Moonburn

by Alisa Sheckley

  I turned to Malachy, who had sunk into a chair and was holding his head in his hands. I put my hand on one bony shoulder. “Do you have any more of the drugs you need at your home?”

  Malachy shook his head. “I had to use them all up to get through the full moon,” he said, resting his head in his hands. “I was just about to make up some more.”

  I felt a pang of guilt, remembering that I had left him alone while I went wolfing it up with Red. Not that I’d had a choice, but still. I gave my boss an awkward pat on the back, thinking that in one sense, this was a success for Malachy. His little protégé had cried real tears today. And she had betrayed him.

  No one could argue that she wasn’t human now.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  An hour later, Malachy and I had secured the changeling dogs in cages and crates and closed the office. The crowd’s mood had turned uglier, with Kayla accusing Malachy of seven different kinds of abuse and Marlene ranting that the virus affecting the dogs could spread to humans. I was more concerned that the lycanthropy virus had mutated so that humans could infect dogs. After all, Malachy’s tinkering with the viral DNA had resulted in Pia’s transformation. Perhaps the mutated virus had undergone another transformation.

  But of course, I didn’t say any of that out loud. Just as I didn’t question why the virus hadn’t manifested itself more during the fullest phase of the moon. In my opinion, that was the strangest part of all, but nobody had asked my opinion. Yet.

  “If there is any possibility of interspecies transmission,” Malachy had said smoothly, “your best protection is to head home now and let me run tests on your animals.”

  Reluctantly, the clients had dispersed. Now Malachy sank down into a chair in the waiting room, his head back, his eyes shut. “Right,” he said, rubbing his temples. “First, we need to draw blood samples. Next, we need to run through the various scenarios and determine what we’re looking for. Then we need to chain me up in the basement.”

  I gave a little laugh, to be polite, and Malachy looked at me as though I had just had an accident on the floor. “I was not joking, Ms. Barrow.”

  “Oh, come on, Mal, aren’t you being a little dramatic?”

  “Have I ever struck you as dramatic? Is that a word you have associated with me in the past?”

  Okay. Point taken. At a loss for words, I realized that I had never seen Malachy in this kind of a mood; he seemed defeated. “So can’t we whip up a new batch of whatever it is you take?”

  Malachy rolled his eyes. “My word, what a marvelous idea! Now, why didn’t I think of it? That was sarcasm, in case you failed to notice.”

  I planted my hands on my hips. “And may I inquire as to why you can’t make more pills for yourself?”

  Mal kept his eyes closed as he massaged his temples. “Oh, I can absolutely make more pills for myself. Unfortunately, by the time they’re ready, there won’t be enough left of me to know I ought to take them.”

  In the charged stillness that followed his statement, I found myself observing inconsequential things. Sunlight slanting through the window, illuminating the dust particles in the air. The flyers on the wall for stray cats and runaway dogs, left by owners who wanted them back, and the flyers for cats and dogs up for adoption, left by owners who wanted to get rid of them. Leashes and dog treats for sale, Dog Fancy magazine on the low table. All the trappings of normalcy, on a day that seemed headed straight into the twilight zone.

  “It’s still you, Mal,” I said, and my voice seemed very loud in the quiet room. “It’s not some other being. Just as my wolf is still me.”

  “It’s not the same, Abra.” Malachy’s voice was curt, either from fatigue or annoyance. “Maybe some essential essence of you is unchanged in wolf form. I wouldn’t know. But what I become … is deranged.” He paused. “And in that deranged state, I revel in my abased and degraded condition. I enjoy myself.”

  “I don’t understand. What do you do that’s so terrible? I’ve hunted deer, Mal. I’ve grabbed a living creature with my teeth and dragged it down. Maybe that’s debased, but when I’m a wolf, it doesn’t feel that way.” I waited for his answer, my heart pounding. I had never talked about what I did as a wolf with Red. I had never discussed it with anybody, and I wasn’t entirely sure why I was revealing this now.

  “It’s not terrible,” said Malachy. He turned to me, his eyes pale in his shadowy face. “If you think like a wolf, and act like a wolf. But have you ever been something less than human and more than beast? Have you ever had just enough awareness to pervert those basic animal pleasures?” Malachy held my gaze. “Have you ever toyed with your prey?”

  I didn’t say anything, but the memory of what had happened with those young men replayed itself in my head. That had not been a clean, wolf kill. That had been me, between woman and wolf, and it had felt shameful.

  “Ah,” said Malachy, leaning his head back on the chair and closing his eyes again. “I see that you have. And that is why people have always feared werewolves, I suppose. Because they combine all that is worst in both species.”

  “Not always,” I said, my voice hoarse.

  “Perhaps not, for you. But I was trying to isolate the genes that control aggression. And as I said, I do not turn into a wolf. My syndrome is more akin to the one described by Robert Louis Stevenson.” At my baffled look, he added, “in his novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Honestly, woman, do you Americans even read books in school?”

  “Hey, I saw the movie.”

  “That would be amusing if it weren’t so sad.” He sighed, and I realized how much I loved arguing with him. Some people have special friends for seeing foreign films, or special friends for tennis. Malachy was my special friend for arguing.

  He looked old with his eyes closed, I thought, looking at him now. When he was looking at me, I was distracted from the lines and shadows on his face. But now, he seemed older than my mother, who had two decades on him. “Mal.”

  His hand still over his face, Malachy opened his eyes and peered at me through splayed fingers. “What?”

  “Can you give me directions to make the pills?”

  Malachy sighed. “And what good will that do?”

  “I can make them for you, and slip them to you if you’re not in the right frame of mind.”

  Malachy removed his hand and just looked at me.

  “What?”

  “You’re brilliant. Or I’m an imbecile. I can’t decide which.”

  “Hey, maybe it’s both. How long will it take to get the ingredients together?”

  Malachy sat up. “It has to be done in stages. I can write everything down and we can do the initial steps now.”

  “I have one request.”

  “At this moment, I do believe that I would do anything you wish, Ms. Barrow.”

  I smiled, because it was pretty damn sweet to be hearing this. “Anything, huh?”

  With a rueful shrug, Malachy amended, “If it’s within my power to provide.”

  “In that case, as soon as we’re done mixing up your potion, I need to eat something. Let’s go get some lunch.”

  For a moment, Malachy looked as though he was going to say something. Then he gave me a mocking little inclination of his head and said, “Lunch it is, then.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  I had always suspected that one of the key ingredients in Malachy’s little pills would be carbamazepine, a mood stabilizer often used to prevent seizures. Instead, he turned out to be relying on the older concoction of phenobarbital laced with diazepam, along with potassium bromide, which explained why he usually had no appetite. As a vet, Mal explained, the phenobarb was easier to acquire. Besides, keeping himself so thin that his body had to break down muscle for glucose was actually part of his seizure-control plan. There was something else in there, however, that Malachy refused to explain. He ran it through the centrifuge, calling it his “secret ingedient” and telling me that it needed to be mixed after nightfall, naked, with only candles for l
ight.

  And no, he added, he wasn’t joking. Yes, of course he had tried it the other way. Five times.

  Half an hour later, unbidden images of Malachy as a naked witch doctor were still popping into my head and making me snicker. Mal looked as though he would have thumped me, if he’d had the strength. But as it was, he barely had the energy to walk the two blocks to the Belle Savage Cafe.

  “Hey, Abra. Hello, Malachy,” Penny called as we hung up our coats on the coatrack. Coming in from the cold and gray, the cafe felt wonderfully warm and bright and homey. There was a good smell of freshly baked bread permeating the room, and a faint scent of some delicious spice. An old Andrews Sisters song was playing in the background, something about rum and Coca-Cola.

  “Here you go,” Penny said, as she set a big bowl of beef stew in front of a young man sitting in the corner.

  The young man looked up from his laptop. As he pushed his wire-rimmed glasses farther up his nose, he seemed a little startled by Penny’s appearance. The youngest of the three Grey sisters, Penny clearly hadn’t adjusted to the fact that she was pushing eighty. Her head seemed too large for her shriveled frame, and she wore her hair in a sleek platinum blond bob, the bangs emphasizing her blue saucer-sized eyes, the swinging sides apostrophes to the gleaming white dentures revealed by her oversized grin. All done up in a periwinkle blue dress and ruffled white apron that matched the curtains, she looked like a ghastly version of the actress Carol Channing.

  It took some getting used to.

  The young man cleared his throat. “But I didn’t order yet.”

  “Smell.” Penny indicated the stew, and the young man sniffed. “So? Do you want it, or not?”

  “I guess I want it,” said the young man, sounding befuddled. Only weekenders tried to order from the small blackboard that listed the cafe’s daily specials. Regulars knew that Penny and her sisters would tell you what you really wanted, and that they would invariably be correct, even if you had an initial pang of doubt.

  I glanced around the cafe. Now the young man was alternately working his way through his stew and tapping away on a laptop. The other customer was a young, expensively highlighted mother dressed in the yummy mummy weekend uniform of tank top worn over long sleeved tee and tight, faded lowrider jeans. Her toddler, who was sporting matching highlights and a Princeton sweatshirt, was refusing to eat his lovely sandwich. I knew it was lovely because the mother kept telling us all so in a carrying voice.

  “But Winston, it’s a lovely sandwich,” she said coaxingly.

  Winston turned his pout to the side, avoiding the bread. “The lady said soft bubbled egg! I wanted the bubbled egg!”

  “Boiled, not bubbled, sweetheart, and it’s not safe to eat soft boiled, you can get nasty salmonella germs. This is cheddar, and you always like cheddar.”

  Winston responded by shrieking no, no, no and trying to tip over the high chair. I looked away, trying to hide my smile. It didn’t pay to ignore the sisters’ advice.

  “Let’s sit over here, shall we?” Malachy steered me toward a table across the room from the young mother. The room was too small for us to be out of earshot, however, and even with the music playing Mal and I would have to keep our voices down. As if on cue, the Andrews Sisters began singing “Bei Mir Bist du Schon.”

  “All right,” I said, “I think we need to talk about Pia.”

  Before I could say another word, however, Mal burst in with a wild laugh. “We need to talk about Pia? What is this, a soap opera? In a short time, I’m going to degenerate into a bestial state. There’s an epidemic of therianism transforming dogs into wolves, and our office cat may well be prowling town in the form of a tiger.” Malachy raked his hands through his woolly hair and gave another broken laugh. “And Christ, mustn’t forget there’s the manitou problem. And with all this going on, we need to talk about Pia?”

  “Actually, I have another couple of problems to add to your list,” I admitted, thinking of Magda’s brothers and Lilliana’s dirt-streaked note. “But I think we need to discuss Pia.”

  Malachy looked at me with third-degree disdain. “I have no interest in discussing Pia. She has this absurd notion that she loves me, because she has transferred her doglike devotion from Jackie to myself. This is not a matter for analysis.”

  “Actually, I had meant that we should talk about whether or not the mutated strain of the virus you infected her with could be affecting the other dogs.”

  Malachy looked chastened. “Oh. Well. Yes, that does seem a likely scenario.”

  Before I could follow up with another question, Penny bustled up to the table. “Well, now,” she said, filling our glasses with water from a pitcher. “What will it be today, folks? I know you’ll want a pot of tea, Malachy, and maybe something light—goat cheese and tomato quiche?”

  Mal inclined his head, and Penny turned her attention to me.

  “Coffee and … no, not coffee, how about some lovely fresh ginger beer for you? And I know something you’re going to love: cheese fondue! Is that perfect, or what?”

  “It sounds wonderful,” I said, and Penny beamed at me and hurried back to the kitchen.

  “So,” I continued as Malachy reflexively checked his pocket for his pills, “we need to get Pia back and take a blood sample. Unless you’ve tested her recently.”

  Malachy shook his head. “No. Recently she has refused to let me monitor her condition. I have no idea what’s gotten into her lately.”

  “She wants to be more than a medical experiment to you.” And, I did not add, I know how she feels. My feelings for Malachy weren’t romantic, but like Pia, I longed to have him acknowledge that our connection was more than professional. He had been my mentor, and it was only natural that now I wanted him to acknowledge me as a peer. No, more than that: I wanted him to recognize me as a kindred spirit.

  Malachy looked down his long nose at me. “I sense a lecture coming on. Some treacly bromide about medical ethics and respect for individuals, no doubt.”

  “You did treat her like a guinea pig, you know.”

  “I beg your pardon. When she was a dog, I treated her like an experimental subject. When she was human, I gave her a job. What more do you want from me?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Me? Not a thing. She, however, seems to have wanted something else—love, I suppose.” Thinking about Red, I reached into my handbag, feeling around for my cell phone.

  Malachy looked appalled, as if I’d suggested he try French kissing the Pekingese. “But she’s barely human … and she’s an infant.”

  “She’s as human as you made her,” I said. “And even if she’s inexperienced in our culture, biologically speaking, she’s an adult female. She was what, three years old last October? That’s around twenty-eight for a person. Unless she’s aging in dog years, of course. Is she?”

  “No, of course she’s not,” snapped Malachy. “So what are you saying: I made her, so now she’s my responsibility?”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “I didn’t mean I wouldn’t take care of her … as is perfectly apparent.” Malachy held up his left hand and began counting the ways on his fingers. “One, I have given her training. Two, I supervise her. Three, I feed her. Four, I pay her.” Putting his hand down, Malachy said, “The only thing I do not do, in point of fact, is allow her into my bedroom.”

  I sat up straighter, startled by this piece of information. “She’s actually told you she wants to sleep in your bedroom?”

  “She’s told me that she wants to sleep in my bed, but she insists she would be happy to lie curled up on the floor. Don’t look at me like that, of course I refuse.” Malachy reached in his pocket, remembered the pills weren’t there, and then rubbed his hand over his face. “In any case, I couldn’t have sexual relations with the foolish girl, even if I wanted to.” Malachy pulled his hand away and said, very matter-of-factly, “The medication that controls the progress of my disease also inhibits sexual functioning.”

  I glanced ove
r to see if the mother and toddler had overheard, but luckily, they were preoccupied with crust removal. “I didn’t realize,” I said, awkwardly, remembering our interlude in front of the cabin. Without thinking, I touched the moonstone under my shirt, and for a moment, I saw the outline of another man around Malachy; a larger, stronger, darker figure, ruled by passion instead of reason. “Did you explain the, ah, problem to Pia?”

  “Of course I did,” said Malachy, making no attempt to hide his growing irritation. “I thought perhaps bluntness would solve the problem, but it only made it worse. Now Pia’s been after me to stop taking the meds.”

  I tried not to smile. “Oh.”

  Malachy rotated his shoulders, gazing over my shoulder at an abstract painting of circles within squares within circles. “I was going to tell her that even if I were physically capable, I would be disinclined to embroil myself in all the hellish complications of sex in the workplace.”

  “Maybe using simpler language,” I suggested.

  Malachy met my eyes, and for a moment, I saw a flare of bright green light them from within. “Although, hypothetically speaking, if I were so inclined, I would at least choose a woman with whom I could have an intelligent conversation.” There was a moment of silence while I tried to think what to say, and then Malachy added, “Like yourself.”

  I was mated. According to Red’s traditions, I was married. And up until that moment, I had been coasting on a sea of contentment. But in the long moment that Malachy held my gaze, my heartbeat quickened and my blood surged. He wanted me. I told myself that it was the surprise of hearing him say the words that was warming me. That, and the fact that I had always wanted my brilliant former teacher to recognize my intelligence and grant me special status by his acceptance of me. But despite that odd moment earlier this month, I wasn’t physically attracted to Malachy. And in any case, it was a hypothetical declaration of desire.

  “Thank you,” I said at last. “I’m flattered that you would think of me that way. I mean, if it weren’t for the medication,” I continued, floundering and sinking more deeply into the mudpit of awkwardness.