“What about that Arnold guy?” I asked. “He seems to have some mysterious connections.”
“Not reachable. It seems like everyone wants to play the ‘sabotage the Institute’ game,” Lonna said and pulled out a stapled stack of papers. “This is the missing application.”
“How did you get it so quickly?” I asked and took it.
“Iain has connections,” Max said.
I read through the materials for a young man Corey Richardson who had gotten Chronic Lycanthropy Syndrome from a tainted flu vaccine. Everything seemed in order. “What am I looking for?” I asked.
“Look at the copy of the ID,” Lonna said. “I thought something looked odd about it, but it wasn’t until I looked more closely that I saw it.”
The driver’s license had been copied in color. Underneath it was a note that said, “Passport pending.” I looked over the license and noticed that it had just been issued a few months before.
“So he just renewed his driver’s license?” I asked. “That’s not suspicious. It’s odd he didn’t have a passport, though it looks like he’s about to get one.”
“Right, and now look at the picture.” Lonna handed me a magnifying glass.
It showed me a young man with dark hair and blue eyes. The eyes looked familiar, but lots of people have eyes that color. Something didn’t match. “The hair looks dyed.”
“Very good,” Lonna told me. “Max suggested we do a background check—which we’re doing on everyone from now on—and this came up.”
She gave me another piece of paper. One Curtis Southerlin Rial had applied and been granted a legal name change to Corey Stuart Richardson.
“The sixth application was for Selene’s brother,” I said, and the air in the room became stale and stagnant as her lies and evasions and half-truths piled up around me.
“There’s no Corey Richardson or Curtis Rial enrolled at Stirling,” Lonna told me. “Iain’s still on faculty there, and he checked. Wherever Selene’s brother is, he’s not there.”
“Selene said Scarface and his friends had something of hers, and it was obviously important enough to be able to manipulate her. I wonder if they have Curtis. But why would he change his name to apply for the reversal process other than the obvious that his sister works at the Institute, and that would be an ethical conflict for her?” I tapped the papers. “There’s something else going on here. Whatever it is, we need to ask Selene, but it needs to be somewhere Scarface and his buddies won’t be following her.”
“Will you be seeing her again soon?” Lonna asked with a sideways glance from under her lashes.
I knew that look, a female on the hunt for gossip. “We’re going to change and run together for the full moon tonight. We were going to do so on the Institute grounds, but I’d rather be somewhere safer. David Lachlan has warded grounds. Perhaps he would let us borrow his estate.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Max said. “That way you have backup if you need it. He’s a canny old wolf. I’ve not talked to him much personally, but he does seem to see and hear a lot.”
I nodded. I would also ask him if he knew anything about the Order’s activities in the States.
My phone rang when I reached my car after having left Lonna and Max’s place. Selene.
“I can’t do tonight,” she said, her tone breathless.
“Where will you run, then?”
“I don’t know. I just… I just can’t.”
I closed my eyes, shut off my own mixed feelings, and analyzed the layers of emotion in her tone. There was fear…and anger. Mostly anger. And impatience.
“What’s pissed you off?” I asked.
A sharp inhale, and then an exhale heavy with frustration. “If you must know, that thing I’ve lost, they’re close to returning it to me, but I must meet them tonight after midnight.”
“Oh, then we’ll have a couple of hours so you can get your change and run out of your system and meet them with a clear head. And I can go with you, make sure they’re not going to pull a fast one on you or give you something other than what you’re expecting.”
She chuckled. “That would be very difficult. My…thing…is very unique. There’s only one of it.” A deep breath. “Okay, we can meet up, but I need it to be closer to the Eastern Pond, and you’re not coming with me.”
That’s what you think. The connections between my experiences wove together into a map, the ruins I’d discovered in the center. I bet that was where the vargamore was hiding.
“David Lachlan’s estate is in that area. I’m sure he won’t mind,” I said, sure to keep my tone nonchalant. “I’ll email directions to you.”
“I’ll likely be followed all evening, as usual, and I don’t want to endanger either of you. I’ll run to his place—they won’t expect that. Can you have clothing waiting for me?”
“I’ll drop by to pick some up now.” And I don’t care if they see me. They need to know you’re under my protection whether you like it or not.
Selene met me at the door. I ignored the bag she held out to me and stepped past her into the apartment. I don’t know what I was looking for, only that I wanted some evidence she hadn’t been keeping such a big secret from me, that she had some valid reason for not asking me to help her.
“I’ll draw you a map so you know where to meet me,” I said. I opened my mouth to say more, but she held her hand up.
“I’m pretty sure I can find you on the Institute grounds,” she said.
“The place I’m thinking of is easier to explain with landmarks.”
She dropped her bag by the front door and nodded. “That makes sense. I can memorize it before tonight. My paper and pen are in the office.”
She left me standing by the couch, and I studied the pictures on the end table while feeling in my pocket for the fluorite Veronica had given me. Not that I knew if it would indicate anything interesting like if the apartment was bugged through electronic or magical means. Obviously something had changed since the previous night, when she’d felt free to be open with me. I looked around to see if I could spot anything suspicious.
The photos were just of Selene and a young man I recognized from the information Lonna had given me, no parents or friends, in different settings and at different ages. Someone must have taken the pictures, I reasoned, since they were snapped from too far away to have been “selfies”. Curtis grinned, but in a few of the photos, Selene gazed off camera, her expression pensive. The Tarot deck sat on the table as well, and I slipped the two cards I’d borrowed back into it before she returned.
She stood at my shoulder as I drew a rough outline of the area with Lycan Village and Laird Hall marked. I wrote on the map, Can we talk freely here?
She shook her head.
How did you get away to call me earlier? was my next written question.
Ran to Veronica’s shop, she answered on the page. Tell you more later.
I nodded and drew the directions out for her.
“Great,” she said, “I’ll see you tonight.” She put her arms around me and leaned into me, her head on my shoulder. I wanted to believe it was a gesture of trust and desire, but there were other agendas at play, and I couldn’t be sure.
What the hell? I thought. I put my arms around her, held her close, and rested my chin on top of her head. Her shampoo smelled of lemon and some sort of herb, maybe rosemary. It was a strong scent for someone who seemed so delicate and buffered by different forces, but it reminded me that she’d kept her secret from Lonna and Max, who were two of the smartest people I knew. What chance did a guy like me who’d been out of school longer than she’d been alive and who didn’t have any kind of scientific training have to outsmart her? All I could do was hang with her and hope for the best. As I’d learned, smart people tended to get themselves in the worst trouble because there are some things you just can’t think your
way out of.
She pulled away but didn’t let go, and I gazed at her face. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes told the story—she needed something solid to hold on to, and she was scared, so scared of what was going to happen to her and her brother. For the hundredth time, I wondered what she’d gotten herself into, but this time it was followed by the realization that perhaps her brother had been the culprit all along, perhaps even since childhood. I commanded my plumbing to stand down, we didn’t need to get distracted by a pretty face and a nice set of—
She stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to mine. It didn’t take much nonverbal persuasion on her part to get my mouth to open for her, and I tangled my fingers in her hair, releasing another wave of scent that mingled with that of our desire. Although it was only afternoon, the full moon sang to my blood, wanting me to make her mine.
In front of whoever was watching or listening to us. That reminder crashed through me like the cold water of Reine’s intervention with Max, and I put my hands on Selene’s shoulders and stepped away.
“We’ll continue this tonight,” I rested my forehead on hers. “I don’t feel like putting on a show,” I whispered in her ear.
“Understood, and thank you,” she replied with a nod. She walked me to her front door and handed the bag of clothes to me. “See you tonight.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“What do you see in the lass?” David asked. “She’s pretty enough, but she’s trouble. And she’s a scientist. That’s almost akin to being a wizard.”
We stood in his kitchen, where I cooked dinner for him and Selene. She hadn’t arrived yet, so we were able to discuss her freely. Correction—he felt free to question me about her.
I sliced tomatoes for atop the rocket salad with a vinaigrette and pondered his question. “I suppose it’s because she’s beautiful, yes, but also there’s a sadness like she hasn’t ever been able to let go and enjoy herself fully. She has the same look in her eye as I remember my mother having after my father died—she’s hanging on for someone else, not for her.”
“You can’t save your mother through this girl,” David said and sipped his Scotch. “You’re only going to disappoint yourself and her by chasing that ghost.”
We both paused, but my father’s ghost didn’t make an appearance. He’d been strangely silent and absent lately after delivering his warning about the battlefield demon and the Boar King, neither of which made sense to me in my current context. I wondered if that was who or what had Selene’s brother, especially now I knew a dark Fey was mixed up in it. Every so often I looked out the window at the back lawn that stretched to the woods in hopes of seeing a small red wolf coming our way. I had her clothes in an upstairs bedroom waiting for her.
That reminded me of our encounter the previous night. “I can’t figure her out. She’s so vulnerable, but she keeps insisting she can handle her own problems. Yet she’s caught up in something big, and I know it has something to do with our Institute.”
“Do you trust her?”
I paused. “I would like to, but I don’t know yet.”
For before our run, I’d planned a dinner of venison with bramble sauce, salad, and berry tart, but as the time for Selene to arrive came and went, and the shadows from the woods lengthened to dusk, I had David eat and finally decided to go look for her.
“Be careful out there,” he warned. “My lands are warded, but the properties around me aren’t, and who knows what lurks in the woods?”
I went into an upstairs bedroom to change. It faced the east, and light from the rising moon spilled through the windows. The sensation that I’d felt in Bartholomew’s office, that of some force rising from my toes through my legs and torso and spreading outward from my solar plexus, overtook me, and I barely got my clothes off before I had to curl into a ball, contracting and then expanding into my new shape. My palms and fingers, feet and toes met the floor as paws and claws, and the warmth of fur enveloped me like a velvet blanket inside my skin. Although I felt shrunk and pushed and pulled, this transformation was still not as bad as it previously had been, and I was grateful for it.
Instead of having to catch my breath, I yawned with my wide jaws and tasted the scents of the bedroom—the cleaning products and the lemon-rosemary scent of Selene’s things. I stuck my head in her bag and sniffed them, anchoring her unique scent in my memory so I could track her.
“You look less winded than usual,” David commented when I met him downstairs. “You must be getting better at it.”
“Right. It’s another manifestation of my lycanthrope power, isn’t it?”
“Quite likely. That’s good—you’re going to need it at Monday’s Council meeting.”
“What do you mean?”
“Later. Go find your girl.”
The moonlight, warm in spite of its cool color, caressed my fur, and I had to remind myself to focus on the task at hand rather than the desire to howl and play with the moonbeams. The silvery light had never felt like anything externally before, just a desire in the blood to run with my pack. Now whatever had prompted me to change also propelled me to find Selene and protect her, who would be the first in my own little pack.
A breeze brought her scent to me, and I followed it through the woods over and under fallen trees, silvered branches and bushes. I may have found a thorn with my foot, but I shook it out and licked the rusty blood away. The single-minded purpose of finding she who I wanted to protect and make my own drove me forward. I vaulted over chasms I would not have dared to leap otherwise and ignored distractions—a badger hissing at me from its nest and one of those strange stones I’d discovered on my previous jaunt.
She stood waiting for me on a rock over a pool, and I panted, looking at her with relief and some irritation that she’d stood me and David up for dinner.
“Where were you? I was worried.”
“I couldn’t make it. They called and wanted me to come sooner, so I had to. I’ve only just now gotten here, and I couldn’t remember which way to go.”
I leapt to join her, and she pressed her body to mine. She shivered in spite of her fur.
“Lie down. I’ll keep you warm.”
She did as I said, and I curled up with her until she stopped shaking. Then I asked as gently as I could, “What happened?”
She sniffled, a surprisingly human sound for her current form. “They brought me to what I’d lost, and it was there, but it wasn’t the same as I remembered it or wanted it to be.”
“Tell me what it was. Or let me guess—your brother?”
She looked at me sharply, and the expression in her eyes told me I’d guessed right. “How did you know?”
I stood and paced. “You didn’t think we’d figure it out eventually, that the sixth file that wouldn’t upload was your brother’s application? Your friends, or whoever they are, didn’t realize that by trying to block it, they were calling attention to it.”
She regarded me with a bemused expression on her canine face. “Congratulations, Sherlock. It seemed a pretty good plan at the time, but you don’t have the whole story.”
“What is the whole story, Selene?”
“It’s the oldest story in the world, Gabriel.” She shook her head and put it on her paws. “And I didn’t see it. I’m so stupid.” The bitterness and despair in her tone drew forth my desire to protect her from whatever trouble she’d gotten herself into, but I needed more. I needed her to be honest with me.
“Tell me everything from the beginning.”
“Can we go back to David’s house? He needs to hear some of this, too. It reaches all the way up to the Council.”
Typically after I run at the full moon, I feel sated like I’ve consumed rich food and alcohol with my spirit, not my body, although sometimes I do hunt. The venison we’d had for dinner was meat from an animal I’d caught and killed at Lycan Castle. Tonight, lured on by the
promise of discovering Selene’s secrets—and I’ll admit to wanting to finish what we’d started with the stolen embrace at her apartment—I kept my alertness. That was how I knew something was terribly wrong when we arrived at Laird Hall.
On the surface, the castle looked the same, but something moved in the shadows, and it wasn’t David. The shape of my father’s ghost stepped forth, his hands up, and I slowed to a trot. I saw him just before the aroma of pipe smoke and kerosene wafted to me, and my hackles stood alert—it was the same scent I’d found at the Institute, but this time it was stronger. The perpetrator was still there, and this time he wouldn’t escape.
A hiss and spark made me skid to a halt and dart to the side as quickly as I could. Selene did likewise, and the warmth of an explosion bloomed at our backs. It knocked us off our feet, and every bit of my fur was flattened by the pressure wave. I curled around Selene so my back took the brunt of the heat, and the smell of singed hair embittered the sweet scent of the summer night.
“Are you okay?” Selene asked.
“I think so. My backside is likely bald, but I don’t feel any burns or severe injury, at least not yet. Are you all right?”
“Yes. What was that?”
“Some sort of explosive. Someone doesn’t want us getting into the house.”
“It’s the same person who killed Otis. I remember that smell.”
We kept to the shadows of the woods and circled the house. My back felt stiff, and I wondered if I could be more hurt than I thought. Thankfully the incendiary device hadn’t thrown any shrapnel, at least not in our direction. Without David to let us in, I didn’t know how we would get into the house, but I also knew he would have some way to do so. He’d spoken of secret passages, and I tried to mentally map out the dungeon as it would be beneath our feet. Not that I’d been in it, but I’d visited other houses of that age and knew the general layout.
“What are you looking for?” Selene’s mental voice still held an edge of panic.
Blood's Shadow: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 3 Page 19