Must Love Lycans

by Michele Bardsley

  “I know that DNA strands are made up of forty-six chromosomes,” I said. “And that genetic material is donated from both mother and father—twenty-three chromosomes each.”

  Dr. Michaels brightened. “Exactly. Half your DNA was human. The other half, too, but only as mimicry, if you will. The minute new DNA was introduced, the nonhuman chromosomes took on the characteristics of lycan.”

  “Changeling DNA,” I blurted. I absorbed the enormity of what he was saying. I’d been only half human, which meant either of my parents had to be . . . well, something else. I could totally buy that my mother was the daughter of Satan. “But that would still make me only half werewolf.”

  “Well, it does now,” said Stan. “My theory is that the. . . er, changeling DNA would have completely reworked both sets of chromosomes. You would’ve been lycan.”

  “But the serum has interrupted the process,” said Damian. Fury was building within him, and I knew it was directed at Jarred. I wanted to be angry, too, but mostly, I was scared.

  “Corrupted is a better word,” offered the doctor.

  He was uneasy now, and I knew whatever he said next was not going to be good. For all my blithe thoughts and words about dying and living in the moment, I didn’t want to face the reality that I wasn’t going to make it. I wouldn’t be Damian’s mate or bear his children. I wouldn’t be lycan. I wouldn’t be alive.

  “Whatever element was used to prevent shifting has . . . I suppose ‘confused’ is the best word here . . . the genotype. It’s trying to compensate, but in ways that further disrupt the process. It’s almost if it’s getting conflicting information—one set of instructions from the lycan DNA and one set of instructions from the serum.”

  “Then it’s only a matter of the serum dissipating,” said Damian. “Unless you can extract it from her system.”

  “I can’t,” said Dr. Michaels. “I’ve tried to figure out any number of ways to help her, Damian, but the truth is that her chromosomes are a mess—and they’re in a big fight.”

  Hope leapt inside me. “You mean the lycan DNA might win?”

  I could tell he wanted to reassure me, but his integrity was too solid. He shook his head. “The process is accelerating. My estimate is that you have two weeks or less before your system overloads.”

  “Dante said the serum lasts thirty days,” said Damian. He was grasping at straws. His fingers dug into my arm. He radiated a rainbow of emotions: anger, fear, hope.

  “She doesn’t have until the end of the month,” said Dr. Michaels. “I’m sorry, Damian. I promise I will work night and day on a solution, but . . .”

  “You don’t think it’s going to end well,” I said. He looked so helpless that I leaned forward and patted his knee.

  “A blood transfusion,” said Damian. Desperation tinged his voice. “Our royal blood conquered the Taint, so why not this?”

  “It conquered the Taint for a few vampires, and all of them very old. Adding more lycan DNA to her system might make her cells implode. I don’t suggest we risk it.”

  “Then the vampires can Turn her,” he said. “If Lorcan and Eva and the loup de sang can be both wolf and vampire, why not Kelsey?”

  “Um, Kelsey isn’t groovy with becoming a bloodsucker,” I put in. “In case I have a vote this time.”

  Damian looked at me reproachfully. “The choice is yours, of course. But loup de sang is better than dead.”

  “You have a point.”

  “I already considered that possibility. Unfortunately, she would be toxic to a vampire,” said Dr. Michaels. “It appears to be a defense mechanism of the genotype. Once the change has begun, anything interfering with it is attacked and killed.”

  “Like the serum,” said Damian.

  “Except the serum has properties that are similar enough to the genotype to make it believe its part of the process. It’s why everything is screwing up,” said the doctor. “The lycan DNA fights off any foreign matter, and the activated genotype fights off anything it perceives to be not lycan DNA.”

  “Then there’s shifter DNA in the serum,” I said. “It would have similar properties, but be different enough to confuse the new coding.”

  “It’s possible,” said Dr. Michaels. “But if there is shifter DNA in the serum, it’s unlike any I’ve ever seen. And I have collected samples and information about all known shifter species.” He turned his gaze to Damian. “Even if we were to drain her manually and allow a Master to perform the blood exchange and spellwork—it could have dire consequences for both the vampire and Kelsey. And that’s not including the consideration that only one in ten humans can be Turned.”

  “You are saying we cannot help her,” said Damian.

  “Not yet. And maybe not in time.” He stuck his hands into his jacket pockets. “I think continued quarantine until . . . um, this is over would be advisable. We don’t know how it will play out. You could get more aggressive, Kelsey. Unable to control your impulses or your temper.”

  An uncomfortable silence fell, and the weight of it pressed on me until I wanted to scream.

  “Thank you, Dr. Michaels,” I said, needing the conversation to be over. Facing my own mortality, the inevitability of dying, was freaking me out.

  He took the hint, offering a tepid smile as he rose from the couch. He was halfway to the door when he paused and turned around. “Not that it matters, but I should also tell you that you’re in heat.”

  My jaw dropped. “What?”

  “Elevated hormones and—” He glanced at Damian, and visibly swallowed. “Er, other factors,” he said. “It’s a lycan female characteristic. Every month, females have a heat cycle. You’re in one.”

  “How long does that last?”

  “Seven to fourteen days.”

  “Oh. Well, like you said,” I responded, “it doesn’t matter.” And then I thought: Lycan females are in heat two weeks every month? Sheesh. Not that it was a hardship, mind you. At least it explained why I was so crazy to jump Damian’s bones all the time.

  After the doctor left, I looked up at my very worried lycan boyfriend. “I’m in heat,” I said. “What’s your excuse?”

  “Kelsey.” My name was recrimination and sorrow, and hearing the grief in his voice broke me.

  “Take heart,” I said, as my throat knotted and tears escaped. “You didn’t kill me after all.”

  “No,” he said, wiping away the moisture from my cheeks. “Dante did.”

  “And you will, no doubt, try to kill him back.”

  “I would,” he admitted, “if he could be killed.”

  “Oh.” Well, that explained a lot. Except the part where he wanted to claim me for himself. What would Jarred want with a woman with changeling DNA? It wasn’t a question I intended to ponder, especially given my current life expectancy. I literally didn’t have time to waste on answering questions that no longer mattered.

  Damian stared at me, his jade eyes glittering with anguish and fury. “Would you beg for his life, Kelsey?”

  “No,” I said. “I would beg for my own. In fact, I have. It’s not as difficult as you might believe.” Then I hiccupped a sob, and let loose with a full torrent of tears.

  Damian slid onto the couch, drew me into his lap, and held me tightly while I wept.

  Chapter 10

  The nightmare began as it always did.

  Robert knew how much I liked candles because it was part of my therapeutic approach. Curtains shut, lights dimmed, candles lit. The scents of lavender and vanilla and, sometimes, sandalwood filtered into the air, mixing with the words—words filled with pain, with suffering, and when there were breakthroughs, victory.

  He liked sandalwood best of all, and he’d brought a dozen thick brown candles. While the drugged girl lay in languid surrender on my couch, he put a knife against her throat and directed me about where to place his scented offerings.

  It was nearly August, and the Oklahoma nights were hot and moist. Venturing outside often felt like falling into a vat of
simmering water. It was a misery, but beauty was out there, too, once you learned how to breathe. Then you could see the lightning bugs mimicking stars, and the trees reaching toward the velvet sky, and mixed in with this palette was fragrant sweetness of honeysuckle blooms and the music of crickets and windswept grass. Brushes of color and scent and sound. Green Country, as they called this part of the state. It had been my home, my sanctuary.

  And he took it away. The meaning of it. The security. Worst of all, the hope.

  It was a difficult thing to watch evil bloom, to see it triumph over the meagerness of prayers, of begging deities for a single, pure miracle. Mercy was a gift, and neither God nor Robert had been in the mood to bestow it.

  It was true that Robert had not broken me. But that night, something inside me was lost, locked away into the dark, still corners that even psychotherapists dared not tread.

  He’d wanted to unleash the beast he felt lurked within me, but instead, he had imprisoned it. It wasn’t the creature of his fevered imagination—it was instead a monster of discontent and fury and fear. I had known my whole life that I was not the daughter my mother wanted. In fact, no matter where I turned or what I tried, I did not seem to be a girl that anyone wanted. I was different, and people seemed to know that, even though I looked the same as they did. I was human . . . and yet I was not.

  Blood will tell.

  He’d said that, but he’d said a lot of other things, too. Given that my definition of crazy had been turned upside down and shaken vigorously, I couldn’t say now if Robert was truly insane, or had been touched by the paranormal. He’d seen in me what others reacted to on a primitive level—but he hadn’t shied away from it. He had embraced it. He’d wanted to draw it out. Make it his friend. His partner.

  The inner me. The outer me.

  One must die, so the other can live.

  After I watched Robert murder the girl, after I fought for my own life and took his, I had a revelation: I did not belong in this world.

  It’s funny how the serial killer and I now agreed on that singular point, though for entirely different reasons. I fought a sense of doom from the day I woke up in the hospital. I plodded forward—through the physical and mental recovery, the police and FBI interviews, the lawsuits, the public condemnation, my mother’s abandonment and betrayal, the bad job and crappy apartment. Every day that I got to wake up and take a breath felt undeserved. And I wanted so badly to deserve my second chance.

  And now, while I stood in my own living room with its leather furniture and glass tables and chrome accents, lighting candles so Robert could begin his sick ritual, I felt the beast stir.

  I was awakening.

  “You feel it now, don’t you?” asked Robert. The knife dug into the girl’s throat; blood beaded at the tiny wound, then fell like a teardrop.

  “Yes,” I said. “You were right.”

  “It’s too late for me to help you. I tried, you know. But you’re stubborn.”

  “I didn’t want your help. And I’m not sorry you’re dead, either.”

  “That’s the beast,” he said, his voice thick with satisfaction. “Have some gratitude, Kelsey. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t know about your father’s little indiscretion. You wouldn’t have discovered your true path.”

  I jolted. “Indiscretion?”

  He gave me a long look that I interpreted as “yeah, right, like you didn’t know.” “Duh. You’re only half human. Your mother is a bitch on wheels. You ever think she has a reason to resent you?”

  Cold sweat slicked my spine. “This isn’t about my mother.”

  “Oh, but it is.”

  I lit the last candle, then carefully put down the lighter. I stood on the other side of the coffee table, watching him huddle against his victim, the knife sharp and wicked against her quivering flesh. “Why didn’t you let her live?” I asked.

  He flashed me a sunny smile. “Why didn’t you?”

  Then he slashed her throat in one big, vicious jerk

  The blood sprayed over us both.

  It hadn’t been like this in the reality. He’d tied me to the chair, placing me at an angle so I could see her face. He used the coffee table like an altar. He’d stripped her bare and made little Xs on her body—the points, he said, where the essence flowed from. Then he waited for the drugs to leave her system, just enough to realize she was being murdered.

  But now, in the dream, Robert sat on the couch, his hands wrapped in her long blond hair, his gaze on mine as we endured the gruesome baptism. Its foul warmth covered us both until all I could see and taste and feel was the blood of an innocent.

  Sacrifice is necessary.

  In the blink of an eye, my living room disappeared. I stood in a circular clearing caged by tall trees. Above me, the full moon gleamed like a pearl tucked into black silk.

  Aufanie and Tark’s glen now held a stone altar—but not them. They were gone, and with them, the hushed sense that this place was sacred.

  Robert had defiled it.

  On the altar lay a naked, unconscious woman. Robert, dressed in a gray robe, stood on the dais, his features harsh as he used a dagger to carve on her stomach.

  “Come here,” he demanded harshly. “This is the path to understanding.”

  I was drawn to Robert, and to the altar. I didn’t want to go, but my feet moved anyway. In moments, I stood next to him, yet again his unwilling, chosen victim. Anger pulsed hotly through my veins. You shouldn’t be here, I wanted to yell. You’ve ruined it! You’ve ruined me!

  But I couldn’t get my lips to move, or my throat to work. My protests remained locked inside, and so, too, my unfurling rage.

  “Do you see?” he asked.

  Reluctantly, I looked at the symbols he’d etched into her flesh. One looked like an upside down cross with circles on three ends. At the top was a bigger circle. Flaring out from the intersection were two curved lines. The other mark was a three-pronged arrow with a small triangle base.

  “Nature. Wolf. Silver. Moon.” He pointed up toward the woman’s chest. “Mate.”

  My gaze locked on to the symbol above the woman’s left breast, and the air left my body in a whoosh. Damian’s symbol.

  Oh, God.

  The face of the sacrificial victim was mine.

  “One must die, so the other can live,” said Robert.

  I heard chanting, but the words had no meaning. The thrum of the voices, though, wound through me like serpents, hissing and coiling. I watched as he slit the victim’s wrist and held a silver chalice underneath to catch the stream of black blood.

  When it was full, Robert cawed and held up the silver cup. An image of a raven was engraved on it, along with the symbols I’d seen carved into the woman’s—into my—stomach.

  “To the beast within,” he shouted, and then he drank.

  Inside me, beyond the shadows of my soul, something awful stirred.

  I felt my bones crack and my muscles peel away. The beast nestled inside me, the one that felt like shame, like regret, clawed its way to the surface. A voluminous blackness burst around me, and there was pain, so much of it. I fell onto my side, screaming in agony. My skin flaked off, my hair shed, and then . . . I felt everything shift back together, but in a completely wrong way.

  I was reborn.

  I lifted my snout to the sky, and howled.

  “Take what’s yours,” shouted Robert. “Wolf of Silver!”

  Stupid human. I felt the power, the strength in my muscles, the fury that beat within me with the same ferocity of my pounding heart. I leapt and knocked him down. The chalice flew out of his grip and bounced on the ground, the blood splashing onto the soil.

  He looked at me, and laughed and laughed.

  My jaws snapped down.

  I easily ripped out his throat.

  I woke up, heart thudding as I bolted upright. Damian came instantly awake, sitting up and putting his arms around me. He nestled his chin on my shoulder.

  “What is it?” he asked, h
is voice thick with sleep.

  “Dream,” I said in a hushed voice. “A really weird one. And considering my track record with nightmares, that’s saying a lot.”

  “I’m here,” he said. “You’re safe.”

  “I know.” I leaned against him, taking comfort in the solidness of his embrace. “Does silver kill werewolves?”

  “Not usually,” he said. “Unless there’s a lot of it. Even a little burns like a son of a bitch, though. Silver has magical properties. Most metallic substances do. And any of them can be used to hurt or imprison paranormal creatures.” He kissed my neck. Then he yawned. “Except vampires. Nothing kills them except extreme exposure to light and beheading.”

  “I’m sure anything dies if it’s beheaded.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Really? Do I want to know?”

  “Nein.” He fell back and dragged me with him. I snuggled against his side, my head resting on his chest. “You dreamed about silver? Is that a hint for jewelry?”

  I smacked him on the pectoral. “No.” Then I peeked up at him. “Maybe.”

  He chuckled. He hugged me closer, which caused a flurry of warm fuzzies. “Tell me about the dream, Kelsey.”

  I told him everything, and when I was finished, he was silent. While he was getting his thoughts together, I let my hand wander over his chest. I trailed my fingertips over his stomach, heading right for the goods, but he stilled my fingers and folded them within his hand.

  “I wasn’t going to hurt you,” I said petulantly. What can I say? This being in heat thing made me grumpy.

  “There are different kinds of pain, Schätzchen,” he responded softly. “Do you believe dreams are portents?”

  “I believe dreams can be important.”

  “Will you remember these symbols tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And you are sure you saw a raven on the chalice?”

  “Well, I’m not familiar with every bird species on the planet, but I’m pretty sure it was a raven.”

  “I feel certain this dream was a message—one meant to help us.”