Blood's Shadow: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 3 Page 3

  I watched her as she fetched a small bag from her car and went back inside. Still, my mind wouldn’t let her go as I drove away, although I wasn’t sure if I was more interested in her as a person or in the mystery she seemed to hold. Either way, I’d enjoy finding out.

  When I returned to my offices at Lycan Castle, the seat of the Lycanthrope Council, I found a stack of files on my desk and a blessedly welcome pot of coffee. Less welcome was the message slip my assistant Laura handed to me.

  “Lady Morena wants you to phone her as soon as you get settled.”

  “I’m going to have to delay getting settled, then, aren’t I?”

  “She didn’t seem in the mood to be pushed,” she told me and looked sternly over her thick rectangular glasses.

  “Yes, mum.”

  “Cheeky,” she said as I walked into the inner office.

  “It’s a good thing you make such good coffee. You can be replaced, you know.”

  Now she took off her glasses and squinted at me. “You’ve met someone. You haven’t threatened to replace me since you phoned to tell me you were close to finding Charles Landover’s secret laboratory in Arkansas and his granddaughter was delightful.”

  “Yes, and we remember how well that turned out. Please fetch me the personnel files on the Institute staff.”

  “Morena. Call her.”

  I gave a noncommittal shrug and closed the door. Once I was safely out of Laura’s line of sight, I tossed the message slip into the unlit fireplace. Although nothing burned due to the warm early summer weather, the small act of rebellion gave me momentary satisfaction. I wanted to do something, not waste my time writing reports and waiting for the waffling of the Council to determine that Lonna, Max and Selene could proceed with their plans. Frankly, I didn’t think the Council should be involved in the Institute, but it hadn’t been my decision, and even though one of their own was an integral part of it, the Wizard Tribunal hadn’t pushed back. Likely they waited to see how it all worked out so that if it failed, they wouldn’t have to take any responsibility for it. They’d just throw poor Max under the bus. Coldhearted bastards.

  Laura brought the personnel files in, and I tossed aside Lonna’s, Max’s, and the lower staff members’. The first one I looked at was Selene Rial’s. A health psychologist who’d been educated in the States and turned after a flu shot introduced the viral vector into her system, she had been invited to join the team when Iain had been impressed with her. He observed that she took everything in stride and while she appreciated the challenges of being a lycanthrope, she could step back and look at the situation objectively, or at least more so than any of the other candidates he’d interviewed—both human and werewolf. He’d written that she had a “unique and sympathetic perspective” on the difficulties CLS sufferers faced, even beyond her own experience.

  Meanwhile, Otis LeConte, a geneticist, had worked in the same lab as Joanie Fisher, now Joanie Bowman, prior to her being fired and turned. When I closed my eyes, I still saw Joanie standing on the balcony off her bedroom at Wolfsbane Manor, watching me change, her eyes burning with curiosity and—

  “Lady Morena has arrived.” Laura’s voice startled me from the memory.

  “Right,” I said. “I didn’t call her.”

  “She said she couldn’t wait, and she expects to be seen immediately or she will fire me and every other staff member you depend on so that your lazy ass will have to learn to do things for itself.”

  A headache started in my right temple, and I massaged it, hoping it wouldn’t flare up into a full-blown migraine. Although modern science had given a name to my “sick headaches,” the medicines didn’t work for me. Losing my staff wouldn’t help it, so I said, “Send her in.”

  Morena glided in without picking her feet very far off the floor. She wore her customary navy blue pantsuit and flats. She’d adapted well to this new era in which women could dress like men. When she and I had worked together in the fifties, the skirts and heels of the time had always looked like they enjoyed being worn by her as much as she enjoyed wearing them. Her yellow eyes took in the details of the office, specifically the message slip in the fireplace, but she didn’t say anything about it.

  I bowed. “What a pleasant surprise, Chairwoman.”

  As always, she got directly to the point. It was one of the few things I liked about her. “I understand there’s been some unpleasantness at the Institute.”

  I gestured for her to take a seat in one of the chairs in front of my desk. She sat with spine straight. I could count the number of times I’d seen her relax on one hand.

  “So you’ve spoken with Garou,” I said and sat in the other one. My office wasn’t as cozy as Lonna’s but still held a fair number of volumes, and my eyes strayed to one shelf of books from the original Wolfsbane Manor. They were all I managed to rescue before the fire found the library, and I had dreamed of presenting them to Joanie when I returned for her. Alas, by the time I had made it through all the bureaucratic nonsense of the Council, she had been claimed by another.

  “He filled me in on the obvious details. I want to know what you think he missed.”

  “What did he find in the pull-off where the getaway car was?”

  “What makes you think I’m going to tell you?” She leaned forward. This was our game.

  “Because I’m the Council Investigator,” I said, “and even if you don’t tell me, I’ll get the report from Garou later. Might as well save me some time.”

  “Insolent pup,” she growled. “I should have voted against making you Investigator. You were too young.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “As I recall, you did, and yet here we are. The question is whether you’re going to help me do my job.”

  “You never did respect your elders like you should,” she told me. “And no, the question is whether you’re going to be able to do your job. Remember, you’re not a full Council member yet. You can be replaced.”

  “I see no reason why I shouldn’t do my job, and yes, I do recall my position. You remind me of it every chance you get.”

  She stood and walked behind the desk to where I had the files laid out. “Yet perhaps I do see potential areas of conflict for you, even beyond your friendship with the directors. What do you know of the dead man?”

  I moved to close the open file, that of Selene. “He was a full human and a geneticist.” I grabbed for his file, but she held it away from me.

  “And what else?”

  “He’d gotten a batch of applications from Iain MacPherson, the CLS specialist and the other geneticist.”

  “Do you know about a wife? Family? Even his nationality?”

  “No, no, and I suspect American. As you know, I only just arrived when you barged in. What are you getting at?”

  She flipped Selene’s file at me. “Only that you might be letting your small head overrule your big one.”

  I winced. No matter how modern we got, I couldn’t get used to women speaking crudely. “I just received the files.”

  “And see which one you opened first.” She slammed both fists down on the desk, which toppled an antique inkwell. I righted it before it could spill. “Dammit, Gabriel, this case goes beyond anything you’ve looked into for us, and it’s got more diplomatic pitfalls than you can imagine.”

  “Oh?” Now she had me intrigued. I could forget the insult.

  She ran a hand through her short gray hair. “We’ve been fighting the press away from the Institute for months now, basically since we started building it. Now we have to be careful that the human press doesn’t get hold of this story. It’s bad enough our community will know.”

  “So we deflect the humans. Business as usual. What else?”

  “I’m getting to it. After months of silence on the issue, the International Wizard Tribunal has come forward to say they do not support the project, and they want to pull M
aximilian Fortuna off the staff. We’re trying to negotiate his staying.”

  A low whistle escaped my lips. “If we don’t have him, we don’t have an Institute.”

  “Right, and that’s why the wizards want to pull him. They haven’t come out and said it, but they’re on the side of the Purists. They believe this thing is a gift, and no one should take it away, especially not using a forbidden form of magic.”

  “Blood magic is only part of the process. They haven’t told me the whole procedure. It’s proprietary, at least until they perfect it and can share it with the world.”

  “No one knows it, and it makes the wizards antsy because they can’t study it and the lycanthrope Purists unhappy because they see it as reversing something that they have a birthright to.”

  I ground my teeth. It was an argument that just wouldn’t go away. “We’re not taking anything away from them.”

  “No, but they’re afraid nevertheless.”

  “What does this have to do with LeConte’s murder?” I asked. “Do you think he was killed for trade secrets?”

  “That, dear Investigator, is your job to figure out as quickly and quietly as you can. I’ll stall the Council, but keep in mind that they’ll want a report very soon.” She tapped a finger on Selene’s file. “And just remember that in our world, it’s rare that something is exactly as it seems.”

  Morena’s cheerful visit left me with difficulty focusing. Her words swirled around my brain, especially what she hinted about Selene. As much as Morena frustrated me, she did have the admirable trait of not interfering in others’ personal lives. On the other hand, I knew next to nothing about hers. Although our rules of coupling and mating were looser than the pure humans’, and therefore she would see nothing wrong with me having a dalliance with Selene, I still had to worry about conflict of interest. And Morena’s warning about the wizards made this an even higher profile case.

  With a growl, I stood and strode out of the office.

  “Don’t forget your ten o’clock tomorrow morning,” Laura called after me.

  I waved to acknowledge I’d heard and then headed straight to the pub.

  “Straight” is a relative term in the hills of Scotland. Of course leaving the castle was never direct since my offices were in a turret, and I had to negotiate a set of winding stairs. Then I had to cross a minor hall, then the major welcome one, and another minor one to the side door to the Council and employee parking. Visitors valeted so they couldn’t leave quickly. That was mostly in place for the rare wizard who showed up.

  The thick carpeting muffled my steps in the welcome hall. No matter how many times I passed them, I couldn’t help but slow to admire the vividly drawn, albeit fading, battlefields on the tapestries.

  “Ho, Gabriel!” The booming voice stopped me just as I reached the door.

  Chapter Four

  I turned to see David Lachlan, one of the Council members, waving me down. His broad stomach stretched the fibers of his sweater vest, and his curly salt and pepper hair seemed to be giving in to the force of gravity, in that more of it now clustered around his ears than the top of his head. Although some might perceive him as ridiculous, I knew his true age and always treated him with wariness and respect.

  In spite of his girth, he approached quickly and with more grace on his feet than one would expect. It was how he hunted both politically and as a wolf: making the prey underestimate him.

  “David,” I said and inclined my head to acknowledge his superiority in our little hierarchy. We all liked to pretend we weren’t subject to the British crown.

  “Gods, lad, I haven’t seen you in years!” He clapped me on the shoulder and propelled me toward the exit.

  “Respectfully, sir, I think it’s been months.”

  “Right, you’ve been busy with that Institute, eh? Well, I was just headed down to Marley’s for a pint. Care to join me?”

  My right temple throbbed again, and I continued to ignore it as my mind rearranged the pieces of this puzzle. I had no doubt that running into him was more than coincidence. David rarely appeared at Lycan Castle, usually only when there was a Council Meeting, and the next scheduled one wasn’t until following week.

  “I was just going there myself,” I said and opened the door to outside. “After you.”

  “Ah, beautiful day, isn’t it?” he asked. “I ran here this morning, so I’ll let you drive.”

  His admission made me raise my eyebrows. To run to the castle was to do so in wolf form, and we all had fully appointed bathrooms with showers and changes of clothes in our office suites. Something must have gotten him excited to go through the trouble, and I worried it might have been my meeting at the Institute today. It also made me wonder if and how he had heard about the murder.

  I unlocked my convertible BMW and allowed the top to open. “I would have, but I had an appointment before coming.”

  “So I heard. We can discuss that mess at the pub.”

  He leaned back and put on his sunglasses, obviously not willing to talk about it further in spite of us being less likely to be overheard in the car. I wondered again what game he was playing.

  Sometimes all you have to do is be seen and not heard.

  I lowered my own sunglasses. My father’s voice intruded into my memories whenever I felt the tangled web of politics tighten around me, and I always wished he hadn’t died when I was so young so he could have guided me through this inherited position and the crazy games that went with it. David had appeared occasionally in my life to give me a nudge in the right direction, but like Morena, he tended to be hands-off.

  The side drive to Lycan Castle had once been a hunting trail into the thick forests around the hill and its base. Not that the forests spread too far these days, but there were still animals there to be chased and eaten as well as streams with cozy bends and stone outcroppings where one could take a certain red lady wolf…

  “Keep your eyes on the road, my boy.”

  I jerked aware from my reverie and corrected my steering around a sharp curve. The car handled beautifully, and David didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t move, and his hands remained relaxed, one tapping on his thigh along to the Celtic music on the radio, and the other draped over the side of the door. I gripped the wheel, which had gone slick under my palms. The desire for a pint left me, replaced by the need for a shot of whiskey and then the thought that either might not be advisable since I was about to have intoxicating beverages at the pub with a potential enemy. My mind was already slipping since my father’s voice sounded like it came from the backseat instead of inside my brain.

  “You look ill, Gabriel,” David said once we got out to the main road and the shadows of trees alternated our path with light and dark.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “We can talk about it at the pub.”

  He nodded. “Sometimes I can’t help but see your father when I look at you.”

  “Why? Was he often ill?” I tried to make it a jest, but I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my tone since the portly man next to me had known my father for decades, and I for barely one.

  “No, he was one of the healthiest men I knew. One of the smartest too. It’s too bad he had to get himself killed.”

  “Not everyone has your knack for survival, David.”

  “Thankfully I was born after Culloden, we didn’t have money for an army commission, and I’d allowed myself to age to the point where I couldn’t be drafted by the time the first Great War broke out. Otherwise, I might not have. Your father could have done the same, but he had his vanity, handsome bugger. You seem to have gotten his looks and his smarts but not the ego.”

  I tried to listen for the meaning behind his words, but this was the first time he’d opened up to me about my father.

  “He’s warming you up to say more than you would otherwise. Thankfully he still can’t talk about me without insul
ting me.”

  I pulled the car into a spot in front of Marley’s and took a few deep breaths to clear my head. The rearview mirror beckoned me from my peripheral vision. Should I look in it and see if my father’s ghost sat in the backseat, glowering back at me? Did my hope make me a fool? Or did my avoidance of doing so make me a coward?

  I got out of the car without looking and joined David at the front door, where a pretty blonde girl in a short kilted skirt smiled at him.

  “Careful, you look old enough to qualify as a dirty old man,” I told him once we’d been seated in a booth in the corner. It was the most discreet booth in the place, and I immediately went on guard, even more than I had been on the drive with just David to worry about.

  “I’m old enough to qualify as one many times over,” he said. “Just because I have a couple of centuries under my belt and haven’t taken a wife for a while, it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a good flirt.”

  I couldn’t say anything considering how my thoughts kept straying to Selene.

  “So is the Institute ready to go, then?” David asked once we’d put in our orders for two Lagavulins—neat—and two Scotch eggs to absorb the alcohol.

  “They’ve had a small setback,” I said and leaned back.

  He arched a bushy eyebrow. “I’ll be getting the report tomorrow,” he told me.

  I heard what he didn’t say, that if something major had occurred, it would require a majority vote on the Council to allow the Institute to continue, and he liked to be the first to know.

  “One of the geneticists died.”

  “Oh, is that all? Find another one. They’re both human, right?”

  “It’s not quite that simple,” I said. “The way he died was rather unpleasant.”

  This time both eyebrows went up. We didn’t typically minimize things. “As in he’s a full-blooded human who is no longer in possession of his full volume of blood.”

  “Yes,” I said, relieved I wouldn’t have to describe it in a public place in spite of the low likelihood that someone would overhear.