Nightshatter

by L. E. Horn

  The night air was bracing at this time of year, and I found it helped to clear my head. I flipped my phone around in my fingers for a time as I paced, my brain staggering through the implications of my next move. Keen followed me for a while before coming to the realization that I wasn’t going anywhere. She settled beneath a bush to chew on her bone.

  Standing in the cool night breeze and surrounded by the whisper of new spring leaves, I punched in a number.

  I didn’t think he’d be asleep. I’d bet on him still sitting, guarding Peter. And as much as I hated the idea of being watched over like a child, until we knew more about this mutant virus—until we were sure I wasn’t going to go insane—I didn’t see any way around it. Someone had to watch me. And it couldn’t be Sam.

  “Garrett,” he answered. Concise, to the point. Like the man.

  I closed my eyes. “I need you to switch places with Sam.”

  Silence. Then, “What time will you be here?”

  I leaned back against a tree, sliding down until my butt contacted the damp ground. This is right, isn’t it? “I have to be at the clinic for eight thirty. So how about seven forty-five?”

  “Okay.” He sighed. “Does she agree with this?”

  “She has no choice,” I said. “She can’t stay with me.”

  God knows what he detected in my voice, but he must have interpreted the undercurrents. “It might be too late.”

  Did everyone know what was happening between Sam and me? My stomach twisted as I thought of Peter, who’d lost his mate in Texas.

  “She called me her soul mate. If one mate dies, does the other ever mate again?” I held my breath.

  “Nope. It’s a onetime gig. But supported by friends and family, the survivor sometimes goes on to lead a productive, fulfilling life. If he or she gets past the first few weeks. For wulfan, grief can kill.” He hesitated. “It’s not a life I would choose. If it’s a soul mating, a part of you dies with your mate.”

  I thumped my head repeatedly back against the tree trunk as he continued.

  “So, tell you what, Liam. How about we figure out a way to save you?”

  “Is that even possible?” I croaked, my heart aching.

  “You never know until you try.”

  3

  I sat on my best friend’s deck, watching the sun rise as I tossed my phone between my fingers. The red and gold lancing across the sky reminded me of the glowing hues of Sam’s long hair.

  Sam and Peter. Two of the most important people in my life, and there was a real chance I’d lose both.

  My initiation into the wulfleng world had been brief and, in the end, brutal. Some wulfleng died trying to transform, others became vicious killers. With Chris’s guidance, I’d been successful with my initial transformation. It had come earlier than expected, days before my first full moon, forced on me early by a confrontation with Dillon. A confrontation that resulted in the death of two people. One by my hand. Or rather, claws.

  Chris had never seen anyone embrace the wulf as easily as I did. In retrospect, the early shifting ability was likely linked to the virulence of the mutant virus rather than any special ability on my part. Although Chris argued otherwise. The enforcer was nothing if not loyal.

  We’d thought, at first, that Dillon contracted the regular wulfan virus from his girlfriend, a pure wulfan. But Chloe had been driven insane by the same virus as Dillon. It now looked as though Dillon had given her the virus, not the other way around. And she had infected Josh by biting him, just like Dillon had infected Peter and me.

  And now Josh might have infected Chris. Although if Josh dies, will Chris want to live? Much as I hoped Hayek was right about us fighting it off, I realized I didn’t believe it. Neither Dillon nor Chloe had managed it.

  Lost in my thoughts, I dropped the phone and bent to retrieve it. Lying at my feet, my furry best friend raised her head to look at me. I noticed that at some point in my lengthy nocturnal ruminations, Keen had either finished off her bone or buried it. I looked closer and detected traces of dirt on her front paws and nose.

  “Seasoning it for later?” Her mismatched eyes—one blue, one brown—always gave her a quizzical appearance, but the question in her face revolved around one major concern—it was time for breakfast. She leaped to her feet when I sighed and rose, and I envied her the joy of easing her hunger when I faced a difficult morning denying my own.

  The cause of my angst gave me a dark look when I entered the kitchen.

  “What were you up to?” Sam asked, her face pinched and pale.

  “Watching the sun rise.”

  “Did you sleep at all?” When I shrugged, she shook her head and continued pouring coffee into her travel mug. “I’ve got yours ready to go.” She gestured to the counter. I grabbed my mug and we headed out the door.

  The urge to stand Garrett up and take Sam to work with me was overwhelming. Sam had been watching me at the clinic, under the pretense of helping our vet tech. She’d fit smoothly into my daily routine, like she belonged there. Because she does, shouted the voice in my head, which had suspicious wulfy overtones.

  Sam sat in silence, sipping her coffee, as we headed out. I didn’t possess the courage to tell her of my decision until we drove past the clinic. Instead, I took the highway north from Beausejour toward Chris’s farm, my second home since Dillon had turned me into a wulfleng, and ground zero for the mutant virus threat.

  I sensed a moment of confusion, then the impending eruption from the passenger seat. Keen pulled her nose from between us, curling up on the back seat.

  “You’re switching me with Garrett, aren’t you?”

  “Sam—”

  “Damn you to hell, Liam. You think this will change things, but it won’t. It’ll make them worse. Your wulf will keep pushing until you give in.”

  “Sam—”

  “No, you don’t get it. You can’t change fate.” Her lips pulled back from her teeth, and even someone unfamiliar with her true nature wouldn’t mistake the expression for a smile.

  I swallowed. “I love you too.”

  She quivered, and her entire body collapsed in on itself. “Then why?”

  “Because I want you. But if we pursue this now, you’ll die from this virus. We need to know more before we can take any chances, before we can be together.”

  “You agree we belong together?”

  “Yes. But only if we get the virus under control.”

  The core temperature of the truck dropped a few degrees below meltdown. A sideways glance revealed that she stared out the window, worrying at her lip with her teeth. Finally, she asked, “Do you have a plan?”

  “Not yet. But someone is taking an interest in what’s going on, and we can bet it’s whoever carted Dillon’s body off. They might have the answers we need.”

  “Don’t forget about the bodies that vanished from the Brandon uprising. Whoever these guys are, they’ve got bucks. And organization.”

  “Yeah. Someone has a vested interest in this virus.”

  Silence for a moment, as she stared at her hands. A glance showed they’d curled into fists. “You’ve got two weeks until the next full moon.”

  I flinched but said nothing. What could I say?

  “Just because Dillon went insane by his second full moon, doesn’t mean you will.”

  I nodded and thought for a moment. “Why are Peter and Josh having blackouts, allowing their wulves to rule? Why is their human side not home?” Dillon had bitten Peter two weeks before Chloe bit Josh. Josh would likely get as bad as my friend, but neither was taking the path Dillon had. Which led to my next question. “Why do wulfan and wulfleng react differently to the virus?”

  She looked at me, and I sensed her make the effort to push emotion aside. “Wulfan are already wulves, so maybe we’re immune to that part of the virus. But why are their humans reacting so oddly?”

  “Well, Dillon didn’t have blackouts that we know of. And the wulf didn’t rule.”

  She stared at me.


  “Sorry, I thought Chris told you. Dillon wasn’t like Peter.” I remembered the fanged jaws dropping open to form words. “Dillon spoke to me during that last chase through the bush. He couldn’t take human form, but he wasn’t all wulf, either.”

  Sam frowned. “Why wouldn’t his wulf be in control if he couldn’t shift back?”

  “Because he was insane at the end.” I couldn’t suppress a shudder, remembering the expression in those dark eyes. “It was as though the human in him was the insane part, a mad human brain in a wulf body.”

  “Chris knows about this?”

  “Yeah. I thought he told you, but he’s been pretty worried about Josh.”

  “But if Josh goes like Peter, he’ll lose the human completely, not have it go insane.”

  “It must be because he’s wulfan.”

  “Well, I’ll discuss it with Chris.” She straightened. “If I’m not following you around all day, he and I can do some digging.”

  I nodded, feeling better about my decision. Sam was a pit bull once she got her teeth into something. She wouldn’t spit this out until she’d wrung the truth free. Maybe if she’s successful, she’ll forgive me for trading her for Garrett.

  “I haven’t forgiven you for this. You will pay.”

  Then again, maybe not. I winced. “Castration is not in your best interest.”

  When she snorted, I glanced at her and saw that her fangs had appeared, adding a macabre touch to her expression.

  “There are other ways to make you suffer.”

  I conceded the point as I turned down Chris’s drive. Garrett was unloading gear from the back seat of his polished black truck. He straightened when he spotted us, his designer clothes as immaculate and orderly as his vehicle.

  “You’d better leave Keen with me,” Sam said. “Unless you want to be peeling her jaws off Garrett all day.”

  “She wouldn’t,” I protested.

  “I would if I were her. Garrett’s as much fun as a nest of wasps.” She paused before adding, “You’ll have to watch it in front of Garrett. Don’t do any partials.”

  I nodded. Wulfan and wulfleng went from human to wulf and back again. Most wulfan could do small transformations of hands, teeth, eyes, sometimes jaws, but true partials, changing bigger parts of your body, particularly things in your core, could kill you. It was easy to lose track of the change and not be able to find your way back to human or forward to wulf, and although any change required resources, maintaining partials used crazy amounts of nutrients and energy. Once the body used up the reserves, it would start to digest itself. Not a pleasant way to die.

  “I mean it, Liam. Partials are dangerous as hell, and if Garrett sees you, you’ll be in a cage before you can blink.”

  “Fine. I’ll behave.”

  “Don’t get cocky because you survived a partial to save your vet friend from a charging bull.” Sam fixed me with a stern stare. “Just because they’re easy for you, doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous. You have to stop doing them.”

  We pulled up beside Garrett’s truck and she twisted to extricate Keen from her harness. Keen hesitated when Sam called to her, but when Garrett approached, she followed Sam to the house.

  Garrett watched Sam stalk away. I opened the back door of my SUV to throw in his gear. He got into the passenger seat and looked at me.

  “Still got ’em?”

  Obviously, castration was something often discussed between him and Sam. “I pointed out that their removal wasn’t in her best interest.”

  “Yep,” he said, shaking his head, though not a hair on his dark head moved. “See, you think you’ve gotten away with something. But you haven’t.”

  “Yeah.” I reversed the truck and headed down the drive.

  He shifted his position twice before he came out and asked, “Is she good? I mean, is she okay? You guys didn’t—”

  “No. And she’s fine. But things wouldn’t have stayed that way much longer.”

  He sighed, I thought with relief. I glanced at him, wondering if his concern was normal enforcer caretaker issues or if something else was there.

  “You two ever been together?”

  “Sam and me?” Garrett huffed a laugh. “She’s not my type. But we’ve run together on missions and we look out for each other. Sam’s one tough cookie.” He hesitated. “I guess she’s more like a sister than anything else. A friend. I want to see her happy.” He gazed out the window. “I don’t have many friends.”

  The information didn’t surprise me, but the admission did. “Might have something to do with your charming demeanor.” The words whipped out before I considered them, and I braced myself for a hostile reaction.

  He laughed. I chalked up another fact about Garrett: just say it. He might be abrasive, but he was honest and expected to be treated in the same direct manner that he dished out.

  “I didn’t like you much at first,” he said, proving my point. “I thought you were too pretty to be smart. But I was wrong.”

  I had taken a sip of my coffee and almost choked on it. He considered me—pretty? I vacillated between amusement, taking offense, and curiosity as to his sexual preferences. But then I remembered my first impression of him and laughed. “I thought the same thing about you,” I admitted, wiping coffee off my lap.

  “Really?” he asked, raising a brow.

  “Have you looked in the mirror?”

  He waved a hand in the air. “In my line of work, I find appearance to be an excellent distraction technique. People see the clothes and the hair and figure that’s all you’ve got going on.”

  “Well, you got me,” I admitted, with embarrassment. This guy was enforcer to the gills. Admire my pretty hair while I dissect your mind. I considered putting gel in my always-tangled locks as I evaluated what I knew about Garrett.

  “What do you do when you aren’t babysitting mutant wulfleng?” I asked.

  “I’m a private detective. I often join forces with Sam’s family. Insurance fraud is lucrative.”

  I nodded. Detection work granted the flexibility required of enforcers, who might do nothing for weeks and then be called upon by the wulfan board to clean up an issue. Often with lethal force.

  I sensed Garrett’s stare and glanced at him, raising an eyebrow. His face expressionless, he offered, “Stick around. I’ll show you a few tricks of the trade.”

  “I intend to,” I said with feeling, and he smiled. Or rather, the corners of his mouth twitched.

  Well, we weren’t exactly friends, but at least it seemed we had declared a kind of truce. I explained him to the clinic staff as Sam’s brother and said Sam had got a gig shadowing another vet for the next while. Our vet tech, Mandy, who had become used to having Sam as her personal minion, appeared disappointed, especially when I told her Garrett was just tagging along for the ride.

  My vet partner, Darlene, assessed Garrett from nose to tailbone with her sharp baby blues before cornering me in the hall outside an examination room. “What’s with the bodyguard?”

  I launched into my explanation, but her expression told me she wasn’t buying it.

  “If there’s something wrong, you’d tell me, right?”

  I swallowed my next words of reassurance. Darlene had been a solid presence since the beginning of my time at this clinic. I couldn’t tell her what was really going on. But if I had this virus, I might disappear on them with no notice, and that wasn’t fair.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” I told her, which caused her eyes to widen. “I’m having health issues, and Sam and Garrett are with me in case they surface. I promise I’ll tell you if it threatens to compromise my work.”

  Her dark brows drew down beneath her mop of curls. “Dammit, Liam. You should have told me. Does this have anything to do with that flu you had last month?”

  I nodded. “I have an excellent medical team working on it.” An image of Sam in a lab coat flashed through my brain.

  “Listen, if you need additional time off, just ask. Nothing i
s more important than your health, and lord knows there were enough times when you’ve almost single-handedly carried this clinic. We owe you.”

  “Thanks.” My single-person-no-family status meant I’d been the go-to guy for emergencies over the past few years.

  “We’ve two student vets coming on this summer for training. They can cover for you if needed. We’ll be okay, so don’t worry about the clinic.”

  “We’ll see how it goes. But if things develop fast, I might not give much notice.”

  Concern darkened her gaze, and to my shock, my normally taciturn partner swept me into a hug. “I’ve got my fingers crossed for you.”

  Garrett appeared around the corner, and Darlene straightened. “You look after this guy,” she told him in a stern voice. “He’s valuable property around here.”

  Brow wrinkled, Garrett watched her stride down the hall. He looked back at me.

  Poised in the doorway of the examination room, I raised an eyebrow at him.

  “There’s a dog growling at me in the waiting room,” he said. “I thought I’d take a chair and sit outside.”

  I managed to stifle a laugh, but I could tell by his expression, he saw it in my eyes. I’d noticed that both Keen and Havoc avoided the tall enforcer, but it appeared their reaction wasn’t a fluke.

  “Good idea,” I said, as our ever-cheerful receptionist, Ardyth, escorted my next client down the hall toward us. The dog, who was so badly in need of dental work that his breath could knock you cold, stopped dead when he got a sniff of Garrett. Garrett looked at the dog. The dog looked at him. Neither moved.

  I grabbed Garrett by the arm and pushed six feet of wooden wulfan enforcer past the fifteen-pound poodle, who growled and snapped as we went by.

  I knew it couldn’t be the wulf the dog sensed, or it would be a quivering mass of jelly instead of Cujo. “What’s up with you? Do all animals react like this, or is it just dogs?”

  Garrett shrugged off my hand and straightened his designer shirt. “Animals don’t like me,” he admitted.