Blood's Shadow: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 3 (29 page)

As for the Order of the Silver Arrow, I technically won leadership of it, but the only member who stuck around was Curtis Rial. The rest had scattered, and the leaders of the Young Bloods went into hiding to avoid being arrested on kidnapping charges. I trusted Garou would find them—he was a good detective, after all.

Curtis found me at the pub after the funeral reception. Troy gave me a whiskey before I ordered anything.

“For the old man,” he said, his eyes red-rimmed. “It was his favorite post-funeral dram.”

“Slàinte,”
I said and raised the glass before knocking it back. It burned all the way down, but this time in a good way. It also gave me an excuse for the tears in my eyes, and I had to take a moment to compose myself.

“Mister McCord?” The young man’s voice beside me brought me back to the present and out of my spiral of “what if?”

“Yes, Curtis?” I didn’t mind the kid, but I’d sent Selene home and wanted to be alone, or as alone as one can be in a pub. I sought the anonymous alone with the occasional understanding nod from the barkeep.

“I just wanted to say thanks for saving my sister. I was stupid, and I didn’t mean to put her in harm’s way. He promised he wouldn’t hurt her.”

I thought about scolding him, but he looked like he was doing a just fine job of beating himself up. I knew the feeling. My mind wouldn’t let go of the sense I should’ve done something to save David. Instead I asked, “What did Wolfsheim promise you in exchange for allowing him to get to her?”

“That he would show me how to manage my CLS so I wouldn’t have to go through the reversal process.” He looked at me with an expression of hope. “There are some things I like about it, but I don’t have the knowledge or control you do. What you did in the cave, how you kept things from happening too early or late, how easily you changed, how you manage among all this stimulation—that’s what I want to learn.”

Anger flared at Dimitri for allowing his great nephew to struggle for so long, particularly as it had put him and Selene in danger. Just as David had taken me under his wing, I could do so for Curtis, and I nodded.

“So you don’t want to be a reversal candidate anymore.”

“Not if I can learn how to deal with this.”

“Fine, I’ll teach you.” I gestured to my glass. “We’ll start with the important things tonight. The first step to becoming a Scottish werewolf—how to use that enhanced sense of smell to choose your favorite whiskey.”

He grinned. “I think I’m going to like this training program.”

Finally, when I got home, I opened the manila envelope Wolfsheim had taunted me with. I had to bury one father figure at a time, and even though the ghost had bothered me leading up to the confrontation, it was hard to say goodbye.

I slit the edge, and several letters and telegrams spilled out. Words floated up to me from the letters as I skimmed through them.
Hot on the trail of the torc… Getting close… Tip he’s in Belgium…
Double crossing, betrayal, and lies.

And then there was the picture of my father’s body on the battlefield with wounds I had assumed were shrapnel, but now I saw for what they were—blood magic eruptions. This time I could look at it without shuddering. As horrific as it was, knowing exactly how he’d died and at whose hands gave me some peace. Knowing I had the information in my possession and intended to complete David’s collection of letters and other information about the Order seemed to have allowed his soul to rest as well.

I put it all away.

Chapter Thirty-One

Six Months Later

I sheltered Selene from the cold wind as much as I could, but it blew with bitter persistence and nipped at our noses and any other exposed parts.

“Why do you live in this part of the world, again?” she asked once we reached my office suite, which had moved to the ground floor at Lycan Castle after Morena resigned her position as Council Leader and the others had voted me into the position. We unwound our scarves and shed our coats in front of the roaring fire.

“Because the women are so gorgeous,” I told her with a kiss.

“I’m not Scottish, you ass,” she said and smiled up at me.

“I’d rather attend to your ass.” I pinched her adorable behind. “And you’ve got Scottish blood in you.”

“It’s a good thing I’m giddy about the news I have for the Council. Otherwise you’d be in big trouble.”

We tried to sober our expressions before entering the Council Chamber, but I had to avoid eye contact with her so I wouldn’t break out in a grin. Finally, after our call to order and approval of minutes, we moved into business.

I looked around the table at a different set of faces than I’d faced when getting approval for the Institute. Of course Cora Campbell had abdicated her position, and she’d moved with Bartholomew to Oban. They were trying to keep a low profile since Garou and I unearthed evidence that Bartholomew had inappropriately used his influence to seduce female cult members who worked at his company, which allowed us to employ sexual harassment charges. There was also questionable use of charitable funds, and I suspected they’d both be in jail before the end of the following year.

Of course Morena had left. She said she wanted to take time to work on her relationship with and care for her daughter, whom Wolfsheim had brainwashed. Dimitri had “retired” after I assumed leadership of the Council, no doubt in protest and to hide from the charges of conspiracy to murder Otis LeConte. Replacing his bloodline had been an easy task.

Also present were former members of the Young Bloods and Purists, both young relatives of the previous Council members, and I hoped they would represent the interests of modern werewolves. Finally, Selene attended occasionally as the Institute liaison. She was so excited I allowed her to speak first.

“I am happy to report that our first experimental reversal appears to have been a success,” she said. “Genetic tests are showing no evidence of CLS in that participant’s cells, and all symptoms have been remitted for weeks.”

Everyone burst into applause with cries of, “Bravo!” Once the room settled down, one of the new members, a young woman named Lacey, asked, “What’s next, then?”

“We have to see how the other four subjects fare, although their cases are looking hopeful as well, both with regard to physical reversal and psychological adjustment.”

“But will it be available to genetic lycanthropes?” Lacey persisted. “Will you include some of them in your next phase?”

“We are currently working on a protocol, which will have to be voted on by the Council, of course. We anticipate the psychological burden on those participants to be higher, as it has been part of your identity since adolescence. Plus, we need to develop an assessment tool to determine what reasons are strong enough for someone to make this major life change.”

Lacey nodded. “I’m just glad this discussion is still open.”

While I admittedly had mixed feelings about it, I trusted Selene and her colleagues. The rest of Council business moved quickly, as we all had Winter Solstice celebrations to get to. But, as always, we read the Lycanthrope Creed:

Our lives are long and full.

We watch the cycle of life and death, death and rebirth, the wheel of the seasons.

Taking responsibility for our bloodlines and vowing to teach our pups.

We act in accordance with honor no matter the adversity.

Standing guard over those whose lives are shorter than ours, saving them from themselves and dangers they can’t even imagine.

Standing alongside humanity, shadows that come to life under the moon.

Standing together with our pack.

Selene, Curtis and I had all been invited to several Solstice gatherings, but there was no question as to which one we would attend.

“Blessed Solstice!” Max announced when he opened the door. Then he shivered. “I don’t know why you people live in this cold part of the world.”

We got inside as quickly as possible.

“It’s because the men are so handsome,” Selene said with a wink at me. She kissed Max on the cheek and hugged Lonna. Iain was there, and we shook hands.

“Was the Council happy?” he asked.

“Very. Of course there are questions about the next part.”

He nodded. “Equal opportunity for all, eh? Come in and have a drink. I’ll pick your brains about it later.”

A tug on my pants leg made me look down into a pair of emerald eyes. “Gabriel, up!” I picked up Abby and carried her into the living room.

“There she is,” Lonna said and took her from my arms. “I’ve tried everything to get this kid to stay in her crib, but she keeps getting out. Even through the locked door.”

I pinched Abby’s nose, and she giggled. “Maybe it’s all right for her to stay up this once? Selene loves her. I do too.”

Lonna sighed, but happily. “I wonder how wizard mums do it.”

“If I meet one, I’ll ask for you.”

I moved with the flow of the party, Selene by my side. I greeted Garou, whose sour expression had melted into friendliness, and the more we worked together, the more I respected him.

Eventually Selene and I ended up under a sprig of mistletoe. I took her into my arms.

“You did good, Investigator McCord,” she said and snuggled up to me. “This wouldn’t have happened without you.”

“What, me being under the mistletoe with you?”

“No,” she said and gestured to the party. Most of it was Institute staff and guests. Even Alexander and his mother were there. With Lonna’s help, they had been able to get away from the abusive Paul. “All these people together in the same place enjoying themselves. You’re even getting along with Iain now. And the program is a success.”

“It’s all because of you doctor types. I’m just a humble werewolf.”

“And a smart politician.”

“That reminds me,” I said. “I think it would be smart for you and I to have some sort of formal arrangement. It took me a while to recognize it, and I don’t say it nearly enough, but Selene Rial, I love you.”

Her mouth dropped open. I knelt beside her, took her hand, and said, “Will you marry me?”

She looked around. A few people were smiling in our direction, and soon silence fell over the party as the guests realized what was happening.

“About time,” Curtis grumbled, but others shushed him.

“Yes, Gabriel, I will marry you.”

Everyone cheered, and I pulled a velvet box out of my pocket. The ring fit her perfectly, a two-carat diamond surrounded by little ones. We kissed.

“Now we’re going to have to get you to learn to drink whiskey,” I said.

She wrinkled her nose. “So that’s how you survive these winters…”

“By the way,” I said, “now that we’re engaged, tell me what you see when we sniff.”

She grinned. “I see a Scottish warrior with the torc standing by a waterfall. He’s you and not you. We don’t need genetic tests to tell where your bloodline comes from.”

She squeezed my hand and moved away with the flow of the party to show the insistent female guests her ring. I looked outside at the snow swirling from the sky. No spirits disturbed us tonight, and I knew whatever may come, I wouldn’t face it alone. I hoped that wherever my father and David had ended up, they were also celebrating the longest night of the year with family and loved ones.

The snow swirled into the shape of Reine, who blew me a kiss and mouthed the word, “Congratulations” before disappearing.

About the Author

Cecilia Dominic wrote her first story when she was two years old and has always had a much more interesting life inside her head than outside of it. She became a clinical psychologist because she’s fascinated by people and their stories, but she couldn’t stop writing fiction. The first draft of her dissertation, while not fiction, was still criticized by her major professor for being written in too entertaining a style. She made it through graduate school and got her PhD, started her own practice, and by day, she helps people cure their insomnia without using medication. By night, she blogs about wine and writes fiction she hopes will keep her readers turning the pages all night. Yes, she recognizes the conflict of interest between her two careers, so she writes and blogs under a pen name. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with one husband and two cats, which, she’s been told, is a good number of each.

You can find her at:

Web page:
www.ceciliadominic.com

Wine blog:
www.randomoenophile.com

Facebook:
www.facebook.com/CeciliaDominicAuthor

Twitter:
@RandomOenophile

Pinterest:
www.pinterest.com/ceciliadominic/

Look for these titles by Cecilia Dominic

Now Available:

The Lycanthropy Files

The Mountain’s Shadow

Long Shadows

Being unique isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

Long Shadows

© 2014 Cecilia Dominic

The Lycanthropy Files, Book 2

By day, Lonna Marconi’s busy career keeps her mind off the fact she was turned werewolf against her will. By night, a dose of wolfsbane lets her inner wolf out to play while her physical body stays safe at home.

When an overheard phone call at work warns her a trap is about to be sprung, she turns from hunter to hunted in the blink of an eye.

She finds refuge with the Ozarks pack she never claimed as her own. Upon discovering a family secret that explains why she’s unique among her own kind, Lonna finds heat in the arms of Max, who’s the one thing she cannot trust—a wizard.

Another kidnapping attempt sends her navigating the treacherous metaphysical borders of a centuries-old war, pursued by rogue sorcerers, a band of ghostly wolves, and repressed memories that prevent her from reclaiming her heritage. All the while, trusting her back to a wizard who demands the price of her heart…and who may not have the luxury of giving his in return.

Warning: Some sexy scenes, adult language, and alcohol consumption. Also descriptions of Italian food that might offend carbophobes.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Long Shadows:

I hadn’t physically changed since the first time six months before. Then, in a trance, I had opened the front door to my apartment, taken off my clothes, and changed into a wolf with the world watching. Okay, not quite the world. It was pretty late, and my apartment complex was quiet. Since then, I had shadow-walked with the aid of the aconite, which caused me to create an astral projection of my wolf self rather than physically change. Somehow I could still eat what I hunted, and I hoped that wouldn’t translate into bad blood work. Who knew how much wild critters would raise one’s cholesterol? A stupid concern, I know, considering everything else. It’s funny what the mind latches on to.

Now I sat in the living room at Joanie’s and Leo’s house with them, all of us wrapped in sheets, as we waited for the moon to rise and for its light to sing in our blood. We could change without it, but it was easier in its light, which compelled us when it was full. I suppressed the urge to giggle at the sight, like we were at the most boring toga party ever. Joanie caught my eye, and her lips twitched like she thought the same.

The moon rose, its light spilling through the bank of windows.

“It’s time,” Joanie murmured.

My inner wolf stretched and yawned, unfurling to her full spiritual presence.

“We can change?
she asked.
Really change?”

“Yes, just be gentle with me.”
Again I stuffed the urge to laugh. I hadn’t said those words in a really long time.

I gasped when my human spirit shrank. The sensation was that of hurtling down a long hallway, then landing in a warm pool and expanding within it to fill a new shape. The inner wolf and I became one. I heard tendons snapping and bones cracking in new arrangements and suspected I would be sore the next day.

“Not sore. Strong and healthy and whole. We are one.”

“We can’t be one. I am not a wolf.”

But I was. I shook the sheet off and looked around with new eyes. Although my senses were heightened in human form now that I had these new abilities, in wolf form, they were almost painfully acute. The moonlight through the windows had been beautiful and cool—now it sparkled on the floor and every surface with opalescence that made me want to run and yip and bathe in its light. The forest beyond the windows beckoned with a thousand scents and rustlings and scurryings, each one of which begged to be investigated.

A light nip to my shoulder brought me back to myself, and I shifted my weight so I stood evenly on all four paws. Leo, a black wolf, sat and looked at me, his tongue lolling in amusement. Joanie, a petite brown wolf who could probably pass for one of the Arkansas red wolves, had nipped me.

“You were quivering like you were ready to explode with the sensations of it all,”
she said telepathically.

“It’s different from when we shadow-walk,”
I responded. “
I feel heavier but more powerful.”

“Do you remember anything of the first time? When Iain and I chased after you?”

“Only that I wanted to get away and be free. And Gabriel…”

A low growl from Leo halted that line of conversation. Not that I blamed him. Gabriel had tried to claim Joanie first.

“Moonlight’s wasting, girls,”
he said but waited for Joanie to lead us out of the house through a—
oh, the shame!
—doggie door in the mud room.

“It was the easiest solution,”
Joanie told me once we were through. I heard the wry smile in her voice.

Once we were fully in the moonlight, the dry brown grass under my paws, I didn’t care that we’d been relegated to the status of mere
canis domesticus
or whatever the hell regular dogs were. I chased after her, nipping at her flank, and she mock-growled at me. We tumbled and tussled before I drew back.

“The baby! I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,”
she reassured me with a canine grin at Leo.
“He’s done worse.”

“And that’s all I need to know.”
I trotted to the edge of the woods and smelled pigeons and squirrels and deer and all manner of things that seemed to taunt me.
“When do we hunt?”
It came out as a vocal whine.

“When Matthew arrives.”
Leo looked around, his ears perked.
“He should have been here by now.”

“Maybe he got delayed by something? Too much traffic on the road, perhaps, or the cubs wanting to come with him?”
The image of the playful pups didn’t dispel the concern in Joanie’s mental voice, and I remembered Matthew saying they never hunted alone anymore.

Leo paced back and forth on the lawn.
“He said he’d be on time.”

A gunshot rang out, and all of us sat up, ears swiveling back and forth.

“What the hell was that?”
I asked.
“Okay, I know what it was, but what was it?”
Human logical processes weren’t exactly working well, but they knew what I meant.

“Danger!”
Joanie yelled in her mental voice, and we scrambled for the house, but another gunshot and a puff of wet dirt and grass in front of Leo, who had the lead, sent us toward the woods.

“Son of a bitch!”

If I hadn’t been so panicked, I would have been shocked by Joanie’s language. She’d promised me she thought in expletives, but I’d heard very few from her.

“It’s a fine line between thought and speech in this form,”
she said.
“We have to hide so we can change back.”

“But we’ll be naked!”

Leo scoffed.
“I’ve got no problem with that.”

“You wouldn’t.”
Joanie didn’t sound amused.
“Stop thinking like humans. Get off the path.”

We did as she said, but we weren’t exactly quiet. There were no more gunshots, so we laid low in a hollow behind a downed tree trunk, panting.

The breeze came from behind us and didn’t give us any good clues as to what was going on up ahead. I heard Joanie curse mentally again and Leo calming her down, but I’d sensed something that made my knees—all four of them—turn to gelatin: the smell of fuchsia on the breeze.

“Guys… Guys! We’ve been lured into a trap.”

“How do you know?”
Joanie looked around, her ears alert.

“I can smell him, the fuchsia wizard.”

“Where?”
Leo started to rumble, but Joanie knocked into him.

“Behind us.”
I stood and ignored Joanie’s growl to get the hell down and stop being an idiot. I bared my teeth.
“It’s one thing to hunt me at my apartment; it’s another to follow me here. How dare he?”

“Go ahead if you like, but we’re staying here,”
Leo said.
“I won’t let you endanger Joanie and our cub.”

I shot a look over my shoulder at him.
“Your cub? You mean your child. Remember who and what you are.”

“You do the same,”
he said.

“I am a human, but I’ll use what I have. He’s after me. I’ll lead him away, and you two get to a safe place.”

“The boathouse,”
Joanie said.
“We can get in and defend ourselves if we need to. There are guns hidden in there, and clothes.”

“Go,”
I told them.
“Keep yourselves safe. I’m sorry for bringing this on you.”

“Maybe it will help us with our other puzzles,”
Joanie, ever the scientist, said.
“But Lonna, be careful!”

“I will.”
I crept away, keeping low to the ground. I knew that humans would be unable to sense half of what I could as a wolf, so I suspected I’d be able to surprise whoever it was. I circled the scent, moving downwind so it would be strong enough for me to pinpoint its exact location. I couldn’t say with certainty, but I suspected it followed me and only me. Finally, it stopped, and I did as well, curious.

The sounds of the night chorused in my ears, and I panicked, sure I’d lost it. Then I smelled a fire and heard human breathing. I snuck closer until flickering light cast strange shadows in the trees and on me.

It stopped and made a campfire?
This didn’t compute with either the wolf or the human parts of my brain.

“It did,”
an unfamiliar voice said in my brain.

I growled, then, careful to keep any thoughts of my two companions out of my mind, but I was too late.

“They’re safe. They’re not after them, only you.”

“Your pronouns confuse me, sir. Who are they? Who are you?”

“And who are
you?” The mental tone held amusement.
“Come here in the circle of my fire and change so you’re out of their reach.”

“I’ll be naked.”

“I have clothes for you.”

I slunk closer until I could see the speaker. It was a man who sat close to a fire. The flames gleamed in the blond highlights in his reddish brown hair, and I recognized him from the doctor’s office. Now he wore slightly tinted lenses, and I could barely see his eyes behind their smoky panes.

“Doctor Fortuna?”

He stood and bowed in my direction.
“Maximilian Fortuna at your service. Call me Max.”