Moonburn

by Alisa Sheckley

  I think I would have gotten myself under control then, but Marlene looked me up and down and said, “What are you, crazy? You some kind of rabid Animal Rights nut job?”

  I opened my mouth to say something else, but wound up growling again as a wave of heat rose up from my toes to the top of my scalp, anger boiling up in me too thick for words. My skin prickled, all the tiny hairs bristling.

  Oh, Jesus, not here. Not now. It was broad daylight and I was wearing jeans and a shirt and a lab coat—and it wasn’t even the right time of month, goddamnit. Except that I’d never had regular menstrual periods back when I was normal, so maybe my fluctuating estrogen levels were activating the lycanthropy virus out of sequence.

  Interesting basis for a study, I thought. Then another flash of heat had me gasping for air and pulling off my coat.

  “Okay, lady, I can see you need some help,” said Marlene, drawing my attention back to her. “So if you don’t mind, I’ll just be taking Queenie here before you …”

  My growl cut her off in midinsult. Like hell you’re taking that poor dog out of my sight, I thought, staring Marlene down. I didn’t realize that I’d moved, backing my human client into a corner, until I heard another voice from behind me.

  “Excuse me, Dr. Barrow—I heard something, do you need assistance?” I whirled, and there was Pia, our veterinary assistant in training. Like me, Pia had the lycanthropy virus. Unlike me, she’d started out life as a tame wolf. Malachy Knox, my boss, had been tinkering with the virus and experimented on her, and now she was more human than I was: Unlike me, Pia was unable to shift back into her original form.

  Right now, I took in the fact of her surprise, her fear and alarm, without quite processing what it was that was causing her reaction. “Dr. Barrow, are you all right?” Her soft, brown, pixie-cut hair stood out like the fur of an anxious dog.

  I gave a little growl of irritation and Pia licked her lips nervously. “Dr. Barrow?” For a moment, I was so annoyed by that tentative voice and posture that I just wanted to take her down. Next thing I knew, I was weaving on my feet, light-headed and confused. Pia was behind me, whimpering anxiously in the back of her throat as she tried to prop me up.

  “Stop whining, I’m perfectly all right,” I said, and then everything went black.

  TWO

  I woke up on the abused couch that had taken shelter in our back office, the stink of ammonia burning my nostrils.

  “Better now?” My boss was capping the glass vial of smelling salts which he’d been waving under my nose. Trust Malachy to have the appropriate Edwardian remedy on hand. I rubbed my nose, trying to get rid of the pungent residue of the ammonia fumes.

  “I’m awake.”

  “I’d call that better.” Malachy passed the smelling salts to Pia, who was standing behind him. I had a vague sense that they’d been discussing me a moment ago, and that I’d just missed some crucial bit of information.

  Reflexively, I touched my face, checking for my glasses. Still on my face, although everything was a bit blurry. “What happened?”

  “You passed out in the examining room. How do you feel?”

  I took stock of myself: All my clothes were still on and I felt more or less human, though none too pleased with myself. My vision had cleared, though.

  “I’m good now,” I said, trying to sit up. “Whoa, head rush.”

  “You might want to take it slowly,” said Malachy. “You gave yourself a bit of a knock on the head going down.” He had a clipped, Home Counties accent, the patrician features of a Roman senator, and the unruly tangled black curls of a Portuguese water dog. Some of our female clients wondered why he didn’t cut it, and I explained that a certain amount of ostentatious eccentricity is the hallmark of the British upper classes.

  “How about giving me a hand, then?”

  I felt his bony arm come around my back, and wondered who had gotten me onto the couch. I had about three inches and twenty pounds on Pia, and while Dr. Malachy Knox was a lot of impressive things, physically, he wasn’t up to lifting anything larger than a Siamese.

  “Okay,” said Pia, cheerleading from the sidelines, “swing your feet over, Dr. Barrow. Great. How’s that feel?”

  “I’ll let you know when the room stops spinning.” For someone who’d been human for less than a year, Pia had adapted amazingly well to life on two feet. I still had trouble believing that the shy young wolf I’d met last October was now a high-functioning young woman. Granted, Pia still didn’t understand why most women colored their lips and eyelashes, and her approach to food was to consume it as rapidly as possible. Still, this made her seem more like a recent immigrant from some impoverished traditional society rather than a recent convert to our species. Part of the credit for Pia’s transition went to Jackie, her former owner, who had worked intensively to train Pia to sit at the table, and not under it.

  Jackie, for her part, refused to acknowledge her role in Pia’s transformation. “You’d be surprised how little I had to teach her,” Jackie had said. It seems our canine companions understand more about human language and culture than we imagine.

  What Jackie had never expressed overtly was how much she disapproved of what Malachy had done to her favorite wolf. Like my mother, Jackie didn’t particularly care for Homo sapiens. Nobody knew what Pia thought about the enormous changes in her life—she wasn’t offering her opinion, and I, for one, was a little afraid to ask her.

  I realized that I had been sitting up for a full minute now, and my head had stopped spinning. “I do feel better,” I told Pia. “Thanks.” I tried to look the younger woman in the eye, but she kept averting her gaze. Now why was she acting so strangely around me all of a sudden? Most of the time it was Malachy who had her running scared.

  Pia cleared her throat. “Can I get you something, Dr. Barrow? Water?”

  “No, I’m fine. And what’s with the doctor business? I’ve said you can call me Abra.”

  “Sure … Abra.” She gave me a poor excuse for a smile, and I had to fight the urge to shout, Stop that cringing, woman!

  “Well, I’ll just be going now,” said Pia, inching toward the door. “Unless you did want some water?”

  Belatedly, I felt guilt kicking in, replacing all my previous annoyance. The bad dog owners of this world deserved my anger. Pia did not. “No, I’m really fine. But thanks for all your help back there. Oh, hey, one question: How the heck did you guys shlep me all the way over here?”

  Pia ducked her head, embarrassed. “Oh, you know … Dr. Knox and I just sort of managed.”

  Malachy snorted derisively. “Don’t try to spare my feelings, Pia. I was of no use whatsoever. It’s a good thing you’re stronger than you appear.”

  “Oh, I’m not so strong. You can lift a lot of weight when you have an adrenaline rush.”

  “Gee,” I said, “thanks a lot.” It took Pia a moment, but when Mal threw back his head and gave a short bark of laughter, she realized what she’d implied.

  “I … I didn’t mean to say …”

  “Never mind, I was just teasing.” Pia smiled a little uncertainly. To her, teasing was like play fighting—a relatively gentle way of testing where you ranked in the pack hierarchy.

  “I really don’t think you’re overweight, Doctor … Abra.”

  “Pia,” said Malachy, “stop worrying. She knows she’s not fat.”

  This was true. I could probably lose a couple of pounds around my midsection, but it wasn’t swimsuit season, so I didn’t care that much.

  “Now, why don’t you go on out and see to the clients before they stage a revolt?”

  “Oh, gosh, of course, sorry, Doctor.” Pia scrambled out the door and Malachy swiveled around in his chair to face me. “All right,” he said, “look at the wall behind me.” I tried not to blink while he shined his penlight into my eyes.

  “Good.” Malachy took my pulse, shushing me when I tried to speak. “So. Blood pressure and pupil response is normal, but I think the next logical step is to do an
MRI.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  Pulling the tip of my braid over my shoulder, I tried to think of a polite way to answer. Malachy knew about my disorder, and for a while, he had even supplied me with a noxious cocktail that suppressed the change. But even if he was the closest thing to a medical expert on lycanthropy, I never knew whether he viewed me as a patient or as an experimental subject.

  “I don’t need an expensive brain scan to tell me what happened. It was just low blood sugar. I forgot to eat breakfast.”

  Malachy raised one eyebrow. “That would explain the loss of consciousness, but not the growling.” He paused. “Another possibility is that you’ve experienced a seizure of some sort. That being the case, an MRI would seem the next logical step.” He paused again, steepling his fingers and clearly waiting for my response. On the wall over his head there was a Wegman poster of a Weimaraner sitting in the same pose and smoking a pipe, my personal contribution to the back office decor.

  “I was just irritated. And I didn’t growl. I made an inadvertent sound of disgust, which I realize was unprofessional, but she wanted me to terminate her dog’s pregnancy, and the puppies are due in less than a week!” I rubbed my right temple, trying to stave off the onset of a monster headache. God, I hated my hormones. I used to have irregular menstrual periods. Now I appeared to be suffering from irregular wolf cycles.

  Malachy took my chin in his hand. “I was tempted to snarl at her myself, but, and here is the critical difference, I restrained myself.” He took his penlight back out of his lab coat pocket.

  “Hey, cut it out. We did this already.”

  “You’re squinting. Is the light bothering you now?”

  “I’m not loving it.”

  “And your head is hurting. All right, you say you’re suffering from low blood sugar … how about something to eat?” Malachy reached over for a box of powdered doughnuts that Pia kept by the computer.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t eat this close to a change. About an hour before or after, I went on crazy protein binges, but something about having your bones rearrange is a real appetite suppressant. “Not just now, thanks.”

  Malachy replaced the doughnuts on Pia’s desk. “Abra, when you stopped taking the suppressants, you agreed to let me know if you started experiencing any new symptoms.”

  I looked into Malachy’s lean, clever, weathered face, figuring out how much to reveal. “The thing is,” I said, “this has happened before.”

  “Ah.”

  “I usually have it under control.” By which I meant, Red was around to make sure I didn’t wake up with any vague memories of doing something unspeakable, or didn’t wake up at all. Unlike Hunter, my ex, and Magda, his Romanian import, Red was a shapeshifter by birth, which gave him a greater degree of control over going lupine.

  Although his long, bony body was still slouched in his chair, Malachy had dropped his habitual pose of detached amusement, and was regarding me with an almost predatory sharpness. “So you’ve begun to experience preliminary shifting between lunar cycles?”

  “Just the odd cramp, or a little tetchiness. Last month I accidentally ate a raw hamburger. To be honest, I thought it was just premenstrual syndrome,” I added. “At least, until today.”

  Malachy didn’t respond, and I waited him out. An absurd image popped into my head: a Wegmanesque wolf in lab coat and glasses. But as the moments ticked by, I became increasingly conscious of all the clients out in the waiting room, wondering what the two veterinarians were doing. “You know, we’re getting all backed up.” Our practice was surprisingly busy, considering the fact that we were the second, and decidedly less prestigious, veterinary practice in town. The Northside Animal Practice, located on Main Street, was where most everyone in the area went first. Our clinic, hidden on a side street, got the clients who couldn’t afford Dr. Mortimer, or whom he no longer wished to see. Naturally, we also got our share of unsavory types, both human and animal.

  Which reminded me: People were still waiting for their animals’ appointments.

  “Mal,” I said, “if you have something to say, say it. Because there are people out there who are going to walk out the door and not come back if we keep hiding back here.”

  The crease between my boss’s dark brows deepened, but he didn’t respond. I still wasn’t completely sure I knew how to read Malachy, though. Back when he’d been my instructor at the Animal Medical Institute, Malachy had given me the impression that he’d selected me for his group because of my husband’s interest in lycanthropy. Mal had led me to believe that he saw me as a sturdy, industrious, hardworking type—the straight A student who spends her life in the library. It shouldn’t have hurt my feelings as much as it did, but I’d always accepted that I wasn’t beautiful or charismatic, like my mother. I guess I’d convinced myself that I possessed a knockout intelligence, until Mal set me straight.

  On the other hand, his own brand of wild brilliance had lost him a research grant, gotten him kicked out of the Institute, and landed him here in Northside, working alongside me. Partially, I knew, he was attracted to the location; something in the air or water of the town seems to have an amplifying effect on certain conditions, such as lycanthropy.

  I didn’t know what impact Northside was having on Malachy’s own health. It wasn’t something we discussed, but I was aware that my boss must have infected himself with some genetically manipulated form of the virus. At forty-two, he looked as though he’d spent a good stretch of time in the French foreign legion, or a dungeon, or both. He wasn’t unattractive, exactly, but his skin seemed to be stretched too tightly over the bones of his face, and there were days when he looked more than just unwell, he looked terminal.

  As if he were reading my mind, Malachy said, “You know, we can’t really run this practice if we’re not honest with each other. I have to tell you if I’m coming down with something. And you have to tell me.”

  “I promise you,” I said, hoping this would break the impasse. “If my problem starts to get worse, I’ll let you know.”

  Malachy looked at me for another moment, then glanced over at Padisha, the obese office cat, who was padding into the room, his flabby white belly wobbling beneath him. Padisha paused, staring at me intently with startled green eyes, his back beginning to arch. I stared back at him, willing him to act normally. After a moment, Padisha visibly relaxed, leaping up onto the table with surprising agility and then slinging himself over the top of the computer.

  “All right then,” said Malachy. “We’ll forgo the brain scan.”

  I was surprised he’d given in so easily, and then recalled that some cats are able to predict seizures. I seemed to be passing the cat scan: Padisha was dozing peacefully, his hind leg and part of his stomach hanging over the side of the computer.

  “Excellent.” I stood up. “Then I can go back to work now.”

  The cat opened one green eye, as if curious to hear Malachy’s response. “I can handle it today, Abra. Can you call Red and have him drive you home?”

  I felt a wave of annoyance and started to say, I don’t need my damn boyfriend to come get me, but stopped when I saw a blur of striped gray fur as a hissing Padisha jumped off the desk and streaked out the door.

  Malachy raised one eyebrow, but refrained from making any comment.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll call Red.”

  THREE

  “I’m so sorry to put you out,” I said for the third time, addressing my boss’s profile.

  “Well, stop being so sorry,” Malachy snapped, not taking his eyes off the road. “It’s nervy.”

  I resisted the urge to apologize for that, as well. Ordinarily, I would have snapped back at Malachy—from the start, we had established that mildly barbed bantering would be our standard mode of communication. But right at the moment, I was feeling a bit vulnerable. We hadn’t been able to reach Red on his cell phone. Either he was out of signal range, removin
g vermin from somebody’s attic, or he was off at Moondoggie’s enjoying a beer. Then again, it was also possible that he’d left his phone along with his clothes while he ran around with the coyote who’d gotten Queenie knocked up. That was the thing about shacking up with a shapeshifter: There was a high degree of unpredictability.

  It wasn’t the kind of unpredictability that my ex-husband had taught me to expect, the kind that had me vacillating between yearning and pain, but it was inconvenient, nevertheless. Besides, I didn’t like having Malachy drive me home. It made me uncomfortable, and not entirely because he insisted on driving an English car with the steering wheel still on the right.

  A truck roared past, making me squeak.

  “Stop fussing. We were nowhere near him.”

  “It’s just a little weird, having you on my right.” Malachy took a blind corner with a cool aggressiveness that had me sucking in my breath.

  “You’re being nervy again.”

  “Does nervy mean nervous, annoying, or some combination of both?”

  “The latter. Is this your turning up ahead?”

  I glanced at the long driveway that led up to my ex-husband’s grand ruin of a house. “No, that’s Hunter’s. The next one’s mine.” The trees were all bare now, but in the autumn, the maples that lined the long driveway turned bright crimson and yellow. It had been October when we’d moved up here from the city. There ought to be a law against moving when the fall foliage is at its peak, and everything is infused with a witchy glamour. Then the spell breaks, the leaves fall off the trees, and you discover that your husband doesn’t love you any better in the country than he did in Manhattan. In fact, he loves you less. Or maybe you just notice it more.

  “Do you mind him living so close?”

  I was so startled, I didn’t know how to respond. “Isn’t that a personal question? I thought you disliked personal questions.”

  “I take that as an affirmative.”