Authors: Judy Teel
"Unbelievable," I said, watching them carrying her up the steps like some kind of Egyptian princess.
Cooper paced back to stand beside me. "She's one of the most powerful and experienced practitioners on the East coast. Don't try so hard to offend her."
"And the head of Miller's coven, right? The one you spent hours negotiating with before she'd agree to protect Falcon and Chiwa?"
"She made a good bargain. Whatever's happening with the Lake Lure coven, Agent Stillman and Marc will get it straightened out."
He glanced at the blood dripping into the ground from my wounded arm and released a long-suffering breath. "Now go see Dr. Barrett. Please."
I watched him stride after the practitioners, gesturing to more of the Bone Clan Weres to come with him. He was wrong if he thought I didn't realize what I was up against when it came to Mistress Raevinne. I'd felt the power coming off of her as she smiled up at me. Worse, I'd known that she was letting me feel that power. Purposefully telling me that she was a match for my kind of bravado and then some.
Why else did Cooper think I'd shot off my mouth and gone all cocky on her? Because I felt safe? The ache in my arm started to demand my attention and I pressed my mouth into an annoyed line. Gripping the scanner, I crossed the grass and headed for the kitchen, figuring I'd either find Dr. Barrett there or in the infirmary behind it.
The strange words of my mysterious rescuer played in my mind and I wondered again who he was. A practitioner couldn't have managed that kind of disappearing act, not without creating a tear between dimensions. If he was Were, he'd have to shift first to accomplish it, which he hadn't done.
And why did I see his face when I thought of my father during my first shift?
Questions rolled around in my head as I stepped onto the porch off the front of the kitchen door. Laswell, by all appearances the head of the North Carolina covens, had once told me that my mother was dead but my father was still alive. I had plenty of reasons not to believe him. On the other hand, I couldn't see that he had any advantage in lying about my father. Of course when you're talking about ancient dimensional beings possibly posing as mortals, who could guess their motivations?
I entered the kitchen and the smell of something sweet and flaky baking in the oven hijacked my attention away from my problems. "Is that pie for someone in particular, or can anyone get in on the action?" I asked.
Dr. Barrett closed the oven and straightened up, pulling off his thick oven mitts as he did. "Guests only."
"Excellent," I said, strolling to the table by the window.
"Guests," Dr. Barrett emphasized. "You're almost family."
Disappointment and surprise stalled me out for a moment.
"The pigeon arrived this morning," he said, misreading my shock. Laying his oven mitts down, he snagged two mugs from the cupboard and then retrieved a fat flowery teapot from the counter. "As the resident practitioner and best cook on the property, protocol demands that I make certain preparations." Crossing in front of me, he deposited the pot and cups in front of me and then returned to the counter.
Still a little stunned to be included on the "family" side of his list, I sank down onto a chair and rested my wounded arm on the table. At least the bleeding had slowed. Blood had a nasty tendency to soak into wood and stay a while.
"What has happened to your casts, young lady?" Dr. Barrett admonished as he loaded up a plate with cookies from a tin and then came back to the table.
"Didn't need them."
"And the bite marks?"
"Infected Were."
He sighed and stared at the ceiling for a moment before getting up and slogging through the back door that led to the infirmary. I was halfway through my third homemade chocolate chip cookie and second cup of cinnamon tea when he came back carrying a metal bowl full of medical paraphernalia. "You are not indestructible, despite your amazing healing ability." He fished out a wrapped cotton swab and sterilized microscope slide from the bowl.
"I don't think the pandemic's a virus," I said, pouring him a cup of tea from the pot. "I think it's some kind of inter-D parasite. And now I have a way to find out." I nodded toward the scanner that I'd placed at a safe distance from the tea. "That scanner's been altered to detect energy that isn't part of our dimension."
Clasping my wrist, he turned my arm over to inspect the matching cuts and bruises on the other side. "And what would you know of such things?"
I blinked.
Uh, oh.
"Cooper told me. About the
Suir aosar
."
"The Devourers of Souls?" he asked as he expertly tore open the swab with his other hand. "Luke mentioned that you'd found something in one of your books."
He took a sample from the deepest of my wounds and wiped the blood on the slide. "I'll ask you the same thing as I did him. How have the
Suir aosar
crossed into our dimension?" Lifting my arm, he laid it across the wide metal bowl.
"I think there's a breach somewhere, again."
Dr. Barrett's brows rose and he glanced at me. "Again?"
"Last summer Cooper and I stopped a murderer who was using dimension hopping to escape detection."
"I see," he said, returning to the task at hand.
I watched him open the bottle of disinfectant, more than a little concerned about what was coming. "My friend, Falcon, used some of the residue she left behind when she did that and created the inter-D scanner."
He splashed disinfectant over my cuts and I sucked in a breath as the bite of it dug into my arm. Grabbing another cookie, I stuffed the whole thing into my mouth to distract myself from the sting. "If they did get through, wouldn't they be drawn to the energy of the Weres?" I pointed out.
"You mean perhaps the Were energy would feel most like their normal habitat and what they usually feed on?" Dr. Barrett mused as he applied antibiotic salve to my wounds. Though at this point, I don't know why he bothered. Now that the puncture wounds were clean, they were already starting to heal.
"If this was a pathogen, it wouldn't have killed Travis when he was collared," I said around the cookie.
Sitting back, Dr. Barrett studied me. I could practically see the wheels turning behind his pale blue eyes as his thoughts spun through the possibilities of my theory. "He would have felt a relief of symptoms when his Were DNA was suppressed.
If
the pathogen fed off of Weres, which by all indications it does."
"But if he were infected by inter-D's that were suddenly deprived of their food, they might have instinctively forced him to shift—"
"—so they could continue draining his energy," the doctor said in a rush as he leaned forward. "The pain would have been unbearable."
"He would have been driven crazy by it and ripped the PRC off even though that would engage the laser," I added.
He studied the scanner. "If your theory is correct, it would also explain why all of the blood samples I've taken show normal." He picked up his cup, stopped halfway to his mouth and put it back down as he stared into space. After a moment, he refocused on me. "Can your friend's device verify your theory?"
I took the last cookie, satisfied that I'd sparked his scientific curiosity in a direction that didn't involve me. "Want to help me find out?"
*
*
*
After checking his apple pie and covering it carefully with a clean dishtowel, Dr. Barrett led me across the compound and into the bowels of the underground catacombs. From there, we wound our way down into a branch of dungeons that was even deeper and more depressing than the cells where we'd been kept and where Danny still was.
Unfortunately, it looked like that was as far as our experiment would be allowed to go.
Drawing himself up to his full height of about an inch over my five-eight, Dr. Barrett pinned his disapproval on the guards outside the infected Weres' cellblock. "I have more testing to do."
"Except at meal time, no one goes in. No one comes out," Bald Guy said in a flat tone. The other guard, a female Were I didn't know, rocked from foot to foot, and looked like she'd rather be anywhere but facing down the wrath of the compound's doctor.
"Who feeds them?" I asked.
"I do," Dr. Barrett said.
"Unless one of 'em's close to the end," Bald Guy added.
"Is one of them close?" Dr. Barrett asked.
"Nope."
"So let us the hell in," I snapped.
Dr. Barrett cleared his throat and stepped in front of me. "I believe there has been a breakthrough in the cause of the disease." The guards exchanged surprised looks that turned hopeful at his next words. "I need to complete some final testing to be certain, but if I'm correct, we may be able to stop this."
I wasn't willing to go that far, but if it got us in, I was fine with backing the good doctor up. "The
Aesei Siian
ordered us to find out."
The discomfort of the guards increased, which was lucky because if they hadn't been looking at each other for a hint of what to do, Dr. Barrett's flinch might have inspired them to test the air to see if I was lying.
Finally Bald Guy turned to take the ring of keys off of a hook next to the door. "If one of them shifts and tears you to pieces, don't come running to us."
"You got it," I said, unclipping the safety strap across my Browning's grip.
Bald Guy helped the other guard pull open the door, which looked to be over a foot thick of reinforced steel. I nearly gagged as the damp, rank smell of the holding cells hit us. Part human waste, part unwashed bodies and a whole mess of the sharp, sour smell of fear.
I glanced at Dr. Barrett, who nodded, his mouth pinched down like he was torn between throwing up and reading someone the riot act. I was with him on both points. And I knew exactly who was going to get an ear full about it once we were done with the testing.
"Wait, you'll need this." Bald Guy picked up the industrial strength flashlight from the stool behind him and handed it to me.
The handle of the flashlight felt thick and cold in my hand as I hefted its weight. "They don't even get a torch?"
"At the end, their eyes are sensitive to light," the female Were said as if that justified everything.
I flicked on the flashlight as we crossed into the cellblock, more for Dr. Barrett's sake than mine, and swept the beam around the room. Huddled figures, their eyes wide with fear, stared back at us from each cell as the door slammed shut behind us with a solid, echoing clank of finality. The beam of the flashlight hit the eyes of a wolf in the second cell, making them glow like the fires of hell burned in their depths. Its lip curled back exposing long, sharp teeth and it snarled. I jumped back instinctively, bumping into Dr. Barrett.
"Helen Garcia," he said, his voice heavy with regret. "She showed her first symptom only two days ago."
The wolf lunged at the bars, snapping at them savagely.
"Here," I said, handing him the flashlight. "Hold this while I work the scanner."
He held the flashlight up over our heads, making a pool of light around us. I turned the scanner on and fiddled with the adjustments the way Falcon had showed me not too long ago, the muffled breathing of the lives around us filling the darkness. As I worked, their stares drilled into my back, making the spot between my shoulder blades itch.
"I have to get close to do the scan," I said quietly, moving back to the first cell and wondering what might spring out at us. "Stay behind me."
I stopped about a foot from the bars and the edge of the light touched the woman huddled against the stone wall as far from the wolf in the other cell as she could get. Despite her lank brown hair and haggard face, she looked young, though that didn't always mean anything with paranormals. She stared at the floor, not moving, not caring as I aimed the scanner at her.
The readout screen at the top of the device turned white and then blinked on and off before it paused and then repeated the rhythm. My stomach twisted into a knot. What if the practitioners had messed with the scanner?
"You better not be broken," I muttered, resisting the temptation to give it a solid whack. The retro scanner Falcon had used had once been mine and that particular move always straightened it out in the past.
"Perhaps we're still too far away," Dr. Barrett suggested. "Can you come closer to the bars, Marie?" he asked the woman, his voice gentle.
Her eyes darted to my gun and then to the scanner, before meeting his gaze. I thought she was going to refuse, but then she scooted up to the bars, not even bothering to get up. Or maybe she was too weak. The heat of anger flushed across my skin at the thought of how these people were suffering.
I aimed the inter-D scanner at her again and this time the readout screen stayed white. After a moment, different colored bars shot up, forming a graph. "See how this blue bar is the highest?" I said to Dr. Barrett. "That proves she's Were. These gray bars would show practitioner DNA if she had it and this one's for vampire."
"Amazing," he said, admiration clear in his voice. "What does the half yellow bar mean?"
"All Weres have some human in them. So do vamps. Practitioners show half and half."
"And where does it indicate if she's infected?"
I pressed the black button next to the readout with my thumb. The screen shimmered and a new graph appeared, this one showing a line that spiked up and down as it flowed across the screen.
"Her heart rate?" he asked, leaning in to get a better look.