by Faith Hunter
“Full moon is coming,” he said, and Brute whined again. Rick closed the folder, dropped it to the floor, and turned off the lamp. Rolled over and pulled up the blanket. “Go to sleep.”
• • •
Morning was back to basics, which meant breakfast in the farmhouse kitchen. From the yard, as he climbed the steps, Rick could hear dishes clatter and classmates chatter. He wondered who would try to cause trouble this time. The cook frowned on weres and had tried to keep his entire unit out of the kitchen, saying that “animals should eat outside.” Some of Rick’s fellow trainees weren’t much better. Brute and Pea beside him, wearing red-and-blue PsyLED K9 harnesses, Rick entered the big room and moved to the left of the doorway, out of silhouette—instinct, to get a wall at his back.
Mary, three tables down, looked over the rim of her coffee cup and nudged Walker. “Our were-animals are here,” she murmured. “I had hoped they’d be out of the program by now.”
Walker pursed his lips. “I tried.”
Rick reached up and touched his face. The fading bruises were no longer painful, but they had been a virulent yellow in his shaving mirror this morning. “Not animals,” he said, loudly enough to be heard by the other trainees. The room went silent and Mary blushed scarlet, the telltale of pale-skinned redheads. The other trainees swiveled their heads toward him, then to the couple. Rick stared Walker down and said, “A PsyLED unit. My unit.” He pretended not to see Brute’s ears prick up, and kept his eyes on Walker. He dropped his voice to a low growl and lied through his teeth, “And the next time you try to kick Brute, I’ll either let him eat you, or I’ll take you down. No chance to sucker punch me again.” Brute chuffed and smiled at Walker, showing way too many teeth. “You may have me by forty pounds, but you won’t get back up.”
The other trainees looked from the guilty couple to the table holding the instructors and mentors, and then back to Rick. From the corner of his eye, he saw Soul put her hand on the arm of his jujitsu teacher, holding the man still. Rick winked at her, and her brows went up in surprise. “It’s okay. He’s lying,” she murmured, her words audible to Rick only because of his enhanced hearing. “And the wolf is perfectly in control.”
Two tables down, a blonde named Polly stood to see Walker. Into the uneasy silence, she said, “You tried to kick his partner? If LaFleur doesn’t take you down, I will.”
Brute chuffed quietly at the term partner. Pea chittered and sat up on the wolf’s back to see better, sounding pleased.
The girl beside Polly leaned back in her chair and said, “And I’ll help.” She looked at Rick. “I knew he was hassling you. Sorry I didn’t step in.” She raised her voice so the instructors couldn’t pretend not to hear. “I don’t tolerate bullies.”
Some of the tension Rick carried melted away as both girls patted an empty place at their table. “Come on, gorgeous,” Polly said. “You can eat with us.” She flicked a look up at Rick. “And your ugly, bruised handler too.”
Rick shook his head at the ribbing. “Go sit with the nice ladies, Brute. Be charming. I’ll bring you a plate.” The wolf rolled his eyes up and Rick said, “Yeah, I know. Six eggs over easy, half a chicken, raw, and apples, quartered. Come on, Pea. Let’s go through the line.”
Rick tossed the grindylow to his shoulder and turned his back on the wolf, going to the buffet. While loading up three plates, he watched in the mirrors over the serving table as Brute padded to the table and sat beside Polly, who was a dead ringer for a young Gwyneth Paltrow. Brute rested his head on her thigh and looked up at her with puppy-dog eyes. Both girls went all mushy and started petting him.
It was ridiculous. Brute got more female attention than he did. And it wasn’t like Rick was ugly, despite the bruises. At six feet even, with black eyes and black curling hair, he’d been known as a ladies’ man, a player. Of course, that was part of the reason he’d been bitten by a female black were-leopard, tortured by werewolves, and had lost his humanity, his job with the NOPD, and his girlfriend, but that was another story.
Rick set Brute’s plate on the floor, Pea’s beside his on the table, and slid into the proffered seat, digging in. The eggs were perfect, and the pancakes, while not as good as his mom’s, weren’t bad, especially when he poured warm blueberry syrup over them.
“Is he really a werewolf?” Polly asked, her fingers in Brute’s fur.
“Yep. The only tame werewolf in the world.”
“You tamed him?” she said, her tone going skeptical.
“Nope. An angel named Hayyel did.”
“No shit?”
“No shit at all. I was there. Saw the whole thing. Pass the coffee?” The girls exchanged a pointed look and Polly poured him a cup. Rick glanced at the wolf’s pale eyes. Brute looked . . . ashamed. Rick narrowed his eyes. The wolf was not feeling shame for what he had done in his life. No amount of penance assigned by an angel could make that happen.
• • •
The schedule was a twelve-hour day: three hours of physical training and combat sparring, six hours in class, with a break for lunch, then shooting, at which Rick excelled. He grew up on a farm in the South and had practically been born with a gun in his hand. Dinner was at seven, with library study time after. The library was a computer room with no books, but with electronic links to everything: the National Crime Information Center, the National Law Enforcement Telecommunication System, the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, the U.S. Department of State’s database of biometric facial recognition and iris scans, and databases the CIA had been compiling since 9/11. They also had access to every state’s motor vehicle records, criminal warrant and parole records, and wanted information. The computers allowed access to Interpol and most of the law enforcement agencies in treaty nations, not to mention advanced GPS and satellite photo programs that made Google Earth look like a high school science project.
Everything was encrypted and was monitored by advanced artificial intelligence counterterrorism software, just in case someone was running unauthorized searches or a sleeper terrorist was compiling a database for use against the U.S. It was a cop’s wet dream. The library alone was reason enough to join PsyLED, and that didn’t count all the cool toys stored in the other half of his Quonset hut quarters.
Polly joined Rick there for study. He could tell she was interested, but for lots of reasons there would be no big love scene to end the evening: it was against the rules for trainees to hook up, Polly had a night-training session, and the biggest reason—Rick could transmit were-taint to a human through sex. The proscription against sex—for the rest of his life—was something he hadn’t been able to make himself think about yet. At all. Instead of encouraging Polly, he kept it casual.
Together they researched a bungled crime scene from the seventies and talked shop, while Brute and Pea lay curled in the corner. Later they all went to the farmhouse kitchen for snacks and beer. The nearly full moon was just rising over the trees when they said good night, Polly heading to the admin building to meet her mentor, and Rick to the Quonset hut to get out of the moon glow.
He nodded to the security guards he passed, his night vision so acute that he could pick them out in their night-black camo. Ernest lifted two fingers from the stock of his weapon and Rick waved back. Ernest was a former PsyLED operative, now fifty-seven and retired, working part-time to keep his hand in. Rick understood that; most cops had problems quitting full-time work, going from service and adrenaline to sitting in front of the TV or playing golf.
As he reached for the door handle, Brute came out of nowhere and slammed into his legs, sending Rick stumbling to the side. The wolf started that horrible, low-pitched growl, the one that made the hair stand up on Rick’s arms. Rick stared at the handle. There was nothing there, nothing visual anyway. He bent and sniffed, but smelled nothing except his own scent. He looked at the wolf, who was staring at the door, head down, slightly hunch
ed, as if he was going to pounce.
“Someone went into my quarters?”
Brute nodded, dropping his head once.
Rick ran through the scenarios. He wasn’t allowed to carry his sidearm on campus. None of them were—they weren’t on duty, they were in school—so going in alone would be stupid. But if he called for help and no one was in there, he’d look like an idiot. So . . . He took a slow breath and let it out. “Let’s be stupid and see what this is.” Rick stood to the side of his door, his back against the wall, and turned the knob slowly. Opened it an inch and sniffed. Brute stuffed his snout inside and sniffed too. After a moment, his ruff settled and he looked up at Rick. “I agree,” Rick said. “Whoever it was, is gone.” He reached in and turned on the switch, flooding the small space with light. No one was there. There weren’t any hiding places. And witches didn’t have invisibility spells. Or at least that was what he’d been taught. Of course, if they were invisible, how would you know?
They entered slowly, Brute at Rick’s side, alert, quiet, intense. “We’ll quarter the room. When you smell something, give me the signal.” Rick moved around the room, his jeans brushing the wolf’s side. Brute kept his nose to the floor, his ears pricked sharply. He sat in front of the small dresser, and again at the closet, which was the signal they had worked out for having found something. Rick opened both dresser and closet, but the wolf showed no particular change in attitude. The intruder hadn’t done anything with his clothes, so why come in here? The wolf stopped at the old bed, the small laptop lying on top. Brute sniffed and sat.
Rick studied his computer. Pea leaped to the bed and raced around the laptop, twittering, almost as if she were scolding it. Rick still had a pair of gloves on his desk from the crime scene and he pulled them on before carefully lifting the screen. He didn’t see it at first, and he never would have noticed it all except for Brute’s nose and Pea’s verbalizations. A tiny black dot was on the black keyboard where he would rest his palms when not typing.
He had to get someone in here to check it out, but if he was going back into the moonlight, he’d need his MP3 player and the counterspell music. He reached to the desk.
It was gone.
Shock swept through him, electric, hot. In an instant he was back at his first full moon, three days in a New Orleans cell, drugged to the gills, as his body tried to turn itself inside out, fighting to shift, struggling to change into the black were-leopard that was his beast. Tried and failed over and over again, held to his human shape by the mangled tattoo spell on his shoulder and upper chest. The artwork bound him to his human form and stopped every attempt to shift. The full moon meant pain like being struck by lightning, pain like being flayed alive. Mind-breaking pain. He didn’t want to shift, didn’t want to be a were, but even that would be better than the three days of hell.
His heart thundered. He broke into a hot sweat. The world telescoped down to the desktop, empty of the MP3 player. Rick reached out and touched the surface of his desk. Gone.
He blew out a breath, heated and hard. He had uploaded the music to a cloud backup system. He could easily download it to his computer for instant listening.
He dialed Soul on his cell. “Someone’s been in my room and stole my MP3 player. They also left something on my laptop. Brute found it.” He described the tiny dot and added, “I’m in my quarters. And no, I didn’t touch anything except the light switch and my laptop, and I was wearing gloves.”
“I’m on my way,” she said.
Rick closed his cell. An hour later, his room had been swept for listening devices and video recorders, and the black dot had been confiscated. His room was clean, and Rick finally got to bed. He needed sleep, but he was edgy, restless, and couldn’t keep his eyes closed. The full moon sucked. Each one could be the last night of his life, or leave him permanently furry like Brute. That was enough to make anyone jumpy. Finally, Rick opened the laptop, downloaded the counterspell, and hit PLAY, the laptop volume so low no human could pick it up. With the music playing in the background, he fell asleep.
• • •
At three twenty-two a.m., his cell rang, and Rick fumbled for it in the dark. “Yeah,” he mumbled.
“Rick. Are you all right? Say something logical,” Soul demanded.
“E equals MC squared. Isosceles”—he yawned in the middle of the words and swiveled his legs up, sitting—“triangle. ‘Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty,’ and so on. Will that do?”
“I just heard back from the lab. The black dot recovered from your laptop was LSD on absorbent blotter paper with a sticky back. Someone wanted you incapacitated or out of control.”
Rick grunted, thinking. “The list of people who might want me to become dangerous, and who know where I am, is confined to the people on campus.” He heard Soul’s long, drawn-out breath at the accusation. “Mary and Walk—” He stopped, remembering that Chief Smythe wanted the name of the witch who’d recorded his counterspell. Thinking about Polly’s sudden interest in him—keeping him out late so someone could get into his room? “Mary and Walker. Maybe Polly. And whoever wanted my counterspell music.”
After long moments, Soul said, “We need to talk.”
“About Chief Smythe, who wants the name of the witch who made the counterspell?” Rick let the harsh tone cops use on suspects grate into his voice. “Wants it enough to enroll me here, even though I’m dangerous?”
“We need to talk,” she repeated, her voice steely. “I’ll be there shortly. Meet me in the kitchen.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure.” He closed his cell and got up, dressed, and headed out. Brute and Pea were there first, Brute blocking the door, Pea riding on his shoulder. Rick reached for the leash, but Brute growled and shook his head slowly, the human motion utterly un-wolf-like. Rick sighed. “Fine. But keep close.”
Outside Rick leaned against the wall in the shadows and waited. Brute, however, went scent searching. He started right at the door, his nose to the ground, and began a circular pattern, walking and sniffing in an ever-widening spiral. He was about twenty feet out when he stopped, his nose buried in a clump of grass. Even in the moonlight, Rick could see his ruff stand on end.
“Brute?”
The wolf chuffed and breathed in and out in short, sharp bursts. Rick had seen the wolf get scent lost before, his wolf brain taking over, leaving the human part of him behind, disoriented and confused. Dog people called it nose suck, which might be humorous in a toy poodle, Chihuahua, or Shih Tzu, but not so much in a Rottweiler, pit bull, or werewolf.
Pea scrambled down from Brute’s shoulder and inspected the tuft of grass with her nose as well. She scampered to Rick, mewling and chittering.
“Brute, are you scenting the person who put the LSD on my keyboard?” Brute didn’t react or respond, and Rick knew better than to touch him. Wolves had violent physical reactions to being brought off a scent binding, and he wasn’t in the mood to be mauled. “Brute?” He whistled softly and finally the wolf raised his head. His pale eyes were wholly wolf, feral. Rick went still, vamp still, not even daring to breathe. The wolf growled so low Rick felt it vibrate in his chest. “Brute? Stand down. Stand down.” Pea launched herself across the two yards and landed on the wolf’s head with a catlike yowl. Brute yelped. In a moment, they were rolling around on the ground, roughhousing, the scent forgotten.
Rick blew out, letting the adrenaline rush melt away. “Brute,” he said, his voice a command. The animals’ heads came up fast. They stopped playing, and Rick could see the intellect again in Brute’s eyes. “Were you scenting the person who put the LSD on my keyboard?”
Brute dropped his head and raised it. Yes.
“Okay. Can you follow it? And not get scent lost again?” Rick asked. Brute nodded. A small, grim smile pulled at Rick’s lips. “Then let’s see where it goes.”
With Pea
riding his shoulder, Brute turned, sniffed, and started running to the back of the Quonset hut, his nose to the ground. Rick followed through the bright moonlight at a trot. He was halfway around the building when he ran out of the shadows into the moonlight. The moon call hit him. His breath stopped in his lungs, his muscles cramped in an electric spasm. He hit the ground face-first. The night vanished.
• • •
Rick woke slowly, the dark night full of scents. He knew where he was and who was with him by the scent patterns alone—the Quonset hut. Brute, Pea, and Soul were there. Soul was sitting on the edge of his bed, he was lying on the floor. His music was playing, the musical notes of the flute driving back the pain.
Even with the music, his skin burned as if he’d been flayed with stone blades, drenched in gasoline, and set on fire. All he wanted was to go back to sleep, find that dark and pain-free place he’d left upon waking, and stay there until the misery ended. Instead he said, “That was really stupid.” The words were mumbled, but he knew he’d been understood when Soul laughed softly and Brute snorted.
“I do hope that is the last time you forget to carry your music when you go out under the full moon,” she said. “I brought my old MP3 player and downloaded your music. Here.” She leaned down and draped the cord over his head to rest on his neck, the speaker close by his ear. “Are you up to trying again, or shall the werewolf and I do this alone?”
