Lycanthropy Files Box Set: Books 1-3 Plus Novella

by Cecilia Dominic

“And see which one you opened first.” She slammed both fists down on the desk, which toppled an antique inkwell. I righted it before it could spill. “Dammit, Gabriel, this case goes beyond anything you’ve looked into for us, and it’s got more diplomatic pitfalls than you can imagine.”

  “Oh?” Now she had me intrigued. I could forget the insult.

  She ran a hand through her short gray hair. “We’ve been fighting the press away from the Institute for months now, basically since we started building it. Now we have to be careful that the human press doesn’t get hold of this story. It’s bad enough our community will know.”

  “So we deflect the humans. Business as usual. What else?”

  “I’m getting to it. After months of silence on the issue, the International Wizard Tribunal has come forward to say they do not support the project, and they want to pull Maximilian Fortuna off the staff. We’re trying to negotiate his staying.”

  A low whistle escaped my lips. “If we don’t have him, we don’t have an Institute.”

  “Right, and that’s why the wizards want to pull him. They haven’t come out and said it, but they’re on the side of the Purists. They believe this thing is a gift, and no one should take it away, especially not using a forbidden form of magic.”

  “Blood magic is only part of the process. They haven’t told me the whole procedure. It’s proprietary, at least until they perfect it and can share it with the world.”

  “No one knows it, and it makes the wizards antsy because they can’t study it and the lycanthrope Purists unhappy because they see it as reversing something that they have a birthright to.”

  I ground my teeth. It was an argument that just wouldn’t go away. “We’re not taking anything away from them.”

  “No, but they’re afraid nevertheless.”

  “What does this have to do with LeConte’s murder?” I asked. “Do you think he was killed for trade secrets?”

  “That, dear Investigator, is your job to figure out as quickly and quietly as you can. I’ll stall the Council, but keep in mind that they’ll want a report very soon.” She tapped a finger on Selene’s file. “And just remember that in our world, it’s rare that something is exactly as it seems.”

  Morena’s cheerful visit left me with difficulty focusing. Her words swirled around my brain, especially what she hinted about Selene. As much as Morena frustrated me, she did have the admirable trait of not interfering in others’ personal lives. On the other hand, I knew next to nothing about hers. Although our rules of coupling and mating were looser than the pure humans’, and therefore she would see nothing wrong with me having a dalliance with Selene, I still had to worry about conflict of interest. And Morena’s warning about the wizards made this an even higher profile case.

  With a growl, I stood and strode out of the office.

  “Don’t forget your ten o’clock tomorrow morning,” Laura called after me.

  I waved to acknowledge I’d heard and then headed straight for the pub.

  “Straight” is a relative term in the hills of Scotland. Of course leaving the castle was never direct since my offices were in a turret, and I had to negotiate a set of winding stairs. Then I had to cross a minor hall, then the major welcome one, and another minor one to the side door to the Council and employee parking. Visitors valeted so they couldn’t leave quickly. That was mostly in place for the rare wizard who showed up.

  The thick carpeting muffled my steps in the welcome hall. No matter how many times I passed them, I couldn’t help but slow to admire the vividly drawn, albeit fading, battlefields on the tapestries.

  “Ho, Gabriel!” The booming voice stopped me just as I reached the door.

  4

  I turned to see David Lachlan, one of the Council members, waving me down. His broad stomach stretched the fibers of his sweater vest, and his curly salt and pepper hair seemed to be giving in to the force of gravity, in that more of it now clustered around his ears than the top of his head. Although some might perceive him as ridiculous, I knew his true age and abilities, and I always treated him with wariness and respect.

  In spite of his girth, he approached quickly and with more grace on his feet than one would expect. It was how he hunted both politically and as a wolf: making the prey underestimate him.

  “David,” I said and inclined my head to acknowledge his superiority in our little hierarchy. We all liked to pretend we weren’t subject to the British crown.

  “Gods, lad, I haven’t seen you in years.” He clapped me on the shoulder and propelled me toward the exit.

  “Respectfully, sir, I think it’s been months.”

  “Right, you’ve been busy with that Institute, eh? Well, I was just headed down to Marley’s for a pint. Care to join me?”

  My right temple throbbed again, and I continued to ignore it as my mind rearranged the pieces of this puzzle. I had no doubt that running into him was more than coincidence. David rarely appeared at Lycan Castle, usually only when there was a Council Meeting, and the next scheduled one wasn’t until following week.

  “I was just going there myself,” I said and opened the door to outside. “After you.”

  “Ah, beautiful day, isn’t it?” he asked. “I ran here this morning, so I’ll let you drive.”

  His admission made me raise my eyebrows. To run to the castle was to do so in wolf form, and we all had fully appointed bathrooms with showers and changes of clothes in our office suites. Something must have gotten him excited to go through the trouble, and I worried it might have been my meeting at the Institute today. It also made me wonder if and how he had heard about the murder.

  I unlocked my convertible BMW and allowed the top to open. “I would have, but I had an appointment before coming.”

  “So I heard. We can discuss that mess at the pub.”

  He leaned back and put on his sunglasses, obviously not willing to talk about it further in spite of us being less likely to be overheard in the car. I wondered again what game he was playing.

  Sometimes all you have to do is be seen and not heard.

  I lowered my own sunglasses. My father’s voice intruded into my memories whenever I felt the tangled web of politics tighten around me, and I always wished he hadn’t died when I was so young so he could have guided me through this inherited position and the crazy games that went with it. Once I had achieved adulthood, David had appeared occasionally in my life to give me a nudge in the right direction, but like Morena, he tended to be hands-off.

  The side drive to Lycan Castle had once been a hunting trail into the thick forests around the hill and its base. Not that the forests spread too far these days, but there were still animals there to be chased and eaten as well as streams with cozy bends and stone outcroppings where one could take a certain red lady wolf…

  “Keep your eyes on the road, my boy.”

  I jerked aware from my reverie and corrected my steering around a sharp curve. The car handled beautifully, and David didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t move, and his hands remained relaxed, one tapping on his thigh along to the Celtic music on the radio, and the other draped over the side of the door. I gripped the wheel, which had gone slick under my palms. The desire for a pint left me, replaced by the need for a shot of whiskey and then the thought that either might not be advisable since I was about to have intoxicating beverages at the pub with a potential enemy. My mind was already slipping since my father’s voice sounded like it came from the backseat instead of inside my brain.

  “You look ill, Gabriel,” David said once we got out to the main road and the shadows of trees alternated our path with light and dark.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “We can talk about it at the pub.”

  He nodded. “Sometimes I can’t help but see your father when I look at you.”

  “Why? Was he often ill?” I tried to make it a jest, but I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my tone since the portly man next to me had known my father for decades, and I for barely one.

 
“No, he was one of the healthiest men I knew. One of the smartest too. It’s too bad he had to get himself killed.”

  “Not everyone has your knack for survival, David.”

  “Thankfully I was born after Culloden, we didn’t have money for an army commission, and I’d allowed myself to age to the point where I couldn’t be drafted by the time the first Great War broke out. Otherwise, I might not have. Your father could have done the same, but he had his vanity, handsome bugger. You seem to have gotten his looks and his smarts but not the ego.”

  I tried to listen for the meaning behind his words, but this was the first time he’d opened up to me about my father.

  “He’s warming you up to say more than you would otherwise. Thankfully he still can’t talk about me without insulting me.”

  I pulled the car into a spot in front of Marley’s and took a few deep breaths to clear my head. The rearview mirror beckoned me from my peripheral vision. Should I look in it and see if my father’s ghost sat in the backseat, glowering back at me? Did my hope make me a fool? Or did my avoidance of doing so make me a coward?

  I got out of the car without looking and joined David at the front door, where a pretty blonde girl in a short kilted skirt smiled at him.

  “Careful, you look old enough to qualify as a dirty old man,” I told him once we’d been seated in a booth in the corner. It was the most discreet booth in the place, and I immediately went on guard, even more than I had been on the drive with just David to worry about.

  “I’m old enough to qualify as one many times over,” he said. “Just because I have a couple of centuries under my belt and haven’t taken a wife for a while, it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a good flirt.”

  I couldn’t say anything considering how my thoughts kept straying to Selene.

  “So is the Institute ready to go, then?” David asked once we’d put in our orders for two Lagavulins—neat—and two Scotch eggs to absorb the alcohol.

  “They’ve had a small setback,” I said and leaned back.

  He arched a bushy eyebrow. “Aye, do tell. And don’t leave anything out. I’ll be getting the report tomorrow.”

  I heard what he didn’t say, that if something major had occurred, it would require a majority vote on the Council to allow the Institute to continue, and he liked to be the first to know.

  “One of the geneticists died.”

  “Oh, is that all?” He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Find another one. They’re both human, right?”

  “It’s not that simple,” I said. “The way he died was rather unpleasant.”

  This time both eyebrows went up. We didn’t typically minimize things. “As in he’s a full-blooded human who is no longer in possession of his full volume of blood.”

  “Yes,” I said, relieved I wouldn’t have to describe it in a public place in spite of the low likelihood that someone would overhear.

  “Any leads yet?”

  I shook my head. “It only just happened this morning. I’m waiting for the report from the detective, and I’ll go from there.”

  “That’s not like you, Gabriel. I know you as a man of action. You’re not one to think too much.”

  “I’ve grown up,” I snapped and would have said more except our drinks and snacks arrived.

  He held up his Scotch. “To those departed, both long and recent.”

  “Slàinte. So would you care to tell me why you brought me here? We could have discussed this at Lycan Castle.”

  He leaned forward and cradled the square Scotch glass with both hands. “I have my own concerns that may not be those of others. I’ve heard rumors that the Wizard Tribunal wants to pull Maximilian Fortuna from the Institute. From what I understand, he does his own thing, but they’re willing to do anything to make sure he doesn’t continue. Something about bad blood or some such.”

  “Blood magic,” I said and mimicked his posture. The peaty smell of the amber liquid wafted around me, giving me its familiar comfort. “It’s a forbidden art, but necessary for the CLS reversal, or at least that’s what they think. We trust that Doctor Fortuna can handle the ability without any bad effects.”

  “Have they actually tried it yet? Has he?”

  “The first batch of test subjects was just recruited. As for him, I don’t know. He seems a smart man, so I would imagine he would know his limits. And if he didn’t, his wife would.” Lonna’s concern flashed into my brain, but I pushed it aside for now.

  “It seems like you’re building your case, not to mention a multimillion dollar Institute, on a lot of what ifs.”

  “We have to try, David. Lycanthropy isn’t for everyone, and those who have been turned against their will deserve a shot at returning to a normal life.”

  “And what about those who were born with it? What if they want to give it up?”

  My jaw dropped. “David, are you…?”

  He shook his head. “Not me, but I know of some who are unhappy that the reversal process is only being offered to those who were changed through pharmaceutical means.”

  I’d heard rumors that some born lycanthropes would want to give it up. “How desperate are they?”

  “Desperate enough that they’ve been lobbying certain Council members hard that if they don’t get a shot at reversal, no one should.”

  Now I understood his motivation in bringing me here: others would know he stood with me, and I with him, but I still didn’t understand his agenda.

  “So why do you care so much?”

  He leaned back. “I see potential for other applications of this process, or parts of it. I won’t say what here, but I have my reasons for being behind you.”

  “And who isn’t?”

  “As much as Morena likes to talk progressively, she’s on the fence. Keith is also waffling now. He has a lot of young wolves in his district who want the choice even if they wouldn’t take it. Dimitri is firmly in support of the genetic wolves who want the reversal option, and Cora, being who she is, is against reversal for anyone at all. Finally, Tabitha tends to go with Morena, as you know.”

  “But the establishment of the Institute was a unanimous vote. I remember it clearly. How have we lost so much ground?”

  “Word of what it is and what it will do got out. You know how that goes.”

  “Aye.” Annoyingly, I did. The Council liked to talk a pro-human game because it ran counter to the Wizard Tribunal philosophy, but when the chips were down, it was every lycanthrope for himself and their biggest influencers. I’d long wondered if we’d gotten Cora’s vote because her husband had been out of town at the time. He ran the closest thing we had to a cult, and the only reason it had been allowed to continue was because his wife was on the Council. As for the others, they liked to appear altruistic, but I knew they had their own agendas.

  David’s knife cut through his egg with ease, and he poured H.P. Sauce over it. The image of LeConte’s blood dripping on to the floor came to mind.

  “So you think the incident today was an attack from one of the dissatisfied factions,” I said to keep the conversation going and prevent my mind from wandering toward uncomfortable memories.

  “Or a wizard or something else.” He took a big bite of egg, sausage, and sauce, and some of it dribbled on his chin. Or maybe that was drool because his eyes widened at something behind me, and he licked his lips. “Now that’s something you don’t see every day,” he mumbled once he’d swallowed most of his bite.

  “Let me guess, it’s a pretty girl.” I twisted around and saw that, indeed, it was. Selene Rial had just walked in the door, and she scanned the pub with an anxious expression on her face. I swung my legs to my right to exit the booth and go to her, but I felt an invisible hand on my arm.

  “Just wait,” the voice from the car said in my ear. Every single one of my hairs stood on end, and the room spun. I clutched the table for support.

  “Now you really do look ill,” David said. He pushed my Scotch toward me. “Or like you’ve seen a ghost.”


  “I haven’t seen one yet,” I managed to say. I caught a glimpse of red in the mirror at the back of the pub and observed Selene’s movements that way. She met up with a man with dark hair and followed him outside. I took a deep breath, the warmth in my chest at seeing Selene at war with the cold warning in my ear.

  “I never knew you for a fan of redheads,” David said. He’d abandoned silverware to swipe the egg through the sauce on his plate with his fingers, and I could picture the little boy he’d been. He likely hadn’t had such treats growing up under the oppressive thumb of the English in the late eighteenth century. I cut a sliver from my egg and tasted it, but it might as well have been fried sawdust. I pushed it away.

  “There’s something magical about them,” I said. “Hang on, she shouldn’t be here. I’m going to try and hear what they’re saying.”

  I pretended I had a phone call so no one would bother me on my way out and wandered outside. I hid behind a large shrubbery and closed my eyes. My wolfish senses increased. Some would say they came online, but I’d had them long before the computer age. My human ears might have wiggled, and psychically my wolf ears swiveled to and fro, picking among the sounds of the pub, parking area, and road like a child searched through pebbles on the ground to find the perfect, shiny one he’d glimpsed from above.

  There, I found it—her voice. She sounded distressed, and I once again had to resist the urge to go comfort her.

  “You weren’t very careful,” she said. “There were traces in the woods. It’s a good thing he was hot on the other trail so he didn’t find them, and I had to make sure he missed them on the way back.”

  “Well, he’s a handsome enough bloke.” The accent was English, the voice mocking. “I’m sure it was such a hardship for you.”

  “Stop kidding around. I can’t stay long. Lonna is having a gathering at her and Max’s place this evening so we can all ‘process’ the day.”

  “Get shitfaced drunk, you mean?” Again, the guy sounded amused in the face of her distress.

  “Have some respect,” she snapped. “Otis was a brilliant scientist. He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”