“And yet you look sad.” She wiped a tear from my cheek. “Do not be afraid. I’ve been told it doesn’t hurt, but it will change you.” She braided my hair in a simple plait down my back and tied it with a white ribbon. A knock on the door told me it was time to go.
“I hope I’m ready for this,” I said to Wolf-Lonna, but she was silent. What I’d feared my first morning there was true—they’d put the antipsychotic in something I ingested to block me from accessing my inner wolf. It seemed to work more quickly than previously, and I worried the stuff might be building up in my system with repeated dosing.
Oh, now they’re really playing dirty. I will find a way to get her back, and I will not let Henry win.
Henry blindfolded me and tied my wrists before we left the room. He tugged me along with a rope attached to the wrist ties.
“Just in case you get any ideas of making a run for it. I don’t feel like chasing you. Not that you’d get far,” he sneered.
I only lifted my chin and didn’t dignify him with a response.
He led me to the dungeon, all the while heckling me with comments like he was looking forward to stealing my will and breaking my spirit. My silence seemed to goad him into further revelation like, “And once I have control of you, I’ll be able to manipulate the werewolves, and then I’ll become leader of the wizards. We won’t have any more of this passive standing aside and letting humanity alone. They’ve mucked things up on their own for far too long.”
“Does your father know about your grandiose plan?” I had to ask.
“He’s getting tired and is ready to step down. Once he does, I can do whatever I want, and others will join me.”
I couldn’t answer because I had to focus on not tripping on the slippery steps down to the dungeon. The ties around my wrists hampered my ability to grab my skirt, and I stumbled on the hem and into the wall a couple of times. Finally we made it down the stairs, and I sneezed at the mildew smell.
“Blood is of the earth, and it’s easier for me to conduct my spells down here,” he said. “That’s how Father and I were able to take care of Max’s memories of you.”
“Why didn’t you just do this to begin with? You could’ve spared us all a lot of drama if you’d forced my change while I was unconscious.”
“Father wanted to wait and test you without any of my magic flowing in your veins. That was yesterday’s task. Today, you’re all mine.” He shoved me against the wall and licked my ear. I cringed away from him.
“Remember, I’ll make you want me, and I’ll make Max watch,” he said.
I took a deep breath to calm my fury, or at least compartmentalize it until I needed to use it. “Just get it over with,” I said. “I’m sick of your melodrama.”
A slap across my face made me bump the back of my head against the wall, and I saw stars.
“Henry!” Carrigan’s voice prompted relief in me for the first time. “Don’t abuse her. You’ll only ruin her for later. Fear and anger are stored in deeper parts of her brain.”
“Yes, Father.” He yanked on the rope binding my wrists, and I stumbled forward.
If fear and anger are stored deep, then passion could be as well.
Rough fingers removed my blindfold, and I blinked to clear the stinging tears. Max stood on the other side of a gurney. His skin was almost as pale as the white lab coat he wore, and droplets of sweat spread across his face as he moved with jerky motions.
“He didn’t want to help transform you, my dear, but something is compelling him.” Henry touched the vial on the chain around his neck, and Max doubled over like he’d been punched in the gut.
“Leave him out of this.”
“He betrayed us. This will only be the first part of his punishment.”
Max jerked back up, and his eyes held apology and sadness.
“It’s okay. I know it’s not you,” I said. He only managed a small inclination of his head, but I knew he understood me.
Henry and Carrigan untied my hands and strapped my ankles and wrists to a gurney so I lay flat on my back. I had only glanced at the ceiling before. It hadn’t been painted or tiled, but was left as the natural stone of the cave.
Cave…
The lights spun, and I knew I was on the verge of having a panic attack. I took deep diaphragmatic breaths to stop it, but then Max wheeled over an I.V. stand with a bag of clear fluid.
“This is to make sure I don’t dehydrate you,” Henry said. “Fluid in has to balance fluid out, no?”
“Don’t,” I murmured. Max put on rubber gloves, and my heart pounded in my chest. Both Henry and Carrigan wore lab coats, and I heard something crack, but I wasn’t sure whether it was internal or external.
A laboratory in a cave, strapped to a stretcher.
“No!” I thrashed around, my head and shoulders the only things I could move freely, and those just barely.
“Strap her down,” Henry said. After Max did, Henry commanded, “Maximilian, proceed.”
“Doctor Ragerman, proceed,” the Cabal researcher says. The tall redheaded man puts a needle in the vein in my arm.
Darkness flowed at the edges of my vision, my mind’s attempt to make me faint and not remember the trauma. I barely felt the prick of Max inserting the needle in my arm along with the electricity in his fingertips, even through his rubber gloves.
“She’s going into shock. Hold off on the extraction,” Max said, his hand lightly on my arm.
“Are you sure you’re not just trying to buy her time? I can feel there’s something going on. I can taste her fear and assure you we will proceed as planned.” Henry also rested a hand on my arm, the sensation like a snake poised to strike as it coiled on top of me.
“Killing her won’t do you any good.”
The needle goes in, and the researcher makes a check mark on his clipboard.
“Start the flow,” he says, and liquid fire spreads through my veins.
I looked up at the dungeon ceiling, noticing how it was different from the top of the cave in my memory, which flooded back, superimposed on it. My mind fought to shut the memories down, but then my aunt’s words come back to me.
It is in your moment of greatest peril that you will find your strength if you have the courage to take it.
Joanie had told me what they were doing in the cave, what they did to us, but my mind had lost it. Classic suppression, as Freud would say. I tried to bring the memories to the forefront, but my throat closed in panic. I had to breathe, to push through. The chemicals they gave us forced us to… To hurt until the screaming made my throat raw. I thrashed, half in the cave in the dungeon and half in the laboratory in the Ozarks, but I grasped at that little wisp of memory and followed it to the images from my nightmares. What were they doing to us?
“How long until the change in this one?” Ragerman says and steps back, his eyes fearful. “We’ve never done an adult before. I don’t even know if I got the dose right.”
“Just proceed as planned.”
Change? I’m thinking. What change? It’s all I can manage with the burning sensation seeping along my major blood vessels. Then when it hits my heart, I feel it. The tunnel opens up, and I fall through, and—
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Max released his hold on me like I burned him, and he fell to his knees, clutching his head, as did Henry, who moaned, “No, not yet. Don’t let her free, you fool! She wasn’t supposed to change so soon.”
The strap that held me down when I was a human caught my head, but I backed out and freed myself. As much as I wanted to go to Max, I knew I had to take care of Henry first.
“You have never killed a human before,” Wolf-Lonna said, to my relief.
“He’s not a human, he’s a monster.”
“Still, you need my help, but you have to trust me.”
“It’s time to abort this experiment, Henry,” Carrigan said and released the safety on his gun. The sound echoed through the chamber and lengthened into the howl of the Benandanti.
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Son of a… I jumped off the gurney before Carrigan could get a clear shot at me. I relished how much more quickly I could move as a wolf and how lethal I could be.
“You’ve got two wizards with lethal intentions and one body,” Wolf-Lonna pointed out. “And the Padre Superiore likes their odds.”
“Fine, I accept you and me and all of this. I give you permission to be a full fylgia and protect me.” Warmth seeped through my body, like what Deirdre had tried to do, but with love rather than hate and jealousy. I leapt on Henry, and he covered his face instinctively. I took advantage of his hesitation to rip the chain with Max’s blood off his neck and fling the vial to Max, who caught it.
Henry scooted back, the fear on his face apparent.
“Now who’s the hunted? Who’s going to get taken against their will while someone they love watches?”
A bullet grazed my flank and burned. The howling reached a triumphant note, but I didn’t allow it to distract me from my prey. Max stood and loosed a stream of electricity at Carrigan, who dropped the gun and fell back.
“Lonna, you know I didn’t mean it like that.” Henry held his hands in front of him.
I continued to close in on him and growled low in my throat.
“And how did you mean your promise to rape me, emotionally and physically? Don’t tell me you didn’t intend to hurt me. You don’t threaten and then bitch-slap the people you don’t want to hurt.”
“Lonna,” Max said. “This is like at your aunt’s place. Don’t let your animal side take over. We can seek justice now.”
“You have your memory back!” I turned to him, and Henry inserted a syringe into my flank.
I spun around before he could depress the plunger. As much as I’m ashamed to say it, I allowed my animal instincts to take over and ripped Henry’s throat out. His skin tore more easily than any animal’s, but it was cold like a corpse’s. I swallowed as little as I could. Silver bullets whizzed by me and looked like little fireballs through my wolf’s eyes. I darted under a table and closed my eyes. Wolf-Lonna’s view took over, and—his bullets whizzing through her—she attacked Carrigan and finished him. The Benandanti fell quiet, but my ears still rang.
“Carrigan!” Max cried and went to his side. He closed his mentor’s eyes, and I looked away from the grief-stricken expression on his face. I put my head down on my paws.
“Max…It was self-defense, but I killed your alpha. I am so, so sorry.”
“They tried to kill you.” He said and sat beside me. He took the syringe out of my flank and threw it against the wall, where it shattered. “You have nothing to feel bad about, but please don’t be too harsh on Carrigan. Henry’s the one who toyed around with the blood magic and made Deirdre’s spirit stay instead of crossing over. He’s the one who corrupted himself by using it and tried to create a vargamore he could control. He’s been hunting you since the beginning, but you were too clever for him.”
“Carrigan helped Henry take your memories and tortured me about it.”
“I see that now. Carrigan worried about me. He didn’t want me falling for someone who he knew would have to go to Henry eventually.”
“For bad magic.”
Max nodded. “I’ll make sure our magic is only used for good from now on. For everyone’s good. Can you change back?”
“Give me a moment.” I did as he asked and crossed my arms against the chill. He found a clean lab coat and gave it to me, and then he took me in his arms.
“I remember everything,” he said.
“I’m glad, although I wish I could take the memory of all this away.”
“No, because our memories are part of who we are like our wizard sides and your wolf side. Sometimes they’re hard to deal with, but they make us whole.” He looked into my eyes, and then he kissed me.
Max decided to seal up the dungeon lab and make it Henry’s and Carrigan’s tomb. He looked so haggard after he was done that I took him by the hand and led him to the beach, where large rum drinks waited for us.
A little forgetting right now might be a good thing.
“Are we celebrating?” he asked. “That doesn’t seem right.”
“No, we’re finding normalcy. Trust me. I’m a professional.”
“Don’t worry, I do trust you.” He frowned at something in the surf.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Do you see all those dark shapes in the water?”
I walked to the edge of the ocean, and Max followed me. A school of hammerheads swam just offshore. “Do wards last after someone dies?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, and I didn’t even think about that. We’re defenseless.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I need to reset everything.”
I touched his hand, and the electric buzz just below his skin startled me. “You’re exhausted and losing control. Don’t worry about the island’s perimeter. Plus, you have me here, so you don’t need to worry about the wolves attacking.”
“We will guard your shores,” the hammerhead I had spoken to the day before told me, his voice faint in my mind. “Do not fear attack by sea.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“What are you doing?” Max asked.
“Talking to a shark. Why?”
He shook his head. “You’re never going to stop surprising me, are you?”
“Nope!” I grinned. “But they say they will guard the shore from attack.”
“And they won’t eat swimmers?”
“Will you refrain from eating humans and wizards?” I asked.
“Yes. They’re not fish. We do not like the way they taste, especially wizards.”
I relayed his answer to Max, who saluted and called out, “Thank you, Guardian!” The shark swished his tail above water in response.
But that wasn’t the end of it.
“I’m still feeling off,” Max said later that night as we cuddled in his room, which was much nicer than mine. “Even more than I would expect considering the day’s events.”
I turned to him and traced the lines of his face with my fingertips. “What do you mean?”
“Something happened this morning when you fought through your memory block and just before you changed. It was like power flowed through you, which made my memories come back, but I also felt Henry’s power.”
“I’ve been wondering if something about me acts as an augmentation of the power of those around me. That would explain how I could give your memories back, I simply absorbed and augmented Henry’s power.”
“That makes you a formidable wizard,” Max said and pulled me closer. “What about his blood magic?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t want that, only to free you from it. Could I have passed it on to you accidentally?”
“We have a lot to figure out,” he said. “I’ll do some reading.”
I had almost drifted off to sleep when a thought hit me. “Max, what if between the Luridatone and blood magic we could reverse lycanthropy for people who didn’t want to be werewolves?”
He frowned. “I suppose it’s possible, particularly if we bring in your friend Joanie and her colleagues to guide us with the genetics and other medical parts. The chemical plus the viral vector directed with a little blood magic might just do it. But why would werewolves want to stop being what they are?”
I lay awake long after his breathing evened out and pondered his question. Wolf-Lonna was silent on the subject, but I could feel her disapproval.
“I’m not thinking about for me, silly.” She didn’t respond, and I don’t think she believed me.
The next day, a helicopter landed on the beach, and my heart thudded along with the rhythm of the blades. Has retribution for Carrigan and Henry come so soon? The servants hadn’t said anything after I explained what happened, but they didn’t like the leader or his son, either.
“Do you know who that is?” I asked Max.
“Those are European markings,” he said, squinting.
My heart dropped, an
d I turned to flee, but he caught my arm. “Let go, Max! They want to come and experiment on me and turn me into human anti-aging products.”
He squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry, you are under my protection. I’m the highest-ranking wizard left in this territory, and they wouldn’t dare touch you.”
His reassurance loosened the panic in my gut, and I focused on my potential opponents. Three men in suits exited and ran along the sand.
“How are they not getting sandblasted?” I asked and watched them warily.
“One of them is an air wizard. He’s keeping it away from them.”
“Nifty.”
He put an arm around my shoulder. “Wizard-kind is pretty interesting. We have as many variations in power as wolves do in color and markings. Still, I wonder what they’re doing here.”
We met the men in the front hallway.
“We are here as representatives from the European and North American Wizard Tribunals,” one said. He had an Austrian accent, kind of like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He also had a square jaw and a humorless face.
“Is there a problem?” asked Max.
“Yes, we are looking for one Master Henry Corvelland,” another one said. He had an American accent, and I arched an eyebrow at him. “American Wizard Tribunal, ma’am.”
“You had better come to the library,” Max told them. “We have some sad news.”
I turned to go to the kitchen to tell Saraya to bring snacks, but Max held my arm.
“You can come. You’re a wizard too,” he said. “In fact, I’ll need you to corroborate my story.”
I nodded and smiled at the warmth in his gaze. I finally belong somewhere.
“I’m sorry for being rude,” the third man, whose very fair skin was already starting to turn pink from the sun, “but are you a vargamore? I’ve never seen one in person.”
I smiled. “I am wolf and wizard. Please, gentlemen, make yourselves comfortable. We’ll join you in a moment.”
“If they’re from the American and European tribunals, what are we?” I asked Max once they’d settled in. “Just give me the quick version.”
Long Shadows: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 2 Page 26