Blood's Shadow: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 3 Page 7

  I didn’t feel David would attack me, but still, since allowing someone to see you change is one of the most intimate things a werewolf can do, David and I split up into different bedrooms to transform into our wolf selves.

  If I’m coming into my full powers, why isn’t this easier? I thought as I lay on the floor to catch my breath after changing. Or is this the human half showing through? They always resist change.

  My mind tried to chew on everything David had told me to this point, but I quieted it—there would be enough time for thinking later. We left through a hinged diamond-pane window I’d rigged so I could open it from the inside with my paws. I could get back in from the outside by using my nose to punch in a code on a keypad with extra large keys hidden in the shrubbery.

  “Ingenious,” David told me telepathically. “Definitely better than a doggie door. Did you know that’s how the vaccine lycanthropes manage?” He snorted. “They have no sense of dignity.”

  I didn’t respond. Lonna told me that was how they did it in the States. “At some point, you just have to get over yourself,” she’d said. “Practicality trumps pride.”

  David led me through the field behind my complex and into a wooded area. The wind whispered through the summer leaves, and woodland creatures skittered out of our way. As a wolf, David was barrel-chested with a little gray showing on his muzzle. In his human form, he outweighed me by a few stone, and the difference wasn’t so drastic in canine form, but it was all muscle. It reminded me he’d be a formidable opponent, and I was thankful he was on my side. I also wanted to know what my father’s letter meant and grew impatient as he led me through twists and turns, on paths and off them, until we were deep in the woods. He stopped beside a pool in a small grove, and the image I’d gotten from my brief sniff of Selene came to mind.

  I’ll consider that problem later.

  “This will do,” David said and stretched out on a flat rock that was shaded, but I could smell the heat radiating off it in waves of mineral and dry dirt, so I surmised it had been in the sun for most of the day.

  I found a soft grassy spot and stretched out. The ground released tangy green smells with notes of damp earth, and I had to fight my wolf side to not close my eyes and take a nap. My human side wanted more information.

  David looked like he had the same struggle—his eyelids kept drooping.

  “Tell me why my mother and I were in danger after my father died,” I said.

  He started. “Right.” He stood and shook himself, then sat on his haunches. “What do you know of the Order of the Silver Arrow?”

  “Not much,” I said. “I remember hearing something about it in school, but I thought it was dead.”

  “It was supposed to have died out long ago, but as with most secret societies, it still survives in some form, but its purpose hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s become more dangerous.”

  Chapter Eight

  Back in the eighteenth century, the world was torn apart by war as the British struggled to expand and hold on to their colonies, and the colonies fought to be free of British rule. It was also supposedly the “Age of Enlightenment,” but there were those who resisted scientific advancement, and they also succumbed to a sort of xenophobia. The opening of the world frightened the Europeans, and the realization that some people were more than human terrified them.

  One of these creatures was a vargamore, a half werewolf, half wizard named Sir Dorian Wolfsheim. He had come from Germany and had fought and sailed for the British. He hated his wolf side, feeling it was crass and undesirable with all those messy emotions and urges, and was overly enamored of his wizard abilities. Rumor had it that he started the Wizard Tribunal, not as the governing body it is now, but rather as a punishing body to chastise wizards who were unable to resist their base instincts in the name of science and purity.

  Sadly, psychology was still barely a twinkle in the eye of scientific inquiry, so Wolfsheim could not realize his persecution of lycanthropes was an effort to eradicate that side of himself. He went at it with zeal akin to religious persecution with the blessing of the British crown, which had its own bloody history and frustrations with the Scots, who were once again revolting. The clans who fought with Bonnie Prince Charlie had the most lycanthrope blood in their number. Those who fought against the Great Pretender, as he was known in England, were primarily allied with the wizards.

  “My family fought on the wrong side,” David said. “And they were part of the packs who failed to show up where they were needed. Something confused and scattered them until it was too late.”

  “Wolfsheim,” I said. “As a vargamore, he could do that.”

  “Aye. And he did. And then he hunted us down systematically until only those of us who could seek refuge on foreign shores or disguise ourselves among those who had not fought for the Pretender were left.”

  A snapping branch brought both of us into alert stance and sniffing the wind for the scent of a creature big enough to make that much noise. A shiny object flew from the trees and embedded itself in a stump just in front of David’s nose. We dashed for cover away from where it must have come from.

  “What was it?” asked David.

  “I didn’t get too close a look at it.” I risked a glance behind us. I didn’t want to distract him from our flight, but I knew what I’d seen: a silver arrow. That someone could have gotten that close to us told me they had magical help. It seemed we had attracted the attention of a vargamore, and someone was in pursuit.

  We eventually circled back to my flat, changed back, and dressed.

  “How was that possible?” asked David when he walked into the kitchen. “How could someone have just snuck up on us? Someone armed?”

  “You know as well as I do,” I told him and handed him a glass with a generous pour of the Oban. “Direction of the breeze and possibly some extra help.”

  He knocked it back and held out his glass for a refill. I gave him a half pour. He scowled.

  “Don’t stiff a man who’s just had his life threatened.”

  “Unless you’re sleeping over, you need to be able to drive. And that silver arrow was a warning. They could’ve killed us both if they’d wanted.”

  He shook his head. “Just fucking great,” he said.

  “Maybe you need to get better at giving history lessons,” I told him. The doorbell rang, and we both startled. “Stay here.”

  “Insolent pup,” he growled, but he didn’t move.

  I hesitated and grabbed the open Oban bottle before he helped himself again. Not that there wasn’t other alcohol in the kitchen, but in spite of his rustic upbringing, David wasn’t the type of guest to open something without asking.

  His words followed me into the front hall. “If your father wasn’t such a good friend…”

  I checked through the peephole and saw the last person I expected: Selene.

  I opened the door and pulled Selene inside. “Are you crazy? You don’t know who might be out there!”

  “What is your problem?” She detached her arm from my grip and narrowed her eyes at the Scotch in my hand. “Are you drinking that straight from the bottle?”

  “No, I’m drinking it from a glass like a gentleman,” I said and motioned for her to follow me into the kitchen, thinking it would be best to introduce her to David before he surprised us. But when I got in there, I saw he’d left through the side door. His empty glass sat on the counter beside the letter from my father, and the sound of his car’s engine started and moved away.

  “What’s that?” she asked and reached for the letter.

  “Official business,” I told her and picked it up. It barely had any weight to it, and I handled it carefully.

  “From when, nineteen hundred?”

  “Nineteen forty-three,” I murmured.

  She shook her head. “Look, I’m sorry if I’m interrupting something,” sh
e said. “I was driving by and…” She squeezed her eyes shut. “That’s a lie. I looked you up and found you.”

  I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t ask if she’d consulted her scarfaced concussion-dealing friend before showing up for a visit. “What can I fix you to drink?”

  She opened her eyes, and her open face betrayed her surprise. How had she gotten mixed up with that bloke at the pub? She reeked of innocence, but she was no dummy. “To drink?” she asked.

  “The rules of hospitality dictate that if a guest shows up at one’s residence, one should offer some sort of refreshment. Thus, would you like a drink?”

  She nodded. “Do you have any wine?”

  I gestured to my dual zone wine fridge. “Red or white?”

  “White, please.”

  Soon I had her settled with a glass of Chenin Blanc on the opposite end of the sofa. The similarity to David’s visit from earlier didn’t escape me, but she was nicer to look at.

  “So what brings you to Shady Acres?” I asked. “I’m afraid it’s not the Scotland in coffee table books.”

  “It’s fine,” she said. “It’s not so different from home except our historical houses are a couple, not several, hundred years old. As for what brings me…” She looked into her glass. “I wanted to know how the investigation into Otis’s death is going.”

  “I had official business today, so I wasn’t able to do any investigating, but I will give it my full attention tomorrow. I’m hoping Garou will have his reports ready by then.”

  “Are you going to question us? He already did.”

  “That depends. Can you add to your statement?”

  “Garou implied we were dating,” she said. “But we weren’t. But still, it’s my fault that Otis died.”

  That drew my attention away from the curve of her neck and the way one button on her blouse seemed to hang on for dear life over her breasts. “Fill me in here. How does Garou’s implication cause you to be a murderer?”

  She blinked, and two fat tears trailed down her cheeks. “Other people thought we were dating, or at least that we were more than friends. Because we were the same age and American, maybe. Lonna even hinted that it wouldn’t be a good idea to cross personal and professional relationships.” She snorted. “Like she’s not married to her co-director.”

  “Right. Believe me, we did consider that, but we need both of them. Go on. I’m still not convinced LeConte’s death is your fault.”

  “That morning after staffing, he asked me to walk with him to his office. He said he had something to ask me. I was afraid of what he’d say, he looked so hopeful and afraid all at the same time. I said no, I had things I needed to do before your visit. The next time I saw him, he was dead.”

  “What do you think he was going to ask you?”

  “To go out with him, I guess. I don’t know what else it could have been. But don’t you see? If I’d gone to his office with him, he might not have been killed or he would have had warning that something wasn’t right. You know we hear and smell better than humans do.”

  “Or they might have gotten you too,” I reminded her. “Did you go to his office between his request to you that morning and when we found him?”

  “I…” She looked down at her now empty wine glass. “I didn’t.”

  I knew she was lying, but I didn’t want to confront her and spook my only link to the murder’s witness into running for the States. That she opened up to me even minimally gave me hope she would continue to do so as she came to trust me. “Do you remember anything else unusual about him or his behavior that day?”

  “No, only that he was excited about getting the applications. He had a project on the side tracing the family records of known lycanthrope lines, and he was looking forward to putting it all together to see how the subjects’ lines intersected with the ones we know about and to isolate another genetic marker to maybe figure out why Chronic Lycanthropy Syndrome fully expresses in some people but not in others.” She shrugged. “That’s all I can remember.”

  “I appreciate your coming to visit me today, but was it really necessary?”

  “I needed to talk to you outside the Institute. I don’t feel comfortable there anymore.” She shuddered. “It’s like I’m being watched.”

  I thought about the letter in the kitchen. “I know the feeling.”

  She stood, and I did as well. “Thank you for the wine,” she said and held out her glass to me.

  “My pleasure.” Our fingertips brushed when she handed the crystal over, and again, I got the image of her as a wolf looking into a pool of water, not unlike where David and I had stopped and been shot at that afternoon.

  She looked up at me with a smile she tucked away, and again, I wondered what she’d seen. It was unusual enough for such strong visual images to come through with scent, and for them to do so with touch puzzled me. Was it part of me coming into my full power?

  “I should be going,” she said.

  I followed her to the front door. “Be careful,” I told her. “You don’t know who or what is out there watching.”

  With a quick nod, she walked to her car and went to the passenger side before sighing and going to the driver’s side. She must not have been in the country that long if she was still trying to drive from the wrong side of the car. I hoped she would remember what side of the road to use.

  After she left, I double-checked all my security measures to ensure nothing had been tampered with. All looked secure, and I took a hot shower. When I got out, I saw something scrawled in the mist on the mirror: 204, the number that had been scrawled at the edge of the photograph of my father’s mangled corpse.

  A chill chased away the heat from the shower, and I hesitated to wipe the fog from the rest of the mirror. Would another face besides my own stare back at me? I licked my lips and tasted salt. Tears?

  I wiped the fog from the mirror, but what faced me wasn’t my father’s or even my face, but a scene from the past. It was the kitchen of my parents’ flat in Lycan Village, where a lot of the Council members lived if their own houses were too far away.

  “No, I’m not doing this,” I said and turned to open the door. The knob stuck. “Dammit, the past is in the past. I have no desire to relive that day.”

  “Sometimes the past doesn’t die.” The voice that had spoken to me in the car and in the pub made the skin at the back of my neck tighten.

  “No, I’m not going to come down,” my seven-year-old voice said. It was the voice of a child simultaneously terrified and holding on to that last shred of hope that if he didn’t come down the stairs, his world wouldn’t come crashing down on him, and he wouldn’t have to grow up too soon. I closed my eyes and rested my head against the wood of the bathroom door, a lump in my throat.

  “You can’t avoid the bad things that happen forever.” That voice was David Lachlan’s, and although the words were harsh, the tone was gentle. I had forgotten he was there when the officer brought news of my father’s death. I didn’t have to turn around and look to remember the scene. My mother, her hands wrapped in her apron, slumped at the kitchen table with tear streaks on her face and looked into nothingness. David—now my mind filled him in—stood with a hand on her shoulder.

  Footsteps came down the stairs, their pace hesitant and defiant, and seven-year-old me stood there, hands on hips, trying to pretend he wasn’t crying. The two men looked at him with sympathy and a little admiration, I’d like to think, for his holding on to hope until the very last second. But he couldn’t hold on to it forever, and he rushed to his mother, who clasped him to her, the most solid remnant of her lost husband.

  The emotions rolled through me then, and I relived the moment when I was that little boy who, in an instant, had had to become a man—the desire for revenge on whoever had done this to my family and anger at the men who had brought the news. And beneath it all, a crushing grief and
fear that my father would be disappointed in me and at my reaction.

  “I was never disappointed in you. But you can’t run from the danger I faced. That was my mistake.”

  I turned around. The only thing in the mirror that caught my attention was the dark hazel irises of my own frightened, angry eyes. I took a deep, shuddering breath and left the bathroom.

  I put David’s letter in my house safe in case he should want it back. It occurred to me I could phone him, but I didn’t know what I would say aside from, “I wanted to make sure you didn’t crash your car on your way home.”

  Then I thought about calling Selene, but that didn’t seem right, either. First, she was lying to me, but my instincts told me she was in some sort of trouble. I needed to bide my time and get her to trust me before pushing her on it. Second, although female companionship would be welcome, I doubted I would be good company for her. The feelings from earlier had subsided except for a certain restless irritation, and I couldn’t even sit still enough to decide what to eat for dinner. Nothing sounded good, but I didn’t want to go to the pub, come back smelling of smoke, and have to shower again. Finally, I busied myself putting together a meal of steak and greens.

  After eating, I flipped through television channels but couldn’t find anything interesting. My cell phone ringing, which typically annoyed me, was a welcome distraction.

  “Gabriel?” The quaver in Lonna’s voice was unusual enough to make me sit upright.

  “What is it?”

  “Something’s wrong with Max.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Chapter Nine

  I arrived at their house in twenty minutes. The sun lay low on the horizon as a glowing orange ball, putting me in mind of videos showing sunset on the African savannah with the silhouettes of prey animals bounding to avoid predators. In our little world, we no longer knew who was the predator and who was the prey.

  Lonna opened the door with Abby on her arm. The baby fussed and whimpered, no doubt picking up her mother’s distress.