to keep the AP and national press out of it by spinning it as a simple protest that turned violent. So for ten years, SAS has been wondering about the rest of the story.
“We knew there were traitors, we just didn’t know how many,” Gulo continued. “And it wasn’t safe to go after the ones we could identify. Not then. So we waited. We had to, most of the leaders were dead. We had to build ourselves back up in a way that wouldn’t attract attention until it was too late. All because you turned on your own kind.”
“How?” Berne challenged.
Gulo blinked. “What?”
“How did they die? Your family? Your leaders? In glorious battle against the oppressors? A hand-to-hand brawl they heroically fought despite being outnumbered?”
Gulo glowered but stayed quiet.
“No. They died in the explosion,” Berne continued. “The one they set. They blew themselves up out of pure piss ignorance, because your family had a shit plan they didn’t think through. And in the chaos, more people died. The only saving grace that day came from the first responders, Stable and Shifter, and you were all too stupid to see it.”
“Oh, please.” Turtleneck rolled his eyes. “Not the ‘only by coming together can we mend our differences’ speech. If you’re a fireman and you don’t know the guy driving the truck is a Shifter, it doesn’t count as peaceful interspecies cooperation. It just proves that hiding our natures is stupid.”
“You want the story?” Magnus snapped. “You’ll hear it to the end. The firefighters and paramedics didn’t give a shite what your agenda was, they just wanted to save as many as they could. You lot, though? You tapped into your entitlement and assumed everything would work out simply because you wanted it to. Your plan wasn’t noble or for the greater good, you just wanted to sow bedlam. Well, ye did.”
“A little preachy,” Oz said. “But dead on.”
“And you’re meaning to again, and for what? Because it’s the anniversary and you feel you’ve got tae do something? To waste more time, money, and lives?”
“It’s not just about a date on the calendar,” Mock said. Oz hoped he would warm to the subject, maybe get distracted. From the moment he’d stepped out of the elevator, he and Turtleneck always had a gun trained on two of the three of them. If he or Annette or Magnus made a move, at least one of them would end up with a bullet in their frontal lobe. At the least, they were more formidable than Gulo, who always seemed on the verge of, or in the middle of, or recovering from, a tantrum. “This has been in the works for years.” Mock swung around to point at Annette. “And that’s your fault.”
“Me?” Annette replied, startled. “What’d I do? Don’t get me wrong, I’m delighted that my actions inconvenienced you, but which ones?”
“You shut down our funding!”
“What are you bloviating about now? How could I have—oh.”
Magnus had been watching Oz and Annette, and at their expressions, asked, “What? What did ye do?”
“The Sindicate,” Annette sighed. Then she brightened. “Just so you know, Oz helped. He’s part of the reason your time line was adversely affected.”
“Thanks, Annette, but you barely needed me. I just moved in at the end to help with the clean-up.”
“That’s not true, Oz. You figured out what all their fake shell companies were for, you figured out what the warehouse was for, and you stuck by us when you knew it was dangerous. And when we had to fight for our lives, you were there for that, too.”
“No, no.” Oz made a show of pooh-poohing the praise. “I wouldn’t say I was a hero, but you can say I was a hero.”
“Jesus, shut the fuck up, you two!” This from an aggrieved Mock. “You’re gonna break bones patting yourselves on the back. And if you don’t, I will.”
Magnus spread his hands. “I’m still lost.”
“There was a cub trafficking ring,” Oz explained. “A sick, disgusting, pathetic, shitty trafficking ring run by sick, disgusting, pathetic, shitty people, and yeah, I’m looking at all three of you scumbags. We found out about it a few months ago. Magnus, you remember Caro? We rescued her. Well. She rescued her. We were late to the party.” To Gulo: “That’s what the Sindicate was for, wasn’t it? Not just so sickos could get off on abusing cubs. Not just so Stables could have pet werewolves.”
“What?”
“I know, it’s fucking awful. Pets for Stables who knew their true nature. Pray you never see the files, Magnus, or the pictures, they’re that bad. And a perfect measure of how we’re not superior to Stables. When we’re inclined, we savage our young just like they do. Often for profit.”
“What are ye saying? That SAS evolved into this syndicate or whatever it was?”
“Or the reverse.” Mock shrugged. “Who gives a shit?”
“Spoken like a true student of history,” Annette muttered.
“Point is, at this time last year, there was plenty of money. We were getting ready to move again, we had the means to watch the traitors, and we could indirectly
