“Slow down. Where are you?” I grabbed for my keys, elbowing past Brody, who had his phone to his ear. “West and I will come to you—”
“You can’t.” Panting, she paused. “I think London Blake infected me with something. And I’m pretty sure I’m contagious.”
“Lacey,” I snarled into the phone. “Lace—”
But it was too late. The connection was dead.
* * *
It took me twenty minutes to get back to town. Lacey wasn’t picking up her phone. Naomi was out on a house call, something to do with a sick emu (because good luck getting one of those bad boys into a cat carrier), and I was this close to losing control.
“Lacey,” I barked, pounding on her door. No answer. A dog howled somewhere down in another unit. With a quick check of the parking lot behind me, I kicked in the door.
On the other end of the phone, Brody cursed. “What part of don’t make a scene didn’t you understand?”
“I’m in,” I growled, cutting him off. “Her place is trashed.” Which was an understatement. A broken lamp lay in pieces just inside the entryway. Shredded couch cushions and a mangled bag of Doritos were strewn like fallen leaves across the floor. At the top of her cat tree, Fancy mewed plaintively.
A whine sounded to my right. Whirling, I cursed, nearly dropping my phone. A small cinnamon-brown werewolf crouched over a recently destroyed box of cupcakes. Destroyed was putting it nicely. Picture what a velociraptor would do if you spread strawberry frosting on a herd of goats and go from there.
“Yeah, uh, I’m gonna need to call you back.” Ending the call, I held up both hands. “Don’t bite my face off.”
Shooting me a dark look, the velociraptor in question stalked over to the refrigerator and began gnawing at the handle.
“Okay, Cujo. But it works a lot better with opposable thumbs.”
Baring her fangs, she sat down in front of the door and gave me a pointed look. Yeah. Totally understood that one.
“I’m opening the door. Maybe this time, try to point with your nose like those cute retrievers do on the duck hunting shows and I can pass you down stuff—”
Another growl. Pretty sure I was sleeping on the couch.
I opened the door and cursed again. Meanwhile, Cujo helpfully gave herself a concussion by diving headfirst into the vegetable crisper. The refrigerator contained an empty orange juice bottle and a jar of peanut butter. This, from a girl who cooked for a living. Not good. From her perch at the top of her cat tree, Fancy flicked her soot-black tail imperiously.
“I know. I promised we could watch Chopped next time I came over. First I have to keep Mommy from eating you.”
“Mrreow.” Godiva blinked giant green eyes at me in obvious kitty concern.
Another whine. Cujo scrabbled past my leg, getting marshmallow cream cheese frosting all over my jeans, thank you very much, in her attempts to extract something from the side door. With my luck, it was probably the tabasco sauce, which she’d drink, then cry sad little wolf tears while I had to brush it out of her fangs in the bathtub.
“Give that to me.”
Cujo sat down at my feet like she was the best-behaved werewolf in Major’s Saturday morning remedial obedience class, and we were going to pretend she hadn’t just totaled her apartment. Setting aside the jar of peanut butter, I texted The Spoke, telling Javier to put a rush on a takeout order. Brisket. Ribs. Potato salad. Mac and Bleu. Then I dialed Brody.
“You’re thinking this is some sort of delayed reaction to the biologic agent, the wolf’s counter response to being forcibly subdued all this time?” he said at last after I’d filled him in.
“Maybe. This seems like your typical bad post-shift reaction. I’m going to try to get some protein into her, see if she’ll be able to shift back.”
Shifting burned a crazy number of calories. Bittens always had more trouble than Borns learning to control their shift, but Lacey had been a werewolf for nearly a decade. Whatever was going on had to be due to the biologic agent she’d been dosed with.
“If she’s been trapped in here for days, transforming uncontrollably at the mercy of her wolf due to some freak overreaction to the drug—”
“She might not have even been fully aware of what was happening,” Brody finished.
“She said something just before we got cut off, that it might have been London who reinfected her.”
Brody was silent for a full minute, and I could almost picture him pacing back at the ranch on the back patio, trying to work the variables out in his head. “Here’s what doesn’t make sense,” he said at last. “When Lacey got dosed the first time, it was by vampires. We don’t know how this biologic agent is even delivered. There were multiple prototypes they were testing in the information on the thumb drive River went over. Is it injected? Delivered as an aerosol? Ingested and breathed onto the face of the target? Absorbed through the skin? Water supply?” He paused. “You want me to go on?”
“You’re saying London couldn’t have infected Lacey without being affected herself.”
“I’m not ruling anything out. We’ve dropped the ball too many times with this already. I’m calling her in. Either she’s got an answer I buy for what’s going on, or I’m going to have to tell River we know where she is.”
I thought back to what London had said at the park.
The best we have to go on is that we think the bloodsuckers were originally trying to develop a drug that would spike viral loads in our people. Something that would drive werewolves mad at the full moon and cause mass chaos in the process. Maybe even be the catalyst that turned some of them permanently feral.
Maybe we’d all been wrong. It wouldn’t matter if in the initial stages the drug lessened viral load if it triggered such a cataclysmic overreaction from our wolves that we couldn’t keep from going mad.
“Call me back the minute you know something.” I slid to the floor. Cujo padded over and put her front paws in my lap, regarding the jar of rich and creamy hopefully. “One, you’re not getting all of this. I don’t care how hungry you are. Pretty sure all that salt can’t be good for wolves. Two, if you bite me, I’m stuffing your fluffy butt in the bathroom for timeout and getting out that plastic cone Brody uses on Major.”
She wagged her tail, blinking innocently like it had been Fancy who went all Slayer on the sofa cushions. Letting my head thump back against the refrigerator, I unscrewed the lid, which would have been easier without a hundred-pound werewolf up in my grill.
“No. Teeth.”
10
Lacey
I AWOKE SHIVERING ON MY KITCHEN FLOOR in a pile of half-eaten bones and empty cupcake wrappers. Something sharp pinched the crook of my elbow. I struggled against the hands pinning me down, blinking to block out the light strobing overhead like a sun about to go nova.
Worst. Hangover. Ever.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Naomi sang from behind a protective mask and shield. She twisted a tube of blood free from the needle in my arm and snapped off the tourniquet. “All set. Any dizziness? Nausea?”
I groaned. “Less. Talking.”
After shining a tiny penlight in my eyes that I unsuccessfully attempted to bat away, she performed a quick physical exam that determined I could probably be taken out by the nearest squirrel, but was otherwise okay. “I’m going to get this blood out with a courier right away. I’ll run some tests at the lab here in town in the meantime. Get you preliminary numbers.”