Kerbasi’s shack was around back. If I could have left the guardian I would have, but I couldn’t go more than half a mile from him before he’d get pulled along with me. The last thing I needed to hear was his whining if he was jerked from his bed without warning.
The magical bands we wore on our arms tugged on him rather than me since as a sensor I was immune to spells. It was a punishment an archangel had leveled on us almost nine months before—me for breaking into Purgatory and him for being an overly-abusive guardian who tortured his prisoners.
I pounded on his door. More than a minute passed before I heard any movement inside.
“What?” he shouted.
“Get out here unless you want to get dragged.”
He jerked the door open. “Do you know what time it is?”
His silver eyes swirled with annoyance and his black hair hung loosely past his shoulders. He wore a pair of sweatpants, but nothing covered his muscular chest. The man was unusually large. Then again, so were all of heaven’s servants. He also had dark-gray wings, but I could only see the faint shimmer of them. Anyone not immune to magic couldn’t see them at all unless he chose to reveal them.
“Yes, it’s almost three in the morning. I don’t want to be out any more than you do, but Sable found something and she’s insisting I check it out. You’re just going to have to get over it and come along.”
He gave me an annoyed look. “Can it not wait until morning?”
“Apparently not. You’ve got two minutes or I’m leaving without you.”
Kerbasi slammed the door in my face.
He handled waking up better if I brought coffee, but I didn’t have time to coddle him. I headed over to the shed where we stored the snow machines and got one started. By the time he came outside I had it ready to go. Kerbasi couldn’t drive and didn’t want to learn, so he had to ride with me.
“This is most inconvenient,” he muttered, climbing onto the seat and wrapping his arms around my waist.
“Feel free to lodge another complaint to Remiel. I’ve given up on the archangel freeing us from each other anytime soon.” All I’d gotten so far was that Kerbasi had made progress, especially after healing a sick child during Christmas, but not enough. At this rate, it would never be enough.
Hunter came running up in his wolf form and let out a bark. Good. We were all set.
I nodded at Sable, who had changed into a snow leopard. Normally I didn’t let her take the shape of feline breeds not native to Alaska, but we could travel faster if she was a bigger breed of cat. My snow machine would cover her tracks, keeping anyone from discovering the prints later.
“Lead the way,” I ordered her.
She took off at a lope, heading toward the trees behind Kerbasi’s shack. Hunter followed the cat with me guiding the snow machine behind them. The snow had grown deep in many areas, making travel slow. I wove between a sea of trees trying to find the most navigable paths as we headed in a northwesterly direction.
At least two miles had passed before Sable began to slow down at a small clearing. My senses picked up the weak signal of a werewolf on the far side. My stomach knotted as she led us toward him. The life force that told me who was just within the line of trees barely registered. He was close to death. It took a lot for a werewolf to get into that kind of shape.
There was something else nagging at my senses as well. Something very dark. Every warning siren in my head was going off.
“Stop!” I yelled at Sable and Hunter.
Chapter Two
Sable stopped more than a dozen paces from the trees and looked back at us, her whiskers twitching. Hunter didn’t go any farther, but he sniffed at the ground. The emotions I sensed from him were confusion and worry.
I brought the snow machine to a halt next to them and ordered Kerbasi to get off before digging in the storage compartment for a flashlight. My night vision was good, but it was full dark and clouds obscured the moonlight.
“Why did you order them to stop?” Kerbasi asked.
“Because I sensed something wrong.”
“Would it not be better to let them face it than us? We can partake of these while they deal with it.” The guardian reached into his jacket and pulled out a Ziploc bag with some donuts I’d picked up the day before. He must have swiped the last two before going to his shack last night. The glutton.
“You’re forty-five hundred years old and have more power than I’ll ever hope to have. I’m pretty sure you can handle whatever is up there.”
He gave me a skeptical look. “Do you even know what the danger is?”
Kerbasi didn’t fear much—except perhaps an empty stomach—but he hated getting involved in the affairs of mortals. If he had his way he’d watch the chaos around him, eat snacks, and critique everyone else’s actions.
“There’s a werewolf in there and something is seriously wrong with him. I don’t want to risk Sable and Hunter getting hurt if he’s turned rabid.” I felt for my gun to make sure it was still where I’d holstered it before leaving the house. It remained snug at my waist.
Kerbasi shrugged. “Then let him be.”
“You know we can’t. Now let’s go.” I waved the flashlight toward the woods.
He stuffed the bag of donuts back into his pocket. “Why couldn’t they have attached me to someone who reads all day?”
I ignored him.
“You two stay here until I tell you otherwise,” I warned Sable and Hunter.
The shape-shifter cat lifted a paw and began licking it. The werewolf glanced between me and the tree line as if he wasn’t sure about that plan, but he didn’t move to follow. Kerbasi and I trudged through the snow, the alarm bells in my head growing stronger as we neared the woods. The magic I sensed was sinister, unlike anything I’d felt before except…no, it couldn’t be.
I paused. “Demon magic.”
“Excuse me?”
“The werewolf.” I pointed the flashlight at a spot where two trees had grown close together. He was just beyond that. “Whatever is hurting him, demon magic is part of it. I need to get closer to figure it out.”
The guardian stiffened. “I should have brought a sword.”
“Don’t worry. I think he’s too weak to attack us.” I hoped, but pulled my gun anyway and held it in my right hand with the flashlight in the other.
“So you say, sensor, but I do not like this. Even I am having a bad feeling.”
“Shhh.”
I began creeping forward again, heading around the two trees. The small beam of light I directed ahead of us did little to dispel the darkness, but at least it kept me from tripping over fallen limbs and shrubbery.
A dark shape appeared amongst the blanket of snow covering the ground as we got closer. It was a guy who looked thirtyish with short brown hair. He wore a heavy jacket, blue jeans, and rugged brown boots. Being fully dressed told me he probably hadn’t changed from being a wolf recently. Most werewolves put on as little as possible after shifting back to human form because they found clothes restricting and hot for the next few hours.
The man’s breathing was raspy. I shined the light on his face and he flinched. Black and red marks covered his exposed skin and his neck was severely swollen. I’d seen frostbite before, but that wasn’t the problem this time. He had something else—something worse.
My senses couldn’t detect the type of affliction, so it had to be naturally-occurring, but I could determine the magic used with it. Two spells were woven into the illness. The first made the disease target werewolves specifically and the second boosted the virulence to prevent the werewolf’s strong immune system from fighting it off. It was a deliberate attack on his race and meant to spread to others of his kind. Who would do such a thing?
“What’s your name?” I asked, kneeling beside the man.
“Ga…Galvin.”
“Do you know how you got sick?” I wanted to lay a comforting hand on him, but there was a chance I could pass the disease on to other werewolves if I touched him. Until we knew what he had, it was better not to risk it.
His teeth chattered. “N…no.”
I wished I’d brought a spare blanket to cover him. The snow and cold couldn’t have been helping his cause. What had he been thinking to come out into the woods sick like this in the first place?
“Do you live around here?”
He gazed about him as if seeing his surroundings for the first time. “I think so.”
Something told me it was going to be more trouble than it was worth to locate his home.
“When did this start?”
“Two…maybe three days ago.” His voice was getting raspier.
He should have gotten medical help as soon as he started feeling bad, but if human men were known for thinking they could tough it out during an illness, werewolves were probably worse.
“Have you run into anyone else sick like you?” I hated to bombard him with so many questions, but he wasn’t going to last much longer. Better to get whatever information I could before it was too late.
“No…no one.” He attempted to lift a hand. “Please, help me.”
I looked up at Kerbasi. “Is there anything you can do?”
“I’m not giving him one of my donuts.” He crossed his arms.
“You know damn well what I meant.” I glared at the guardian. “Can you heal him?”
“No, but I could rip his head off and end his suffering.”
The werewolf groaned. No one deserved to spend the last hours of their life listening to Kerbasi’s lunacy. I’d had to learn a lot of patience since being stuck with the guardian.
“Can you at least tell me what is wrong with him?”
Kerbasi couldn’t deny he had the ability to see diseases within a body and heal them. I’d found out that secret when he’d saved a boy dying of leukemia during Christmastime. But Edan had been a human child. This was a werewolf and the guardian would consider him an abomination against nature.
“I do not care what is wrong with him.” Kerbasi looked away.
My hands fisted in the snow. “Will you check? This could pass on to other people.”
No need to point out it couldn’t spread to humans just yet.
“For the sake of the innocent, I will look.” He kneeled down on the other side of the werewolf’s body and his silver eyes lit up. The magic was palpable as Kerbasi used a special sort of vision to “see” Galvin's afflictions.
“It is unlike anything I’ve come across before,” he said, brows furrowing. “It began in the lymphatic system, but it has spread to his lungs. Some sort of bacterial infection. I have no experience in how to treat this.”
My medical knowledge only reached as far as military first aid. This was far beyond what I could diagnose even with that much information, but there was someone else who could help.
“I’m going to call Paula. This is something she’d be better off handling.” She was a vampire who’d gone to medical school before being turned nearly fifty years ago. “Tell Hunter and Sable to go home.”
“Do you think they could catch it?”
“Maybe.” Hunter could have since the disease targeted werewolves, but Sable would have been fine. I just hadn’t wanted to take any chances.
I moved away from Kerbasi to make my phone call. Paula would be up at this time of night and with it being winter in Alaska we still had plenty of darkness left for her to come out.
She answered on the first ring. “Yes.”
“I’ve got a sick werewolf here and he’s dying.” I filled her in on the rest of the details.
“Where are you?”
“I’ll text you the grid coordinates, but please get here fast. He doesn’t have much time left.” She lived in Fairbanks and we were about thirty-five to forty miles to the east. We’d be lucky if she made it while the werewolf was still alive.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She hung up.
I rushed back to the snow machine and pulled out a spare GPS I kept inside of it. As soon as I had the coordinates I sent them to her. By the time I finished Hunter and Sable had cleared the area. Good. Now all we had to do was wait and hope we weren’t left out here freezing for too long. The temperature had dropped a few more degrees. There was no way the werewolf could hold on much longer.
***
Paula didn’t come alone when she popped up on my radar almost an hour later. She must have picked up Derrick along the way. He was the alpha werewolf and supernatural leader for the Fairbanks area.
We hadn’t spoken since he ousted Nik—a master vampire—from the position late last summer. They’d both been my friends and the aftermath of their power struggle had been difficult.
In order to beat the ancient vampire Derrick had to become something stronger, perhaps immortal, by drinking the blood of a
daimoun
—a half angel and half demon. The werewolf was supercharged now and probably couldn’t catch whatever disease Galvin had, but I needed to warn him. Whether I wanted to talk to him or not.
“Stay here and watch Galvin. Don’t kill him,” I ordered Kerbasi.
“Very well, but do not make me wait long. I’m hungry.”
He’d eaten his two donuts and had been pacing around the field ever since.