“Well, hello there,” he crooned. “What’s a pretty girl doggie like you doing here?”
I carefully placed the vial on the mat and sat on my haunches.
“What’s this, then?”
It’s a sample of the serum, idiot. But all that came out was a whine.
“Have you been to the lab in the woods? Did you see Joanie? Is she okay?”
As okay as one can be separated from one’s body. I hoped his saying my name wouldn’t keep me from being able to return, but he was likely too far away from my physical self to have an effect.
Iain still didn’t pick up the vial. Instead, he glanced behind me and gave it a quick nudge with his foot. It rolled until it rested in a crack between the mat and the threshold stone with a clink.
I realized something was horribly wrong, and I turned to see the barrel of a gun pointed straight at my head by the charming Sheriff Knowles. All trace of friendly mountain cop was gone, his expression determined.
“You know keepin’ wild animals as pets is illegal, don’t you, Scotty? Especially ones not indigenous to the area.”
I tried not to growl. Good for you, Sheriff, that’s a big word.
“My name is Iain, and it’s not a pet. It just appeared.”
“Now a wild animal would never just show up at your door if it didn’t know you. Have you been feedin’ this pretty wolf?”
“No, officer.”
I didn’t know with certainty, but I could guess that Sheriff Knowles’ gun didn’t have the regulation lead slugs in it. I wondered if they made silver hollow-point bullets and how badly it would hurt.
I forced myself to sit on my haunches and give Sheriff Knowles a lupine grin. See? I’m a friendly wolf-girl. Don’t shoot me.
“And did this animal bring anything to you?”
“Nothing, officer.”
“Then you won’t mind if I look around?”
I mind.
“Do you have a warrant, Sheriff?”
Yay, Iain!
“As a matter of fact, I do.” He produced an envelope from his pocket and showed an official-looking piece of paper to Iain. “We suspect Doctor Fisher is harboring suspects in a kidnapping case.”
“Then you may perform a cursory visual inspection of the premises, as the warrant states. I’ll show you around.”
He glanced back over his shoulder, and I debated whether I should wait or disappear. “Go,” he mouthed, and I bobbed my head.
I followed the trails back through the forest, but when I came to the spot where I’d knocked Robert into a tree, he wasn’t there. Only the disarrangement of the dried leaves showed where he’d landed.
You little bitch. I heard him just before he landed on top of me. We rolled, and I alternately struggled to keep his hind legs from disemboweling me with sharp claws and to prevent his teeth from closing in on my neck.
That’s Doctor Bitch to you. But I couldn’t hang on for long—my strength waned. My still unfamiliar werewolf form was no match for his expert maneuvers. All I could do was try not to let him tear apart anything important. I wondered what would happen to my body if he killed me.
Wait. This wasn’t a physical form, although I’d been acting like it was. With a force of effort, I tugged on the wisp of energy connecting me to my body.
I woke and coughed and sputtered in my efforts to spit out the bitter aconite. My body felt strange to me, my senses muffled, particularly hearing and smell. I tasted blood in my mouth.
“How was it?” asked my grandfather.
“Interesting. How long was I gone?”
“It’s hard to say, but I would guess about five hours. Did you accomplish what you needed?”
“I think so.” I passed out.
I woke a few hours later and saw our captors had tossed some bread and bottles of water into the cave within reach of my bound hands. I had dreamed in fragments, of running through the woods, and of Leo as a wolf, his dark eyes in a lupine face.
I ate my provisions and was struggling with the cap on the water bottle when we heard a commotion on the other side of the metal door fitted into the cave wall. It opened slowly, the light spilling in bit by bit to illuminate the floor. I squinted against the glare. A young man in a paramedic’s uniform poked his head in.
“They’re in here.”
It was a whirlwind of people untying our hands, the paramedics checking to make sure there were no injuries past minor scrapes and bumps as well as what would have been caused by partial starvation and dehydration.
“How did you know where to find us?” I asked after I drank an entire bottle of water in one gulp.
“Those two brought us here,” the EMT said and inclined his head toward Leo and Simon. “Once we could tear the boy away from his mother, that is. He insisted on coming with us to help rescue the others.”
“I’m sure she was glad to see him.”
“The mothers of the other boys will be happy to see their sons too,” he said. “That’s why we’re checking them here. We don’t want them to be away from their families for a minute longer than they have to be.”
Iain pushed his way into the cave. “Gentlemen, please do not dismantle any of the equipment. Try not to touch it. The FBI and FDA agents are going to examine it.”
I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up into my grandfather’s eyes. He had a weary smile on his face. “How’s the house?”
“Still in one piece as far as I know.”
“Did you find the surprises I left you?”
“I think so.”
“And the cats?”
I pulled the silver chain out of my shirt. “Yep, here’s Mishka.” He put an arm around my shoulder and squeezed me tightly.
“I thought I wasn’t going to be able to do that ever again,” he said, his voice gruff. I looked away so I wouldn’t see him cry.
“Me too.”
Leo came over. “Are you okay? How’s the wrist?”
“Decent.”
“Sir, how are you?” Leo asked and gave my grandfather a hearty handshake. He cocked his head as if to ask how much he could give away.
“I’m doing much better now I know my granddaughter and all the children are safe. And you can say anything. She’s a smart girl—I’m sure she’s figured it all out.”
“Are you ready to assume the pack alpha role? We could use you on the hunt.”
“In time, Leo, in time. Where’s your cousin?”
Leo frowned, his handsome features distressed. “I can’t find him.”
My grandfather put his hand on my shoulder. “Then it’s a good thing we have a spirit-walker among us. She’ll be able to find him more quickly than anyone.”
“A spirit-walker?” asked Leo.
“It’s the term for a shape-changer who does so with spirit rather than physically, like you did. Not everyone has the talent. With a spirit form, you can move much more quickly and silently.”
I thought about my escape from Robert, and my stomach turned when I thought about how, for a moment, I had been tempted.
“The wolfsbane?” Leo asked. “How does that work?”
“It both helps and hinders the transformation. It prevents the transformation physically but facilitates the spiritual one.”
Leo shook his head. “That’s amazing.”
We walked out of the cave into the waning sunlight of another day. Iain continued to direct the federal agents, but one broke off from the crowd and followed us.
“Doctor Fisher? Doctor Landover? We have some questions for you.”
My grandfather’s brows drew together. “Can’t we go home, get hot showers and a good night’s sleep first? Have mercy on an old man.”
“It will just take a moment.”
“I’ve got to get Simon back to his family,” Leo said. “I’ll catch you later at the Manor. I can give Gabriel and Lonna a ride.”
The two of them hadn’t met each other’s eyes the entire time we were in the main cavern, and I wondered what, exactly, had transpired bet
ween them before they were kidnapped. But I didn’t have time for speculation now. The federal agent led us out of the ravine and away from the river to a clearing, where a lone black SUV with tinted windows sat.
I turned to the agent—a nondescript fellow with sandy brown hair and blue eyes—who I had nicknamed “Buddy” in my head, to ask what was going on, but got the answer even before the words came out of my mouth. He pointed a gun at us and gestured to the car.
“Someone wants to talk to you.”
“I’m guessing there are silver bullets in that thing, aren’t there?”
“Of course.”
The window rolled down to reveal Sheriff Knowles in the driver’s seat. “Come on in, Doctors. I’ve got someone here who’s been dying to meet you.”
The back door opened, and I saw Ron as well as a guy who looked like he’d been up all night waiting for us. His salt-and-pepper tufts were messy over his ears, and his greasy comb-over zigzagged in disheveled strands across his shiny head. Bags the color of green tea hung under his eyes, and his jowls wobbled as he introduced himself.
“I’m Agent Marius. I have a proposition for you.”
We climbed in, and Buddy closed the door behind us. The SUV started up with a purr, its hybrid engine making all the noise of a large golf cart. One more vehicle leaving the scene wouldn’t be noticed, especially one as quiet as this one. I didn’t know how long they’d been there, but I could guess from the collection of fast food bags on the floor and the empty drink cups it had been a few hours.
“That took longer than we thought,” Ron said. He faced the window and wouldn’t meet either my or my grandfather’s gaze.
“Not that you were any help,” I said. “And where is Kyra?”
“She’s around. She wanted to find Leo.”
I tried not to think of Kyra and Leo and how close they had looked that first evening. He had said there was nothing between them, but was it true?
“That was you last night, wasn’t it, coming out of the cave? How did you do that?”
I held up my hand. “All in good time. Now, can you guys please explain why we’re getting kidnapped—again?”
Agent Marius made a sound combining a cough, harrumph, and sneeze. “This isn’t a kidnapping, Doctor Fisher. We just want to have a little conversation.”
“About what? And what does Ron have to do with all of this?”
“All in good time.” His tone mocked me.
The vehicle went over a rough patch, and we were thrown from side to side. I hit my left wrist, and the pain made me hiss.
“Are you injured, Doctor Fisher?”
I glared at Ron. “As you well know.”
I heard Knowles chuckle from the front seat. The road evened out. So, I guessed, this is what happens. Be disagreeable, get jostled. Be friendly, and things go smoothly. And keep in mind if things get too rough, Buddy’s gun might just “accidentally” go off.
“What can we do for you, Agent Marius?” My grandfather’s tone was even and charming, but I heard the steel beneath it. I had heard the same steel the last time I saw him and my mother together, and she had told him I wouldn’t be spending summers up there anymore. She got her way, but at the cost of losing her inheritance.
“Well, Doctor Landover, we’re interested in some of the experiments you’ve been doing.” He pulled a manila folder out of his black briefcase and handed it to my grandfather.
“How did you get these?”
I saw they were the documents Galbraith had given me and Iain, my grandfather’s notes on his aconite research.
“Your lawyer was more than happy to cooperate with us when we subpoenaed your records.”
“On what grounds was the subpoena served?”
“We were concerned about your research on the grounds of homeland security. A rogue scientist in a mountaintop laboratory might be making things we would rather not have fall into the hands of our enemies.”
“How did you find out in the first place?”
Ron’s guilty look told me all I needed to know. “They promised me a cure, Joanie,” he mumbled, his eyes still down. “They promised me if I cooperated, I would get my old life back.”
“Just couldn’t wait, could you?”
He flexed his fingers. “I need to be back in Little Rock, back at my fellowship.”
“And back within dating distance of your professor’s daughter.”
“What we’re interested in most is something Ron saw last night,” Marius, obviously ignoring us, continued. “He said he saw a shadowy wolf, something solid in its mouth, slip without a sound through the woods, fend off an attack from a material wolf, and then disappear when attacked again.” He raised one bushy eyebrow. “Would you know anything about that?”
I had been so intent on my goal I hadn’t noticed I was being followed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Are you sure, spirit-walker?”
“You had bugs in the lab. You knew what was going on.” I clenched my fists, and the truck lurched over a pothole or rock of some sort.
“Sorry,” Sheriff Knowles called out. “That one snuck up on me.”
Marius ignored him. “We’ve been keeping an eye on Hippocrates-Cabal. We wouldn’t have let them contaminate the bird flu supply, of course.”
Wouldn’t they? I wondered. But I kept my breathing even and relaxed my hands with effort. “What do you want from us?”
“We want you to continue your research. We think it has intriguing possibilities.”
“We’re scientists, Agent Marius,” said my grandfather. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“Fine, then.” Marius made the disagreeable sound again. “As you know, our military is stretched thin right now, and our enemies numerous.”
“Right.”
“We need better, stealthier, ways of quelling insurgency so we can get our soldiers out faster. Then we need the money to bankroll the operations.”
“You want to be the ones to make the ‘cure’ for CLS,” I said. “You let Hippocrates create the problem, and you’ll be the one to fix it. At premium cost.”
“And you want to turn your soldiers into werewolves,” my grandfather said, more steel in his tone. “You want to take all those young men and women and condemn them to a life I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Do you have a plan for what to do with them when they return?”
“We cure them.” Marius spread his hands as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“But there isn’t a cure.”
“That’s what we need you to find before we can put the program into effect. It’s a risk we’re willing to take. We’ll take care of them in the future if necessary.”
My grandfather leaned back. “You have my notes. You have my granddaughter’s documentation from her research so you can see who to experiment on. Why do you need us?”
“Because you’re the only ones who have made it this far, and for someone to try to replicate and fully understand your work, even for someone like Iain McPherson, would take far too long. This is an urgent situation, Doctors. We don’t have that kind of time.”
I heard gravel under the tires. We had reached the driveway to Wolfsbane Manor.
“You have a decision to make, Doctors. Will you help us with this?”
“What if we don’t?”
“Then you will be treated as rogue scientists, and we will not hesitate to lock you away for the rest of your life. Prison is hard on terrorists.”
My grandfather seemed to deflate in his seat. “It appears as though the decision has been made for us.”
They dropped us off at the front door and drove away.
“Why did you agree?” I asked as we walked inside. ”I would have gone to jail to keep them from hurting any more people. This is not how I remembered you.”
He shook his head. “Because they might just try the transformation anyway, without a cure. The dosing of aconite is such a delicate process they would lik
ely kill many innocent people before they succeeded in their aims. At least this way, we’d have control over the process.”
I looked at him in disbelief. He had always told me scientific integrity was the most important defense we had against the pressures of government. But he seemed too weary for me to argue.
We trudged up the stairs. The noises of the other inhabitants of the house were comforting, albeit sharper than they had been before my transformation. I heard Lonna in her room, packing. With the mystery of the disappearing children solved, I guessed she would be heading back to Little Rock, although I didn’t know how she would manage to live with her new CLS.
“Go talk to her,” my grandfather said. He had always managed to read my mind—or at least my face. “She told us in the cave things had been…tense…between you two since she arrived. Something about her not learning from your mistakes.”
“You could say that.”
“I think she learned her lesson. And you learned yours.”
“Mine?” But I knew what he meant.
Lonna’s suitcase lay open on the bed. She had already folded everything into it.
“Hey,” I said. She looked up, her liquid topaz eyes full of emotion.
“Joanie, I should’ve listened to you,” she started, but I held up my hand.
“It’s all in the past.”
She bit her lip and took a deep breath. “I need to tell you what happened. With me and Peter. You need to know.”
The conversation about the spell he had put on her came back to me. “Okay.” I sat on the bed. “I’m listening.”
She told me how she’d gone to interview him at his request, and he’d made her agree to have lunch with him as the price of his silence as to who she really was.
“He was really nice, you know. He told me how impressed he’d been with my work. But then things got weird.”
He had leaned across the desk and taken her hand, turning it palm up. “You have an interesting story on your palm, Ms. Marconi,” he said. “It says you’re in for some big changes.” Then he brought it to his lips and kissed it.
“God, Joanie, I felt it all the way down to my toes. It was the most sensual kiss I’d had in my life—on my hand.” So sensual, in fact, she experienced an orgasm right there in his office. She excused herself to go to the bathroom, and when she’d washed her hands, she noticed the hand he kissed had a small cut on it as though it had been grazed by one of his teeth.
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