"Werewolves?" I laughed. "You've been watching too many B movies."
Mandenauer's face didn't change. He didn't find me funny. Imagine that? "You lie to everyone else, but you cannot lie to me. I have hunted these beasts for longer than you have both been alive. Unless..."
He considered us. "Unless one or both of you are possessed by the demon werewolf." His gaze lowered to Adam's bloody arm. "I don't suppose you were shot with silver."
"As a matter of fact - " I began, and Adam elbowed me in the ribs. "Hey!"
"Who de hell are you, mister?" Adam demanded.
"I will be happy to tell you as soon as you prove you aren't evil."
"And how are we supposed to do that?" I asked.
"Well, in the good old days, I would just shoot you and see if you exploded. But as everyone has been telling me, that causes too many questions. I hate questions. So I have come up with another way."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a huge silver crucifix, throwing it at me before I knew what he was up to. I had no choice but to catch the thing or let it hit me in the nose.
"No smoke," Mandenauer said. "You live."
My silver fleur-de-lis chain had disappeared down my shorts. I tugged it free. "I could have shown you this."
"Oh well." He shrugged and glanced at Adam. "Are you wearing one?"
Adam snorted.
The old man lifted a brow in my direction. "If you please?"
"I've already done this test," I said.
"Humor me."
I pressed the cross to Adam's nonbloody bicep, then lifted a brow in Mandenauer's direction. "No smoke, no flame, no explosion. Happy?"
The old man lowered his gun. "Ecstatic. Now where is the beast?"
"What beast?" I asked.
"You have a cage in the swamp. You have been hunting from a tree. You understand about the silver. If I didn't know better, I'd say you were one of mine."
"Your what?"
"Jager-Suchers."
"My German is a little rusty."
"Hunter-searchers," Adam said.
Mandenauer's gaze narrowed. "You know of us?"
"I know a little German. My guess is you hunt things no one else believes in."
"Ja."
"You'll find nothing here."
"I know better. Even without the physical evidence, the newspaper reports of disappearances and deaths, the rabies concern, there's what I know about her."
"Me?" I squeaked.
"Diana Malone, obsessed since her husband's untimely death with finding evidence of a paranormal creature and clearing his name. For the past four years you have traversed the globe searching. But at last I think you have found one. My question is, why are you not calling the national media?"
I tightened my lips and kept quiet
"Could it be because you're in love with the thing?" His gaze turned to Adam. "Lycanthropes are accomplished at the physical. They will do anything, say anything, to keep themselves alive."
"Are you hinting that I've allowed myself to be seduced to the dark side?"
"It has happened before," Mandenauer muttered.
"I just showed you that silver doesn't affect him."
"Perhaps the beast in the swamp is a different kind of beast from the one I am used to. Perhaps whatever hunts beneath the crescent moon in the Crescent City has grown strong enough to survive the usual methods."
He lifted his gun, and I stepped in front of Adam again. "No. I mean, yes. But... hell. Adam, I think we should tell him."
"There's nothing to tell."
"I sent a man down here a few weeks ago," Mandenauer continued as if we'd said nothing. "He saw wolves where they did not belong, led by a black wolf with all too human blue eyes. Then my man disappeared. Now I learn he was strangled not far from here. Do you know anything about that?"
I started to sweat - actually I'd been sweating all along, it was hot, but the sweat trickling down my back turned cold.
Although Adam hadn't told me so, I was pretty sure he'd been responsible for the strangulation. What would Mandenauer do if he discovered Adam had killed one of his operatives to protect the evil, murdering loup-garou? Edward Mandenauer might appear too old to do much of anything, but in his eyes I recognized a steely resolve, a lack of compassion reminiscent of the beasts he hunted, and that made me nervous. Because even my grandpa could fire a gun. Maybe Adam was right and we should keep quiet.
"I can cure lycanthropy," Mandenauer murmured.
Adam's sharply indrawn breath was drowned out by my blurted, "You can?"
"Not me, but there is someone I would call."
I turned to Adam, hope making me babble. "This could be the break you've been looking for."
"Or a trap." He lowered his voice. "He said he's a hunter. All he knows is how to kill."
True. Why should we trust someone who'd walked out of the swamp? He could be anyone. I stilled. Or anything.
"You were in the army, Ruelle," Mandenauer continued. "Elite Special Forces. A team known as Company Z - last resort You were assassins."
"How do you know that?" Adam demanded. "No one is supposed to know that."
"I have worked for the government most of my life," Mandenauer said. "Even now, though I am in complete charge of my unit, I receive my funding from them." He pulled a cell phone off his belt and tossed it to Adam. "You must have a contact, a friend, still in the employ of Uncle Sam. Call him."
"If you are who you say you are, no one will tell me anything."
"They will if I say so. Call your friend; have him access my file, then type in A-I-R-A-M when asked for security clearance. After be relates the information, you can decide if you want to tell me the truth. But remember, I will either kill or cure whatever I find here. It is your choice which it will be."
Adam's gaze met mine and I shrugged. What could it hurt?
He followed the instructions, then listened as his contact recited the information in Mandenauer's file. Adam disconnected, appearing a little shell-shocked.
"He is who he says he is," Adam confirmed. "He runs some Special Forces monster-hunting unit."
"You mean werewolf-hunting?"
"According to my contact, there are a lot more than werewolves out there."
I caught my breath. "Simon was right all along."
"And often quite helpful to us," Mandenauer murmured. "We monitored his Internet and library usage, his book purchases - "
My eyes narrowed. The Patriot Act could be a real pain in the ass. Although this seemed to be slightly beyond the realm of the rightly paranoid Homeland Security Force. Just what kind of power did Mandenauer wield?
"Your husband was very good at weeding the truth from the lies," he continued. "Often we followed him, and on more than one occasion we eliminated what he found."
"Those times he said he'd discovered something, but when he took me to see it, it wasn't there?"
The times I'd wondered about his sanity.
"We killed the beasts before they killed someone else."
"What about the night he died?"
I'd always wondered what had really happened. Not that it made any difference. Dead was dead.
Or was it?
Simon had died from a fall. His body had been broken, marked, torn. Then, I hadn't thought to check for bite marks. If there'd been one -
I stiffened. The Simon I'd seen at the window of Adam's shack could very well be running around the swamp on four paws. And if Mandenauer actually had a cure -
My heart leaped with hope, even as my gaze went to Adam. What would I do? I loved them both.
I turned to Mandenauer. "Was one of your agents there that night? Did they see what happened to Simon? Is he - ?"
"Out there killing people? No. We made certain he would not rise again."
"He was bitten?"
"Yes."
I winced. "But you said you could cure lycanthropy."
"The developments are recent. I am sorry."
"Me, too."
I glanced at Adam. He smiled softly. He understood.
"You couldn't save Simon before he was attacked?" Adam asked. "What kind of army are you?"