by RJ Blain
“What did she do, Alex?” Richard asked, sitting down on the floor next to me. Drawing a deep breath to catch his scent, I considered whether or not I wanted him so close. With so many Fenerec nearby, it was hard to tell which one of the cinnamon scents belonged to him. While I tried to puzzle out what my nose was telling me, he made himself comfortable.
“I’m not sure. After you left, I… was having trouble controlling my wolf. When she noticed, she bit me. That’s when the temperature dropped.”
“It got cold when Dominic and Patrick were shot too,” Lisa said.
“Dr. Cerimino said the plague would live for almost two months in cold temperatures,” Amber said, standing and heading into the other room. When she returned, she held a microscope. She set it down on the coffee table and plugged it into an extension cord coiled under her couch. Taking up one of the samples, she put it under the magnifier. She spent several minutes with her eye glued to the scope. “I can’t tell if it’s still alive or not.”
“Let me look,” Lisa said, bouncing down onto the couch next to Amber. The witch made space for my twin. “I can’t tell either.”
“I don’t see how this is relevant,” Richard said.
“Your scent has changed,” my father said, pointing at Alex. “You don’t reek of illness nearly as much as you did earlier tonight. Lisa’s scent has likewise changed, although I was under the impression it was due to taking over her sister’s body.”
Richard shook his head. “You know for fact you were infected, Lisa?”
“Yes.”
“Then explain to me why I don’t smell any plague at all on Nicole? If she took over Lisa’s body, she should be infected with the plague too, right?” Richard sounded worried.
“I have no idea how to take a blood sample to check,” Amber said.
“It’s unnecessary. Nicole, unlike Lisa, is immune,” my father said.
“What?” a chorus of voices demanded.
“How is that possible, Desmond?” Richard asked with a hard edge in his voice.
“The same way that you and I are immune, Richard. She was born that way, unlike her sister.”
“Father?” Lisa asked in a small voice. “What are you talking about?”
“Your mother is the better person to ask about this, I’m afraid. I don’t know the details of how it was done.” My father rubbed at his brow. “When you were born, we had to keep you separated. One night, your mother decided to take matters into her own hands.”
Richard sat stiffly at my side. “You’re making no sense at all, Mr. Desmond. What exactly are you talking about? I was under the impression the only people immune to the plague were purebred humans, purebred wolves, and True-born Fenerec. Are you saying she’s a full wolf now?”
“No, I’m saying she is as she was born: a Fenerec. We had to make a choice. We either had to let Nicolina turn her sister into a Fenerec or make Nicolina an ordinary human like her sister. We meant to spare Lisa from the fate of being a Fenerec, but it seems our intentions were made pointless when Lisa chose to become one of us on her own.”
Stunned silence descended and I gawked at my father, unable to believe what he was saying. I wasn’t a Fenerec. I never had been a Fenerec.
“Is that even possible?” my twin asked in a whisper.
Amber shuddered. “It’s a form of sorcery, but done by a witch. I’ve never heard of anyone who had actually done it.”
“My wife lost her powers as a witch as a result, but Nicolina no longer appeared to be a Fenerec when she was finished.”
“That’s horrible. That’s absolutely horrible. How could you do that to your own daughter?” Splotches of red colored Amber’s cheeks.
“You murdered her wolf,” Richard whispered. I recognized the bitter undertones in his scent as rage.
“An infant cannot survive the ritual to become a Fenerec. Nicolina didn’t understand why her sister wasn’t like her. It was her instinct to change her twin. We had two choices to keep our daughters alive; sever Nicolina from her wolf or keep the girls separated.” The anguish in my father’s voice shocked me almost as much as his admission. “We tried keeping them apart, but Nicola couldn’t tolerate it. They both lived because of what we did. How could I sacrifice one for the other?”
Lisa turned sickly pale. “You didn’t want us going to Canada because you knew she couldn’t become a Fenerec…”
My father nodded.
“Wait, Canada? What does Canada have to do with anything?” Amber asked.
Lisa stared down at the floor. I trembled. Memories I didn’t want to acknowledge surged up from where I locked them away and I shook my head in order to deny them.
“I guess this part is my fault,” Alex said, covering his face with his hands. “I was the one who invited Lisa to come to Canada. We’d met a few years prior and got to know each other. Her father agreed only because Nicole and Richard absolutely hated each other at first sight.”
I gaped at Alex. I had known Richard in the past? Why didn’t I remember him? I’d remember someone like Richard. Why would I have hated him? I didn’t hate Richard. Sometimes he annoyed me, especially when he tried to act protective. But hate?
What had happened and why couldn’t I remember it?
Alex sighed, staring at the wall with a blank expression time before saying, “They had met before I met Lisa, when Richard went to San Francisco for pack business. With the fur flying between those two, Mr. Desmond never dreamed Lisa and I would consider becoming Fenerec.”
Amber pinched the bridge of her nose. “Wait, you’d want to consider becoming Fenerec? You weren’t a Fenerec then?”
“No, Lisa and I underwent the ritual together,” Alex replied.
“Together,” Amber echoed in a weak voice. “You mean as a couple?”
“We’re mates,” Lisa confirmed. “When I joined the Inquisition, it was under some very specific conditions, including the allowance to return to my mate and pack at any time I chose. That’s not the point though. Nicole was there. She and Richard were fighting as usual. That’s when something went wrong.”
“What exactly went wrong?” my father asked. “You never saw fit to tell me.”
When Lisa didn’t say anything, Richard sighed. “I never was able to figure it out. The pack is usually very well contained during the ritual moon. There were sixteen hopefuls. Lisa was among them. Nicole was not,” he said, his tone one of displeasure. “I never got proof on who attacked her. Three young wolves of the pack, however, were murdered a year or two later.” At that, Richard stared at Lisa with an arched brow. “I have some suspicions on who dealt with them.”
My twin sniffed, lifting her chin defiantly.
“Anyway, Nicole had been at the lodge when it happened. I was busy overseeing the ritual, which I assure you she was not invited to attend. By the time I found out what had happened, she was gone.”
I turned my ears back and stared at Richard, trying to figure out why I would have spent so much time arguing with him when we seemed to get along. Something wasn’t adding up, but I couldn’t dredge up the memories to figure out what.
“A few years later, when I saw her in a film, I made a deal with the Inquisition and started working in L.A.,” Lisa said. “Richard and Alex came to Vegas often to visit.”
“When Lisa didn’t check in, we took up residence in the Venetian as a temporary headquarters. The suites are owned by the Inquisition, but seeing that they’d manage to lose one of their top operatives, they deemed giving it to us for their use was a wise idea.” Richard snorted. “I’m still not sure which one of us they’re more afraid of—Alex or me!”
I had a hard time believing anyone could be afraid of Alex.
“So, let me see if I understand this correctly. Lisa and Alex were a couple and decided to become Fenerec together. Nicole, who was supposed to be the chaperon, let this happen?” Amber shook her head with a puzzled expression. “So while Richard, Alex, and Lisa are at the ritual, Nicole is left at this lodge
, where someone attacks her. She disappears and shows up several years later in L.A.?”
“She took the car too,” Richard muttered. “I never found out what happened to it.”
“She stole your car?” Amber asked, incredulous.
Richard pursed his lips, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, mumbling soft enough I was the only one who could hear him. “It was her car too.”
How could it have been my car? Frustrated over the things I couldn’t remember, I bared my teeth at Richard and growled a little. Nothing added up. All of these years, I had believed my sister had tried to turn me into a Fenerec. But if what Amber said was true, she hadn’t been responsible. It’d been someone else.
“But why would anyone attack Nicole?” Amber asked.
“Pack politics probably,” Alex said. “There were those in the pack who didn’t approve of Nicole’s presence when she had no intention of becoming a Fenerec and was very upfront about it. Lisa was accepted because she wanted to be a Fenerec. But Nicole? Not a chance. Wanted nothing to do with the idea. More than a few wanted Nicole in the pack, too, which didn’t help matters any. Considering how often Nicole and Richard bickered, it wouldn’t surprise me if a few thought getting rid of her would be better for the pack. What I think happened is that a few of the young ones thought it possible to force someone to become a Fenerec. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Alex is correct,” my father rumbled. “The ritual magic simply doesn’t work if the victim doesn’t want to become a Fenerec. It’s been tried and it’s always failed in the past. A Fenerec can’t attack a human to the point of death and have any expectation that their victim will survive and become one of them. That’s a human story. A lethal myth. You’re either born a Fenerec or you choose to become one.”
“Or a sorcerer switches your body with a Fenerec’s?” Lisa asked in a wry tone.
Richard cleared his throat. “Sorry to interrupt, but you should know this. When I found out where Nicole was after she left, I wanted to ask her—that’s when I learned about her accident.”
“Accident?” Lisa asked. My sister lifted her hand to touch the fading scars on her throat.
“I don’t know all of the details; there was only so much information I could get… but I found out she was diagnosed with some form of amnesia. Whatever gave her those scars took a large chunk of her memories. She was hospitalized in Florida for almost a year.”
My twin paled. “A year?”
Richard nodded.
I refused to meet anyone’s gaze, keeping my eyes lowered. I knew some memories were fragmented, but how much had I forgotten of when I had lived as Nicolina Desmond?
“That is something we can address another day. There is no proof that she’s anything other than a human in a wolf’s body at the moment.” My father’s neutral tone stung. “She’s displaying none of the usual Fenerec instincts, which is a big part of who and what we are. Without the wolf, she’s merely a human occupying a wolf body.”
“She smells like a Fenerec to me,” Richard said.
“That could be Lisa’s scent,” my father pointed out.
A buzz interrupted whatever Richard was going to say. “Saved by the bell,” she muttered. Amber stood, stepped over me, and pressed a button on the intercom.
~~*~~
Not long after dinner, Amber ordered everyone except me to go stay at the nearest hotel. While she cleaned the condo, I made myself comfortable in an out-of-the-way corner. I doubted she wanted wolf slobber all over her things—or teeth marks.
Sometime later she poked me awake with her foot.
“You figured out how to slow the plague, didn’t you?”
Blinking the sleep out of my eyes and yawning, I nodding.
“I got a rather excited call about an hour ago from one of the local witches. They were expecting a lot of bodies this morning, but no one died. Any ideas?”
I shook my head. I remembered doing what I could for Alex, but I hadn’t done anything for the other Fenerec—not even my twin.
“But you did something to Alex, right?”
I nodded.
“Can you do it again?”
Considering her question, I shook my head once and nodded once.
“You’re not sure but you think so?”
Nodding, I lurched upright and shook myself off. A cloud of dark-colored fur flew from my coat.
“Nicole!” Amber made a disgusted sound. “That’s going to be hell to get out of the carpet. Thanks.”
Stretching out the aches and kinks from having slept on the floor, I shook myself off again. I missed having a human body and vocalized my displeasure with a warbling noise.
“It’s five in the morning and I have an idea I’d like to try,” the witch announced, grabbing her purse and keys. “Up for a ride?”
Pricking my ears forward, I trotted to the door and waited for her to finish getting ready. Ten minutes later, I took over the back seat of Amber’s car, which was barely big enough to fit me. Taking advantage of the lighter traffic, she headed north along Highway 101.
“I noticed last night you were drawing a lot of electricity around the same time it started snowing. So, I asked one of my witch friends to see if she could find out if anything unusual happened between certain hours. She confirmed there was a notable spike on the grid. If you were curious, there were reports of freak snow flurries all over the city. My friend figured out that there was a direct relationship to where it snowed and the lessened severity of the plague.” Amber chuckled a bit, increasing her speed. “So, I had an idea.”
I huffed my impatience for her to get to the point.
“Los Angeles isn’t exactly the most stable place for electricity. If you, by accident, managed to somehow curb the plague with the limited resources you had access to, what could you do if I put you in a place with unlimited power? So I got to thinking. Where could we go that would allow you to tap into enough electricity to repeat whatever it was you did to Alex? If you can, you’ll buy a lot of Fenerec time.”
The hope in Amber’s voice hurt. My success with Alex had been born of desperation. But I’d try because she was right. Maybe I hadn’t found a cure, but I could slow the illness’s progress. Then I would have the time to find a way to eradicate the plague. Richard wouldn’t have to live without Alex and my father and I wouldn’t lose our family either.
If Amber believed she knew a place where I could make this dream a reality, I would follow.
Amber took us west and north of L.A., beyond Santa Maria, to an access road twisting through rugged brush and foothills. After thirty minutes or so, she drove her car off the paved road until she found a place she could hide the vehicle.
“We aren’t exactly supposed to be here,” she announced after parking. From the trunk, she pulled out an assault rifle and several handguns. She buckled a pistol around my neck like a collar, slung the rifle over her shoulder, and started walking. Following after her, I wondered where we were going that needed such precautions.
It took us an hour of hiking over barren, unstable crags and through scrub. When we crested a hill, I felt the thrum of electricity wash over me. Gargantuan power lines saddled the neighboring rise. In the distance, I could make out a large warehouse-styled building partnered with smaller installations.
Electricity roiled from the place, charging the air. My skin tingled with the plethora of power begging to be used.
“Welcome to Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant,” Amber said in a smug tone.
Her phone rang. The witch muttered a few curses and stepped a discreet distance away before answering, “Hello?”
A grin tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Oh, hello Richard. Good morning—”
I heard a burst of noise through the phone and a wordless growl.
“My, aren’t you in a temper this morning. It’s barely after ten, Richard. Yes, yes, we’re fine. We’re running an errand. I got a call and I needed to deal with it. No, there’s nothing wrong. Yes, she’s wit
h me. She’s fine.”
Amber stared up at the sky as if begging for patience.
“A few hours is all we’ll need, I’m sure. I thought you needed your rest. How is Alex doing? Still feeling fine? That’s good. Yes, I’ll bring her back intact, don’t fret. Go get breakfast before you bite someone’s head off.” Without waiting for a reply, she disconnected the call. “That man can be a downright fiend in the mornings. As if I’d tell him where we were going. It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission, right Nicole?”
I bobbed my head.
“How close do you need to get to tap into that? This is the biggest source of electricity I could find. Think this is close enough?”
The power plant was a wizard’s dream come true and the Inquisition’s worst nightmare. I marveled at the amount of damage I could cause if I really wanted to. I understood, then, why the Inquisition wanted wizards gone—considering how easy it was to access the place, a wizard could ruin hundreds of thousands of lives if provoked.
A wizard could also save hundreds if not thousands of lives, too.
Fortunately for the Inquisition, I fell in the second group.
I sat, closed my eyes, and concentrated on the power crackling from the electric lines. Warmth flooded through me. Remembering the hungering virus and its need for heat, I searched for something similar to focus on.
I found it, somewhere distant, a tickling faintly against my senses. As with Alex, the virus hungered for warmth, so I summoned the cold—a chill frigid enough to contain the plague without killing the infected host.
When the wind blew, it carried the crisp scent of snow.
I fell into a trance as I searched for the plague and didn’t stop until the power plant’s endless supply of energy failed to hold my exhaustion at bay. With my body stiff and aching, I opened I eyes. Judging from the position of the sun behind hazy clouds, I’d spent at least an hour or two hunting the plague.
Amber huddled next to me, shivering from the cold. Frost caked the desert in a sheet of blue and white. The first flakes of snow drifted down.