The knock on the door came half an hour later and Bond had his gun out as he checked the door. There was a camera over the suite's entrance and it showed them their visitor.

Bond opened the door.

The visitor smiled widely. "Hey, there, James. Long time no see. Welcome to New York."

"Felix."

About five eleven, broad shoulders, receding hairline and dressed in a dark suit, the man looked like he had just come out of his office. Q guessed Leiter was about Bond's age, maybe even a bit older.

"It's been what? Two years? Eternity. Heard you were dead."

"Only for about three months," James deadpanned.

"Death became you. Hope you enjoyed it, too."

Bond smiled a little more. "Actually, no."

"Figures. You're not the type."

Q remained where he was, standing between the conference room and the entrance hall of the suite, face expressionless, stance loose. His agent knew the man and he knew who they were expecting, but it always paid off to be careful. He listened to the light banter, noticed his partner's ease, and he knew he trusted the newcomer.

Of course he did.

He had known this man for years, had worked with him, and he probably trusted him.

Dark eyes met his and Felix gave him a once-over.

"Who's your partner, James?"

"Felix, meet Q, quartermaster of MI6. Q, my old CIA friend Felix Leiter."

"You're Q? Damn, they recruit young."

"You have no idea," Q replied wryly.

"Didn't think you'd be out in the field."

"Neither did I, but here I am. Shall we get going?"

Leiter grinned and shot Bond a quick look. "I like him."

Q gave him a bland look, refusing to react to the teasing. They settled down around the conference table and he typed a few commands into his laptop. The beamer cast images against the wall.

"Right, business," Felix agreed. "I know you were brought in on this because one of yours was killed."

"0012," Q supplied. "As well as his handler."

Leiter nodded. "They were the last victims and we believe collateral damage when the killer came after Leonard Thomas."

"Collateral damage," Bond echoed sourly.

Leiter looked pained. "Yes, sadly. Thomas was on a joint mission with 0012."

Bond studied the images on the wall. "He was a werewolf."

Another nod. "We've lost six agents in the past three months. All werewolves. All of the same pack."

Blond eyebrows rose. "All?"

"Yeah."

Q called up the six images, names underneath all. His expression stayed neutral. Losing almost a whole pack was unusual.

"We didn't make the connection at first. It took three kills to get us on the right track."

Q looked at the screen. "Only three more left."

For one used by the Agency, it had been a large pack. Packs varied in size, but usually six or seven are the maximum occupancy, so to speak. Any more and the alpha might have a problem. Werewolves were territorial supernaturals. They chose a city or an area and stayed there.

Agents had to be able to move around and not get caught up in separation anxiety. Well, the werewolf kind of separation anxiety.

To use a pack as CIA agents, the alpha had to be very strong to stay on top since he never had all of his pack together. Three or four might run a mission, but all of them together? Not likely.

Another downside to wolfpack operatives.

Leiter nodded. "Mark Snow. The pack's alpha. Tyrell Evans, who took over as his second when Kara Stanton was killed two years ago in the line of duty. And John Reese. He's MIA and the CIA has been looking for him for a while now. They say he's alive. He might no longer be part of the pack, but he might be a target."

Q studied the picture of the dead second. She was a woman in her thirties. At least she looked like it. Long, dark hair, wavy, dark eyes, slender. There was a hard expression to her eyes. She was clearly used to command and to be on top. To lose a strong beta like her must have hit the pack hard. The alpha needed someone to handle the pack while he wasn't there and the handler had to be respected.

Stanton had been all that and Snow had lost her.

Bond studied the images. "You think one of them might be involved?"

"Or the next kill. Honestly, Bond, I doubt a werewolf would kill one of his own pack, least of all the alpha would. Snow has been trying to find the killer the moment it became clear who they were targeting. It didn't stop the kills. "

"You have him in protective custody?"

Leiter snorted. "Have you ever met a werewolf? An alpha? Let alone worked with one?"

Q raised an elaborate eyebrow. "There's a reason why MI6 doesn't use them as agents."

"Yeah, well, we do and the packs are successful." It sounded almost defensive.

"Unless something like this happens."

Leiter's jaw clenched a little. "Yes. I'm very well aware of the limitations of a werewolf agent, let alone a whole team, but we made it work."

"And look where it got you," Q muttered without stopping his computer work.

Bond shot him an amused glance. If Leiter had heard him, he chose to ignore the remark.

"The problem is that as an alpha, Snow takes this very personally," the CIA agent continued, "and he won't back down. He built the pack, he hand-chose them all. He lost them all, one by one, in a manner that suggested the killer knew what they were."

Werewolves were very enduring, healed fast, could take a lot more punishment than a human, and they could partially shape-shift – a rare few fully - which made them supernatural. They were the most common supernaturals and numerous, and there were a lot of shifters all over the world. The wolf was dominant among them.

Due to their animalistic tendencies and the pack mentality MI6 didn't employ them as field agents. Lone wolves tended to be unpredictable and didn't react well to handlers. Packs weren't a viable form of agents for MI6. The CIA had had a different take to it.

Bond tilted his head a little. "Hunter?"

While there was a general acceptance of the supernatural and preternatural, there were those who hated the shapeshifters. It was a prejudice like any other. They liked to call themselves werewolf hunters, but there were few and those fanatical enough who tried to actually shoot the wolves were far and few between. Mostly they simply talked trash.

A werewolf was born as a wolf. If someone was bitten, it didn't mean a turn. It was rare and it had to be an alpha of age. And even then it might just be a bite infection, some fever, and nothing else.

Full moon didn't necessitate a change, but it made the wolf more moody when he didn't. The day before and after they were a bit more temperamental. Q knew that his own abilities were a lot more of a problem to him than being a werewolf was.

"Hunters choose lone wolves. This one singled out a pack and systematically decimated it. Each agent was unable to recover from their wounds. And no hunter in his right mind would go after trained operatives."

"Highly unusual indeed," Q agreed. "And bothersome to think that those operatives didn't see it coming or defended themselves in any way."

There had been no defensive wounds at all. All of them had been surprised, which meant someone they had known, had trusted, had been the killer. He also would have to know about the wolves' pack affiliations, about each member of the Snow pack, where to find them.

The whole scenario might work with a family pack, but not an Agency one. Their locations, while on a mission, were only known to the alpha and the handler of the pack. Their names were under lock and key. No one could identify pack affiliation by just looking at a werewolf. It wasn't like they were wearing badges.

Very strange.

"You'll find the files on their deaths here." He tossed a USB stick at Q, who caught it easily. "Snow is currently in New York, as is Evans. We have agents there, with them and around them, but wolves are picky and we couldn't use another pack to protect them."

Bond nodded. Another downside to packs. One as threatened and weak as Snow's wouldn't accept protection from another, even within their own agency.

Snow would rather die than submit to another alpha.

Q was already typing on his laptop and accessing the data on the stick.

"Let me know if you need anything, Bond."

"I will, Felix."

"Nice meeting you, Q."

Leiter left with a brief nod at Q, who was already deep within the data.

"Hm," he muttered.

Bond leaned over his partner's shoulder.

"I think I'll need to pay the CIA server a little visit," the quartermaster only said. "No offence to Mr. Leiter, but what he gave us is less than superficial."

"Hacking the CIA, Q?" Bond teased.

Brown eyes sparked with humor. "I need something to do while you run around and do whatever you do next."

He caressed the long neck and placed a kiss on Q's temple. "Don't get caught."

The offended expression was almost comical. Bond kissed him again, this time on his lips.

And then he was gone.

x X XX xx X XX xxxx X XX xx X XX xxxx X XX xx X XX xxxx X XX xx X XX xxxx X XX xx X XX xxxx X XX xx X XX xxxx X XX xx X XX xxxx X XX xx X XX xxxx X XX xx X XX xxx

He had walked the streets of New York all day, following 0012's trail. The weather had truly let up, though it was freezing cold and the sun didn't even peek. People were hurrying to or from their appointments around him. Tourists flocked among them, their cameras shooting pictures of everything. Tour busses roamed the streets, and yellow cabs were everywhere.

Bond had been to where his colleague had, had talked to the same people, had tried to find a connection between the mission and the cause of his death. 0012 and his handler had had a rather simple operation going: find a forger who had apparently set up camp in New York and who had appeared on the CIA's radar just recently. He had been involved with some unsavory characters of Russian nationality, delivering perfectly forged passports and official documents, and making a name of himself as someone who could deliver whatever anyone ordered.

The more Bond investigated, the more he was convinced that Leiter had been correct: 0012 had been collateral damage. The target had been the supernatural at his side. The forger had been arrested, the Russians had cut all ties with him, and nothing about this case pointed at them killing three agents, two of them British, just because of their investigation.

"For once the CIA was right," Q commented in his ear. "How fascinating."

"I would be more fascinated if you could tell me who my mark is, Q."

It got him a slight chuckle. "Bring dinner."

Bond did. Take-out from across the street, because neither was cooking and the hotel, while offering an excellent room service, didn't really have to get a glimpse of the command center Q had set up in the conference room. Bond had talked to reception, had asked to lay off maid service unless called. They were used to a lot more outrageous requests and the receptionist didn't even bat an eye.

Q was deep within his hacking and Bond simply held the plate with the food out to him. Q took it with an almost absent-minded nod.

"Intriguing," he commented, looking at the screen.

Bond settled on the bed, fries and burger on a plate on his lap.

"I know your name, the name you were born under, is James Bond," Q continued.

That got him a raised eyebrow. "Are you sure?"

The quartermaster shot him a slightly annoyed look. "Yes."

"Then it is so."

"Anyway. MI6 rarely renames its agents."

Bond was silently waiting, eating fries.

"Well, aside from assigning cover names to use while on missions."

"Like… Q?" Bond teased.

The quartermaster shrugged with one shoulder. "Agent Leiter gave me a very watered-down version of the actual CIA files of the pack. The file contained all we needed to know for a simple mission, but digging deeper I found discrepancies between what we were given and what the CIA knows about the pack, especially about the alpha, his former second-in-command, and a recruited pack member who seems to be a bit different to your average werewolf."

Bond ate the last of his burger and wiped his hands, still attentive.

"I don't think that Mr. Snow, Ms Stanton or Mr. Reese are truly who they appear to be on paper," Q explained. "Kara Stanton is dead, so I concentrated on the other two. The alpha is almost straight-forward, though with deep cover names and a list of missions that rival yours, 007. Calling it Black Ops is still a shade too light; they've done some very unsavory things, even by CIA standards."

Cold blue eyes studied the mission briefings Q called up on the screen. Bond would be familiar with it, but even he hadn't been running deep on his home turf, treating his own country as a hostile. Whoever had handled the pack, they had been operating outside the government, that was for sure.

"The pack was doing a lot of things no one will ever even whisper about. I've been following Reese's life up until he disappeared from military employment and into CIA handling, and he wasn't John Reese back then. He wasn't Reese when he joined the CIA. His whole life was erased, put under lock and key…"

"Which you still found."

Q glanced at him with a small smile. "Of course I did."

"Of course." Bond smirked knowingly.

"He has no marker for a supernatural heritage. All pack members are labeled as werewolves in their respective files, except for Reese."

The Double-Oh frowned. "Unusual," he agreed.

"Very."

"Then again…" Bond shot him a pointed look.

"Well, yes," Q agreed.

Their own files. Bond's preternatural nature wasn't on any computer file. Only M and Tanner knew what he was, and two doctors down in Medical. But nowhere in any mission report or data file on any server did it say that James Bond, 007, was a phoenix. Q had also made sure that he wasn't labeled as a technopath either.

"I doubt the CIA would just ignore what he is, Bond," the quartermaster argued. "He was part of a whole pack, not a single agent. He was recruited from the military. He ran missions."

"Then what is he?"

"Still digging. He looks suspiciously… smooth. The file reads too normal for my taste."

Bond looked at it, silent, apparently thinking.

"The CIA is actually looking to find their wayward agent. He seems to be pretty active here in New York, if you can believe these reports. Don't get me started on the FBI files on him. They sound almost ludicrous."

Q clicked on Snow's name.

"Stanton was Reese's handler for a while and Snow's second. I think she brought him into the pack, though if he isn't a werewolf I'm wondering how he got into the pack dynamics."

"If he isn't a werewolf, he isn't pack. Pack means loyalty and trust."

Bond had met werewolves before, yes. He remembered one pack Down Under. They had been a close-knit unit and there had been a connection; it had been clear to see.

"To trust Reese he had to be something to them. The CIA wouldn't have made it work otherwise."

Q leaned back. "I'm not an expert on pack mentality, but to bring in another kind of supernatural, and I believe he has to be in order to function in a wolf pack, is risky. They would never accept a human as part of their team. Advisors, yes. Temps, maybe. But running undercover? Not a chance. It's a trust issue and werewolves have a lot of them. Even if the alpha brought in the outsider, the pack members wouldn't trust him as they would another werewolf."

He clicked an icon and a picture appeared. An older woman with longer, light brown hair.

"Alicia M. Corwin, forty-one. Not a werewolf, not any kind of supernatural or preternatural. She handled Snow's pack. She was the deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs."

"And she's dead."

"Yes."

Bond frowned. "Related to the pack's deaths?"

"Her files says she took her own life."

The frown stayed. Bond, like Q, knew that a suicide was easily faked.

"When did she die?"

"Six months ago. She had resigned and had dropped off the radar for a long time. Her death might be related or just coincidence."

"That leaves us with two possible killers from the pack or an outsider."

"If we believe Felix and the alpha isn't the one, and it we leave Evans to Felix's own investigations, our main interest is in Reese. Who isn't a werewolf."

"He might be a kind of supernatural closely related to werewolves."

Bond shot him an inquisitive look. Q shrugged again.

"No expert," he repeated.

"So he might be the killer?"

"I don't know."

"But he is in New York."

"If you believe everything I could find."

Bond straightened. "Then I believe I'll go looking for him."

Q nodded. "I'll start my own hunt. If he really is here, he is leaving a trail."

James put away the remnants of the food, then walked over to Q and pulled him into an affectionate kiss. "Be careful."

"I always am. Try not to shoot too many people, 007," he added mischievously.

"I always do."

And Bond left again.

tbc...