by Jen Haeger
“What ex-act-a-ly does that mean?”
Kim cleared her throat. “It means that Evie might have found a way to keep a werewolf from changing, but that it won’t make any werewolf who is already sick or insane from the virus better or sane again.”
Shimmers of tears temporarily blinded Evelyn as her thoughts turned to the Scribe, but she swallowed and wiped them away. “It’s not perfect, but we don’t have much time and this could work…” She tugged at her lower lip. “Except we wouldn’t be able to administer or test it until two days before the final confrontation with the Vulke, because the wolf DNA is shielded by the viral DNA until transformation. And since distemper doesn’t infect humans, trying to infect the Vulke or strays now wouldn’t do anything.” Evelyn grabbed Nicolas’s shoulder. “Nicolas, I know I’ve asked you this before, but please be honest with me. Are you sure the Vulke don’t know you’ve turned on them, or that you took the research files?”
Nicolas paled and fidgeted as all eyes turned to him. “My absence will be noted, but the theft of the files…should remain a secret.”
Breath whistled from Evelyn’s lips. “We need to make sure. You know where some of the Vulke…” Evelyn wanted to say torture centers, “training centers for the strays are, yes?”
“Da.”
“Then we need to check those out and make sure they’re still active. Make sure the Vulke haven’t sensed something and cleared out. If they’re still there, we try to hit every Vulke concentration Nicolas knows about, infect the food and the water. Like I said, it’ll have to be done during a transformation time, so two days before the full moon at the earliest. But before all that, I need to steal a crap ton of the mutant distemper strain from the USDA. We’re going to need some massive help and fast…time to call Roberto.”
64
“Roberto, this is Evelyn.”
“So…is Nicolas with you now?”
“What…how…?”
A heavy sigh wafted through the phone’s speaker. “Because I know you, Dr. Eisenhart.”
Bracing herself to be berated, Evelyn continued. “Are you mad?”
“Mad? No. Positively thrilled. No one else knows about this, I take it?”
“Just the Inali…and Clem.”
Smug satisfaction oozed into Roberto’s voice. “Clem, of course, good. Listen, Doctor, let us cut to the chase. I wanted to help you recruit Nicolas to our side, but I could not risk it with the traitor still unknown, do you understand.”
Evelyn was so derailed that she couldn’t think straight. “No, I don’t think so.”
“If the traitor thought that Nicolas might identify him, he might have done something rash, something that could have gotten good people killed.”
“But this way, the traitor, whoever they are, still feels comfortable.”
“Yes…Does he know who it is?”
Biting her lip, Evelyn grimaced. “Um, I forgot to ask him.”
“You…never mind that now, but please ask him and let me know, would you? So if you are not calling about that, why are you calling?”
It took a bit of time to relay all of Evelyn’s breakthrough and plan to Roberto. In the end, she was out of breath and Roberto was less thrilled than she thought he would be. “And you are certain that you have no way of testing this beforehand?”
“If I could’ve found a way to stimulate the virus to initiate the transformation, so could the Vulke and there’d be werewolves running around today in broad daylight.”
“I see your point.”
“Good. So you’re going to get teams together to check out the Vulke, um, stronghold locations that Nicolas gave us?”
Roberto didn’t answer right away. “Yes, but Evelyn I…should we not get this other mutant virus first?”
“Well, we should know where the Vulke are to infect them first, but I can tell you where the USDA is storing the stuff…and probably get you the security code.”
“That will help.”
*
Days rocketed past and they heard painfully little from Roberto, except that things were ‘progressing’. After finally asking Nicolas about the traitor, Evelyn reported to Roberto that Nicolas didn’t know who it was, but he did know that he or she were being blackmailed by the Vulke. Nicolas described a Wolfkin child, a girl, held captive by the Vulke that he believed to be the child of someone from the Wahya or Amaruq pack and an illegal offspring of a Wolfkin pairing. It didn’t shock Evelyn that a Wolfkin on their side had broken the rules about breeding. Likely the woman had hoped that the child would somehow escape her affliction, but the very idea of a poor Wolfkin child in the hands of the Vulke sickened Evelyn. She was thankful that the Wahya had found Katie instead of the Vulke.
To stay busy, Evelyn insisted that Nicolas continue to translate and the others help her to sort the Vulke research, even though it was too late to try something different. She also attempted several doomed experiments using a centrifuge to simulate the gravitational pull of the moon in her efforts to test her theory about the distemper co-infection. Nicolas often joined her in the lab, though he had no specific scientific skills. And if he was there, David came, and if David came then Kim followed, and if Kim followed, Clem didn’t want to be left alone at the condo. The full house at the lab added to the frustration of Evelyn’s fruitless experiments which was compounded by the shortening timeline and Roberto’s silence. When they weren’t going through the Vulke research or in the lab, all five of them worked their frustrations out at the gym, Clem and Nicolas as guests.
Finally, only three days from the start of the Wolfkin transformation cycle, Roberto arrived unexpectedly at the condo with a grim Caroline in tow. David happened to answer the door.
“What the hell, Roberto? We’ve left you like two dozen messages. What’s going on?!”
“It is a rather long tale. May we come in and sit down to tell it?”
David threw up his arms in frustration, but moved to let Roberto and Caroline enter. Roberto sat on one of the chairs in the living room and Caroline took the other, leaving Evelyn and Kim to share the couch, and David, Clem, and Nicolas to stand hovering on the fringes of the room.
Evelyn, who’d watched Roberto and Caroline closely from the moment they came in, knew that there was bad news coming.
“Let me first introduce you to the new Wahya Alpha.” Roberto gestured to Clem.
Clem froze, blinked then blinked again. “Uh, come again?”
Having a sneaking suspicion, Evelyn butted in. “Zachary? Wow. It makes sense.”
Clem stared at Evelyn. “Jest what makes sense?”
“Zachary was the traitor.”
Everyone now stared at Caroline, whose lips were pressed together so tight that they were white.
Her mouth gone dry, Evelyn had to ask, “Was?”
Caroline dropped her gaze to the floor. “Zachary’s dead.”
“How?“
Roberto cleared his throat. “That is not important now. What is important is that he tipped our hand to the Vulke and told them that we were investigating Vulke compounds. We could do nothing to prevent them from being abandoned, and now we do not know where the Vulke are concentrated to infect them. I’m afraid…” His normally commanding voice failing, Roberto brought up a hand and rubbed his temple. But he didn’t have to say it. The plan was scuttled. They couldn’t infect the Vulke before the battle. The news was bad, but all hope wasn’t lost.
“There’s another way.”
Clem’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “You mean that virus wasn’t our last hope?”
“No, I mean there’s another way to distribute the virus to the Vulke, but…” Standing, Evelyn walked to the fireplace and stared at the flickering pilot light.
“But what, Evie?” David’s voice was warmer than it had been in days. She turned to face the room.
“The virus can be aerosolized and spread that way, so we could basically blanket the battlefield with it, but…” Evelyn closed her eyes to continue, “infect
ion that way wouldn’t be one-hundred percent, and they have superior numbers, so if more of our side was infected with the distemper and couldn’t transform then…”
“Then it could still be a bloodbath,” David finished, conspicuously eyeing Nicolas, who was fidgeting and shifting his weight back and forth.
Nodding, Evelyn’s eyes became unfocused as her thoughts coalesced. “But I can make sure that we have an advantage.”
“How?” Kim’s voice was barely a whisper.
“I can vaccinate us.”
Evelyn’s words hung in the air until Caroline broke the silence. “I don’t see the issue here.”
David answered for Evelyn. “The issue, if I’m not mistaken, is that if you get the vaccine and make sure that you can fight, then you can’t use distemper as a kind of cure afterwards, right, Evie?”
She nodded.
Nicolas’s agitated motion ceased.
Roberto’s eyes blazed, but Caroline was nonplussed. “I never wanted your cure.”
This snapped Evelyn out of her stupor. “You may feel differently in a few years.”
“You might actually find a real cure in a few years.”
David interceded before Evelyn could lunge across the room and throttle Caroline. “We’ll have to tell all of the allies the risks involved and let them decide for themselves.”
Caroline shrugged. “Fine, whatever. We don’t even know if this is going to work.”
Evelyn ran a finger along the mantle. “We’ll know in three days. I’d like to test it on a stray and on a non-mutant Wolfkin.” She glanced up at Kim.
Kim’s face was stern. “Uh-uh, I’m fighting. The Vulke took…give me the vaccine. You should cure Katie.”
Frowning, Evelyn shook her head. “Too risky. If something goes wrong and it hurts her somehow…”
Roberto stood. “I have a candidate, the stray that escaped the Vulke. He is still quite traumatized from his ordeal. I think that he will be a danger to himself and others next time he changes.”
Evelyn didn’t relish the thought of using anyone as a guinea pig, but they had to know if her plan with the distemper was going to work. “That takes care of a stray and the mutant Wolfkin virus, what about a regular Wolfkin?”
Roberto opened his mouth and then closed it, pursing his lips together. Evelyn knew that Roberto wanted to be cured as much as she or David or Kim did, maybe more. But he also was a true leader, and to lead people into battle, you had to be out in front of the line. Clearing his throat, Roberto began again. “Doctor Jonson has suffered a significant decline in mental facilities since the last full moon. I am sure that he would be open to the idea…or at least his wife would.”
65
Dr. Jonson and the stray, Allen, sat in folding chairs in the basement of the defunct Northville Psychiatric Hospital, now under new management after being acquired by an entrepreneurial real estate company owned by, but not traceable to, Roberto. A makeshift lab had been hastily assembled in the space and, since they were no longer sequencing DNA, the lack of sterility was acceptable. Two burly men stood behind the chairs, Paul and John? Evelyn very vaguely remembered them from the throngs of Wahya at the battle, though she didn’t remember John having a scar across his cheek. They were there to escort the test subjects to the isolation cells that Clem had once occupied, in what seemed in Evelyn’s mind to be a whole lifetime ago, so that they could be monitored during the transformation.
Evelyn, the only one gowned, gloved, and masked, tapped the side of a tuberculin syringe one more time to dislodge any air bubbles, then approached Dr. Jonson. He smiled up at her.
“Shouldn’t be much worse than a rabies vaccine, right…uh…”
“Evelyn.”
“Right, Evelyn, I knew that.”
Evelyn swabbed his arm with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball then blew on it to dry the area. “One, two, three.” She jabbed the spot with the tiny needle and depressed the plunger. “All done.”
“Do I get a lollipop?”
“I’m afraid I’m all out.” Evelyn nodded to John, who tensed and glued his eyes to the veterinarian.
After disposing of the used needle in a bright red sharps container, Evelyn picked up a second needle filled with the same slightly opaque fluid and gave it a tap before approaching her other test subject. She spoke softly as she swabbed his arm, but he was sedated and didn’t really seem to notice her. She’d been upset by his state, but Roberto had shown her a video of the man agreeing to the test. “Allen, I’m Dr. Eisenhart. You may feel just a tiny prick now.”
Allen didn’t move a muscle while she injected him with the distemper virus sample. As Evelyn nodded to Paul, Paul and John escorted Allen and Dr. Jonson to the door and then out into the hallway. Roberto, who’d been lurking in the corner, paced over to her as she cleaned up and took off her mask, gown, and gloves.
“Should we not be testing the aerosolized strain?”
Shaking her head, Evelyn met his eye. “Same strain. Should make no difference, but if there’s some kind of terrible side effect, I didn’t want all of us exposed.”
“Ah, I see.” He walked towards the door with her. “Where is everyone else?”
“Clem had some pack matters to see to, David’s waiting in the isolation hallway with Kim, and Nicolas is…well, already in one of the isolation cells. David says that we are too close to people and he’s worried that Nicolas won’t be able to control himself…anyways, I don’t think it’s necessary, but…”
Roberto didn’t press and Evelyn didn’t want to say more. She was furious with David, treating Nicolas that way after all the help he had been to them. Still, she had to admit, a small part of her felt more at ease with Nicolas in a cell tonight. It just made things less complicated. Walking in silence the rest of the way to the isolation chambers, they arrived just in time to hear the dour clang of the cells being shut and latched. Evelyn checked her watch. “Not long now.”
Kim smiled at her and grabbed David’s arm. “That’s my cue.”
David pointed at Evelyn. “Remember your breathing.” He then followed Kim out into the hallway.
Roberto posted John and Paul next to the door then went with Evelyn to stand in front of the occupied cells. Peeking into Nicolas’s cell, Evelyn was going to ask him how he was doing, but he was sitting cross-legged in the center of the closet-sized room and appeared to be meditating, so she put her concentration to the task at hand. She hadn’t previously had great success staving off the change on the nights prior to or after the full moon, but Clem and David had both given her some tips to try tonight. Also, she hoped that the importance of testing the distemper co-infection would help her stay focused. Roberto was completely at ease, even when the pressure of the change was pressing in on Evelyn’s skull. Breathing slowly in and out, she glanced over at Paul and John. They both had flushed faces and shifted their weight back and forth instead of standing statue-still as before, but neither appeared to be in danger of losing control.
Come on, Evie, you can do this. Evelyn peered into Dr. Jonson’s cell. Sitting serenely on the edge of the crooked metal bunk, he caught her eye.
“I feel a bit tingly. Is it close to sunset?”
“Not quite yet.” A thrill ran through her and the pressure in her head doubled. She moved on to Allen’s cell. He was actually asleep on his bunk, and since Evelyn knew from her experience with Kim that sedation did nothing to prevent transformation, she knew that the co-infection was working. Sweating and panting, she leaned on the wall between the two cells and imagined the distemper virus particles clinging to the newly exposed lupine DNA within the Wolfkin cells, creating physical blocks to the shifting Languorem luporum structure. Roberto approached, but didn’t crowd her.
“It appears to be working.”
Evelyn bit back the agony coursing through her own body. “Good results…but…might not work…as well…full…moon.”
Roberto nodded gravely then calmly removed a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped a fine
layer of sweat from his brow. “We can set up a camera tomorrow night, but we will prepare the distribution canisters. Even if it does not completely prevent the change, if it does anything, it will help.”
“Where?”
“The new battle site? The Vulke haven’t specified yet, though I suspect a Canadian location this time. They are still acting in a civilized manner with regards to the war. It unsettles me. Other than Zachary informing them of our knowledge of several of their strongholds, they have no reason to believe that they have lost the upper hand…still.” As his words trailed off, Roberto sounded like he was talking mostly to himself.
Through the pain, Evelyn had a clear thought. “The…Alonso?”
Roberto frowned. “Will likely join the Vulke in battle here against us, as their other allies are more conveniently located for aiding in England.”
