by Dani Harper
“What the hell does that leave?” demanded Melnick, forgetting completely that he wasn’t a councilor and technically was not permitted to speak.
Fitzpatrick exchanged a glance with Lowen and took the podium again, his face grim. “We’ve got samples of hair, tooth marks on bone plus photos of tracks that were found near the body, all pointing to a single animal. It’s been suggested that the killer might be an extremely large and vicious dog, and all the evidence indicates that we’re dealing with a wolf or a wolf-dog hybrid.”
Zoey gripped the edge of the table as the council chamber erupted with loud protests, arguments, and questions. The noise was excruciating, almost as if her brain were trying to escape from her head. Perspiration beaded on her forehead, ran down her back. She hadn’t noticed the heat when she came in, yet it was sauna-like now. Then a shiver ran through her and she was instantly chilled. Her gut cramped hard. Am I coming down with something? Please God, not the flu. Anything but that. Her notes swam in front of her and the air seemed thick and hard to breathe. She had to get out, had to go home, but her legs wouldn’t obey the order to stand.
From his truck parked directly behind Zoey’s old red Bronco, Connor had staked out the village office building for the past hour, until the sense of something wrong that had dogged him all day suddenly began screaming at him. His inner wolf clawed at his insides, wanting out, wanting to get to Zoey, but the effects of the charm hadn’t worn off yet. Instead, Connor leapt from the truck on two legs, racing into the building and up the stairs to the council chamber.
He didn’t need Changeling senses to hear the muffled commotion on the other side of the heavy double doors. Cautiously, he pulled one door open. The wall of noise hit him first. Everyone in the place seemed to be on their feet, arguing. Except Zoey. He finally spotted her sitting alone in the far corner at a desk reserved for members of the media. Her head was in her hands and she didn’t look up, but every other eye in the place was fastened on him. So much for trying to sneak in.
“Dr. Macleod, I’m relieved to see you! Maybe you can help us make sense of this situation,” said the mayor. She waved a dismissive hand at Lowen and Fitz, who were standing their ground grimly in the midst of the melee. “These men are claiming there’s a killer wolf out there.” Her angry tone said it all. She didn’t believe it. She didn’t want to believe it.
The president of the Chamber of Commerce piped up. “I will not have this nonsense starting up again. Local retailers are having a hard enough time without somebody crying wolf. It’s bad for business.”
“For heaven’s sake, Brady, those werewolf stories a few years ago brought a ton of people to town,” declared another man, the utilities manager. “They all had to eat, buy gas, and rent a motel. Maybe it’s exactly what we need to boost the economy around here.”
Connor exchanged glances with Lowen and Fitz, glad he wasn’t in their shoes and not keen to try them on. Something was terribly wrong in this room and he couldn’t see it. He scanned the furious faces, but no one was even looking at Zoey. All of the anger and outrage was being directed at Lowen and Fitz. But all the attention was squarely on him.
He took a deep breath. “I didn’t come here to take part in this discussion, but I will say that these men are experienced professionals and Dunvegan is damn lucky to have them. Fitzpatrick worked homicide for twenty-two years in three cities, and I shouldn’t need to remind you that Miller is one of the most respected doctors in the country in the field of forensics. So if they say there’s a wolf out there killing people, I’d start figuring out what to do to protect people instead of complaining because it’s not what I wanted to hear. That’s all I’m saying.”
There was shocked silence for a moment, then an eruption of indignant comments, which Connor ignored as he made his way around the room to the news desk. “Zoey,” he whispered fiercely. “Zoey, are you all right?”
There was no response. She continued to look down at her notepad, holding her head in her hands. Connor searched for words. “Look, I know you’re pissed off at me and maybe you don’t feel like talking to me, but I just need to know—” He felt it then. Electricity hovered in the air around her, invisible but building fast.
Quickly Connor sat on the edge of the table, shielding Zoey from view as he yanked her hands from her face. Powerful static looped and crackled around his fingers. She blinked up at him in surprise. Her eyes sparked with green fire.
God in heaven. “Honey, we need to get you out of here, okay?” he whispered, his heart in his throat. In case anyone was watching—although everyone seemed to have returned to arguing among themselves—he felt her forehead and her cheeks. She was burning up and cold at the same time, but it was no fever. Connor was about to ask if she could walk, but quickly decided appearances just didn’t matter at the moment. He scooped her up in his arms and walked out with her. “Flu,” he said as loudly as he could to Lowen as he passed. He lowered his voice however—and no one but a Changeling would hear him above the raised voices in the room—and said to Fitz, “Lupine flu. I’ll be at the clinic. Bring the doc.”
He was confident that Fitz and Lowen would cover his exit. They’d extricate themselves and come to the clinic as quickly as they could, although he doubted either could do much to help in this situation.
Connor didn’t know what he was going to do either. The clinic was the only safe place he could think of to go in a hurry. It was close by, yet isolated at the edge of the village industrial park, surrounded by corrals and sheds. Zoey’s apartment was not an option. If Zoey Changed, there would be pain. A lot of it. He winced as he remembered the screams of that frightened teenager in the woods. . . .
Zoey was curled in a shuddering ball on the seat of the truck beside him. Pale beyond pale. Static energy lifted wisps of her russet hair, made it dance and float. Her eyes were glassy, unseeing. Connor drove with one hand while he gripped hers in the other. “Stay with me, honey. Hang tough for just a few minutes, okay?” Dammit, wake up, wake up, you can’t do this! He hit the remote on the dashboard and drove inside the back bay of the North Star Animal Hospital.
There was no time for gentleness. He carried her straight to the shower in the back of his office and shoved her inside. Turned the cold water on full blast. He held her there for a moment, then gritted his teeth and stood under it too, holding her to him. Holding her up. “Come back to me, Zoey. Can you hear me?” Look at me. Listen to me, just to me. The wolf is calling you but listen to me instead. Listen to your mate. Come back now. There was no response except for a soft moan. “Don’t do this, honey, you’re not ready for this yet. For God’s sake, wake up!” Her eyes were closed but he didn’t need to see the green glimmer in their depths to know that the Change had not retreated. The wolf in him could feel it.
Connor had never known such fear. There was no way for Zoey to successfully Change, not now, not so soon. The Change required vast amounts of energy, both from the body and from the elements. Connor was practiced enough to draw it from the air if need be. With some coaching, a new Changeling was able to draw from the ground where the energy was most easily available. But Zoey hadn’t had any instruction at all. Nor could he hope to teach her now. She was long past even being able to hear him, never mind understand what he was telling her.
Christ. She didn’t even know what was happening to her. If he didn’t find a way to stop this, she would never even know what killed her. Because Changing unprepared was almost always a death sentence. There was no being “stuck” partway between human and wolf like in a bad movie. Just death—pure, simple, and final.
Zoey’s body was limp beneath the icy shower spray, her skin nearly transparent. Connor shook her fiercely, calling to her both aloud and in her mind, aware that time was rapidly running out. Again and again he reached out with all the psychic power he could bring to bear. Finally, he slapped her. For a flicker of an instant he felt her try to respond, then her awareness slid away again. “I won’t let you go! Zoey!” He slapped her f
ace again, much harder this time, willing her with everything he had to come back to him. He waited in agony.
Suddenly she gasped for air like a drowning swimmer. Her eyes opened wide and she held up a hand to fend off the spray of freezing water. “Goddammit, Connor! What the hell are you doing!” She sputtered and choked and cursed him, but it was music to his ears. The hellish green light had disappeared from her amber eyes, replaced by pure feminine fury.
Outrageous relief flooded his senses and jellied his knees. Connor gave up trying to stand. Instead, he opted to simply slide to the shower floor with Zoey clutched tightly in his lap. With one hand he reached up to turn on the hot faucet and let the water warm their shivering bodies.
Chapter Twenty-one
“Aflu? This was all because of a flu bug?” Zoey was incredulous. “The last thing I remember is sitting in the council meeting and the next thing I know, I’m being drowned in a cold shower.” She’d elbowed her way out of that shower in a fury, ran straight into Lowen as he came in the front door of the clinic and all but demanded that he take her home. Immediately. He’d compromised by taking her to his clinic first, where his wife had made her a soothing tea and found her some dry clothes.
Lowen nodded as he leaned over Zoey. He pumped up the blood pressure cuff and applied his stethoscope to the inside of her elbow. “No problem here,” he announced as he ripped off the cuff. He turned his attention to her eyes, fingering the lids open wide and shining a penlight into the pupils. She winced.
“Light still smarts?”
“Oh yeah.”
He put the light away. “You told me you came down with the migraine from hell to start with. Your pupils match. No broken vessels in the retinas either, but the surface of your right eye is mightily bloodshot, which can be symptomatic of a real thumper. You took medication?”
“Twice, but it didn’t help.”
“Hmpf. Headaches sparked by a virus seldom respond to conventional treatments. I’ll have George at the drugstore send over something else. Head still hurt?”
“Yeah. At least it’s down to a dull roar. Now the rest of me feels like crap.”
“I’ll bet it does. Get some solid rest.” He pointed his finger at her. “Real rest, hear me? Lots of fluids. I’ll write you a note for work. Bev will drive you home and I want you to stay there.”
“Okay, but the shower thing—”
“Still ticked over that, are you? It was damn fine first aid in my book. Connor says you were dangerously feverish. Christ, your temperature was still 102 when you got here, and it’s not normal yet. Combined with a migraine, I’m not a bit surprised you passed out. You’re lucky you weren’t alone when it happened.”
“Okay, okay,” She could accept that. And she could almost accept that Connor had taken her to an animal clinic. Habit, she supposed. And probably the closest available shower stall. “You seem to have a lot of respect for Connor’s medical skills.”
“More than I have for most human doctors, frankly. But if it’s credentials you need, I suggest you check the wall in his waiting room sometime. He’s got more than veterinary science diplomas up there.”
She would be certain to do just that, but right now she wasn’t concerned about Connor’s qualifications. “Actually, I’d like to ask you about his mental health.”
Lowen stopped writing on the prescription pad and stared at her. “Connor’s mental health?”
“I don’t think that’s such a strange question. I have reason to wonder if he’s prone to delusions, hallucinations— anything like that. He’s told me some pretty disturbing stories.”
“Stories,” repeated the doctor. “So I take it you don’t believe whatever he’s telling you?”
“Well, of course not!”
“Have you ever known Connor to lie?”
“Look, I’m sure he believes what he’s saying and that’s why I need a professional opinion—”
“You care about him?”
Why was he giving her the third degree? “Look, Connor says he can become a wolf for God’s sake. All the caring in the world doesn’t make that normal!”
“Normal,” Lowen snorted, ripping off the prescription sheet and handing it to her. “Young lady, the older you get, the more you realize that normal is just a word somebody made up. But since you asked for my professional opinion, here it is—there isn’t a damn thing wrong with Connor Macleod.”
Zoey sat there, openmouthed, as the doctor left the room. She didn’t even notice Bev behind her until she spoke.
“I’m sorry, dear, but Lowen tends to be rather direct.”
“Yeah, I get that. Well, at least I don’t have to waste time wondering what he’s thinking.”
Bev chuckled. “No one does. I’ve warmed up the jeep if you’d like to go home now.”
“Thanks, I’d really appreciate the ride,” said Zoey and stood up. She still felt a bit shaky, but better than when she’d come in. No wiser, however.
There isn’t a damn thing wrong with Connor Macleod. She wondered about Lowen’s words all the way home.
It was 6:45 A.M. and her head swam with great pounding waves of pain. Damn migraine. Damn stupid stinking migraine. This one had been building for two days, ever since she’d been home. It might even be the same migraine from the night of the village council meeting. It wouldn’t be the first time a skull-splitter had fooled her into thinking it had left, only to ambush her again later. The change in weather might have triggered the migraine too. The overcast sky was iron gray, and there were reports of thunderstorms in the foothills with unusually heavy rains. A far distant dam on the Peace River had been forced to discharge water, and Zoey had called the sports reporter to investigate reports of flooding upstream.
As for herself, she wasn’t going anywhere. Her stomach roiled with nausea and moving was out of the question. Zoey laid her head gingerly on the little bistro table in her kitchen and closed her eyes, grateful that she wasn’t at the office. Wishing she had the energy to put herself to bed now that she’d finally finished the front-page story.
Officials hadn’t released enough details for a thorough report in last Monday’s paper. Now she had something to work with, and work she had. Zoey had put in hours on the Al Menzie article, and several others related to it, less to please her publisher and more as a matter of professionalism. Menzie had lived alone and had no relatives in the area, but he had farmed that same spot for 53 years. Long enough to have accumulated a lot of friends, neighbors, and acquaintances, most of whom would be reading the newspaper. She had wanted every detail to be both accurate and sensitive, and had written and rewritten everything into finely polished pieces.
The fact that the task had kept her mind off Connor for whole minutes at a time was a bonus.
Maybe I could nap or something right here at the table. Maybe I’ll wake up in a couple of hours and my headache will be gone. Maybe I’ll sprout wings and fly. She knew that the pain in her head would stand between her and sleep, just as it had much of the night even though she was exhausted right down to the bone. What little sleep she’d snatched hadn’t been rewarding. Whenever she had nodded off, she’d dreamed again of a great grizzled wolf attacking poor Al Menzie—and then stalking her.
Damn wolves. Thinking about them naturally led to thinking about Connor. If she was honest with herself, she missed him. A lot. So much so that sometimes she almost didn’t care if he thought he was a wolf. And when Zoey caught herself thinking things like that, fear and anger grabbed her by the throat. Fear that her heart was no longer her own, and anger that she had let it happen, that somehow she had lost control. You’d think I’d be mad at Connor, but instead I’m just mad at me. Why is that? I should be furious with him, the way he’s insinuated himself into my life, the way he’s pulled all these emotions out of me. I probably wouldn’t even have this damn headache if it weren’t for him.
“It’s all your fault, Connor Macleod,” she muttered into the place mat.
“Probably.”
Zoey nearly fell off her chair in her scramble to sit up, the pain in her head screaming at her for moving so fast. She put one hand to her stomach to hold it in place, the other hand to her pulsing temple, and blinked to try to focus through the rush of agony. Connor was leaning in the glass doors to the balcony.
“Sorry to startle you, honey. I thought you were asleep until you spoke. Are you all right?”
“Actually I was having a near-death experience, but it wasn’t as pleasant as I’d been led to believe it would be.”
He didn’t laugh. “Another migraine,” he guessed. “A bad one too. I can see it from here. Will you let me help you?”
“I already took something for it. I’ll be fine, thanks. Now what the hell are you doing here?” The pain prevented her from achieving much of a glare, and it was hard to feel assertive from a sitting position, but she worked at it. “Since when do you just walk into my place? And did you climb or something?”
“Since you haven’t answered your e-mail, your text messages, your phone, or your door, I was concerned.”
“I’m sure your pal Doc Miller told you I’m supposed to be resting.”
“Ha. Nice job of that. I ran into Ted Biegel today. He told me all about your articles, so I know you haven’t been taking it one bit easier than usual.”
“Hey, I stayed home, didn’t I? So now you’ve seen me, you know I’m alive, you can leave.” She meant to say it casually, flippantly, but it didn’t come out that way. In fact, the words almost didn’t come out at all. In spite of the pain in her head that was almost blinding her, the pain in her heart was much worse.
He sighed. “I don’t know what you took for that head, but it’s not working. I can see you haven’t been sleeping much either. And don’t”—he pointed at her, and his voice took on a warning note—“say you’re fine one more time or it’s really going to piss me off.”