HELL WAS DRIVING A BLOOD-SOAKED VAN LISTENING to two children dying in the backseat, while Grendel whined as if something were killing him. Hell was watching Jezebel run out of the Keep's gates, her face a pain-distorted mask, clench Joey's mangled body, rock him like a child, and scream and scream and scream, as if it were Jezebel who was dying. Hell was seeing fear in Doolittle's eyes when Curran carried Julie, wrapped in the sheets from my office cot, into the Keep, and then sitting in the waiting room.
Curran spoke into the phone, biting off words. "Is anybody going to tell me why our own fucking render attacked my mate?"
Barabas walked into the room. The skin of his face stretched too tight over his features, making him look sharper and fragile. He came over and crouched by me. "Can I get you anything?"
I shook my head. Curran hung up the phone.
Barabas's eyes were watering. He looked feverish and unhinged. His quiet voice shook with barely contained anger. "Did she hurt before you killed her?"
"Yes," Curran said. "I saw the body."
"That's good." Barabas swallowed. His hands shook. Technical difficulties with controlling his rage. I could relate. "Jez will be glad to hear it."
"Was Joey a relative?" I asked. My voice squeaked. I could've given a rusty metal gate a run for its money in the creaking department.
"He was the youngest of our generation," Barabas said. "Jezebel used to babysit him. We all did, but she had done it the most."
The door swung open and Jim blocked the light. Tall, dark, grim, and wrapped in a black cloak, he looked like death walking in. Jim reached into his cloak and pulled out a thin gold chain. The light of the feylanterns clutched at the gold and slid down to a small pendant. A lighthouse. A tiny diamond winked from the spot where the lighthouse lamp would have been.
"Boyfriend had it," Jim said. "Leslie broke the chain. He was getting it fixed for her birthday."
Leslie Wren was a Lighthouse Keeper.
It wasn't the hundred-mile walk through rough terrain that had hurt Julie. It wasn't a freak accident or a render gone loup. No, it was my case. Had she not been in that office, she wouldn't have been attacked. Had I ordered the trackers to bring her back to the Keep ... "Leslie's father was an engineer in Columbia," Jim said. "Made good money. About fifteen years ago the man lost his shit, quit his job, and moved the family north of Atlanta, to the countryside. He'd inherited the house from his parents. Leslie had an older brother, but he stayed in Columbia. The locals say they never saw the family much. They remember Leslie--a quiet kid in threadbare clothes. She went to school, but the parents wouldn't leave the property."
"How did they survive?" I asked.
Jim put the pendant on the table. "Lived off the land. There are deer in the woods, raccoons, small game. They must've hunted a lot. Three shapeshifters need a lot of food."
Curran glanced at me. "Explains why Leslie made a good render. She probably spent more time in her fur than in her skin growing up. It's not good for children. Messes with your head."
Jim shrugged off his cloak. "She came straight to the Pack the moment she turned eighteen. She's been with us for nine years. She was squared away. No warning signs, no problems, nothing. In hindsight, I should've asked myself why there were no problems. Most renders miss a step once in a while. She never did. She was the go-to render when we had an issue."
I leaned back. "Why would you look for trouble, when there is none?"
"She was with us for a third of her life. We treated her well." Curran leaned on the table. "I want to know why."
Jim squared his shoulders. "Teresa, one of my people, tracked down Leslie Wren's brother. She came back this morning. We'd just missed her. She says that Leslie's father, Colin Wren, had a serious case of paranoia. The mother, Liz, was a go-with-the-flow kind of woman. The brother says she was passive, didn't like confrontations. They weren't the most stable couple."
A paranoid shapeshifter with a passive mate who'd do pretty much anything he wanted to avoid a fight. That was a recipe for disaster.
Jim kept going. "When Leslie was twelve and her brother was seventeen, their mother had an affair with Michael Waterson."
"Local cat alpha of Columbia," Curran said for my benefit. "Not a bad guy. Capable."
"The affair didn't last long," Jim said. "When Colin found out, he snapped. From the way the brother tells it, he took Leslie with him out of Columbia and went to his parents' house. He gave Liz a choice: if she didn't come with him, she'd never see Leslie again."
"Used his daughter as collateral," Curran said.
Jim nodded. "The brother says she was afraid he'd do something to Leslie, so she went with him. Waterson never followed her. He says she told him not to look for her and that she was going to save her marriage. They holed up in the house. Liz wasn't allowed to leave the property. The brother was in high school at the time; he stayed behind to finish the year out. He came to visit them on his break. The dad tried to kill him. Said he was competition."
Living in that house must've been pure hell. It didn't make me regret killing Leslie. "She must've blamed Lyc-V for driving her father crazy."
Jim nodded. "Yeah."
"Bullshit," Barabas spat. "Dozens of shapeshifters deal with affairs. Marriages break. People die. We carry on. We don't abuse our mates and children."
"When did the Keepers recruit her?" Curran asked.
"We don't know," Jim said. "Had to be early on."
Something awful had happened to Leslie Wren in that house. Something that convinced her that the shapeshifters were evil, that the very magic that made their existence possible had to be destroyed. She believed it so deeply that she joined the people who hated her kind, signing her own death warrant. She had a life with the Pack, respect, friendships, a future. But whatever happened had scarred her so deeply, she threw it all away when the Keepers called.
How? How do you go from taking Julie on a hunting trip to trying to murder her? I had killed dozens, but I could never bring myself to take a life of a child. It was beyond me.
The door down the hall opened. Sander, one of Doolittle's junior medics, a tall, thin man who looked like he would snap in half any second, came out and approached us. "The boy is awake."
ASCANIO LAY ON THE BED UNDER THE COVERS. HIS face was a bloodless mask. He looked weak and small, his eyes enormous, like two dark pools on the pale face. If he were human, he would've been dead. Sander said he had hairline fractures in both legs, serious blood loss, a punctured lung, and two broken ribs. Leslie had thrown him around like a dog shaking a rat. The Lyc-V would knit him back together. A few days and he would be up and walking. But meanwhile he hurt.
I sat on his bed. Curran remained standing.
Ascanio's gaze fixed on him.
"What happened?" Curran asked.
"Aunt B's boudas came," Ascanio said, his voice flat. "Three of them. They told Andrea Aunt B wanted to talk. Andrea said no. They said, `You're coming with us one way or another.' I figured there would be trouble. Andrea looked at me and said, `Someone has to stay with the kids.' So they left Joey. He was the weakest. Grendel really didn't like him. He kept trying to bite Joey, so Andrea took him with her. Then you called and Joey told us to stay away from the damn door. Then he went upstairs, he said to sleep."
Damn boudas. I tell him he's under siege and he goes to take a nap. "About half an hour later someone knocked on the door. A woman was screaming."
Ascanio swallowed.
"Keep going," Curran told him.
"Julie said, `Come on, doorboy, aren't you going to see who it is?' And I said, `I'm not a doorboy, and if you want to know so bad, go see for yourself.' She went." Ascanio closed his eyes for a long moment. "The woman on the other end yelled, `Help me, they hurt my baby.' Julie looked out and screamed that it was Leslie. She knew her from the Pack, and Leslie was carrying a bloody kid. We knew the Pack was being attacked. We opened the door."
They saw a shapeshifter woman with a blood-smeared child and they let her in. Of course they let her in. I would've run out the door to protect her. I should've told them about Leslie. No evidence existed that the two were connected, and I didn't know. If I had, Julie wouldn't be losing her humanity right now.
Ascanio took a deep breath. "She was in warrior form when she came through the door. She knocked Julie aside. I shifted and hit her. She was too strong. I got some strikes in, but then she clawed me up. I thought she'd slice me to ribbons and then Julie jumped on her back. The cat pulled her off and bit her, hard. It happened so fast. And then Joey came running. The cat said, `Step aside, weakling. You know you can't take me.' And Joey pulled his knife and told me to protect Julie."
Ascanio squeezed his eyes shut. "Julie was already messed up. I picked her up and I ran."
His legs were broken and he'd carried Julie anyway. Whatever he did from now on, I would never forget this.
"I knew if we went out the back, she'd chase us down, so I got into the loup cage and locked the door."
He gulped the air.
I wanted to kill Leslie again. I wanted to kill her slowly and take my time.
"The cat did something to Joey to keep him from moving, because we heard Joey cussing her out. The cat came to get us, but she couldn't get through the bars. It really pissed her off. Joey was screaming and cursing, telling her she should come and pick on someone her own size. The cat went back out. And then we heard Joey scream. I wanted to go and help him, but I couldn't get up. The cat was beating him to death and I couldn't get up."
"You did everything right," I told him. "You did great. You couldn't have done more."
Ascanio's hand shook. "He died to keep us alive. Why? Why would he do that?"
"Because that's what you do," Curran said. "That's what being in the Pack means. The strong defend the weak. Joey protected you, and you protected Julie." "He didn't even know us!" He stared at us, his eyes wet. "I'm not like you. I don't want this. I don't want people dying for me. I don't want to walk around with it."
Curran leaned toward him. "Then get strong. Learn to be bad enough so others don't have to die to keep you safe."
A commotion broke out by the door.
A female voice barked, "You will let me in or I'll kill you where you stand!"
The door flew open. A muscular woman strode through, a harried expression on her face. Martina, Ascanio's mother. She saw us and halted.
"You have a brave son," Curran said. "A credit to your clan."
Down the hall the door of the emergency room opened. Doolittle walked out, wiping his hands on a towel. I slipped out of the room and marched to him. He saw me. His face wore a tight expression, like he was straining to keep things inside.
Whoever you are upstairs, please don't let him tell me that Julie's dead. Please.
I reached him. "How is she?"
"Julie has massive trauma to the shoulder, three rib fractures, and a Lyc-V infection in the third stage."
Lyc-V infection had five stages: introduction of the virus, beginning of shift, half-shift, advanced shift, and stabilization. Julie was in half-shift, which meant her body was fighting the virus to stay human.
His face was grim. Something bad was coming. I clenched up.
"Julie's bloom levels are very high."
My chest constricted. Lyc-V "bloomed" when its victim was under stress, saturating the body in great numbers. Too much, and it would put Julie over the edge. Forty percent of all Lyc-V victims went loup during the fourth stage. Julie was bitten, she was an adolescent, and she was injured. Her stress level was through the roof and her body was flooded with hormones. Her chances of going mad were astronomically high.
Someone asked, "Is she going loup?" and I realized it was me.
"Too early to tell." Doolittle rubbed his face. "Her transformation came on too fast. In all my years I've never seen it happen that fast. She started to transform almost from the moment the virus entered her system. Julie is very magical. Introducing the virus to her body was like planting a seed in fertile ground. The first transformation is always the most volatile. In a case of stable infection, the virus should've leveled off. Julie is still blooming." Oh no.
"Call to the Frenchman," Curran said. I almost jumped. He'd come up behind us and I didn't hear him. "I don't care what it costs, just get it."
"Get what?" I stared at him.
"The Europeans have an herbal concoction," Curran answered. "It reduces the chances of loupism by a third. They guard it like it's gold, but we know somebody who smuggles it out."
Doolittle's face was mournful. "I took the liberty of calling the moment she came in, my lord."
"And?"
Doolittle shook his head.
"Did you tell him who was asking?" Curran snarled.
"I did. The Frenchman sends his apologies. If he had any, he would immediately deliver it, but there is none to be had."
Curran clenched his fists and forced them open.
"What now?" I asked.
"She's under heavy sedation. The main issue right now is to make her feel secure. No loud noises, no alarming voices, no agitation. We have to keep her calm and safe. That's all we can do. I'm so sorry."
"I want to see her."
"No." Doolittle barred my way.
"What do you mean, `no'?"
"He means you're so agitated, you'll spike her virus levels by just walking in there," Curran said. "If you want her to get better, come back and see her when you're calm."
Yelling that I was calm, damn it, would only hammer home his point.
Curran turned to Doolittle. "When will we know?"
"I'll keep her under for twenty-four hours. We'll try to wake her up. If she shows signs of loupism, we can sedate her for another twenty-four. After that ..." Doolittle fell silent.
After that I would have to kill my kid. All strength went out of my legs.
I would have given anything for this to be a nightmare. All my magic, all my power, for a chance she'd wake up. "Is there any hope?" Doolittle opened his mouth and closed it without saying anything.
I turned and marched down the hallway. The Lighthouse Keepers had to have a base. Someone had to have owned or rented that van. Someone supplied them with explosive bolts. The only time I'd ever seen them used was when Andrea put two of them into a blood golem controlled by my aunt. She had to have them special-ordered.
I would find the Keepers. I would find them and murder every single one of them.
Curran caught up with me. "Where are you going?"
"I have things to do."
He barred my way. "You look like shit. You need a medic. Let Doolittle fix you."
"I don't have time for this."
He leaned to me, his voice quiet. "This isn't open to negotiation."
I unclenched my teeth. "If I don't hurt something, I'll lose it."
"Either you let him mend you now or you'll run out of gas in the middle of a fight when it counts. You know your body, you know you're at your limit. Don't make me carry you."
"Just try it."
He bared the edge of his teeth at me. "Is that a challenge, baby?"
I glared at him. "Would you like it to be, darling?"
A hulking figure loomed in the hallway. Mahon.
Thick and barrel-chested, the alpha of Clan Heavy looked like he could step in front of a moving train and force it to screech to a halt. His black hair and beard were salted with gray. He didn't like me much, but we respected each other and since Mahon was the closest thing Curran had to a father, both Mahon and I went out of our way to remain civil.
Mahon finished maneuvering his massive frame near us. "My liege. Consort."
"Yes?" Curran asked, his voice rumbling with the beginnings of a growl.
Mahon fixed us with his heavy stare. "Unlike your quarters, this hallway isn't soundproof. Your voices carry. These are trying times. Our people look to you for guidance and example."
Doolittle held open a door to a side room.
Mahon inclined his head in a slow half bow. "Please, Consort."
Fine. Half an hour wouldn't make a difference anyway.