by John Conroe
Hekla’s expression of anxiety changed to one of determined hope and she continued to speak in Icelandic, her tone becoming soft and comforting.
A quiet whine sounded from the trees where Caeco was looking, and Hekla spoke more firmly.
Slowly, silently, a beautiful light-colored wolf appeared from the forest. She was as big as a Mastiff, heavier built than a natural gray timber wolf, with a big skull and thick shoulders and forelegs.
The humans froze collectively as more of the big wolf appeared from the vegetation. “It’s okay, Kristin,” Jetta said. “Come on out. We’re going to help you change back… so you can go home with your mom here and hang with your buddy.”
Jetta stayed in front and Caeco kept even with the suddenly eager mother and friend, even catching Hekla’s arm when she stepped forward too quickly. The werewolf was focused on Jetta, head tilted to one side.
“We know all about what’s happened to you, Kristin,” Jetta said. “We work and live with people just like you. Can you smell my shirt? That’s Matt, my boyfriend. He’s a werewolf too. He’s always hungry. I bet you’re really hungry right now, aren’t you?” Jetta knelt down and slowly swung her pack off her back. She opened it and pulled out a plastic freezer bag filled with bloody beef.
The wolf crouched down, whining, ears flicking forward and back anxiously, her body creeping forward slowly. When Jetta pulled open the zip lock on the baggie, the wolf lifted her head and her whine changed to something deeper.
“Smells awesome, right?” Jetta said, using her left hand to pull the meat from the bag. It looked like a raw roast, big and bloody. With an easy motion she tossed it forward. It landed in a mat of pine needles halfway between the girl and the predator. Jetta’s right hand dipped into her hoodie pocket as the wolf flashed forward, giant jaws snapping up the lump of meat and ripping it in half. With a big gulp, half the meat went down the werewolf’s throat and then she looked down to locate the remainder. As soon as her head dropped, Jetta’s right hand came smoothly out of her pocket and made a short, quick throw so smoothly that it looked almost lazy.
A fat red dart appeared between the wolf’s shoulders and her head snapped up, yellow eyes narrowing, a growl escaping around the meat locked in her jaws.
“Please. That doesn’t hurt, and you know it,” Jetta said, completely calm. “It’s about the same as if I tossed a marble at you.”
The wolf pulled back her head, still chewing but slower, as if she was surprised by the words.
“But you might not want to swallow that lump right just yet,” Jetta said. The wolf lifted her head, tossed the meat up and opened her jaws wide to gulp it down. “And here we go,” Jetta said with a sigh.
The beef went down the throat, but the wolf suddenly dropped to the ground, limbs going boneless, eyes rolling back in her head.
“Mack, I need those tongs,” Jetta said, rushing forward to the downed wolf. Caeco was beside her before she made two steps, then was past her, reaching the wolf first. Grabbing the head, she lifted it and looked up to see where Mack was, but he was already there, arriving alongside his sister, a gleaming chrome surgical tool in his hand.
Caeco pressed on the sides of the wolf’s jaws, arm muscles standing out through the tight black fabric of her shirt, and the mouth opened a little. With a quick motion, Mack reached the tool into the wolf’s mouth and with just a few struggles managed to pull out the hunk of meat. Leaning back, he relaxed and let the beef chunk fall to the forest floor.
“Whew,” was all he said, grinning at the others. “Even werewolves need to breathe.”
“What did you do to her?” Hekla demanded, moving closer to the massive wolf. At her motion, Chief Kent and his officers moved up as well.
“We drugged the crap out of her,” Jetta said. “Easiest way to get her to Change back when you don’t have an Alpha handy.”
“Hekla and Marika come close, so that she smells you,” Caeco said. “Our special cocktail should drug her deep enough for the wolf to relax, but my personal opinion is that comforting odors help too.”
“Look. She’s starting to change,” Jetta said.
The fur was moving, visibly getting shorter, and the animal’s body began to pop and click as the limbs twisted to new configurations. Fascinated, the officers crowded around as Kristin’s mother and friend knelt on either side of her, watching the transformation. Jetta reached back into her pack and pulled out a thin fleece blanket. Within minutes, the wolf had been replaced by a naked teenaged girl, one whose visible ribs and clavicle showed how very lean she had gotten. Jetta covered her with the blanket and then Caeco easily picked her up.
A tiny black drone buzzed out from the trees and landed on Mack’s shoulder. He noticed it but ignored it.
“Okay, let’s get her home,” Caeco said.
“No, we need to get her checked out,” Kent said. “Morris here is an EMT. And you drugged her.”
“So am I,” Caeco said, “and these two are certified for wilderness medicine. Our mixture is herbal, not pharmaceutically based. Her heartbeat is steady, temperature is normal for weres, breathing is unlabored, but she is malnourished, more so than a regular human would be. Were metabolisms are fierce, burning calories extremely fast. Actually, she looks better than expected, so she must have done a good job scavenging. But a hospital won’t know what to look for and it’ll just stress her out. Being home with her mother’s cooking is the best idea.”
Kent looked uncertain but his officer, Morris, who was looking Kristin over as she hung limp in Caeco’s arms, was nodding. “I think she’s right, Chief. She seems pretty healthy but very, very thin. Eyes are good, breathing is good. They’ve been right so far.”
“Alright, but you’re going to need help carrying her. Let me take a stint,” Kent said, moving forward.
Caeco looked like she might protest but then nodded, handing the girl off to Kent, whose eyes widened as he took her full weight.
“Were muscle and bone is denser than human normal,” Mack said. “She’s going to always weigh more than she looks but will never look overweight. Expect your grocery bill to go up… a lot.”
“I notice you didn’t offer,” Kent said to Mack.
“Hell no. Caeco’s a lot stronger than I am,” he said, turning and heading back on the trail, the little black insectile drone still clinging to his shoulder.
A half hour later, they had Kristin resting on the couch in the family room of the shingle-style coastal house that looked out over a rocky Maine shoreline.
Kristin woke up as her mother and friend were maneuvering her into her second favorite pair of pajamas, the first pair having disappeared the same night she did. She looked confused for a few seconds, but her expression dissolved into almost heartbreaking relief as she realized she was actually back in human form, in her own home, with a big plate of her favorite lamb dish in front of her.
Kent dismissed most of the officers, but he and Detective Treviano stayed, along with Mack, Jetta, and Caeco. At first, the girl alternated tearful hugs with her friend and mother between big mouthfuls of food. After the second plate had disappeared along with two glasses of milk, she was able to talk.
“I woke up outside… in the forest… moving on all fours,” she began. “I couldn’t figure out what had happened, but then I remembered the bite on my leg and that project we did for AP Social Studies. Remember, Marika?”
“The one about the white werewolf?” Marika asked. “We had to do a project on the disruptions to society that the supernatural revelation caused. We did ours on Stacia Reynolds, you know… the White Werewolf who is also a model?”
Mack choked on the bite of lamb he was trying, earning himself a glare from Caeco and a smirk from his sister. Manfully, he swallowed it down, nodding even as his eyes watered. “Yeah, we know her, right, Caeco?” he said.
“You know her?” Marika asked, exchanging a glance with her friend.
“These two work for Chris Gordon and Tatiana Demidova,” Chief Kent expla
ined.
“Shut up!” Kristin said, eyes wide.
“Kristin!” her mother admonished automatically.
“Sorry, but you know what I mean,” she said. “You know them and her?”
“Yeah, we do,” Jetta said.
“So you would know her boyfriend… the Warlock?” Marika asked, starstruck.
“Declan was Mack’s roommate at the college they go to,” Caeco said, frowning a little.
“Which you will likely receive an invitation to,” Mack said to Kristin.
“What?” the girl asked astonished.
Her mother was frowning but Mack moved smoothly on. “You’re a werewolf now. No going back. Not everyone survives the virus, but you did. However, you’re going to have to learn to control yourself and the Change. It takes other wolves to do that. Dellwood is the Alpha at the school. He’ll treat you right.”
“Wait. You’re mistaken. Kristin is going to attend university in Iceland,” her mother said.
“Mack, you’re going too quick,” Caeco said. “Let’s leave that off for now. Kristin, what we really need to talk about is what happened in Robinson Woods. Do you remember anything about that?”
The excited look on Kristin’s face disappeared, immediately replaced by fear. Then her eyes turned yellow.
“Nope, nope, none of that,” Jetta said, sitting down next to the girl and wrapping an arm around her. “You are safe in your house with well-armed people here to protect you. Just take a big sniff of familiar scents and relax,” she said, then turned to Caeco. “Who’s going too fast now?”
The girl breathed deep breaths in through her nose and then settled back, although she suddenly sniffed Jetta’s hoodie. “Who is that?” she asked.
“My boyfriend, Matthew. He’s a werewolf too. Part of the pack at Arcane. So listen: We do need to ask you about the scary stuff in the forest, but you need to remember that you’re safe, Marika here is safe, your mom is safe, everything is good.” She held the girl’s eyes with her own, nodding at her until Kristin nodded back.
After a moment or two, she calmed down and looked at Chief Kent, then Marika. Grabbing her friend’s hand, she held on tightly, then began to speak.
“I heard ‘Rika, then smelled her perfume,” she said. Instantly her friend squealed and yanked on their linked hands.
“Ow, Kristin—you’re hurting me!” Marika exclaimed, pulling away.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to!” Kristin said, worry on her face as she let go.
“You’re much, much stronger now,” Jetta said. “Stronger than Mack or the chief—probably stronger than both together. Learning to control that strength is just one of your new challenges.”
Marika rubbed her hand and then reoffered it to her friend.
Tears appeared in Kristin’s eyes, which she quickly brushed away. She took a breath and continued her story, staring at her friend. “You were singing a song, and it made me excited to hear your voice, so I followed. You were almost out of the forest, onto Shore Road, and then I was sad when you were gone. But I figured you were going to the bakery, so I waited. When you came back, I followed. I saw the boys and heard what they said. It made me really, really angry. I wanted to bite them. But I wanted to follow you, ‘Rika, more. I was happy when you ran out of the woods because I knew you were safe, but then I wanted to go find the boys. But as I was headed their way, I heard yelling and some kind of a roar, only not an animal but more like a person trying to roar. By the time I got there, Lucas and Ren were dead, but I heard James running away and someone was chasing him. So I chased too.”
“Did you see him, Kristin?” Chief Kent asked, leaning close.
“No, he veered off, away from James, toward Stonegate, when James got close to Shore Road. I was going to follow him, but I followed James instead. He was in one of my classes last year and he’s not a bad kid.”
“Damn it,” Kent said. “Sorry; I was hoping you could identify him.”
“Well, I didn’t see him—but I did smell him. He was wearing an old animal fur, but I could smell his scent underneath that and all the… blood. If I smelled him again, I’m sure I’d know him,” she said, then frowned. “That sounded weird, didn’t it?”
“Nope, not where we come from,” Jetta said. “Hear it all the time.”
“Yeah, just wait till you learn to use it. You’ll even know when people are lying to you,” Mack said.
“What is Stonegate?” Caeco asked.
“It’s a road. Also the name of the development around that road,” Kent said.
“Kristin, you’ve been through a very stressful experience, but you’ve handled it unbelievably well,” Caeco said. “Once you’re rested and full of your mom’s cooking, do you think you’d be up for a ride through Stonegate?”
“That’s all it would take?” Treviano asked.
“Pretty much. Drive-by sniffing is a thing,” Caeco said. “Even if this guy stays indoors, houses breathe, and his scent will flow out of it.”
“I could go right now!” Kristin said, which prompted a round of no from her mother, the chief, and Jetta.
“Your body is really stressed right now,” Jetta said. “But the thing about werewolves is that they bounce back really fast. A good night’s sleep in your own bed along with more of your mom’s great cooking and you’ll be ready for anything.”
Outside, a car door slammed and suddenly a big blonde man was entering the house at almost a dead run. “Kristin?” he called as he barreled in.
Kristin said something to him in Icelandic and he enveloped her in his arms.
“I got here as fast as I could. After talking to you this morning, Agent Jensen, I was more hopeful than in days, so I kept my schedule to a minimum. You found her. You found my baby.”
She hugged him back fiercely and suddenly he groaned. Immediately she let go and he drew in a deep breath. “Wow, that’s some hug,” he said, only half kidding. Immediately she looked to Jetta, who smiled and nodded.
“Sorry, Daddy,” she said.
He frowned and then started to shake his head but Caeco interrupted. “Your daughter has been through a great deal, Mr. Bjornsson. Her ordeal actually began in Iceland on your family’s last visit. That bite she received was from a werewolf, not a dog. It infected her with the LV virus and thankfully it didn’t kill her, but… she’s now a werewolf too.”
His tanned face blanched at her words, his eyes going wide with first alarm and then anger. He said something vehement in Icelandic, most likely a curse, based on the shocked reaction of his wife and daughter.
“Do you know the werewolf who bit her, Mr. Bjornsson?” Caeco asked.
He stared at her, frowning, then shook his head. “Not directly, but I can guess why she was bitten and who might have arranged it,” he said. “It is outside the…jurisdiction? Jurisdiction of your FBI.”
“Maybe, but not outside the jurisdiction of the supernatural world. Deliberately spreading LV is a high crime pretty much everywhere on the planet. It will have to be looked into,” Caeco said.
“By who?” he demanded.
She turned and looked at the Suttons. Mack scratched his head. “Probably the Coven,” he said.
“You will tell them?” Vilhelm Bjornsson demanded.
“I already have,” the Bluetooth speaker on a nearby credenza said.
“That’s the Omega computer, Vilhelm,” Chief Kent said. “It seems to pay a lot of attention to whatever these three do.”
“Correct,” the speaker said. “The Elders of the Coven have been informed. They will send someone to look into it.”
“I don’t really care about that. What about Kristin?”
“She survived her first Change and stayed in wolf form through her second full moon. But she’ll need help when the next one rolls around,” Caeco said.
“I have informed ather and Stacia of this situation. Stacia will be contacting you, Kristin Vilhelmsdottir, sometime today,” Omega said.
“Stacia Reynolds will be calling
me?” Kristin exclaimed, then turned to Marika, whose expression matched her own disbelief.
“Actually, that’s really good,” Jetta said. “She’s a strong Alpha and she’ll do a better job teaching you than any other Alpha we know.”
“Yeah, she helped a deputy who got bit during that incident in Fetter, Maine,” Mack said. “Devany has adjusted really well. Same with Holly, who got bit in Las Vegas, and that girl has some serious anger issues.”
“We can talk more about all this later,” Caeco said. “We’ll leave you three alone and continue our investigation. But we could really use your help tomorrow.”
“Now wait a moment. We just got her back!” her father said.
“Dad, this is something I can do to help those boys,” Kristin said. Her eyes went a little yellow and Jetta instantly clapped her hands once, loudly, startling everyone.
“Gotta watch your temper, Kristin,” she said. “Reacting from anger or fear right now, at this stage, is very, very dangerous. Werewolves have volatile tempers, and you’ll have to learn to control yours. And also, extreme emotions can trigger a Change.”
The girl looked stricken, her eyes tearing up. Jetta reached over and patted her knee. “Look, being a were is going to be different and difficult. But you survived not just the virus, but your first Change and a month on your own. That’s freaking amazing. You’re going to be a great werewolf. Just relax, eat lots, and rest. Tomorrow we’ll talk some more. Just try and stay… even. Okay?”
The teenager nodded and Jetta smiled at her again, then stood up. Vilhelm showed them to the door. “I want to know more about what happened to my daughter,” he said to all four of them. “I would speak with you about it at a later time… perhaps tomorrow?”
“We will talk to you tomorrow,” Caeco said, the last to step out.
They made it to the cars before the next shoe dropped.
“Chief, you should know that a reporter from Portland has bribed an individual on the coroner’s staff. They are preparing to break a report that the boys were killed by a werewolf. You may wish to get out ahead of it,” Omega said from Mack’s cell phone.