Lycanthropy Files Box Set: Books 1-3 Plus Novella

  “Gabriel? Is that you?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said and sniffled. “Sorry, dusty parlor. What’s up?”

  “Well, it took me, Max, and Iain looking through Otis’s charts and figuring out his code—the key is on the laptop Garou has—but we came up with another interesting connection between the Rial family and the Council.”

  My toes grew cold in spite of the stuffy room. “What?”

  “Selene and Curtis—both of them—are related to Dimitri Corvair through their mother. Closely. I don’t know what it means, but—”

  “But Morena is in danger. Sorry to interrupt you, Lonna, but I have to run.” Indeed, I already ran down the hallway and followed Morena’s and Dimitri’s scents to her offices. As the leader, she was the only one who rated a nice suite on the ground floor. Their voices came to me in the hall.

  “This is irrelevant!” Dimitri yelled. I’d never heard him raise his voice before, and here he was almost snarling.

  “Why did you give your blood to be tested?” asked Morena. “You could’ve abstained.”

  “How was I to know my great nephew was a test subject and my great niece would be an Institute employee? I had to manage appearances.”

  I flung the door open, but they stood with no weapons other than their words. “I think this would be a better discussion to have with the Council,” I told them. “They need to have the entire story.”

  Dimitri gave me a smile that chilled me to my core. “Oh, I agree, Investigator. Lead the way.”

  26

  Once we’d all assembled in the Council Chamber, Morena started with a call to order. I looked around as she read the minutes of the last meeting—which I’d not been invited to, but which didn’t mention me or my situation. I still felt that power coiled at my solar plexus, my third chakra, some would say, but it lay quiet like it waited for something. I, too, waited and dreaded the words that would make the previous evening’s horror real. Finally they came.

  “As you know,” Morena said, “David Lachlan was investigating the Order of the Silver Arrow for the Council.”

  “Where is he, anyway?” asked Cora Campbell. “I cut a trip short to be here. He should be more considerate.”

  “I’m sure he would have been here,” Morena told her, “had he not died in his home last night.”

  Cora’s mouth fell open in genuine shock. I hung my head in sorrow but watched the reactions of the others. Dimitri’s face drained of color, making his black hair, stubble, and eyebrows even starker against his skin. Everyone looked truly horrified and saddened by David’s passing, but it made my job harder. And then things got worse.

  “Why doesn’t Gabriel look more shocked?” asked Cora. “You two were friends.”

  “I was the one who found him, so I already knew.”

  “And I assume you’ve talked to Garou?” Dimitri said. “Morena, will the detective be here today to give us a report?”

  “He will,” she said, but she shot a helpless look at me.

  “I have not yet spoken with Garou about it,” I said. “I was injured and had to seek medical attention, and then Morena woke me this morning.”

  Dimitri sniffed. “I’m not sure what kind of attention he was seeking, but I can tell you it wasn’t medical, at least not all the way.”

  Dammit! “My personal life is none of your business,” I told him.

  “But the Council and what happens to its members is,” Dimitri pushed. “Let me guess, you were with that pretty little redheaded scientist, weren’t you?”

  “Again, that’s none of your concern.”

  “And who did you seek help from? We know that Maximilian Fortuna, the wizard wanted by his own Tribunal for use of questionable magic, and that silver Fey visited you last night. Was that your ‘medical attention’?” He stood and pointed a finger at me. “Lady Morena, I submit for consideration that our own Council Investigator has been consorting and possibly conspiring with enemies of our kind.”

  The other members jumped in on the uproar, and it was impossible to tell who as for and who was against me in the din.

  “And what about you, Dimitri?” I asked when I could break into the shouting. “What secrets have you been keeping from us? Or trying to?” I stopped. I couldn’t say anything about Selene and Curtis’s involvement with the Order of the Silver Arrow without endangering all of us.

  “You’ve been withholding information just as you are now,” he sneered.

  My temple gave a little throb. I should’ve guessed the tension would blossom into a migraine, or would try to. “I can’t share all the information without jeopardizing the investigation,” I told him. A couple of people nodded, but the rest sat in stone-faced silence, their expressions neither accusatory nor supportive, but more curious. It was then I understood the dynamics at play.

  How could I be so stupid? David was dead. He’d been the senior male member of the pack, and although Morena was our leader, the remaining males would then be vying for alpha position. Not Keith, a firm beta who had never shown any desire for leadership and whose graying temples and rounded features watched with curiosity. That left Dimitri, whose behavior suddenly made more sense beyond his hiding his connections to the Institute. I wondered if finding out his niece and nephew were so close made him change his vote. He would be reprimanded for not acknowledging them since it was important for us to keep track of our own kind so we could protect the human population.

  “I would like to propose a replacement for Council Member Lachlan,” Cora said. Her mask of clueless observation melted away to reveal a shrewd expression. “I would like to propose Bartholomew Campbell as our new male council member.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “He has no genetic link to the Council.”

  “Ridiculous!” Dimitri said. “He has not demonstrated the moral fiber necessary to sit at this table. Need I remind you of his infidelity?”

  Instead of recoiling from the harsh fact, Cora leaned in. “You call it infidelity, but is an alpha male not permitted to take whatever female he wants from his pack? His actions have all been with my consent.”

  “Even his actions abroad?” I asked. “With those outside of our knowledge and kind?”

  Her features drew in like I’d just forced a very sour pickle into her mouth. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Damn, I would have to reveal one of Selene’s secrets, but I didn’t know how to get around it. “He has an illegitimate son by an American woman, a boy who manifested the full spectrum of CLS symptoms.”

  “Preposterous!” Cora sputtered. “Prove it.”

  “Otis LeConte was going to prove it. He was working on making genetic connections between known werewolves and found something indicating one of our first test subjects was related to Bartholomew.”

  “How? Bartholomew refused to give a sample.”

  “He got one somehow.”

  She smacked the table. “There must be some sort of mistake. Let’s get back to the matter at hand, not airy-fairy accusations.” She pointed at Morena. “These are dire times, and we need a full Council to take a vote on the abomination that is the Institute before it further endangers us and our kind.”

  “The Institute is only a building, Council Member,” Morena said. “It cannot threaten you any more than this table can.”

  “Then the people who make it up.” And, with a poisonous glance at me, “And those who advocate for it. Even beyond its stated mission, which in itself is an abomination to ‘cure’ people of this gift. First it brought danger into our midst, then it risked exposure of our secrets to the humans, and now it is the vehicle for unfounded accusations toward our businesspeople.”

  “Investigator McCord, can you produce the sample from Bartholomew Campbell that LeConte analyzed?”

  “I wish I could, but it was stolen along with all the others from the Institute.”

  Another uproar, this time with fear.

  Keith’s quiet voice cut through the chaos. “Garou’s latest report
mentioned a theft of samples, but it didn’t say of what. We should have pressed further.”

  “Now we’re all in danger,” squeaked Tabitha, the youngest female Council member. With her short brown hair, small mouth, and big eyes, she looked like a frightened rabbit. “Whoever has it can use blood magic against us.”

  I wanted to argue and negate the fear, but I couldn’t. Was that what had allowed whoever it was to kill David in so gruesome a manner? I swallowed around a choking feeling.

  “I promise I have leads, and I am following them,” I said. “It’s not necessary to take precipitous action or fill a lifelong position out of fear. That would be the worst mistake of all.”

  “Oh, come now,” said Dimitri. “It seems that the more you ‘investigate,’ the more danger we all end up in. Are you finding out true facts or just uncomfortable family secrets that may or may not be true?”

  He, of course, seemed relieved to find out the blood samples were gone because there went the proof of his deception as well. The more I discovered and pieced it all together, the more it seemed that the murders at the Institute and the theft went above me.

  Everyone has their secrets, Reine had said. I’d discovered Selene’s, but it seemed the Council had an ugly secret of its own with full complicity of all except…

  I looked at Morena. She closed her eyes, sighed, and said, “I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this.”

  “Come to what?” I asked.

  “Don’t do it, Morena,” Tabitha whispered. “Oh, gods, don’t.”

  “Do it,” Dimitri snarled. “Let him show what kind of wolf he is since he cannot prove he’s an honest man.”

  “I am an honest man,” I said. “But I am not trusting, especially of wolves who conspire against fixing a process we allowed to go on too long to begin with.”

  That got their attention. “What process?” asked Cora. “What sort of new distraction is this?”

  I spoke over my heartbeat, which sped up in time to the incrementally thickening tension in the room. My fingers and toes tingled like when I walked into Veronica’s shop, and I became aware of the cool weight of the fluorite around my neck under my shirt.

  “We knew of the sudden increase in full CLS in the States, and you sent me to investigate. Then you sat on my report and refused to allow me to proceed.”

  “You got distracted,” Dimitri said. “By Landover’s granddaughter. And then her friend. Who you brought here to head up the Institute. See? We did allow you to proceed.”

  “You allowed me to set up the Institute because you felt guilty. Had you heeded my warnings of the small colonies of werewolves popping up in the States earlier, it wouldn’t have been necessary. We could have stopped the epidemic.”

  “This is all irrelevant,” Cora put in. “We need a full Council to deal with this new threat, whatever killed David Lachlan. Bartholomew is waiting just in the other room.”

  “The Council killed David,” I snarled at her. “How do I know you didn’t have anything to do with it? I smelled Otis LeConte’s killer at your husband’s company headquarters. Perhaps you and he set up David in a similar fashion so you could force him onto the Council.”

  “I won’t have you slandering my wife in that fashion!” Bartholomew Campbell strode in, fists clenched.

  “No one has slandered anyone,” Morena said. “Mister Campbell, this is a closed meeting, and you are not on the Council.”

  “Yet,” he said. “Allow me to make my case. According to your bylaws, any related member of a current or former Council member can apply for a vacancy, and it’s obvious things have gotten out of control. Consequently—”

  “Council bylaws,” Morena put in, “state that the application may be made verbally or physically at the discretion of the Council Chairperson.” She rapped the table. “I choose physically.”

  “As in combat?” Bartholomew flexed his broad shoulders. “Fine. I’ll take on any of these flyweights.” His gaze fell on me.

  I glanced at Morena, and she nodded.

  “What? McCord?” he asked with a sneer. “You’d have me fight the pup?”

  “Not a pup any longer,” she said. “Gabriel Stuart McCord, I hereby summon forth your full alpha. Fight for the honor of the Council and your pack.”

  27

  The sensation that had been simmering under my skin and centered in my solar plexus burst inward and outward simultaneously. I dropped to my knees and shook my head to clear the roaring from my ears. Then I recognized the roar for what it was and picked it apart into individual sounds—the heartbeats of the Council members, their chairs scraping across the stone floor under the rug, the rug fibers as they bent and straightened under the weight of chair legs and shoes, and underneath it all, the satisfied growl of Bartholomew Campbell.

  “Do you know what he will be?” Tabitha’s frightened whisper floated to me on the stream of other sounds.

  “I’m hoping he will be like his father, who was a phenomenal fighter,” Morena’s reply came next.

  “Yes, Simon McCord was a fine specimen,” Keith agreed. “But shouldn’t we hold this in the arena?”

  “It’s still closed due to flood damage,” Morena said. “They’ll just have to make do here.”

  The sounds then faded in favor of the sense of touch, each nerve ending tingling. Now I felt all the little stitches in my clothing and the pressure of my belt and watch. All my senses went through that enhancement, then fading to let another one through, until they all fit together and concentrated on one thing: my heartbeat.

  It beat, and I breathed, and it thudded, and I breathed, and with each throb, something expanded outward from it and transformed me physically. This wasn’t the painful transformation of most of my years. Nor was it the easy quick ones of the past few days. I felt the strength of boulders, the persistence of ice, the passion of flames, and the freedom of the wind. It made me into a creature of the elements, but especially of earth, with which I felt a bond like I never had before. When I opened my eyes, I saw not brown fur, but gray, and bigger paws than I’d ever transformed into previously.

  “Magnificent,” someone breathed.

  I stood and shook off the remnants of my clothes. Veronica’s fluorite hung on a chain around my thick neck, and it buzzed with power I’d not been able to sense before. When I looked around the room, I ticked off who people were: Keith—no threat, Tabitha—no threat, Morena—co-alpha, Cora—threat, but not too big of one, Dimitri—threat to keep an eye on, Bartholomew—

  Bartholomew had also transformed into a large wolf, this one all black, and he watched me with shrewd eyes. Now with human niceties stripped away, we could regard each other as the enemies we’d always been.

  “You clean up surprisingly well,” he said. “Not the ball of scruff I expected you to be.”

  I wanted to respond, but I was too busy analyzing the combination of scents he was putting off. I smelled his surprise and a little fear. Perhaps it had always been there.

  “I’m glad I can keep you on your toes,” I finally replied. “You’re about what I expected. Tell me, did you leave your little traitor back in the Hebrides?”

  “Who? Jade?” he asked. “She was the one who insisted Cora and I return. She said she had a vision something had gone terribly wrong.”

  “I’m sure she did.” Now we circled each other, teeth bared, but the human part of my brain latched on to his revelation. “You do know she’s a wizard, right?”

  “No, she’s one of us. I smell it on her. I smell it with her.” He licked his lips, and I gave him a disgusted look.

  “You would say such things with your wife in the room? Can’t you see, Bartholomew? You were set up. We were set up.”

  “What, are you afraid of a fight?” He switched direction, and I almost ran into him. He nipped me on my rump. “No matter how big you are, you’re still a pup,” he growled.

  “And you’re an idiot. You’ve been sleeping with a vargamore. She orchestrated all of this.”

 
His stride faltered. “To what end?”

  “To destroy us. To create dissent within the Council. To gain control of the reversal process. She’s going to use it against us or is going to sell it to the Young Bloods.”

  “I don’t have time for your conspiracy theories!” He launched himself at me, and he knocked the wind out of me. I twisted away before his hind claws could find my abdomen and backed up to regroup. He gained his feet and came directly at me again.

  “How did you meet Jade?” I asked and dodged him.

  “Is this a fight or an interrogation?” he snarled.

  “Why not both?” This time I nipped his shoulder and leaped away, but I misjudged and knocked into a chair. I found myself needing to become accustomed to my new, larger wolf body. What I lacked in maneuverability, I had gained in strength, but it was taking time to find my balance.

  “Fine,” he growled. “I’m happy to point out how stupid you’ve been.”

  “As long as I get the information I need, I’ll take whatever you can give me in whatever form.” He lunged at me, and I leapt over him, grazing his back with my claws. “First blood.”

  “You’re not fighting fair,” he said. “Sit still.”

  My hackles rose at his command. “I think not. Now my question—how did you meet Jade?”

  He huffed and circled me again. “She came to the office with resume in hand looking for a job. Nothing interesting.”

  “Who hired her?”

  “Probably one of the HR people.” He dodged my feint.

  “And how did she become your personal secretary?”

  “The girl who was my secretary had an”—he stopped and blinked—“accident. No one could prove it was foul play, but there was talk. It happened about a year ago.”

  “When we were first talking about the Institute.” This time I took advantage of his mental confusion and made a full direct assault. We rolled in a mass of fur and teeth and fangs, and I finally had him by the neck. A whimper came from the other side of the room—Cora.