by Jen Haeger
Evelyn felt an odd little surge of pride in David’s Alpha behavior and mirrored him, but then a thought flashed through her mind and she turned back to Marcus.
“Have you gotten any leads on Katie’s mom’s attacker?”
Marcus looked confused. “What do you mean?”
David turned back around to look at Marcus.
“The Wolfkin who killed Katie’s mother, and must have bitten her, changed her. Did you get any scents from her house? Do you think it was the Vulke?” Evelyn asked slightly exasperated.
Marcus broke eye contact with Evelyn and was silent. She could tell he was considering lying to her.
“Marcus, what aren’t you telling us?” she accused.
His eyes met Evelyn’s again. “There was no bite wound on Katie,” he said matter-of-factly.
Evelyn’s eyes widened. “Do you really think that she was infected through that tiny little scratch?” she said in disbelief.
Marcus shook his head. “No, I don’t.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Evelyn, you don’t understand. There was no evidence of the presence of another Wolfkin in Katie’s home.”
Evelyn shook her head annoyed, “Just what are you saying Marcus?”
“I am saying that Katie was the one who killed her mother, and we don’t know how she became a Wolfkin.”
13
Evelyn just stared at him, her mouth agape.
“What?” exclaimed David.
Marcus sat back down heavily but said nothing.
Evelyn’s mind was racing. “Marcus, do Wolfkin, have Wolfkin children?” She couldn’t believe that she had not thought to ask before.
“Wolfkin men do not father Wolfkin children, no,” he hedged.
Evelyn narrowed her eyes at him. “And Wolfkin women?” she pressed.
Marcus cleared his throat. “They aren’t permitted to bear children after the change.”
“So you don’t actually know?” Evelyn clarified.
Marcus shook his head. Evelyn was slightly rankled by the whole sexist overtones of the term “permitted”, but it all made perfect sense. Birth was a bloody business and if the mother was infected there would be a very good chance of the baby being infected by her. But if Katie’s mother had been a Wolfkin and Katie had become a Wolfkin shortly after birth, then her mother must have known and would have taken precautions. Not only that, but her mother would have also been in Wolfkin form during the last full moon and Wolfkin bodies didn’t change back to human form after death like in the movies. While it was technically possible for Wolfkin to hold off the change the days prior to and just after the full moon, it took great focus and strength to do so, and it was unlikely that Katie’s mother could have held it off in the midst of Katie’s attack. It was all just so confusing.
“So it’s possible that Katie’s mother could’ve been a Wolfkin?” Evelyn suggested.
“Possible,” Marcus conceded.
“But it’s just as unlikely as her becoming a Wolfkin through that scratch.”
“Unlikely, but it must have happened that way,” Marcus insisted.
David had been silent, but suddenly he spoke, “What about a blood transfusion?”
Marcus looked at him skeptically.
“No, hear me out. Someone becomes a Wolfkin then donates blood and Katie gets into an accident or gets sick and needs a transfusion, a freak accident. It’s at least as likely as anything else at this point,” he insisted.
Marcus waved his hands, “Something happened. The important thing now is that we take care of her and keep her safe…for as long as we can. But for now, there is nothing more you can do, and I have a lot of work to do, so please.” He motioned to the door.
Evelyn was intrigued. There were so many possibilities. She would love to get a sample of Katie’s blood, but she knew that was not a possibility. She did have an idea though.
“May I see her before we go?” she asked Marcus, “You know, to say goodbye?”
Marcus nodded. “Of course, I believe she is at the pool with Zachary.”
David looked at her strangely but said nothing.
“We’ll find her,” Evelyn said turning to the door again.
“Let us know if you find out anything about Clem…or Katie,” David said.
“I will,” Marcus replied.
They found themselves back out in the casino lobby and Evelyn made a beeline for the gift shop.
“Uh, Evie, I think that the hotel and pool are back this way,” said David lamely, pointing in the opposite direction.
“I know. I want to get Katie a present.”
David opened his mouth to speak, but then caught Evelyn’s eye and shut it again as he followed along after her. She bought a single gourmet lollipop, and shortly after making the purchase, they found their way out to the hotel pool.
It was a beautiful, though chilly, spring day and Katie splashed merrily about in the shallow end of the heated pool under the watchful eye of a very sullen looking Zachary. She wore a purple bathing suit and bright orange water wings. When she caught sight of David and Evelyn she smiled even wider.
“Hey, I know you!” she cried out. “You’re friends with Uncle Marcus.” She flailed her arms about and looked at Zachary expectantly. “Zach ooouut!” she whined.
Zachary gave David and Evelyn an evil look and went to the side of the pool to lift Katie out, and then placed a towel around her. Katie hurried over to Evelyn and David and Evelyn smiled down at her.
“We have to go home now, but we got you a present. I hope that you like lollipops!”
Katie’s eyes got wide. “I do!” she said gleefully.
“We thought that you might,” David jibed.
Evelyn gave Katie the lollipop and then the three of them sat down in some patio chairs while she started in on the candy. Zachary hung in the background looking supremely bored and flinging himself down into a lawn chair.
“Do you want to see my finger monster?” asked Evelyn.
Katie, not willing to remove the sucker from her mouth to answer, nodded her head vigorously. Evelyn deliberately stuck out her tongue in mock concentration as she wove her fingers into an intricate arrangement resembling a monster complete with wide mouth, eyes, and pinky antennae that she wriggled for the little girl’s benefit. Katie giggled around the lollipop and looked over at David eagerly.
“Oh, um…”
David held up his hands and started trying to mimic what Evelyn had done, but he couldn’t quite get his fingers to go the right way. Katie laughed even harder at David’s ineptness and clapped enthusiastically when Evelyn mimed her finger monster eating David’s knotted fingers.
“Katie?”
“Hmmm?”
“How did you get that scratch on your forehead?” Evelyn delicately kissed the mark with the finger monster.
Katie just shrugged. Trying not to show her disappointment, Evelyn just smiled and made the finger monster gobble at Katie’s bare arm, eliciting a shriek of mirth. The bathing suit gave them a pretty clear view of most of her body and it was true, there was nothing like a bite mark anywhere on her. In short order the lollipop was no more and Katie was chewing happily on the stick.
“Well, we really have to go now.” Evelyn held out her hand. “I better take that stick before you go back in the water,” she said pinching up her face in exaggerated seriousness.
Katie relinquished the stick to Evelyn and then gave her and David hugs. Apparently they were friends now. She then threw her towel in Zachary’s general direction, ran, and jumped back into the pool. Evelyn carefully wrapped the stick in its wrapper and pocketed it. As they walked back into the hotel, David suddenly understood.
“You wanted a DNA sample from her,” he said under his breath.
Evelyn nodded.
“Will that be enough?”
“I think so,” said Evelyn hopefully.
14
Things almost went back to normal for a few weeks. Clem was still missing without a trac
e or a word, and nothing new surfaced regarding Katie, who had gone to live in California with one of the female Wahya members that Evelyn didn’t know personally. Nothing else strange happened. It was a blessing and a curse. Last time when things had started to go bad for Evelyn, they had spiraled out of control right from the start. This badness seemed more insidious somehow, and Evelyn found herself expecting something more to happen at every turn. It was an almost unbearable tension, made only a little better by her and David’s reconciliation. They were much warmer to each other now and there were a few more kisses here and there, but mainly they were busy.
Evelyn went back to work and had to deal with a very grumpy Dr. Alverez who berated her for taking off time from the clinic whenever she felt like it. She knew that she had to put in at least a week or two this time before her and David took another weekend down at the lab in Tennessee. It frustrated Evelyn to no end, but she needed her income from the clinic to pay the rent and also had to catch up on some work so as not to lose her position with the USDA, so they decided to put off going to the lab for two weeks. That didn’t mean that Evelyn didn’t still often spend several hours a night pouring over books and journal articles on viruses, retroviruses, and wolves in the meantime. David researched as well, occasionally spending the night when they were up too late reading together, though on the pullout couch.
One such night David turned to her out of nowhere and said, “We should name it.”
“Name what?”
“Name the virus.”
“Oh. O.K.” Evelyn thought about it a moment. “Do you want me to name it properly? I mean based on what other viruses I think it is most closely related to?” she asked.
David shook his head. “No. I don’t think that we have to go that far. That would take time, and it’s not like we are going to publish a paper or anything. But I still think we should give it a Latin name.”
“Hmmmm. What about, Maledicam luporum?” Evelyn suggested.
“What does that mean?”
“Curse of the wolf.”
David wrinkled his nose. “It’s O.K., but I don’t like the idea of calling it a curse, seems to give it more power somehow,” David explained.
“Alright. Um, Lupus factorem? Wolf maker?” she offered.
“Ahhh, that one just sounds kinda lame.”
Evelyn gave him a look of mock offense.
“I’m sorry it does,” he insisted.
“O.K. Fine.” Evelyn furrowed her brow in thought. “Languorem luporum. The sickness of wolves.”
“Languorem luporum. The sickness of wolves,” David repeated. “I like it. I don’t think that many other Wolfkin will like it, but I think that it fits.”
“That settles it then. Languorem luporum it is,” Evelyn declared.
*
Things were going along well and everything was coming together just as planned. David and Evelyn packed and were ready to set off to the lab in Tennessee first thing on Friday. Evelyn had put in her two-plus weeks at the clinic and she couldn’t wait to get back to work at the lab. But then, Murphy’s Law reared its ugly head the Wednesday before they were going to leave. Evelyn’s mother called. Her grandfather on her father’s side had passed away and the funeral was scheduled for Saturday afternoon. The news didn’t shock Evelyn. Her father’s father had been ill for many years and she wasn’t that close to him. But it did throw a terrible wrench into their plans. There was just no way Evelyn could skip out on the funeral, so after much consternation, they finally decided to reschedule their Tennessee trip for the following weekend. Evelyn doubly hated to do that because it would be close to the full moon again and Saturday would mark the start the five day Wolfkin cycle, which would mean that they would lose working through the night on Saturday and Sunday. But it was better than nothing and Evelyn desperately wanted to get back to the lab, so there was nothing for it.
The funeral was terrible, as most funerals are, and it was an hour and a half away, in Dearborn. David came with Evelyn despite the fact that she told him clearly that he didn’t have to go. The funeral home smelled of cleaning fluids and dead flowers, and was dark and somber, as funeral homes are supposed to be. There were not that many people there as the family tree was slightly sparser on her father’s side. Evelyn hated to see her father so upset, and she too was sad, if only because she hadn’t known her grandfather well and now she never would. Her mother made a bit of a fuss about the way the flowers had been arranged, but Evelyn knew it was just a smoke screen to hide her grief. Evelyn’s sister was also there with her three nieces and three nephews, but they stayed mainly in the lounge to contain the inherent chaos in six children under fifteen years of age.
Evelyn and David spent most of their time in the lounge too, visiting with Evelyn’s sister and helping to stem the pandemonium by corralling the children. David was gifted at entertaining children even though he had been a bit standoffish with Katie. Evelyn suspected it had something to do with the fact that he couldn’t help but imagine what would happen to her later down the road and that he didn’t want to get too attached to her.
After the funeral, Evelyn’s sister had to take the children home, but her folks invited her and David out for a bite to eat at a nearby Italian restaurant.
“So how’s work going, Honey?” Evelyn’s mom, as always, was adept at avoiding what she considered unpleasant topics of conversation such as the funeral they had just come from. “Any more…er…problems?”
By ‘problems’ Evelyn knew that her mother meant any more strange occurrences or break in’s that might have again endangered her youngest daughter.
“No mom, everything’s been fine,” Evelyn assured her, though she couldn’t resist casting a surreptitious glance in David’s direction. “Remember I told you that we an added an alarm system and a security camera?”
“Oh that’s right. Good.”
“You look tan Dave. Did you and Evie take a trip down to Florida recently?”
Evelyn was surprised that her father noticed that David was even there let alone the slight coloring of his skin from their hiking back and forth to the lab. She looked over at her dad and he was eyeing David thoughtfully. Her parents had met David a few times before so it was odd for her father to seem suddenly interested in him.
“Ah, no, but we do some hiking.”
Evelyn’s mom appeared mystified by her father’s sudden strange observatory outburst, but rapidly recovered her composure and pressed the conversation into safer, more mundane topics like the weather and a cute cat photo she’d seen on the internet. After dinner, the long drive back to Lansing gave Evelyn and David a good excuse to head out early.
“Take care of yourself, and don’t forget to get the oil changed in that car.”
“I promise I won’t forget.” Evelyn hugged her dad for an extra few seconds then turned to her mom.
“You and David should come over for dinner sometime soon,” her mother prodded, giving Evelyn a tight hug as David shook hands with her father.
“Yeah, soon,” Evelyn hedged.
*
On the way back Evelyn fought the urge to turn the car south and head to Tennessee, but she knew that she quite literally could not afford to take off a whole week of work at the moment. David could see that she was tense. He guessed at what was upsetting her.
“I know, I really want to get back to the lab too, but just one more week.”
“I know. I just can’t shake this bad feeling. It’s like trouble is brewing. And I just can’t believe that Clem hasn’t turned up, you know? I keep expecting him to show up any moment saying something like, ‘Evie, darlin’ you jest would not be-lieve what happened to me on the way to your house the other day!’” Evelyn mimicked Clem’s accent with a touch of sad amusement in her voice.
“I know, Evie. I miss him too.”
“Do you think that the Vulke have him…or killed him?”
“I don’t know. But if they did,” David cracked his knuckles menacingly, “they’ll be s
orry.”
*
“Why haven’t we killed him yet?”
Viktor sighed heavily. “And what precisely would killing him accomplish, Anton?”
Anton strode over to the table where Viktor was sitting and slammed his hand down on the cracked wooden surface. “Ridding the world of a filthy, unholy beast! That’s what!”
Viktor was unmoved. “Dah, one filthy, unholy beast. We know this one is part of a pack. We set the trap, use him as bait, and rid the world of many filthy, unholy beasts.”
“But why wait? Why wait until they are in their beast forms? Why not draw them in now and kill them?” Anton ranted.
“Listen to me. When they are not in their true form they can fool us. They can act like a man even think a little like a man. They may even fool the local authorities into believing that we have done something wrong. It complicates things when they are not in their wolf forms. When they are wolves, we have all the advantages. They are animals then, rabid animals. Simple to trap and simple to kill,” Viktor explained, losing patience.
Anton stalked away thinking, but then turned again to Viktor. “If you think that they can think, if you think that they can convince humans of things, then why do you leave him alone with Dmitry? Dmitry is young and foolish. What if he convinces Dmitry to let him go? Huh, what then?” he accused.
Viktor’s patience had gone. He stood.
“Enough! Enough of this foolishness, Anton! Do you think I have not been watching?” he shouted pointing to the monitor in the corner of the small room. “Dmitry will not be moved by the beast. He does not speak English and it does not speak Russian.”
15
James sat on the comfortable leather of his therapist’s couch staring at the painting on the wall behind her armchair. It was an abstract oil painting in rich reds and gold. As usual it reminded him of blood. He tried to concentrate on what his therapist, Dr. Jenny Haraldsen, was saying, but his mind wandered as it often did during his therapy sessions. Occasionally he imagined himself and Dr. Jenny in a more intimate setting instead of in her office, but more often they wandered back to the past or to his job.