"Silver bullets?" Ru guessed.
"Damn right!" Daggit loaded the bullets into the revolver. "The only way to deal with werewolves."
"Werewolves?" The word slipped out before Atticus could stop himself.
"Do you think we're stupid?" Daggit ticked factoids off with his fingers. "The Pack. Dog Warriors. Demon Curs. Hell Hounds. Growling like a rabid dog anytime you're pissed off. Howling at the full moon? Jesus, you might as well have it tattooed on your arm: werewolf."
Howling?Atticus had never felt the urge to howl.
"They can't do tattoos, dickhead." Animal snickered. "Their bodies reject the ink and heal over. They don't fucking scar."
That's true,Atticus thought.
"They could use silver ink." Daggit used one of the bullets to imitate the rapid jab of the tattoo needle, complete with a soft tat tat tatsound effect.
"Silver only works as a bullet inthe heart," Animal said. "If it just goes throughthe heart, you're screwed. You're going to get your face torn off by a pissed-off Pack dog."
"Whatever." Daggit waved it off. "Where's the Cub?"
"He's sleeping." Ru gave a safe answer.
"Someone fucked him over good." Animal tapped out a cigarette and lit it. "Who is this walking dead man?"
"The Cub doesn't remember what happened," Ru told them; they'd decided against mentioning Ukiah's real name to the bikers. Annoying as it might be, they were safest dealing under the Pack's cover.
"He lost that mouse, eh?" Daggit ignored Ru's presence and addressed Atticus instead. "Or hasn't he taken the mice back yet?"
"That's why he's sleeping. He took them all back." Actually, they had released the mice into bed with Ukiah. Nature would take its course, keeping his brother asleep longer than any drug would. Still, it was startling that the bikers knew things Atticus thought were secret. Was what they were telling him about werewolves true?
"Someone's going to get their ass kicked, then." Animal gave a breathy laugh, eyes going wide with anticipation of such an event.
"You're Pack too, aren't you?" Daggit finished loading his revolver and gave the cylinder a spin. "You have that look."
Atticus glanced towards Ru—he didn't like talking during these things. Normally he stood in the corner, looking menacing while Ru closed the deal. Because of his Pack connection, though, the Iron Horses seemed to want to talk only to him. Ru glanced upward in an abbreviated roll of his eyes, meaning that they had little choice but to reverse their roles. "I didn't know we had a look."
"You're lean and mean." Daggit patted his paunch. "You never see a beer gut on Pack. Six-pack abs. It's all part of the magic."
"Like voodoo," Animal intoned. "The werewolf curse."
"It's one of the reasons that these dipshits are all drooling over the idea of being Pack." Daggit shook his head as if not understanding it. "Ask any one of them if they were willing to run the risk to be Pack, and they'd sign up for a mauling in a second."
"Not you?" Atticus asked.
"Hell, no." Daggit borrowed Animal's cigarettes and tapped one out for himself. "Any retard can do the numbers. A couple dozen can take the walk in the woods with the Pack, maybe one will come back out changed,one of them."
"A Get," Animal said with reverence.
Daggit shot Animal a disgusted look, and then continued. "These dipshits see one of their brothers go all toned without lifting a weight, able to throw a bike around with one hand, and take any amount of shit and get back up, and think, 'That's so cool; I want that too.' They can smell the power, without thinking it all through."
"Hell, I'd do it. Like that!" Animal snapped his fingers.
"Yeah." Daggit lit his cigarette, took a deep drag, and blew out a column of smoke. "And if you do come back, there's a stranger looking out through your eyes."
"Look." Animal pulled out his wallet and thumbed through it to pull out a photo. "Look at this."
Daggit took the photo and studied it a moment. "So?"
Atticus intercepted it before Daggit could hand it back. Unlike the blurry photograph on the FBI Web site, this was a clean shot of Rennie Shaw and a young Animal with a Mohawk haircut. The nomad faced the camera while the Dog Warrior was focused on something else. On the back was written, Mike" Animal" Ross, Rennie Shaw, 1984 Gather.
"I was seventeen in that picture. Look at Shaw. The fuck hasn't aged a day. He still looks like he's in his mid-twenties. They live forever, Daggit. Shaw was in the fucking Civil War, man."
"Come on; that's all bullshit. Urban legend."
"And the chicks," Animal went on, undeterred. "Prime babes. Not an ounce of fat on them, and that sexy wild-thing look. They only spread for Pack dogs."
If the conversation had sunk down to sex, then they weren't going to get more useful information—if you wanted to call the werewolf theory useful—out of the bikers.
"Let's do this." Atticus unslung the backpack and thumped it down on the table. "Show us the goods."
Animal reached under the table to pull out a black leather duffel bag. He unzipped it and lifted out resealable plastic bags, the contents shifting like invisible sand. Empty, the inside of the duffel bag glittered faintly from a dusting of the drug, meaning that the plastic bags were probably coated too. Atticus warned Ru off with a look and reluctantly examined the bags. The chiming in his ears had started the moment Animal opened the bag, releasing tainted air. As Atticus handled the bags, the chiming grew louder.
Ru unloaded the backpack, stacking up the bills. He gave Atticus one worried look and then kept his focus on the bikers. The bikers, in turn, thumbed through the stacks of twenties, examining the bills to see if they were real, and even checking for sequential numbers.
Animal produced a scale and they weighed out the bags. Normally Atticus would open the bags and check the contents—his system shrugged off most drugs—but there was no way he was going to do that now, not if he wanted to stay in control. As the drug burned through him, all his senses took on a sharpness,making irritating little cuts into his patience. It was like wading through sawgrass. He packed the plastic bags hurriedly into the backpack, trying to handle them as little as possible.
"We're going to want more," Ru said. "Double this. How soon can you get it?"
"More?" Animal looked to Daggit, who shrugged. "You'll have to give us a couple days."
"This is Monday. By Thursday?" Ru asked.
"Saturday," Daggit said.
"If the Pack are werewolves," Ru, seemingly causal, asked, "does it mean that pixies literally make this shit? Do you hold them upside down and shake hard?"
The bikers laughed, showing teeth yellow from cigarettes, filled with silver.
"Just about," Animal said. "The Temple are all fucking fairies."
Temple of New Reason? The religious cult that murdered Ukiah was their source? Suddenly Ukiah's hate of the drug became clear. The police reports, detailing out bodies being hacked apart with an axe and cremated, flashed into Atticus's all too perfect memory. He felt sudden dread; the bikers knew where Ukiah slept alone at the isolated beach house. "Did you talk to them after you left us?"
"That's none of your business," Daggit sneered. "The middleman stands in the middle, you don't go around him. Pack or not, you're not cutting us out."
Atticus lashed out, grabbed Daggit by the hair, and slammed his head face-first into the table. Everything littering the table leapt up, as if startled by the violence. The smell of blood blossomed into the room. "What did you tell them about us?"