Page 252 of Golden Eagle

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When he was a boy, Dr. Fowler had loathed sports. Gangly, awkward, lacking any finesse or hand-eye coordination, he’d failed spectacularly at every horrible gym class game, from dodgeball, to capture the flag, to that dreaded rope everyone had to climb, as if they were all about to ship off to basic training at eight years of age. That was to say nothing of team sports: baseball, football, soccer. All failures.

A vivid memory stayed with him, even after all these years, of his last attempt at football. A rainy day, the sky leaden, the grass wet, puddled, and chewed up by cleats, slippery as an ice rink. Fowler sat on his backside in the mud, rain dripping off the front opening of his helmet, trickling down into his ears, head ringing. He was concussed, surely, from that last hit. He was thekicker, for God’s sake, and he’d been tackled by three boys twice his size, dog-piled and crushed, and one had cracked their helmets together on purpose, laughing cruelly as he did it, throwing an ugly slur at him. A shadow fell over him, blocking the rain a moment; his father, face more thunderous than the clouds overhead, glaring down at Fowler like he was something ugly that had been tracked into the carpet.

“The fuck’s wrong with you, boy?”

It had been the last time he’d tried to please his square-jawed, tough-talking, drill-sergeant-vicious father. Dad had complained and insulted him about his true love, science, but Fowler hadn’t cared anymore. He didn’t want to throw a ball, or crash into other boys, get banged up on purpose and call it fun. He wanted to study. Wanted to fill his head with all the knowledge it could contain, andmakesomething. Do somethingusefulwith his life.

And hehaddone just that. It was heady, what he’d accomplished, knowing what was still left to accomplish. The horizon stretched before him, limitless, the sun bringing new possibilities at the dawn of each day.

Once he’d left sports behind, he hadn’t thought much about his physical body. He drank coffee to keep sharp, ate the sandwiches his assistants brought him, chewed them mechanically when they insisted that he ought to eat. He slept when necessary, and went to the bathroom, and had his shirts and sport coats dry-cleaned, so he could look professional for the brass that kept him funded. But he didn’t care about the trivial aspects of being alive, occupying a physical body.

At least…he hadn’tat first.

But as he aged, aches and pains began to make themselves known. A soreness in his neck, back, and shoulders at the end of long days spent hunched over microscopes. His eyesight was degenerating, his glasses prescription stronger every year, and his doctor starting to predict glaucoma, given his family history. His blood pressure was high, and a medicine had been prescribed that he only sometimes remembered to take, and which left him so dehydrated that he shook and shivered and had taken to keeping bananas and Gatorade in his desk drawers. Eventually, his body would fail him – totally – and he’d be nothing but a tidy stack of research, and some bright-eyed young protégé would have to pick up where he’d left off – only less ably. No one working under him was a match for him. He loathed the idea of handing his work off, after all that he’d achieved this far.

He wasn’t ready to let go. To get old. To take time off. To go blind and feeble, and…

And then he’d realized that he wouldn’thave to.

He was studying immortals. And there were ways tobecomeimmortal.

If only his plans for that didn’t keep gettingfucked to hellby Nikita Baskin’s people.

A knock sounded at his office door, and it opened before he could call permission. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and didn’t snap at Gustav when he entered.

“Good, you’re here. Thank you for coming.”

Gustav shut the door, but remained standing. Only a few months ago, he would have dropped languidly into a chair and adopted a pose meant to flaunt his superior power. There’d always been something ofyou need meabout his mannerisms, coy and mocking.

He’d recovered, outwardly, from his run-in with Baskin a few days ago, but his expression, weary and wary at once, indicated that the conflict had taken some of the wind out of his sails.

For the first time, Fowler felt that the power had shifted between them. On Gustav’s end, his agreement to turn Fowler had always been a quid pro quo situation. But now, that agreement was in tatters.

“I called you up here,” Fowler said, shutting down his computer and turning to face his guest fully, “because I’m on my way to a meeting. Earlier this morning, I received a call from Detective Trina Baskin.”

Gustav didn’t move, his features carefully schooled, but he swallowed, and that telltale ripple in his throat said everything.

“She wants to sit down with me and discuss, in her words, ‘our agreement.’ That would be blackmail, by the way. And you know, the funniest part about it is, Detective Baskin is supposed to bedead. As is the rest of her pack.”

Another swallow.

“Would you care to explain why they aren’t?”

“Killing them wasn’t part of our original agreement,” Gustav evaded.

Fowler offered a smile. “You’re right. It wasn’t.” And retracted it. “At first. But then you went and bungled the job you were placed in charge of, and got them all involved. And then youvolunteeredto remove them from the equation, and bungledthat. Consider your leash shortened. Significantly.”

He stood, and gathered his briefcase, already packed and ready. “I’ll be taking a team with me to deal with Baskin’s people. You stay here, with your Familiars, and guard the lab, should they have any designs on splitting up and sending part of their pack here.”

“You know that’s exactly what they’ll do.”

“Yes. Are you telling me you haven’t recruited replacements for the vampires you lost in your last encounter with them?”

“No, I–” Frustration bled through his voice, showed on his face. He sighed. “I underestimated them, before. They’re…they’re stronger than I first thought.”

They’d all underestimated them, but Fowler wasn’t going to admit to any such thing.

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