Darren Shan - Wolf Island

“Roughly,” Shark growls.

Antoine gulps, then says quietly, so that we have to strain to hear, “Somewhere between six and seven hundred, give or take a few.” And his smile, this time, is a pale ghost of a grin.

Six or seven hundred werewolves on the loose, in the hands of a maniac most likely in league with Lord Loss. Nice! Demons rarely have time to kill many people because they can only stay on this world for a few minutes, while the window they crossed through remains open. But hundreds of werewolves, divided into groups of ten or twelve, set free in dozens of cities around the globe…

If each only killed five people, I make that three and a half thousand fatalities. But it’s more likely they’d kill ten times that number, maybe more.

We’re in Antoine’s office on the eleventh floor. It used to be Prae Athim’s. It’s a large room, but with twelve of us it’s a tight fit. Nobody’s said anything since we came in. We’ve been looking through photos of the specimens which Antoine gave us, studying the data that he has on file.

I know from my own brush with lycanthropy that werewolves are strong and fast. I felt like an Olympic athlete when it was my time of turning. But I’m still seriously freaked by what I’m reading. I never knew they were this advanced.

I shouldn’t let it matter. The Shadow must remain the priority. If it succeeds in uniting the demon masses and breaking through, the world will fall. The damage a pack of escaped werewolves might cause is nothing in comparison.

But how can I ignore the possibility of tens of thousands of deaths? Beranabus could. He’s half-demon and has spent hundreds of years subduing his human impulses. We’re statistics to him. He’d take the line that a few thousand lives don’t make much difference in the grand scheme of things, that we have to focus on the millions and billions— real numbers.

I can’t do that. Even if we find out that the attack in Carcery Vale has nothing to do with the demon assault at the hospital, that Prae Athim isn’t working with Lord Loss, I have to try and stop her. I won’t let thousands of people die if I can prevent it. Especially not when the killers are relatives of mine.

Perhaps crazily, I still think of the werewolves as kin, even those bred in cages. They’re part of the Grady clan. That makes it personal.

“We have to find them,” I blurt out, without meaning to. All heads in the office bob up and everybody stares at me. I’m sitting by one of the large windows, the city spread out behind me. Any of the people on the streets, eleven floors down, could fall victim to the werewolves if Prae Athim unleashes them.

“We have to stop this.” I get to my feet, discarding the photos I’d been mutely studying.

“Maybe there’s nothing to stop,” Meera says unconvincingly. “Maybe Prae was telling the truth about a new disease and took them to dispose of safely. Perhaps the few who were sent to attack Dervish were simply being used to settle an old score, and were then executed along with the rest.”

“Bull!” Shark snorts. “If she’d wanted to kill them, she’d have slaughtered them in their cages. It would have been a lot simpler than smuggling them out.”

“Probably,” Meera sighs. “I was just saying maybe …”

“What will she do with them?” Marian asks.

“I guess she’ll drop them off in a city somewhere,” Shark replies. “Let them run wild. Maybe collect them at the end and take them on somewhere else.”

“But why?” Marian frowns. “Why not build bombs, poison a city’s water supply or develop chemical weapons? Hijacking hundreds of werewolves to use as crazed assassins… it’s like something out of a Batman comic!”

“Crazy people don’t think the way we do,” Meera says glumly. “They have all sorts of warped ideas and plans, and if they gain enough power, they get to inflict their mad schemes on others.”

“Like Davida Haym in Slawter,” I note.

“There’s another possibility,” Terry says. “She might have done this for humane reasons. Maybe she suffered a moral crisis. Decided they’d been mistreating these creatures. Took them somewhere isolated, to set them free.”

“Unlikely,” Antoine says with a cynical smile. “Her people killed seventeen of our staff during the breakouts. Many more were seriously injured. Hardly the work of a good Samaritan.”

“I’ve seen fanatics who think animals are nobler than humans,” Terry says. “They’d happily kill a human to save a dog or cat from abuse.”

“Prae Athim isn’t an animal rights activist,” Antoine says firmly. “I refuse to entertain the notion that she did this to free the specimens, that she stood waving them off as they returned to the wilds, happy tears in her eyes.”

“He’s right,” Shark says. “We have to assume this was done with the intent of creating maximum havoc.”

“So let’s track her down and stop her,” I snarl. “We can’t just sit here and talk about it. We have to… to…” I throw my hands up, frustrated.

“We all know how you feel,” Meera says sympathetically. “But until she makes a move, there’s nothing we can do. The world’s a big place. You could hide seven hundred werewolves just about anywhere. We can’t—”

“I could find them,” Timas interrupts. “If I had access to your mainframe,” he adds, smiling at Antoine.

“I told you—the records have been wiped,” Antoine scowls.

“It’s virtually impossible to wipe a mainframe completely clean,” Timas says. “That’s one of the reasons I was surprised you still used one. I can perform at the very least a partial restore.”

“We’ve had experts working on it for the last six weeks,” Antoine says sharply.

“I’m sure you’ve employed some of the best people in the business,” Timas says earnestly. “But I’m the very best.”

“Even assuming you could restore it,” Shark rumbles, “how would that help us? She’s unlikely to have outlined her secret plans on a work computer.”

“You can’t move that many bodies around without leaving a trail,” Timas says. “If I find out more about the creatures, I can use that information to fish for clues on the web.”

“What do you mean?” Shark asks.

“They didn’t take the cages,” Timas notes. “That means they transported them in cages of their own. Once I know what the cages are made from, I can search for companies who specialise in this type of construction and find out if they’ve filled any large orders recently. If they have, I’ll learn where they delivered the cages to.

“If I can determine how the werewolves were tranquilised, I can track the drugs back to where they were manufactured, then trace them through delivery records.

“How did they transport the creatures—aeroplanes, articulated trucks, trains, boats? I’m assuming they moved at least some of them across international borders. There will be a trail of red tape, no matter how surreptitiously they went about it. I’ve followed such trails before and enjoyed a large measure of success.

“Do you want me to continue explaining or shall I get started?” Timas addresses this question to Antoine Horwitzer.

Antoine’s torn. “Is he really that good?” he asks Shark.

“Yes.”

“If he can do what he says… he will have access to confidential information. He’ll have to sign a privacy clause. We need absolute affirmation that he’d never reveal—”

“You present the forms, he’ll sign them,” Shark cuts in.

Antoine struggles with the idea for a couple of seconds, then sighs. “Very well. I’ll log you in and provide you with the relevant security codes.”