by A. J. Aalto
“Not when you’re in my hands,” Dr. Delacovias assured me. “I’d also like to withdraw a sample your ocular fluid.”
Eyeball juice. I cringed. “Awesome.”
“Your assistance may help me produce a new vaccine, Dr. Baranuik, which could help future generations avoid this horrible disease.”
“A new vaccine,” I said. “Implying you have an old vaccine. Or more than one.”
“Just the one. It's in clinical trials, but isn't proving to be as efficacious as we'd like. And getting volunteers has been… well, a trial of its own, in fact.” He gave me the side-eye and I braced for him to ask me, but he didn’t.
I bristled, though I wasn’t sure why. “Tell me about the virus you’re looking to lay the beatdown on.”
He took a deep breath, rolling away on his stool so he was tucked up next to a small desk, where he grabbed my chart to put on his lap like it was a crotch shield as he scooted back into my personal space. Maybe he had read up on me. “Lycanthropy is caused by a family of lysogenic viruses called lupoviridae that hijacks regular protein synthesis to create copies of itself, which is how it stays in your body, much like varicella zoster— chicken pox to the layman.”
I smiled tightly. Layman? I swallowed my ego and said, “Okay.”
“It’s an elegant system. She can go dormant with or without a period of activity. She likes to hide.” He sounded as though he admired the virus. “You say it was one of the Folkenflik werefoxes that bit you?”
I hadn't said anything of the kind, but I suppose since Finnegan had dropped me off, it was a safe bet on Delacovias’s part. I watched him load a syringe; this time, he took my left arm. “So I was told,” I said vaguely. “What’s that?”
“Just a little muscle relaxant. Should help with the next tests.” He hurried on. “Werefoxes mean we are looking for the Vulpes virus. There now, that didn’t hurt, did it?”
I shook my head, and he tossed the used needle in the biohazard bin.
“Shall we go take a look?” He checked his watch, hummed a bit as he did some mental calculation, and then nodded once. “Right. The centrifuge will need a bit more time, but I’ll show you the rest of the lab and answer your questions in the exam suite.”
I had to wait until he shifted the rolling stool back, as I was effectively trapped in the chair. He didn’t immediately move for me; there was an uncomfortable pause, during which I gave him a half-smile that said, ready when you are, dude.
When he finally moved away, I hopped down in my sock feet and quelled a full-body shudder of disgust and regretted not bringing Finnegan into the exam room with me. I shoved my feet clumsily half-into my lime green Keds, gathered up my things, and followed him out.
As we walked down the quiet, sterile hallway, I asked, “You mentioned on the phone something about exploring with electroshock?” A draft teased at my butt cheeks, and I grabbed the medical gown and held it closed over my underpants. Nobody needed to see my goosebumps or the cartoon froggies on my booty.
“Oh, yes, it’s an exciting new development in my research. I’ve found that passing a small electrical current through the prefrontal cortex causes the virus load to stop replicating for a time, and that continued applications of electroconvulsive therapy as an ongoing treatment can stay the virus, and in some cases, reduce the load by up to a third.”
“You’ve tried this on living patients?” My tongue felt numb, and for some reason, I flashed back on Ruby Valli and her spicy drug-laced chai. Suspicion flared. Just muscle relaxants, Marnie. He’s surrounded by lab assistants. We’re in a government facility. He’s not going to knock you out without your permission. Either that, or he's going to drag you out back and zap your brains like Nurse Ratched, because you're a trusting sucker.
“Well, no,” he admitted. He swiped his ID badge and led me through a set of doors to a brightly lit exam room, this one quite a bit bigger. “To date, this has only been done in tissue samples. But if we had a live volunteer from the lycanthrope community…” His eyes danced. “Why, it would be best if we could find a patient who hadn’t yet had their first change, while the virus is still in fairly low concentrations. We may even be able to stave off the shape-shift if we did it on the full moon.”
I swallowed hard. “You’re saying you wanna zap me.”
“Oh, Dr. Baranuik,” he scolded. “Zap?”
“Yeah, zap’s not science-y, is it?”
“Consider it an opportunity to contribute to the early exploration of this intensely fascinating branch of science, Dr. Baranuik.”
Now, when he used my title, he did it with honey dripping off his tongue, and it disgusted me. “Yeah, I’ve decided I don’t like science anymore.”
“Oh?”
“Just now, in fact.” My eyelids felt pleasantly heavy, and it was disturbing. I hesitated at the door. “Where are your lab assistants?”
“Oh, they’ll be along any second. Let’s just see if, yes, here we are.” He tapped on the computer and up on the wall, a huge projected slide showed serum in which cells of various types writhed and divided and squirmed together in an endless dance. Stained purple and red, they were madly hypnotizing; this was going on inside my body right now, this dance. My lungs forgot how to draw air and I had to struggle to pull it in. My head spun and my hands vibrated.
He turned off the overhead lights so we could better see the cells. “Isn’t she something?”
“The virus,” I said on an exhale. “It’s there.”
Chapter 26
Lord and Lady. “I’m infected,” I said, stunned.
“Quite thoroughly.” He pointed and the shadow of his pen marked the shape of the cells for me, as if I couldn’t tell by the rampant invasion. “I’m surprised you haven’t experienced your first lunar shift yet. You look to have at least twice the viral load that I normally see in an infected adult lycanthrope.”
“I’m a werefox,” I barely breathed. I felt my knees wobble and groped for a place to steady myself, unable to take my eyes off the projection. The steel table propped me up, and I slid down to rest on my forearms, slumping. The chill of the metal against my arms and the cool laboratory air on my freshly-exposed butt barely stirred me from my deepening torpor.
The doctor was nodding, mostly to himself. “That you are. But here, too, look. A vast majority of the virus has mutated. See this one? And that?” His pen's shadow darted among several strands of RNA with spiny projections looped together and coiling about like blobs of liquid mercury. “Perhaps because of that elixir you applied? What did you call it? Mellified man? I don’t suppose you have any left that we could sample and examine?”
“Mutated,” I marveled, at once horrified and fascinated. “Does that mean my shifted shape will also be mutated? Mutated into what, exactly?”
“Time will tell, yes?” he mused, glancing back at me. “Oh, I doubt it’s anything to worry about. Some variation on the fox, I’m sure. Bigger ears. Smaller tail. Perhaps a different colored pelt. Minor details.” He straightened. “Are you feeling all right, Dr. Baranuik?”
“I need to sit.”
He was quick with the rolling chair. I thumped my ass down into it and gripped the arms for reassurance.
“I need some water,” I told him, swallowing with a dry click.
“I’ll have Michael or Deb bring you some. Excuse me,” he said, smiling with what might have passed for sympathy if the Blue Sense hadn’t reported his satisfaction. Satisfaction that I was reacting badly? That I was thirsty? No, satisfied that those muscle relaxants are kicking my ass. He wants me helpless and vulnerable. I had already known that, I thought, if I was honest with myself. Well, he wasn’t going to like what happened if he tried to zap me.
I shook my head to try and clear it, but that made the dizziness worse. I squeezed my eyes shut.
******
The next thing I knew, I was in a different room, sitting in a wooden chair, wrists and ankles in nylon and velcro restraints, head cupped by a white, padded
neck brace like a neck pillow for a transcontinental flight. I tried to look up at the lights, but my eyes weren’t obeying me, rolling back down and to the side like they were spinning marbles. My forehead wrinkled and I felt sticky pads on my temples. Electrodes. There was an IV stuck in the back of my left hand. There was something in my mouth and I struggled to spit it out; a bite guard tumbled down my chin and bounced off my lap.
The door to the room slid open with a gentle huff of breeze, and Dr. Delacovias came in wearing soft blue environmental protective suit with full plastic face guard and elbow-length yellow rubber gloves. He looks like he's doing the dishes in a leper colony on Mars, my brain supplied unhelpfully. Calgon, take me away.
I was sure I’d slur, but when I spoke, my words were surprisingly clear. “I did not assent to experimentation, you fuckbagging cockgoblin,” I said, raising my voice in case there was video and audio recording.
He smiled sadly at me and shook his head. “Already done. That wasn’t so bad, was it? Come now, Dr. Baranuik, you didn’t feel a thing.”
“What did you do to me?” I stared at him for a long beat, trying to comprehend it, trying to plan my next move. I tested the restraints as subtly as my drug-addled state allowed, which was both un-subtle and unsuccessful. I was having visions of lawyers and court rooms and stripping his medical license. I may also have had visions of Harry and Wes turning him into a bloodless husk before tearing him into shish kebab nuggets. “This was done without my consent.”
“Monsters need not consent.” There was something in his hand that looked like a full color slide. “And look at these results!” He pointed with a fat yellow-gloved finger at the printout.
“I'll show you a fucking monster,” I growled at him, and the sound of it surprised both of us. He put the printout down behind him on the shiny, steel counter and approached me with his head cocked.
“Well, hello there, little creature,” he greeted, as though the sound that escaped me had come from a totally different animal. My mind’s eyes showed me decidedly unhelpful images in a rapid slideshow: a black orb in my hand, a jackal, a wolf, a fox, a mangy, two-headed hound, a black mare, a murder of crows, and the sleek, white scales of Remy Dreppenstedt’s frost wyrms.
I swallowed hard. “Doctor Delacovias--”
“Call me Charlie, please.”
I stiffened, and enunciated each word carefully. “Suck it, Chuckles.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you have a beautiful scream?” He wet his lips.
Urk. “Can’t say as they have.”
“You belong on the screen, Marnie,” he purred, stepping closer to me. I felt everything in me trying to shrink into the chair; even my goosebumps tried to retreat. “In black and white. A classic movie scream queen.”
What even? “Well, I’m not,” I said firmly. “I’m here in full color reality, and if you touch me one more time, I’m going to make you regret it.”
“Will you?” His eyes lit up in a most unfriendly way. “What will you do to me? Do tell me; spare no detail.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I bared my teeth at him and snapped, “You’re no doctor. You’re a nutjob.”
“We need to find out what’s going on with this mutation, Doctor Baranuik. Surely, you can see that, in the interest in public health, I simply can’t let you walk out of my lab.” He didn’t break eye contact. “It’s incredibly irresponsible for you to be running loose with a mutated viral load of this level.”
“Then register me,” I challenged, calling his bluff. “Call it in.”
“In time,” he said.
“Now. Or else.”
That got his attention. He set his chin higher as his eyebrows lifted in interest. “Your eyes are gleaming, doctor.”
Were they? I felt no different. I decided to run with it. “Then maybe you should do what I say. Maybe you’re about to have an angry monster on your hands.”
He chuckled softly. “You’d not be the first,” he informed me calmly. “These labs are built to withstand a lycanthrope tantrum or two.”
My vision hazed over and I squeezed my eyes closed long enough to feel good. They leaked, felt like they were jittering in their sockets, hot and wet.
Dr. Delacovias made a low, interested noise. “Problems with your vision, doctor?”
“Cram your condescending sarcasm up your colon with your forehead, creepwad,” I rasped.
“I do apologize,” he said insincerely, and the Blue Sense blasted me with his smug vindication. “Are you losing your temper, Marnie?”
Me? Lose my temper? Pshaw. I rolled my head to loosen my neck, taking a long, slow breath through my nose to settle down. He wanted me to rage-shift and Hulk out, which would show him what type of lycanthrope I was. “I won’t give you the satisfaction. And, judging by the front of your pants, you wouldn't be giving me any satisfaction, either. Sorry about your Q-Tip dick.”
He raised an eyebrow and propped one foot on the bottom rung of the stool and began to bounce one knee.
“Hands off your semen-cannon there, creep,” I warned him. “I didn’t come here for your geezer cockdrizzle.”
“We need to see what sort of creature you are, Marnie,” he said as though he were apologizing. “The sooner your shift, the sooner you can leave.”
“It’s pretty simple,” I told him. “There are only two types of lycanthropes. Wolves and foxes. Family Canidae—“
“And the subfamily Borophaginae,” he corrected. “There are small groups of lycanthropes that share more in common with the extinct group of ‘bone-crushing dogs’ than with either wolves or foxes. They're more like hyenas than modern canids. There have been two recorded werejackals, as well, both random mutations. Now, what was different about your infection, Dr. Baran—sorry, Marnie. Marnie. When we look at your virus, we see startling differences. I should like to run a full panel on it, see what we can find out. But it would be more helpful to me in the immediate sense if you would just…” He stood. “Fucking. Shift.”
His voice was whisper soft, but the way he said it sounded like the threat of violence if I didn’t comply. Trouble was, I didn’t know how to comply, and I certainly had no desire to do so. I started wondering where the hell Finnegan Folkenflik was, and why I hadn’t heeded his warning, and if he’d even be able to get into the lab to help me, or if he was parked outside, sipping his coffee and waiting, and, uselessly, if the coffee he'd gotten me would still be hot if I lived long enough to escape and drink it. I had no concept of how long I’d been inside or unconscious. Certainly longer than the hour I’d allotted? Maybe not, if the drug was fast-acting and fast-abating. It certainly didn't take long to draw off a sample. Folkenflik told me that the virus could call to itself in others, that I could use it somehow to call the werekin. I didn’t have the foggiest clue how to do that, though.
“If I’m missing past dusk,” I warned, “Harry will come looking for me.”
“Ah yes, your vampire parasite.”
I bristled but held my tongue. He was trying to get my goat, or my were-goat, or whatever I was going to turn into.
“My sympathies,” he said. “What a burden that must be on you. I am not without compassion for your difficult lifestyle.”
“You can cram your prejudices and your fake sympathy up in there with your sarcasm, Chuckles.”
He continued, “You are something of a tomb guardian, are you not? Did you mention something about being bitten in a tomb in Egypt? Did you realize, Marnie, that there is an Egyptian tomb guardian with the head of a jackal? Wouldn’t it be fascinating if your assistant’s bumbling attempt to cure you with this ‘elixir’ altered the course of your transformation? Wouldn’t it be truly fascinating if, instead of warding off the virus, the mellified material protected the virus from your natural defenses, instead boosting its own strength within you? That could explain the extreme viral load we’re seeing in your vitreous and spinal fluids.”
He’d taken a spinal tap and a sample from my eyes while
I was out cold. Nobody sucks out my eyeball goop without my consent. Doctors are the worst. I am never, ever going to play doctor for sexytimes again.
“Fascinating isn’t the word I’d use,” I said, feeling breathless. I ate that mellified man shit, I thought frantically. To scare the Troll. I ate it. On purpose. What have I fucking done to myself? I was assuming he meant Anubis, but the tomb guardian I’d seen in Egypt was Duamutef, who also had the head of a jackal. “What effect could the mellified man have had regarding viral mutation? It's just honey and herbs and embalmed dead dude. No lycanthrope nothing.”
“I couldn’t predict, as I’ve never heard of a bite followed by an improvised attempt at a ‘cure’ like this. When you throw in your DaySitter proclivities and the attendant v-telomerase's interaction with the cell replication, well, the results could be very interesting. There could be engagement with ms-lipotropin as well. You may have a mild case of yersinia sanguinaria from feeding your parasite, which I will test for this afternoon to be sure.” He grabbed his clipboard, scanned down the papers, flipped to the next page, and muttered, ruminating. “Most vampire bloodlines are associated with various nocturnal animals. Tell me, what animal is most associated with House… Droppinshit, is it? Am I saying that surname correctly?”
The Blue Sense walloped me with his deepening contempt, and I pursed my lips and focused on keeping my breath even. “My revenant does not carry yersinia sanguinaria.”
“That you know of. It can be carried asymptomatically—”
“Yes, I know,” I snapped, and my vision blurred alarmingly once more. I took a deep breath through my nose and held it for a four-count before letting it stream out.
“The animals of your house, Marnie?” he prodded. “Please. It may help you.”
In my head, I heard Aristoxenus, The Stonecaller and Asmodeus' main minion, the diminutive demon at Skulesdottir, as he greeted the assembled revenant muckety-mucks at the throne room that first evening, announcing each of the Crowned Princes of the Blood by their full title: Wilhelm Dreppenstedt, also known as the Raven of Night. I’d seen Harry become an owl, while teaching Wesley, who was in House Strickland, to fly as a bat. I wasn’t about to reveal any of this to Doc McDickbender.