by Hattie Hunt
Ripley let hers fall to her side. “Padfoot.”
A smile broke out on Leah’s lips. “The real kind.”
“I’m not bacon, kid.”
Leah rewarded her with a chuckle.
Well, apparently, even witches watch bad dog food commercials. “Anyway, I’ve gotta go.”
Leah nodded. “Will I see you again?”
“I hope not.”
Leah frowned, her shoulders slumping.
“Nah, kid, it’s just…” Fuck. Now she felt like an ass. “I just plan on leaving soon, is all. I don’t—if I stay, yeah, sure. We’ll get together. I’ll introduce you to tequila. It’ll be a gas.”
Leah quirked her lips but took a step back. She raised her hand as she took another. “Then, I hope you stay. Padfoot.”
Yeah. Ripley really didn’t want to.
Chapter Six
Ripley loped back toward Joe and Brett, her mind scrambling to figure out what the hell she was even going to do with them. If Brett had rabies—
Didn’t they need to go to the doctor or something for that? She didn’t even know. Rabies just didn’t happen in a shapeshifter society.
Which might mean there was a reason there were no stories. No stories meant that there was nothing to talk about.
Except that the really, really bad things were never talked about. Like how the Shadow Sisterhood dealt with humans who discovered their society, or who the Council of Elders were.
Yeah. Ripley wasn’t so sure that ignorance meant safety, especially when her padfoot was telling her something different.
“Ripley,” Joe called in a tone that said he saw or smelled her.
“Hey,” she answered back, not seeing him through the thick Oregon forest that ran along the Sandy River.
Branches cracked in front and to her left. Joe and Brett broke through the vegetation, Brett just a half step behind his brother.
Was Brett looking a little pale? What were the symptoms of rabies? What kind of time frame did they even have? She pulled her phone out of her pocket. Time to find some answers. “I got the wolf.”
Joe stopped in front of her, grabbing her chin and searching her face, his brown eyes glistening in concern. “Whose blood?”
Ripley pulled her head out of his grasp. “Wolf’s. Got him. He’s dead. The kids are safe.” She opened an app on her phone and hit the microphone. “Okay, Google.”
The phone waited a moment before chirping at her.
“How long before rabies symptoms appear?”
“Here are a few listings for how long before rabies symptoms appear.”
“Thank you, Google.” She didn’t need to say that, but Ripley always felt better thanking the device. Several articles were detailed in a list, providing information on the rabies virus.
“What was that back there?” Brett demanded.
Ripley ignored him and read an article from the CDC.
Rabies took longer to manifest in an animal than in a human. That was good and bad, she guessed. She couldn’t tell. In an animal, it could take up to two months to show, but in humans, it was only a matter of weeks.
Okay. Great. So, what was she supposed to do? She tapped a link that looked like it might provide that answer.
Brett shoved her shoulder. “Don’t ignore me.”
Ripley growled but kept her concentration on her phone. Brett might be angry, but the real threat was the bite on his arm. She was the only one who could see the death leaching into him, and she had no idea how to deal with it.
“Back off, Brett,” Joe growled, shoving his brother away.
“I need answers!”
So did she. Ignoring the two brothers, she read the article on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website. Saliva. The rabies virus could only be transmitted via saliva.
So, Leah was right. A wave of relief swept over her. She was safe.
“Are you seriously coming between us?” Brett asked.
Those two boys. “Were you bitten?” Ripley demanded, not even looking up.
“What?” Brett took a step closer to her, staring at her with anger and frustration on his face.
“Your arm, dumbass,” Ripley shouted. “Are you going to fucking die because you let that damned rabid fucking wolf bite your stupid fucking arm, or are you going to live?”
“He bit me.” Brett clamped his lips closed and turned away, a frown furrowing his brows. “There’s never been a story about a rabid shifter. It doesn’t affect us.”
She raised her eyebrows and nodded. Oh, yeah, because that answer sufficed. She didn’t find anything helpful. The CDC said to see doctor and then the doctor would decide if vaccinations were needed.
Only thing, shifters didn’t have doctors. Not like that, anyway. They had Snow, who was their healer of sorts. They had doctors and nurses, people who had gone to medical school, but that didn’t help the shifters. They were both animal and human, and there was something there that seemed to make it more difficult for real doctors. And there weren’t research labs dedicated to shifters.
At least, none that Ripley knew.
The only thing Ripley knew for certain was that her padfoot was growing more and more content as the time passed and the virus spread.
“We’re going to see Snow.” She turned and headed to the north. Shifter territory was large, but they still didn’t use cars. A lot of the places people lived were difficult to impossible to get to in a car. The only way to get to Snow was on foot, preferably four of them. Or by wing, but Ripley hadn’t made friends with a lot of the bird shifters. They tended to stay with their own.
“I’m not going anywhere with—”
Joe cut his brother off with a fist to the jaw.
Ripley rolled her eyes but ignored them. Bears. Very emotional.
Her phone vibrated in her hand.
She held it up. Tuck. Hitting the answer button, she put the phone to her ear. “Wolf’s taken care of. Need to call someone to take care of the body.”
“I’m workin’ on it,” he said in a tone that always seemed to soothe her nerves. “I heard there was a situation.”
“Like?”
“You biting a rabid wolf?”
So, he’d talked to Leah. The girl had made a good call. “CDC says I’m fine. Saliva is the way to transmit the virus, and I’m not the one who was bitten.”
“Someone was?” he asked with mild interest.
“Who are you talking to?” Brett asked, his footsteps heavy as he followed. “Who’s she talking to, Joe?”
“Yeah.” God, she wanted to punch Brett in the balls. “Brett. He intercepted the wolf and was bitten in the scuffle.”
“Well, get it looked at.”
“That’s where we’re going.”
“Who is she to tell other people my business?” Brett demanded.
Ripley clamped her mouth shut.
“You know what?” Tuck said over the phone. “Take him to Leslie.”
“Who?”
“Leslie Whiskey.” He grunted, and the truck door squealed before it slammed closed.
“The witch.” Not bloody likely.
“Yeah. You’ll see, Rip. She’s good people.”
Ripley seriously doubted that. Yeah. She’d just met a witch, a kid witch, and she hadn’t seemed, well, bad, but no. She needed real answers, the kind she could trust in. She didn’t know Snow, but she trusted her a lot more than she did some witch.
“Or not.” Tuck sighed. “But at some point, you’re going to have to see the bigot you’ve become and compare it to the bigot you rail against.”
It wasn’t that easy, but he couldn’t see that. He was only human. “Yeah. Okay. Talk at you later.”
“Dinner. Home. Seven. Be there.”
“Yes, sir.” She hung up the phone and stashed it in her pocket.
Brett grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. “I need answers.”
Not that he deserved any.
“What the hell happened back there? You shifted into a wolf o
f some kind.” He shook his head. “Some kind of big black dog.”
“I’m not a dog,” she said quietly, watching him, half interested to see his reaction, half cringing for it.
“Then, what? We don’t shift into dogs.”
She hid a sudden yawn. She hadn’t had enough water that day. Well, she’d have to fix that, or she’d be yawning for the rest of the damned evening.
“She’s a padfoot, Brett.” Joe stood beside her, his bare, human arm providing warmth where it touched her. He didn’t wrap it around her, didn’t try to claim her. He knew what a mistake that would be, but he did offer his support.
She didn’t miss any of that. She straightened, facing Brett firmly.
Brett barked a laugh, then paused as the thought hit him full in the face. He looked poleaxed. “You mean, all those years, you weren’t human.”
She shook her head.
“You’re a shifter.”
Not quite. If she were a true shifter, she’d have earned a bit more respect. “I’m a padfoot.”
“But you shift.”
The man wasn’t bright. “I’m a padfoot.”
He glanced at Joe and shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
“I don’t expect you to.” She turned and headed back in the direction of Snow’s cabin. “But suffice it to say, there are differences.”
“Like the fact that you keep your clothes,” Joe said under his breath.
“Yes. Like that.” Ripley raised her nose to the air. Wood smoke. They were close. “Other things, too. I see death.” She gestured to Brett’s arm. “That’s how I know you’re in trouble and we need to act. Now.”
“But there are no stori—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said under her breath. “I know. But there’s death in that bite, and it’s running down your veins. Faster than what I saw on the CDC’s website.”
“What do you mean?” Joe asked, coming to walk on the other side of her.
Aw, a brother on either side. That didn’t soothe her. Whatever. “The CDC website said you should have some time, but—” She shook her head, not wanting to turn on padfoot vision to see how it had progressed. “It’s traveling fast.”
“And you can see that?” Joe asked.
They broke into a clearing nestling a quaint little cabin.
“Yeah.” Ripley lengthened her stride. The faster they got this handled, the better.
The faster she could hand this mess off to someone else, the better.
The door opened as Ripley raised her hand to knock. An older woman with short, snow-white hair filled the space. Her blue gaze swept over them, and she took in a deep breath, stepping outside. “What happened?”
“He was bitten,” Ripley said, waving a hand at Brett. Now that she was standing in front of Snow, a healer who should know, nerves and fear wrangled with each other in her stomach. What would she do if they had come here only for Joe to find out he was losing his brother, the man who he revered?
Snow shrugged.
“By a rabid wolf.”
Alarm slammed over her wrinkled and worn face. “Are you sure?”
Ripley nodded.
Snow’s tongue peeked out from between her lips. “Well, that’s not good, boys.” She pointed to Brett and nodded curtly. “You’re dead.”
Disbelief followed closely by fear paled Brett’s face.
Joe took a step forward, intense brown eyes boring into the woman. “Wait. There has to be a cure. There are no stories of this ever happening.”
“You’re right.” Snow turned back to her cabin. “I’m calling Chuck to let him know. You’ll be canceled.”
“Canceled?” Ripley frowned. That was one way to put it. She shouldn’t care. She should be handing this over to Snow so she could be done with it. “There has to be something. The CDC has a vaccine.”
Snow whipped around. “For humans. For you—” She blinked and took a step back. “Padfoot.”
Great. Now, everyone knew. Awesome.
Snow’s expression settled and her wrinkled lips curved in a slight smile. “That certainly makes sense now.”
Ripley didn’t know what Snow was referring to and, frankly, she didn’t care.
“So, you saw it.” Snow raised a dark eyebrow. “The death.”
She had. “That’s why we’re here.”
“Well.” Snow licked her lips and then bit down on them. “I wish there was something I could do for you, but I can’t.”
Something in her tone and expression was off, and Ripley narrowed her eyes. “What aren’t you telling us?”
Snow took in a breath and tipped her head to the side. “First, you need to understand just how bad this gets.”
“Okay.”
“You know about the madness.”
Everyone knew about the madness. There were two strains of brain eating amoeba in the world. One affected humans. The other affected shifters. The waters around Troutdale bred the infection more than a couple of times over the years. When people said not to drink the water, they meant it.
When the madness started, shifters would become erratic and violent, striking out and often killing their loved ones. Entire families, packs, and clans had been wiped out because of the madness.
But the only way to become infected was if the person drank the infected water.
Ripley nodded, catching the abbreviated nods from Brett and Joe out of the corner of her eye.
“Well, rabies on shifters is similar but is highly transmittable. Spit, saliva, blood.” Snow raised her hands. “And you think that the mad wreak havoc? At least it ends when most of their brain is turned to liquid.”
Too much detail, even for Ripley. Her stomach twisted, threatening to heave.
Snow reached beside her and grabbed a cloth, handing it to Ripley. “The rabid fight to infect until their dying breath.”
Fuck. Ripley breathed through her open mouth, staring at Brett.
He blinked at the ground, the truth ramrodding him visibly.
As Ripley accepted the cloth, Snow motioned to her mouth. The blood.
Ripley took it and bitterly attempted to wipe away the dried blood.
“And now that the padfoot is back,” Snow said, clasping her hands in front of her with a prim smile, “you get to call Chuck and inform your high alpha of the danger in his territory.’
“I’m not back.”
Snow snorted and turned away. “Always running, Ripley Kent. Just like your brother.”
Ripley bristled. She wasn’t anything like her brother.
“You can’t tell Chuck,” Joe said quietly, leaning forward, his eyes sideways at his brother. “That’s a death sentence.”
“Look, I don’t like the idea either. But is killing all the shifters around here a better one?”
Joe shook his head. “There has to be another way.”
There was. Ripley had seen it on Snow’s face. “Hey, Snow,” she called.
Snow stopped in the doorway but didn’t turn.
“We’ll have that cure now.”
Snow expelled a breath and shook her head. “It has never worked.”
“Then why was it documented for you to make?” Even if it only worked once, Ripley had to give Joe at least that.
Snow moved into her cabin. “I’ll get it prepared.”
Chapter Seven
Ripley shouldn’t have been as shaken as she was. She didn’t even want to be there, didn’t want to stay. What did she care?
But that was the problem. She did care, and that scared her.
Brett had retreated into himself, his old asshole self disappearing like the setting sun.
Joe walked beside his brother, his hand reaching toward him, only to pull back.
What was it like to be so close to someone? To hurt when they did? Ripley couldn’t remember if she’d ever been that close to her mother. Her father had always been distant, his attention reserved for Sean. She’d never been close to her brother either. He’d been twelve years older
and hadn’t wanted anything to do with his bratty little sister.
Ripley wished she knew how to help Joe and Brett. What to say. What to do?
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out.
A text message from Tuck lit up the lock screen.
* * *
Kids are home. Dinner?
* * *
For all that the sun was “setting,” they still had hours left. The sun wouldn’t set until nine, and it was only four.
She texted back:
* * *
Sure. Just let me tie up a few things first.
* * *
She stashed her phone, knowing Tuck probably wouldn’t text back. The last she knew, he hated texting. Of course, she preferred it. She’d much rather text someone than having a real conversation on the phone with them.
Leaves stirred in front of them, and a woman burst through the undergrowth.
“Juliet.” Brett breathed a sigh of relief, meeting her half-way and wrapping her in his arms.
The woman was thick boned and well-muscled, her face somehow too delicate for a bear. How she was able to personify both was completely beyond Ripley.
Juliet only embraced Brett for a moment before she took notice of their audience. Joining one hand with Brett’s, she eyed Ripley. Her auburn hair turned white as her hackles rose. “My bear told me something was wrong.”
Ripley braced herself for the verbal onslaught likely headed her way. Bears were notoriously emotional and over protective.
Juliet stepped closer, holding onto Brett’s hand. She smiled at Joe, then turned her attention to Ripley.
“Juliet,” Joe said in an attempt to prevent whatever might be coming. “This is Ripley. Rip, this is Juliet.”
Juliet’s smile widened as she glanced slyly in Joe’s direction. “The Ripley?”
Brett frowned down at his fiancé.
Joe’s expression folded, and he looked at the ground. “How did you know?”
“I talk to Emma.” Juliet chuckled, releasing Brett’s hand and wrapping Ripley in a welcome hug.
Welcome…what? Ripley almost forgot to hug the woman back in her surprise. The warmth that only a bear could offer surrounded her.