“You really think you’re going to live long enough to benefit? Even if I don’t shoot you, the human body wasn’t designed for shapeshifting. Therianthropes survive their transformations because they’re adapted to them on a cellular level. The disease you have is breaking the laws of nature every time it rewrites you. You know what most werewolves die of?”
“Silver bullets,” said Basil. “Even I know that one.”
Cooper laughed. “I like your friend. He’s gonna be a wolf the size of a pony. That’s going to be something to see, don’t you think?”
“Werewolves die of heart attacks,” I said, refusing to allow myself to be baited. “They die because when they go from biped to quadruped and back again, sometimes their spinal cords restructure the wrong way, and they snap their own necks. They die because their livers explode. Do you understand me yet? Werewolves die because they have a disease. You have a disease, Cooper, and the fact that you’re spreading it to your own people on purpose—well, that’s sick. No pun intended.”
“They stopped being my people the moment I got bit,” said Cooper calmly. “Ask your friend there how the Thirty-Six Society deals with monsters. Ask your girlfriend. Shelby Tanner was always the worst of a bad lot, even when she was a little girl. Bigots, all of them.”
“I don’t think she’s so bad,” said Basil.
“They’re conservationists,” I said.
“Sure. They conserve. In pens and paddocks and aviaries, they conserve. In zoos and museums and private collections, they conserve. They love their koalas and their kangaroos and all those other nice creatures for the tourists to coo over, but anything that isn’t native—anything that seems like a danger—those things, they’re more than happy to lock away forever.” Cooper shook his head. “They weren’t going to lock me up. I’ve been one of them for too long. I know what their hospitality looks like.”
“So why didn’t you quit?” I asked.
“Didn’t mind it so much when I was on their side of the cage. Things have changed.”
“You still didn’t have to . . .” I trailed off. “Infecting the people you used to work with is wrong. Even if you know they’d treat you like a monster, you shouldn’t have done that. That was what made you a monster. Not the virus. Not the things you did when you were transformed and didn’t understand yourself. The choices you made.”
“Then I’m a monster,” said Cooper calmly. “That gun you’re holding, it has what, six shots in it? There’s four of us. I think I like those odds.”
“Cooper—”
“I like you well enough, Covenant boy, and I know you came a long way to help us. I figure if anyone can find a way for this virus not to kill us all, it’s going to be you—and my people deserve that chance, don’t you think? They deserve a chance at long, healthy, productive lives. We can do better work for this country as monsters than we ever did as men.” Cooper turned, walking back toward the woods. “Get him, boys. Infect, not kill. We need him.”
“Wait!” I cried.
Cooper stopped. The wolves, which had been tensing to spring, froze. If there had been any question remaining as to whether transformed werewolves were fully aware, that moment would have answered it: only thinking creatures would have reacted that way. “What, you willing to come quietly?” asked Cooper, twisting to look over his shoulder at me. “That would be the sensible choice. Much less chance that we’d accidentally damage you. I’d like to take you as intact as possible, since men who’ve just had their arms ripped off always need help in the lab, and that seems like a waste of resources.”
I didn’t shoot him. No one was going to reward me for that, and I would probably regret it later, but in the moment, the fact that I didn’t go ahead and shoot him felt like the most self-control I had ever shown. “Gabrielle Tanner,” I said. “How long ago did you have her bitten?”
“Ah. You found out about that one.” Cooper smiled slow and languid, showing more teeth than he really needed to. “Not that long ago. Did it myself, actually. I picked her up from school. She seemed suspicious. Watching me, yeah? She caught me sneaking off the property when I was supposed to be dead, so I gave her a little nip and pointed out what her family would do to her if they found out. She wasn’t willing to see the sense of my words right away, but she was willing to conceal her condition and my survival, so that’s something, right? Imagine the look on Riley’s face when his precious little girl went for his throat.”
“All I needed to know.” She had been infected within the last forty-eight hours. She hadn’t transformed yet. She could still be saved.
I raised my gun, and had the satisfaction of seeing Cooper’s eyes go wide in his suddenly bloodless face before he threw himself at the trees, and the wolves threw themselves at me.
Then a hand was grabbing the back of my shirt, and Basil’s voice was saying, “Sorry about this, but you seem like a fellow who enjoys air,” and I was flying backward through the air, hauled by that same hand. Jett was in Basil’s other hand, balled up and whimpering. The wolves skidded to a stop at the edge of the water, apparently unwilling to follow Basil into the swamp. They had been Australian naturalists before they became werewolves; they knew better than most what could be lurking in those waters.
The yowie strode through the water, churning it into a froth around his tree trunk-thick legs. Snakes, frogs, and what looked like a small crocodile fled from the disturbance he made—and many of them fled toward the bank, creating a second barrier between us and the werewolves. I hesitated, gun still in my hand. On the one hand, I now knew that werewolves were intelligent creatures, capable of moral decisions and ethical thought. On the other hand, they were disease vectors, and these werewolves were specifically targeting their former friends and companions out of the accurate belief that failure to turn them all would result in a widespread monster hunt.
Too much of my training had been focused on sympathy for every living thing. I was still debating whether or not to pull the trigger when Basil ran into a thick stand of swamp-growing trees and dumped me unceremoniously on a wide branch about eight feet above the surface of the water. He dumped Jett in my lap. She promptly tried to hide her entire head in my crotch. I wasn’t Raina, but I’d do for now.
“Sorry to pull you out of there, but I didn’t really want to dance with the werewolves,” he said. “You all right? I didn’t suffocate you or anything, did I?”
“Not quite.” I rubbed the front of my neck, where the collar of my shirt had dug into the skin, and shook my head. “I need you to go back and get the girls. Please. We can’t leave them there with Cooper in the area, there’s no telling what he’ll do when they go rowing back to shore.”
“In a minute.” Basil crossed his arms, looking at me flatly. “Why weren’t you shooting, huh? I know you humans and your guns. It’s cute, how you’ve made up for a total lack of natural defenses by coming up with a few hundred unnatural ones. You should have been filling that arsehole with bullets the second you figured out he was coming for you and the girls. What gives?”
“I . . . my family believes that everything has a right to live,” I said. “We just try to keep things as fair as possible. To smooth out the edges where we collide with one another.”
“Wow.” Basil shook his head. “I mean, wow. I knew humans were inherently fucked up, and I thought the Thirty-Six Society were top of the heap there. I mean, they can look at folks like me—just folks, yeah? Just trying to get along, maybe have a little fun, maybe find a nice billabong that doesn’t already belong to a bunyip or a croc too big for eating, settle down, have a family—and think that we’re monsters. That’s pretty screwy. But you lot! You look at everything and think ‘that has a right to live, even if it’s going to eat me.’ Screw that. You have a right to defend your species. You have a right to keep breathing. There’s a middle ground between ‘everything’s a monster’ and ‘everything has a right to live except
for me.’”
I blinked at him slowly before asking, “So next time, you think I should shoot?”
“The man flat out said he’d been infecting humans to get them on his side,” said Basil. “That means he’s taking things that are human and making them into things that aren’t human. You can be as nice a fellow as you want to be, but I don’t think you should sit idly by while your species gets replaced. That’s not being nice. That’s being stupid.”
“So noted,” I said. “Now will you please go get the girls?”
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Try not to get eaten by a bunyip because you think it needs a square meal, a’right?” He turned and lumbered back into the swamp.
I leaned back against the trunk of the tree I was seated in, resisting the urge to close my eyes and think. Basil was right: I’d been so interested in confirming whether or not the werewolves were still intelligent in their changed forms that I hadn’t considered that I’d been essentially baiting four large apex predators while holding nothing but a handgun. I had killed werewolves before. Knowing that they weren’t just dumb beasts shouldn’t have changed things—or if it did, it should have made me even more enthusiastic about killing them. Werewolves that could plan and execute complex maneuvers were terrifying, and they couldn’t be allowed to exist. So why had I hesitated?
It wasn’t like my family didn’t understand the need to kill things for the sake of the human race, however much we disliked doing it. Grandma and Sarah were the only “good” cuckoos we knew of. All others came with a permanent order to shoot on sight, unless they did something to indicate that they, too, might be capable of showing things like mercy and affection. We knew there were monsters in the world, real monsters, not things like gorgons or bunyip or yowie that inherited that title from urban legends and folklore about them killing people for fun. We knew that sometimes, monsters had to be stopped. So why had I hesitated?
Riley’s voice echoed in my head, calling me “Covenant boy,” talking about how much they didn’t need me or my family’s teachings. Just like that, I had my answer.
I had hesitated because I didn’t want to be what he thought I was. On some level, I had been willing to let myself be seriously hurt to prove that point. I wasn’t Covenant. My parents raised me better than that. I understood mercy. And mercy was the thing that was likely to get me killed.
“Oh, I can already tell I’m going to love having in-laws,” I muttered.
The sound of sloshing alerted me to something approaching through the swamp. I tensed, turning my head toward the sound, and was relieved to see the great green form of Basil come slogging through the trees, hauling the small boat belonging to the Tanner sisters behind him. All three of them were there. Jett pulled her head out of my crotch and barked, tail beginning to wag as she saw Raina. At least someone was having a good day, even if we still needed to check her for infection.
Raina was in the middle of the boat with her arms around Gabby, who was crumpled against her sister and sobbing, face buried in Raina’s shoulder. I fought the urge to wince at the sight of such casual contact between someone who was almost definitely infected and someone who wasn’t. Gabby hadn’t been infected long enough to have changed, and lycanthropy didn’t spread through tears. Most werewolves didn’t take a lot of time to cry.
Shelby was at the front of the boat, standing with one foot on the stubby prow to counterbalance the rest of her body. She had a gun in her hand, and was watching the swamp warily. I smiled at the sight of her. I couldn’t help myself. I might not be thrilled by the idea of in-laws, but they were a package deal with Shelby . . . and I was more than thrilled by the idea of her. No, that wasn’t right. The idea of her was pleasant enough. The reality of her, on the other hand, was worth moving mountains for.
“I see you managed to survive sitting alone for five minutes,” said Basil, once he was close enough that he didn’t have to shout. “Anything interesting happen?”
“Nothing tried to eat me. I’ll call that a win.” I leaned forward, waving my free hand. “Hello, the boat. Is everything all right down there?”
“Not in the slightest,” said Shelby. Her face was fixed in funereal mode. It made me want to put my arms around her and tell her everything was going to be all right now, that we had solved all our problems and were going to go live happily ever after. It was a pity that both of us would know I was lying. “Gabby’s been bit.”
Behind her, Gabby gave a convulsive sob and burrowed even deeper into her sister’s arms. Raina raised her head to look at me, but didn’t say anything. She just narrowed her eyes, clearly waiting for me to respond.
“I know,” I said. “But she wasn’t bitten long enough ago to have turned; the treatment I brought with me should still work for her.”
“What if it doesn’t work?” asked Raina. “Are you going to shoot our sister?”
“No.” I hadn’t been certain—not really—of what my answer would be until I heard it spoken aloud by my own voice. It was a relief. “We know from dealing with Cooper that werewolves are capable of controlling themselves when transformed. If Gabby is going to turn, we can find ways to manage it. It will mean a certain amount of compromise, and locking her up on full moon nights, to avoid her accidentally infecting anyone else, but it can work.”
Gabby pulled her face away from Raina’s shoulder, looking up at me with large, liquid eyes. “But . . . opera school,” she said weakly. “I was going to sing Carmen.”
I winced, doing my best to hide it. “We’ll find a way,” I said.
“I may have one,” said Basil. All four of us turned to look at him. He focused on Gabby. “Do you trust me?” he asked.
“Don’t quote Doctor Who at me,” said Gabby, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Of course I trust you, Basil. You’re our Basil.”
“All right.” Basil looked first to Shelby and Raina, and then to me. “There’s a wagyl near here. Its bite can cure just about anything. I’d wager lycanthropy is on that list. But you have to let me take her, and you have to promise you won’t try to follow.”
Given the situation we’d fled when we ran after Gabby, we were needed back at the Thirty-Six Society. We didn’t know how many werewolves Cooper had created, or how they were going to react to the fact that the Aeslin could quite literally sniff them out. Charlotte needed backup. And yet . . . “Is this wagyl something that could come back here? Gabby isn’t the only one who’s been exposed.”
“Asking a wagyl for a favor is a big deal,” said Basil. “Getting it to bite one person is going to be hard enough, but I’m willing to negotiate because it’s Gabby, and she’s as good as family to me. I’m not even going to ask about anyone else until she’s bitten and it can’t be taken back.”
“Is there any risk to her?” asked Shelby. “Wagyl may be awesome healers or whatever, but they’re still ripping big snakes. I don’t want my sister getting hurt.”
“Your sister’s already been hurt,” said Basil.
“I’ll do it,” said Gabby. She stood up, the boat rocking beneath her, and took a step toward Basil, raising her arms like a much smaller person, like she expected him to sweep her up and carry her, piggyback, into the trees. Maybe that was exactly what she did expect. She’d been smaller when they first met, after all. “I don’t care about risks, and I don’t care if it could hurt me. I want to finish opera school. I want to see the world. I want to have children someday. I can’t do any of those things if I’m stuck here, being a werewolf.”
“Gabby . . .” said Shelby.
“It’s my choice.” Gabby turned to her sister, sticking her chin out in what was apparently a hallmark of the Tanner sisters when they were deciding to be remarkably stubborn about something. “I don’t have any better options. Alex’s ‘cure’ isn’t guaranteed to work for me, and I refuse to be a pet monster for the Society. I’m not the new Tasmanian wolf.”
“Can I go with you?” asked Raina, before looking up to Basil. “Can I?”
He shook his head. “No, dear, you can’t. It’s not because I’m punishing you, either: I’d take you if I didn’t think it would make it even less likely the wagyl would help her. They don’t like humans much, as a rule. Too many dead, and their memories are long.”
Raina nodded, crestfallen. “That’s what I was afraid you’d say.”
Shelby opened her mouth, like she was going to object again. Then she stopped, mouth snapping closed, and nodded. “All right,” she said. “Go with Basil. He’ll keep you safe. He’ll make sure no harm comes to you, unless it’s unavoidable. And if harm does come to you, Raina and I will both make sure it’s understood that this was your choice: no one forced you, no one coerced you, and no one told you that you had to go.”
“Thank you,” said Gabby, smiling through her tears. She flung her arms quickly and wildly around her sisters, managing to catch all of Raina and half of Shelby’s torso. Then she let them go and stepped up onto the side of the boat, holding her arms out for Basil once more. He picked her up like she was a toy and set her on his shoulder, where she fit, not well, but compactly, putting one arm around his head to keep her balance.
“Down you go,” he said, reaching for me once his hands were free. I barely had time to stuff my gun back into my waistband before he was grasping me around the waist and lifting me down to the boat, which settled and rocked under my weight. Then Shelby was there to steady me, and Jett, tail still wagging, was cramming her nose into my crotch, examining all the new smells I had accumulated since she last checked me over.
“When will we know?” asked Shelby, her eyes remaining on Basil and Gabby.
He mustered a small smile. It looked like it hurt him, and I realized then that whatever a wagyl was, it wasn’t a magic bulplet: there were no guarantees, and Raina and Shelby were allowing their sister to be carried away, without backup, to what might be her certain death. “It should take a few hours to get to the right spot, and a few hours more to negotiate a bite. It’ll take about eight hours for the venom to clear her system. One way or the other.”
Pocket Apocalypse: InCryptid, Book Four Page 30
