3: Potentially Troublesome

SASHA POV

“All right, ladies, we’ve got a few hours left before touchdown,” Zoe chirps brightly, rudely waking me from my catnap. She and Rika stifle a giggle at my disgruntled expense. “Plane’s on autopilot, nothing weird on the radar. Let’s have a look-see at our potential lycan targets.”

“Aren’t we supposed to focus on the vampire coven first?” I grumble.

“I mean, yeah, but that seems pretty cut and dry, from what Rika showed me while you were napping. Might as well get a head start on the next task, and enjoy rebelling at least a little bit against Anselm’s instructions.”

“I’m no more eager to spend time with lycans than I am to do anything Anselm wants me to do.”

“Believe me, I sympathize,” Rika says in a way that I’m sure is meant to be reassuring; however, it’s really hard to take her seriously while she’s plunging her fangs into a juice box of blood. “They always smell of wet dog, and they always suss out what I am right away, which makes it so much harder to get them to cooperate.”

“They’ll probably be nice to look at, though. In all our missions, I’ve never met an ugly lycan,” Zoe points out with a suggestive smile.

“Eye of the beholder,” I mutter, but I crawl out of the chair where I’d curled up and stand in the entrance of the cockpit, where Zoe and Rika are pilot and co-pilot, respectively. Zoe is an elemental who can manipulate metal, an extremely rare ability, and as a result she is uniquely gifted with all things mechanical and can make anything with a motor obey her every whim. As I join them, Rika is already pulling up the lycan files from Anselm on her tablet, which she holds so Zoe and I can see it, despite all the lights and displays and instruments all over the cockpit. How the two of them can make sense of any of it, I certainly don’t know; my training has mainly focused on laws and myriad methods of punishing those who break them.

“All right. I have the filters set so we’re only seeing the ones the scouts have marked as potentially troublesome,” Rika tells us.

“Only a dozen or so. Not bad,” I observe.

“And more than likely at least half of them are probably on there out of an overabundance of caution on the scouts’ part, rather than any actual troublemaking,” Zoe adds.

“That would be typical. Do we want to look through all of them, or—”

“Let’s start there, yeah. Can you pull up the scouts’ notes, if there are any?”

“You know there’s nothing I can’t do. If the information exists anywhere in an electronic form, I can get it.” Rika has been working with computers since they were big enough to fill entire rooms. “Here you go. We’ll just run through them in whatever order they’re organized—”

“Least troublesome to most troublesome, please, if that’s an option,” I interrupt.

“Sure. No problem at all.” Rika taps a couple of things and the icons representing the lycans rearrange themselves. “Okay, so first one has had one run-in with human law enforcement…a parking ticket.”

“Probably not actually troublesome,” Zoe and I mutter in an odd burst of synchronicity.

“Agreed and noted. Next one…has a habit of going for late night runs as a wolf.”

“In the middle of a city?” I inquire incredulously.

“…No. Lives on the outskirts of the city, pretty far out. Far enough out to own several acres of wooded land. Thus far we have…zero reports of her leaving her own land on these runs.”

“Right. Not an issue. Next,” Zoe declares.

The next few we look at are similarly mundane and non-threatening to WASP’s laws, policies, and ideals. I’m starting to wonder if Anselm sent us out here on a wild goose chase.

“Oh, here we go. This one…and the next two, who are from the same pack…. They came to Columbus from a tiny town in Maine a couple months ago,” Rika remarks, pulling up the files side-by-side so we can look at all three of them at once. “Apparently they’ve been out and about around town quite a bit…presumably looking for their mates. All signs indicate that all three are single.”

“They’re a bit old to be single, aren’t they? At least, by lycan standards?” Zoe asks.

“Definitely by lycan standards.”

“But why have they been flagged as potentially troublesome? Just for being single and from out of state?” I press. I have no interest in harassing (or killing) the innocent.

“Not hardly. Seems the scouts have overheard one of them talking about lycans and humans living together in harmony.”

“Which one? Why are all of them flagged if only one of them—”

“Drake Sadoques.” Rika opens the photo gallery of the three lycans in question, then enlarges one image, showing a young man of Native American heritage—dark hair, strong jaw, chiseled brow—with characteristic lycan gold eyes. “It seems the other two just told him to pipe down, rather than outright condemning the remark, which would indicate he talks about that sort of thing somewhat frequently.”

“That could definitely be a problem,” Zoe sighs.

“And then this one—Xander Athenase—has gotten a bit out of control at a bar on more than one occasion.” Rika pulls up a different picture, this one of a paler-skinned young man with prominent tattoos and a spiky black and red mohawk. His sharp features and lycan eyes give me the impression that he’s wilder than Drake, less predictable, easier to manipulate. “Which, in itself, is not a crime—”

“But if he was out of control enough to use his true strength, that would warrant our involvement,” I conclude. “And the third?”

“Callum Laroque. Guilty by association.” Another picture becomes featured on Rika’s screen. This one is built like a body builder, ebony skin, chin-length dreads. The lycan eyes are particularly striking against his skin. “Scouts indicate he seems to be making quite an effort to keep the other two from doing stupid shit, with reasonable success.”

“So far.”

“And as it turns out…. The accommodations our commanding officers have so kindly arranged for us just so happen to be in the same rental property complex as their current residence.”

“That would make them our intended first targets, after the vampires. They’re the ones on this list WASP is most concerned about,” Zoe says glumly. “It’s just not fair. They’re all pretty fine. Any of them catch your eye, Sasha?”

“Not a chance. Dogs aren’t my type,” I retort. “Why do you always seem to think I’m going to find true love with one of our targets?”

“Not true love, but maybe a good lay. And you wouldn’t have to worry about them wanting more than a night or two together.” Because that’s all the time it takes for them to reveal enough evidence to sign their own death warrants. She doesn’t have to say it out loud. We all know.

“I’d prefer to avoid having to seduce any of them to get information, even so.” I think it’s one of the cruelest of our tactics, personally. “And the lycans usually aren’t down for it, anyway. They want to save themselves for their mates or whatever.”

“Might be worth a shot, anyway. It’s not good for you to always be sleeping alone.”

“I’d cuddle with the two of you, but Rika doesn’t share well.”

Rika smiles, playfully baring her fangs. “No. I do not.”

They’re cute together. I don’t begrudge their relationship at all, although there are moments every so often when we’re working together that I feel like a third wheel.

“Well, if not any of these good-looking lads, maybe we can find you someone else while we’re here.”

“And someday, pigs might sprout wings and fly.” I don’t want a relationship. I don’t want anyone I might be forced to leave behind if things get ugly in this line of work. She knows this. Why is she pushing it?

“Stranger things have happened.”

“Like you deciding not to play matchmaker on a mission,” Rika jibes. The two of them start teasing each other, and I take the chance to withdraw. Might as well take another nap before we land in Columbus and the work begins.