“You are beginning to make me think you’ve seen one to many episodes of The Wire, Doc.” I replied as she pulled over and parallel parked the car next to a parking metre.
“Trust me, Bg, you can trust me if Paris does.” She said turning off the car engine and opening the driver side door to get out. I got out of the car and felt better for it. She was bumping up my paranoia level. I really didn’t know Dr Marisini from a bar of soap, so asking me to trust her and using the phrase ‘trust me’, set off a little red flag inside of me.
Trust with me isn’t given, it’s earned. I have very good instincts and I’ve learned growing up, more and more to go with them. Right now, they had me watching the Doctor, wearily, sizing her up in detail.
She was about the same height as me. I couldn’t tell if she was nervous as she hoisted her oversized black handbag onto her shoulder, or just had neurotic tendencies. “I usually get my coffee from over here.” She said as we approached a little sidewalk café. “They have an extensive range of coffees and teas if you prefer that.”
“Coffee’s fine.” She lead the way into the ordinary looking café. It looked like a place that sold coffee and cake. Nothing terribly sinister and mysterious about it. It was plain, unlike Dr Marissia. Nothing to fear here, except the ordinary. I looked at the coffee menu, well, the menu wasn’t ordinary so maybe looks could be deceptive. We were the only customers in there.
“There’s a place in Prospect Heights, that does cupping’s if you really love your coffee.” Doctor Marisini said, gazing up at the overhead menu.
“Cuppings?”
“Kind of like coffee samplings, like you do for wine, they do for coffee, you should go to one sometime. They’re very rewarding.” I was about to order just a regular black coffee, but then figured, that would make me incredibly boring, and ordinary. I looked over at the doctor’s take away cup in her hand.
“What’d you get?”
“Raspberry Mocha” I looked back at the menu. The doc had a sweet tooth side. That was probably rather tame for her by the looks of it.
“I’ll have a Café Miel.” I paid for my exotic coffee and we walked over to a table near the front window of the café to be waited upon. We sat down and Doctor Marisini put her handbag on her lap and her take away, large coffee cup on our small round table top.
“So, how about that weather?”
“We can talk here. It’s open and public but, well, safe because of it.” Doctor Marisini replied to my sarcasm. Or ignored it, depending on how you viewed her response. Maybe she didn’t get sarcasm or that I just wanted to know why she had me travelling into New Jersey for exotic coffee.
“Seriously Doc, stop with the secret agent spy stuff, and just tell me what is so important that you couldn’t discuss with me over the phone. I know it has to do with my blood work. Because why else would you call me? We don’t know each other outside of that weekend and that purpose.”
“You’re right.” She said and I noticed her hands shift on what looked like the top of a manila folder in her handbag. “It’s about your blood work. Several things about your blood work and I thought if I could talk to you in person, that perhaps I could answer any questions you might have or vice versa.”
“Doc you are starting to freak me out.”
“Sorry, I know I prattle on too much. I ran initial tests on your blood work as you and Paris requested to see if there was wolfs bane still in your system. I didn’t find any trace amounts left in it, which isn’t surprising given that by the time I drew you’re blood it had already been over a week since the initial poisoning and flushing stages.” She paused as a waitress in a green apron walked over to us and put my café miel down on the table.
“Well that’s good news, no traces of it lingering in me, right?” I asked pulling the small glass coffee towards me. I sniffed the aroma of it, a shot of espresso, with cinnamon steamed milk and honey mixed in. My stomach gurgled in response.
“Yes indeed. But then I wondered why you weren’t affected by the wolfs bane, and I tested the sample tablet you gave me to ensure it was indeed laced with wolfs bane or whether you were actually dealing with something else. I mean, I’ve never heard of a werewolf who didn’t suffer fatality from wolfs bane before.” I stared at her then. Was she talking about my father and how he’d died horribly from wolfs bane poisoning? She better not be, because I was not okay with her talking about him or his death.
“Oh god, oh I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean….of course.”
I stirred my coffee while the doctor took a moment to get a grip on herself and let out a heavy breath. “But it did occur to me when doing these tests, that you’re immunity to wolfsbane was peculiar given what…what…happened to your father.”
“I wasn’t immune to it. I was in horrible fucking pain for a week. Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t shape shift.” I replied back at her angrily. “That’s hardly immunity.” I looked down at my café miel.
“By immunity I mean, it wasn’t lethal to you, even in the small amount that was in the tablet. Whereas I’ve been lead to believe that even small amounts of it, to a werewolf, are fatal.” She replied quickly.
“How many werewolves you know of who have killed by wolfs bane? Or even seen, or heard of it? It’s a kind of rare thing to get in today’s world isn’t it?” I kept stirring my coffee and looking over at the doctor.
“You’re right, by all accounts it is rare. Highly rare, which is part of what makes this finding on your blood work all the more interesting. I have to ask a rather personal question, but your father is he your biological father?”
“No he’s not. Biologically speaking.” I put my fingers on the glass of my coffee and felt the warmth seep through them. I missed my father, greatly and it hurt, every time we mentioned his name. His death was still too fresh for me.
“Oh well, then that could explain the immunity then, as your stepfather and you wouldn’t carry the same bloodlines and..”
“I’m adopted.” I stated back at her as my cell phone buzzed again from inside my handbag. I reached in and pulled it out and flicked through the screens until I saw my text messages. Persistent Paris. I’d really pissed him off. I put the phone back down on the table ignoring it.
“Still not seeing exactly what the big fuss is about doc. It’s not like I never knew I wasn’t adopted, my parents were quite open with me about it from a young age. So yeah, my health issues aren’t going to be genetically related at all to the Sommers family. Is that what you had me come all the way out to New Jersey for and couldn’t speak to me on a telephone about? Cause got to tell you, you had me going with the whole, James Bond, secret agent approach.”
Doctor Marisini’s fingers played on the hidden folder in her handbag. And I had a feeling that we weren’t done yet, by a long shot. “You’re blood work showed some anomalies that rather fascinated me and at first I assumed it might have been because of the wolfs bane getting into your system, but then I ruled that out as we both agree you’re body had already flushed all the poison out of you by the time I drew your blood. So I decided to run some other tests.”
My eyes widened. “What?” The doctor had the good conscience to look a little guilty. “I never gave you permission to play with my blood work doctor. Isn’t that some kind of an ethical doctor-patient violation right there?”
“Hear me out.” Dr Marisini said putting up a hand. I picked up my coffee and sipped, inhaling the aroma as the rich and lightly sweet taste of it filled my mouth. “I think you’ll find the results rather, well, staggering. I did.”
I put the coffee back down again as my cell phone buzzed, again. I picked it up. Another message from Paris about how angry he was with me. I closed the message down and clicked on the camera app on my phone and held my phone up to Doctor Marisini.
“Smile doc, I need to take this photo, so Paris doesn’t lose his god damn mind.” I muttered snapping a photo of her sipping from her coffee cup. I had to stop Paris’s mood escalating any
further into overdrive. I didn’t want him to truly be angry with me.
Just catching up with Dr Marisini regarding my blood test. I texted as I sent the photo and message to him. Then thought about what I’d sent. I was in a no win situation. He’d probably get Addison to track me down in an instant now and haul my beta werewolf ass back to Manhattan for a royal spanking of the painful kind.
“It’s the wolfs bane and your immunity that got me so intrigued. Apart from the fact that this substance is rare, and hard to find and therefore hard to come by.”
“I can tell you that the bitches who pressed the pills together got it from some left overs they found when they broke into Plum Island. Whoever did clean up on that place, didn’t do a stellar job before they moved out.” I said referring to now sold, government facility that claimed to research diseases against animals that were potentially threats to human health. Not that I like so many other werewolves actually believed that.
The Plum Island facility it seemed had gotten too much publicity in recent years. And not a lot of it good, so people protested about it being so close to such a dense population like New York. The answer to the government was to sell the facility and move the work inland, to Kansas. As a result, now that Plum Island wasn’t bordered and guarded by homeland security forces anymore, some werewolves had gotten brave enough to break in and investigate it’s skeleton remains. And that was where my latest troubles had come from.
“Yes, pain killer pills laced with silver and wolfs bane even in small amounts, I believe should have done more damage than they did to you. After all, you said you took quite a few of them before you stopped.”
“I was taking them daily, popping them like they were candy.” I replied over the top of my coffee. “Till I realised they weren’t doing shit for me. But I was more than a little stressed at the time, what with my pack mate being kidnapped right before my own eyes and all.”
“And I accounted for your stressful condition when doing my research.”
“Research?” I asked putting the coffee down. “Who said anything about research, on me?” A second red flag went up in my mind and I tensed. “You were supposed to check my blood work for wolfs bane poisoning, end of story. I’m beginning to think doctor that you got me over here, so I couldn’t start something with you if I didn’t like what I was going to hear. Is that it? Get me out of the territories I have rights to fight you in? Is that why I’m in New Jersey?”
Technically, being in another werewolf pack’s territory meant I wasn’t allowed to start fights with their pack or those under their protection. As Dr Marisini had chosen New Jersey to meet with me, I had to assume, as a shape shifter, she had some sort of protective agreement with the Neiwe Teme pack there. Otherwise why wouldn’t she meet me in Manhattan or even the Hamptons, which was free ground to us both? She was expecting a fight, that’s why.
She put up both hands and pushed her chair back slightly. Her head was bowed and she was averting her gaze from me. But I wasn’t buying her act of submission, in acknowledging me as the bigger, greater threat here. “Please, Bg, I was just curious and I’m a doctor and that means when I get curious about something, I start checking it out, fully, checking it out.”
“Researching it. Researching me, right?” I growled at her. “When I tell Paris about this doctor, you can be assured your days of friendship and whatever standing you have with the Manhattan Maen, will be over.”
“Please, just hear me out.”
“You’ve got until I finish this coffee before my claws come out.” I said back at her.
“I think I can safely say, no New York wolf, is quite like you Bg. Because you’re not from around here, are you?”
“Enough with the questions. I already told you I was adopted.”
“But not from New York, you might have been adopted in New York or come here to live with your family, but it’s not where you originate from is it?” I glared at her. She was beginning to insult my feelings.
“Not that anyone could figure out. I was abandoned and left in inside a church in Red Hook. I was a newborn, the doctors that checked me out, concluded that I couldn’t be more than a few days old. The authorities checked the hospitals for new mothers and couldn’t find anyone that might be missing a baby. They said that I was dropped off in red hook cause it was easy to access the freeway and get in and out of Brooklyn quickly. Which meant, my mother could’ve come from anywhere. The parishioner of the church knew my father and eventually Dolph Sommers adopted me. That’s the abridged version.”
Dr Marisini was nodding her head listening to me with all of her attention. Her hands again on that folder in her bag. Then she said five words that just about stopped my heart beating completely.
“I know where you’re from.” She said excitedly pulling out the manila folder.
5
The same time she said those words to me, the world outside went dark. I mean, visibly dark. It kind of looked ominous in the sky, to have no sunlight like that and still not be night. We both looked outside. It was obvious a storm was on the way. A big one. But I didn’t care about my lack of umbrella now or that fact that’d travelled to New Jersey to get this information. All that mattered in that instant was that I know what Dr Marisini knew, about me. My phone buzzed again and I put it in my handbag, not bothering to deal with Paris. He could wait. Everything outside of my sphere of focus, could damn well wait. This was my time, this was about me.
But my mouth was dry and I couldn’t find words. I’ve never really thought about my adoption. Never had cause to. I grew up in a great family, was raised right, was, still am, loved by them and I love them back. There’s no reason for me not to love my life as it’s been given to me. But that didn’t seem to stop my body’s natural reaction to this jaw dropping news. For all intents and purposes outside of my life as a Breukelen werewolf, and outside of the Sommers family, if you stripped that away from me, I knew nothing about myself. Nothing at all.
“What?” I managed.
“I know where you’re from. Well I mean, not like where you were born exactly, but,” she put the manila folder on the table and opened it. “I know you’re blood line, you’re werewolf blood line and it’s not local or indigenous to New York at all. That much I can tell you with certainty.” I felt my stomach drop.
“So what does that mean?” She pointed at some notes she typed up for me along with a printed page of some sort of graph which indicated things about my DNA.
“I’ve been assisting werewolves in New York for several years. Ever since I graduated from medical school. I’m seen as a friendly to your culture given my own biology.” She stated. “And when I started giving aid to various pack wolves, I started to do my own research on things that hurt them, and things that didn’t. In doing so, it makes me a better doctor, more knowledgeable in how I’m able to assist your kind and well, my kind too. We don’t work and heal and have regular health problems like humans do. We’re different, so we need different approaches to these things. I started a database.”
My eyes went wide at what I was hearing. “Be assured it’s under lock and key and is encrypted. Information on that database is as important to my safety as it is to yours or anyone else’s.” I let out a small breath. She tapped the sheet of paper in front of me pointing something out. “This I believe, is you’re blood line.”
“Canus Dirus Ligoni.” I read out the zoological term first, and paused, she moved her finger.
“Go on.” Before translating to plain English. “Archipelago Dire Wolf.” I looked over at her. Three little words that defined what I was and I had no idea what the hell that meant.
“The Archipelago wolves generally speaking, come from and around the Alexander Archipelago region, on the north-western coast of the United States. You are somewhat of an anomaly in New York.”
“North-Western coast.” I muttered mentally picturing a map of the USA in my head and cataloguing cities and states quickly. “Canada?”
“Cl
ose, Alaska.”
“Alaska.” I repeated like a broken record. How not glamorous, but then a little voice inside my head told me how could I possibly know that since I’d never been to Alaska before. “So what you’re saying is I’m from Alaska?”
“No, not at all.” I frowned lost. “The Alexander Archipelago region is actually a group of islands off the south-eastern coastline of Alaska.”
“So I’m not Alaskan?”
“Right,”
“Phew.” I muttered softly and picked up my coffee again.
“But in all likely-hood you’re from somewhere within that group of islands. There are supposed to be something like over one hundred thousand islands in the region. But I think the geography version of an island and my version, differ. Some of these so called islands, are just tips of glacial icebergs. But to know more than that, I’d have to do more tests.” She said looking at me with a rather hopeful expression on her face.
“Oh so now, you’re actually asking for my permission, is that it?” I sipped my coffee and looked at Dr Marisini. I didn’t know that I could trust her not to go ahead without my permission, given what she’d already done, as startling as that was. “Do you know what it’s like doc?” I asked her softly.
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“And there in is my point. Do you know what it’s like to not know? To be adopted? To have to face an unknown? I’m not sure you understand what it feels like, to have someone other than yourself, pushing for something they want, out of your life. I’m not a test subject. I have very mixed feelings and thoughts. And you’re talking about stomping into my life and messing it up, what in the name of science? To fuel your own curiosity? Some people ride roller coasters for entertainment, others watch reality TV, but not you, you pull things apart so you can understand them better.” I took a mouthful of my coffee and savoured it, swirling it in my mouth before downing it. “But I’m not a thing.”
She looked away then. “Of course you’re not a thing.” She turned her head to look back at me. “You’re an out of context werewolf that I could give you context to.” She pointed at the sheet again in front of me and I looked at it again. “It says Canus Dirus Ligoni. The Archipelago region, that’s only part of what I found out about you. And it’s not even the most fascinating part, not by far.”
Werewolf Storm Page 2