by RJ Blain
My mom’s partner grinned. “You’re so much fun when you’re high on painkillers and hopped up on the lycanthropy virus. You’re definitely cut from your father’s cloth, that’s for sure. And don’t underestimate the ladies. There are advantages to men with the lycanthropy virus—loyalty being one of them. I doubt even an incubus could get your father to cheat on your mother. The trick is waiting for the girls to want to settle down. That’s when the werewolves get the lion’s share of the bachelorette pool. It’s a guaranteed way to avoid most marital problems.”
“It’s like I have a second set of parents, they’re both male, and they’re as determined as my mother to have me explore the potential of the opposite gender.” I groaned and set my dinner aside. “It’s not that I wasn’t interested in finding someone—I am. I was just too busy in Chicago. The hours were crazy, especially since I had the lowest magic rating the force would allow. They’re more prejudiced against werewolves in Chicago, too.”
Winston sighed. “Of course they are. Here, either you’re infected, you’re related to someone who’s infected, or you want to be infected. Those outside of those groups either can’t be infected, like us centaurs, or don’t care either way. Lincoln, Nebraska. Werewolf Mecca.”
Thinking about my utter lack of a love life depressed me. “I figured I’d do my time on the force before thinking about settling down. Actually, I think I was hoping to meet someone on the force but in a different department, but it turned out Chicago was a really bad choice for that sort of thing. They require cops exposed to the lycanthropy virus to wear special badges. Useful for dealing with angry werewolves on the streets but bad news for finding a date.”
“They discriminate that much there?”
“Between my low rating and exposure to the virus, let’s just say the last rung of the totem pole was an exclusive club belonging to me and only me. I was good at my job, but I was only accepted because I busted my ass. They didn’t care I wasn’t infected. I’d been exposed, and that was enough to get them riled up. They, grudgingly, have three werewolves on the force, and they only have them to meet their diversity quotas.”
The four cops exchanged long looks and remained quiet.
“So, before you get any bright ideas of trying to hook me up with a date, don’t. When I want a girlfriend, I’ll start looking around to find one.”
Dad’s partner smirked at me. “You’re a virgin.”
I smacked my forehead. “I’m the son of a werewolf. Of course I’m a virgin.”
Not playing the game often meant I won the game, and my ready acceptance of the truth, without any evidence it bothered me, stopped the quartet of cops in their tracks. They gaped at me.
“Consider my father. Now take a moment and consider my mother. What do you think would happen if I even thought of having a romp in the hay?”
Enlightenment hit all four at the same time. “Ooooh,” they chorused. “A wedding.”
I clapped for them. “Well done. You’ve demonstrated you know my parents. Now, what are you not going to do? Marshal, you’re probably the best one to answer this.”
My mother’s partner laughed. “We’re never going to speak a word of this to anyone, especially your mother, as she’ll want to start making wedding plans, and you might even get to contribute on some element of it. Unlikely, but possible.”
“Exactly. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I have no idea why anyone would have shot me and taken Sally. The vet said Sally wasn’t all that old, and while she does need to be sheared soon, her fleece isn’t that valuable. Not worth shooting an ex-cop for. The only thing I saw in New York was the body landing on that car and killing its occupants. If someone had tossed the body off the skyscraper’s rooftop, they would have had to use binoculars to get a good look at me. I didn’t see anyone suspicious, just a bunch of New Yorkers who didn’t want to have their day blown answering questions for law enforcement.”
“This would be a lot easier if you had a long list of enemies wanting revenge on you for landing them in prison, Shane,” my dad’s partner complained.
I pitied the other two cops in the room. They looked at the door and heaved a pained sigh.
“I can’t help that I went to work, got along with the riffraff, and didn’t cause trouble for hardly anyone. It’s not my fault.”
“For once in your life, I think you’re right.” Winston scowled and beat his tail against the floor while tapping the hospital’s polished tiles with his claws. “But why would anyone shoot you to steal an alpaca?”
Chapter Five
Why would someone shoot me to steal an alpaca?
Nothing made sense. I thought through every single case I’d ever dealt with in Chicago and had no idea who might want to come all the way to Nebraska to kill me. My inability to make sense of the situation kept me up all night, resulting in me resemble a demented raccoon when my mother and father walked into my room at exactly two minutes after eight in the morning.
“Right on time. Did you just happen to arrive, or were you standing out in the hallway waiting for the perfect moment? Eight sharp would have been fine, you know.”
“Why ruin a perfectly good tradition?” Mom stared down her nose at me and scowled. “Why do you look worse than you did right after surgery? Darling, I thought your blood was supposed to help, not give him raccoon eyes and rabies.”
Dad shot my mother a glare and hooked a chair with his ankle, dragging it to my bedside before sitting. “It seems I am the source of every one of life’s problems this morning. Got angsty because you couldn’t do anything productive?”
“Got angsty,” I confirmed. “I just don’t understand why someone would shoot me to steal my alpaca. I’ve gone over my cases in Chicago about a hundred times. I can’t think of a single person who would hunt me down in Nebraska to kill me. If they were after me, why take Sally? It would have been easier to shoot her, too.”
“That thought had crossed my mind. Seein’ it was right on the way home, your mom and I had a look at where you’d been shot. You left a lot of blood on the ground, son.” Disapproval deepened my father’s voice. “The shooter didn’t leave a scent marker for us, but your Sally sure did. She sure does like spittin’, doesn’t she?”
Mom stayed in the doorway, crossed her arms over her chest, and smiled.
Uh oh. When my mother smiled like that, she was preparing to cause a lot of trouble for someone. “I wouldn’t say she likes it. She makes the most disgusted little face after she spits, like she doesn’t understand why she’d do something so awful to herself.”
“Thanks to her spittin’ habit, I was able to find the direction the truck went. I’m thinkin’ your mom and I are gonna go on a ride later today.”
“On Hopper and Skunk?”
“No, son. Motorcycles. Our poor old horses wouldn’t like us taking them on a ride like that. Ain’t no one ridden them in years. Harold’s gonna watch over ‘em while we’re gone, and since you’ll be locked up here for a few days, I reckon you won’t miss us much, right?”
Mom and Dad teaming up for a hunt worried me. Dad pulling out his worst southern drawl meant he fully intended to cause trouble wherever he went. The police department kept them separated for a reason. Alone, either one of them could amass major property damage in a few minutes when left unsupervised. Dad did it with his bare hands. Mom did it with her guns.
Together, I feared for any building they went into. It always amazed me their house was still standing.
“Try not to get arrested. I can’t afford to bail you out, and even if I could, I won’t.” I took my time glaring at each of them. “That means if you find the shooter, you do not beat the daylights out of him. You call the cops in the appropriate jurisdiction and let them arrest him. ‘Arrest him’ is not a euphemism for ‘beat the daylights out of him.’ Am I understood?”
“If he tries to run, we will restrain him,” Dad growled.
“Restraining does not mean beat. Restraining means pin on the gro
und without excessive force. Remember, you’re both cops. Cops are supposed to be good people who uphold the law.”
“I told you telling him was a bad idea, Patsy.”
“I have awful parents.” I groaned. “Go on your field trip, and don’t panic when you realize you can’t reach me on my cell since I don’t have its charger.”
Dad reached into his pocket. “This charger?”
“Yes, that charger. I’ll forgive you for being awful parents if you find Sally and bring her home safely. Remember, I like her more than I like you, but I might like you a bit more if you return her.”
Those infected with lycanthropy were so easy to manipulate. Working Dad over took less effort because his virus was more mature, but my mother’s eyes gleamed, too. Wolves craved affection from members of their pack in the wild, and the lycanthropy virus rewired its host to respond in a similar fashion.
To them, I wasn’t just their puppy, I was part of their pack.
“Don’t you get into any trouble while we’re gone,” Dad growled, setting my phone’s charger on the table beside my bed. “Behave.”
I saluted my parents. “Have a safe trip. Don’t kill anyone unprovoked. I really can’t afford to bail you out even if I wanted to.”
They glared at me on their way out the door.
The highlight of my hospital stay was when I cornered and convinced the nice doctor responsible for me still having a shoulder to release me several days ahead of schedule. A better son would have notified his parents he had escaped the hospital.
Me? I retrieved my blood-stained wallet, filled out my forms, promised I wouldn’t bite or bleed on anyone for the next three days, and called a cab. The no-biting thing was more of a precaution than anything else; saliva didn’t contain the virus. Blood and semen did; a single cut on the gums could spell lycanthropy for someone else if I wasn’t careful.
Since I didn’t have any women in the wings, I classified as a minimal contagion risk.
Fortunately for me, Mom and Dad had brought a change of clothes, although I don’t think either one of them expected me to need it quite so soon. With my arm trapped in a sling, I wouldn’t be doing a lot of heavy lifting, but I could manage most of my chores with my left arm.
When I arrived home, Old Harold was in the barn tending to Hopper and Skunk. “I was done told you weren’t gonna be home for a few more days, son!”
“I’m an awful child and escaped prison early,” I confessed, flashing him a grin. “A little help keeping these two grass guzzlers fed and groomed wouldn’t hurt. I’m under strict orders to take it easy. I’m also supposed to avoid biting anyone.”
The old man laughed. “You’re in a right good mood for someone who done got himself shot fulla holes.”
“Just don’t tell my parents I was discharged. I get the house all to myself for a few hours.”
The first thing I’d do was raid their gun cabinet and pick a friend to keep me company, and then I’d do a thorough cleaning of the place. Knowing my parents, the instant they got home last night, they had paced their way into a frenzy, resulting in my father dismantling at least one cushion to ease his anxiety. Mom would have scattered half-knitted projects around the house, and if she had taken the shears to Dad, there’d be fur everywhere. Cleaning would keep me busy so I wouldn’t fixate on what I couldn’t do, which was pretty much anything useful.
“You betcha, son. You go take your tired self on into the house and catch up on some rest and heal up proper. I’ll make sure the horses are set out to pasture and brought on in and fed tonight, so don’t you worry yourself none about them.”
“Thanks, Harold.”
“Anytime. You see anythin’ funny around here, you give me a call. I’ll come on by with the rifle.”
To most, rifle meant a hunting rifle, but I knew better when it came to Old Harold. In his day, he’d served in the military, and his rifles could stop a tank in its tracks.
Most people called his ‘rifles’ grenade launders. I thought it better to let him call his badass guns whatever the hell he wanted to keep him happy. I also was pretty sure he had heavier machinery than grenade launchers kicking around his place, too. Hopefully, he’d just bring a high-calibre rifle over instead of his heavy weaponry.
I could justify Old Harold having a machine gun. It’d be a lot harder explaining to my parents why they no longer had a house.
“I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks again!”
I escaped into the house, which my parents hadn’t bothered to lock. I wasn’t surprised. Who was stupid enough to rob a werewolf? A stranger might try, but anyone with half a grain of sense in their skull steered clear of a werewolf’s home. Add in the fact both my parents were cops, and no one in their right mind tried anything on their property.
Those caveats didn’t stop me from partaking of their gun cabinet, however. They’d probably forgive me. Finding the keys took an hour, and I located them between the mattresses of the guest room bed. Since I’d left home, they’d added to their collection of weapons.
The glittery purple and silver zebra-striped wraps on the machete caught my attention, and I gaped at it. The blade, a terrifying eighteen inches long, could ruin someone’s day in a hurry. Since Dad wouldn’t be caught dead with anything glittery or purple, my mother must have finally taken complete leave of her senses. Lifting the weapon with my left hand, I tested its heft, raising my eyebrows at its weight.
In the hands of a human, a machete could easily kill. A werewolf could slice and dice someone into cubes within ten minutes, leaving even the bones a splintered mess. Shuddering at the thought of so much carnage, I returned the weapon to its spot and went on a hunt for a suitable pistol.
My father’s idea of a good gun cabinet had a lot of drawers, each one dedicated to a single weapon. When I’d last accessed my parents’ firearm collection, they’d owned sixteen different handguns. The count had gone up to thirty-two, and they’d also added a rack for three hunting rifles.
True to form, they alternated rows, with Dad favoring guns with enough recoil to knock a regular human on their ass if they weren’t ready for it. Since Mom handled lighter weapons, I sorted through her collection in search of something a little tamer.
What in the hell was my mother doing with a purple leopard print Desert Eagle? I scratched my head, staring at the drawer with my mouth hanging open. Even her spare magazine was decorated in the horrendous pattern.
The Desert Eagle would punch me in the face if I let it, but I lifted the weapon out of its drawer and checked it over. Why did my mother have a custom Desert Eagle in purple leopard print? Why would she do such a thing to an otherwise manly gun?
Why? Why? Why? Why would anyone customize a Desert Eagle to have leopard print of any color?
Maybe a better question was why wasn’t I putting it back? I dug through the accessory drawer until I found a holster suitable for a left-handed draw and buckled it around my hips. When my parents got home, making Mom explain why she had defiled a perfectly good gun would be my first task. Then I’d spend at least an hour tormenting my father over my mother’s choice of weapons.
I’d have a great time. I looked forward to it.
Until then, I’d do my mother a favor, clean her disgustingly cute but deadly gun, and carry it around in case someone decided to take another stab at ridding the Earth of me.
What was it with my mother and pancakes? Why would she think it was acceptable to leave two half-cooked pancakes splattered on the ceiling? One day I would figure out how the damned things stayed up there, forcing me to stand on a chair to scrape them off.
Upon closer inspection, I realized the ceiling was mottled with pale stains marking at least ten other pancake incidents. The chore kept me busy, although I made my right shoulder sorer than I liked cleaning the kitchen ceiling and floor.
Realizing I couldn’t leave part of the kitchen spotless while the rest resembled a battlefield, I sighed, put on the dish gloves, and went to work. I began with the fri
dge.
The instant I opened the door, I acknowledged my mistake.
My parents needed an intervention, although I suspected the accident causing the loss of my eye was to blame for their behavior. No one liked cleaning out the fridge, but after a month of neglect, the disaster I faced made me want to throw up—and murder them. The pancakes made a lot more sense.
Pancake batter in a box only needed water, allowing them to dodge the horrors lurking within their refrigerator. Shuddering, I found a garbage bag and cursed them, cursed the asshole who’d shot me to steal Sally, and began throwing everything out, including several of my mother’s best pots and pans.
The dishwasher didn’t deserve to have such nasty things put into it, and I wasn’t sure it could kill whatever the hell was growing in the cookware. One of the roasting pans had turned a rather intriguing shade of green, tempting me to conduct science experiments in the sink.
Halfway through cleaning, with my stomach performing summersaults because of the smell, I wanted to haul the fridge outside and light it on fire. My phone ringing spared the appliance, and I ditched my gloves in the sink before answering, “Hello?”
“May I speak to Mr. Gibson, please?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Detective Steinburg from the NYPD. Would it be possible for you to come to the station to answer some questions?”
I had to work hard not to laugh. “Is there a problem?”
“We have some additional questions about the murder you witnessed.”
I blinked. “It’s been classified as a murder?”
“Yes, Mr. Gibson. The case has been reclassified as a murder investigation. We’re going to need you to come in for additional questioning.”