Page 119 of Junk Magic

The potion threw shifting green shadows over his face and should have given him a sinister air, even with the Mr. Magoo glasses. Only his expression didn’t allow it. His eyes were bright and his face animated, almost awed. He looked like a child delighted with a new toy; one he couldn’t believe that he’d managed to create.

“Forget crypto zoology,” he said, his voice hushed. “Pouring for hours over old bones, wondering what this or that creature might have been like. This is paleo genetics! And not just bringing back a talent or two, but an entire ancient being. One capable of feats that modern man—including modern Weres—can only dream of. Until now.

“My brew can take any old Were and turn him into—well, what you saw. And even untrained, they’re ferocious. It took the combined power of your entire lineage in the Corps to take down one, newly turned and untrained example. Can you imagine what an army of them could do?”

I didn’t have to imagine. I remembered the way that four of them had carved through a phalanx of dark mages as if they weren’t even there. It had taken seconds, and what they’d left behind hadn’t even looked human.

Gooseflesh suddenly broke out, all over my arms.

“I intend to use it to create a force of my own,” Jenkins was saying. “To deal with this war and the people in our organization who refused to act, even when I put a sword in their hands! But one problem persisted: how to control my new army? How to keep them in line when they are so much more powerful than anything else around them?”

“How do you do that?” I asked hoarsely.

“Well, up until now, I’ve relied on a charismatic leader to keep them in check, using the Were tendency to unify around an alpha. But that has had its own set of—”

“What alpha?” I asked, but Jenkins was on a roll and ignored me.

“—problems, like that damned clan he found for me, to grow the herbs I need. It was too dangerous dealing with smugglers all the time, not to mention the quality you get is often suspect. So, I thought, why not grow the stuff myself? But those bloody bastards started selling some on the side, didn’t they?”

“So, you killed them.”

“Ordered it done,” he agreed, as if admitting to mass murder was no big deal. And then he saw my expression, which must not have been as blank as I’d thought. “Don’t look at me like that! They did the same thing, you know, exiling and then attacking a bunch of their own people who didn’t want to be involved with illicit drugs. Killed dozens of them, from what I understand. So, they weren’t lily white.”

“And the alpha?” I said as casually as I could manage. “Did you kill him, too?”

He looked surprised. “Of course not. I might need him again. I will require Weres for my new army, and they don’t trust humans easily, if at all. I had to find someone they’d follow—but even he got fooled. They played him, didn’t they?

“Or perhaps he played me.” Jenkins scowled. “You can’t trust anyone anymore. But I couldn’t risk brewing my creation here. I was almost caught smuggling in a body a few months back—practically had a heart attack when one of the guards wanted to check my trunk! My trunk—can you imagine?”

“I can’t think why they wouldn’t trust you,” I managed to say without irony.

He nodded vigorously, and then had to push his glasses back up “Exactly; I’ve been here for decades; they all know me. But war! It changes everything. I managed to talk my way out of that one, but what about the next time? I couldn’t risk it. So, I’d go out whenever the clan harvested a new crop and brew up a batch on site, where they were also supposed to store it for me. But I suppose they thought I wouldn’t miss a little here or there, and started their own damned business! And I couldn’t have my potion going to junkies on the street!”

“Junkies like Colin,” I said steadily.

“Yes,” he sighed. “It was inevitable that they’d sell to a Were eventually, despite being informed that it was poisonous to your kind. I told them that to keep them from using it themselves, but I guess they didn’t care about anyone else. Or else they sold it to someone who sold it on to him. And, of course, it brought my new creation to the Corps’ attention.”

“How terrible for you.”

“Yes, it was,” he said, too self-involved to notice the anger in my voice that I could no longer fully control. “Luckily, they turned his body over to me, as it was my area of specialty. And they didn’t have the manpower to put a whole team on the investigation, just you—”

“So, you ordered me taken out, too.”

Jenkins blinked, as if suddenly realizing that talking about cleaning up the mess to part of said mess wasn’t polite. Of course, if he’d killed as many people as I thought, that shouldn’t have mattered. But it seemed to, as if the man he’d been before his obsession warped his brain was battling with the monster he’d become—one far worse than his creation.

“It wasn’t personal,” he said, and actually sounded sincere. “It’s simply that the Corps doesn’t have anyone else who knows Weres like you do. Eliminate your expertise, and it might be months, years, before any progress was made—”

“But I didn’t die.”

“No. I told the clan to take care of it, after you stumbled across their operation—that was before I figured out what they were up to. But they didn’t follow directions! They could have just buried you in the desert and forgotten about it, but no. They didn’t know who you might have told where you were going, and killing a member of Clan Arnou terrified them.”

“So, they gave me a dose and dumped me in Vegas?” I asked, in disbelief.

“They wanted you as far away from them as possible, somewhere you’d be seen before the poison killed you. But they weren’t sure how it would affect a rogue, so they gave you an extra large dose—”

“And bit me to make sure I counted as Were enough for it to kill me.”

“Did they? That’s smarter than I’d have expected from them.”

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