The Mountain's Shadow

He ran his hands through his tangled hair, and leaves and pine needles fell out. “We knew that the place was there, the cave of the Gowrow. We couldn’t get close because we didn’t want to be caught. He smells like that place, like chemicals and fear.”

“Can you keep an eye on him?” I asked. “They’re looking for him. Iain and I have to meet someone at Wolfsbane Manor at midnight.”

“I guess.” I thought at first he was just being rude, but he just gazed at Simon with searching dark eyes. “Was there a little boy there? About two, with curly blond hair?”

“Yes, but they don’t do anything to him. He just cries.”

Leo held out his hand and Simon took it. “Go ahead. I’ll take care of the boy.”

I should have been happy to have Simon’s care out of my hands, but the way Leo looked at him made me wonder if maybe the boy would be safer with us, particularly with Leo not being so psychologically adept at the animal-human transition. I didn’t have time to worry. Iain gave my arm a tug, and we hiked up the trail. I heard the murmur of voices behind us, Leo’s bass and Simon’s rasping tenor and wondered what they could be plotting. I only hoped they wouldn’t act rashly and give us away before we could figure out who was ultimately responsible for creating that hell in my childhood playground.

Chapter Eighteen

We reached the edge of the lawn with five minutes to spare. My heart pounded in my ears, and I bent over with my hands on my knees to catch my breath.

The house made a dark silhouette against the starred sky. The waning moon lit some of the corners and planes, and it looked like a movie set, two-dimensional with the shadows painted wrong unless you saw it from the right angle. No light shone in any of the windows, and the manor seemed desolate and abandoned. I thought back to returning there that first night with Lonna, how we’d been unsure of what we’d find and how Gabriel had come down the stairs to welcome us. Some Lady of the Manor I turned out to be. Both of them were now held captive by mad scientists who would do God only knew what to them.

The usual night noises of the last of summer’s crickets, the wind rustling through the trees, and the occasional car on the road below the front gate rushed to fill the sound vacuum left by the water and by Iain’s gasping and my own pounding heart as we climbed the hill. Although all seemed safe, I felt reluctant to step into the open. All my instincts screamed at me to run, that there was danger here—and underneath it all, the half-hope and half-fear that Robert would, after all this, want me back. I had fallen for aspects of him in the wolf-men, Leo’s intensity and Gabriel’s cunning, but now, watching the second hand move around my watch face, I realized they paled in comparison to him, my mentor and best friend. Earlier that day, I’d been ready to toss him aside as a lover and focus on rekindling the professional relationship. Now, in the dark, I felt that familiar longing for his arms as well as his brain. He would know what to do, how to sort this out.

A twig snapped behind us, and Iain and I crouched behind some blackberry bushes at the woods’ edge. A large black wolf—the black wolf—ambled up the path we had just taken, sniffed at our footsteps, and stepped into the moonlight. Once there, it lifted its nose to the light and closed its eyes, and a fine mist wreathed it. We watched, transfixed, as the wolf shape blurred and resolved into the shape of a man with his face lifted to the moon, his arms outstretched at his side. His body—oh, how my body ached with longing for it. During the month since I’d seen him, he’d become lean, muscular, and more hirsute.

“Joanie? I know you’re there. I can smell you. Iain, too.” He turned and looked straight at us, so we made our way to the path and to the lawn.

“Robert? You’re…” I held up my hands.

“Naked, yes.”

Tears clogged my throat, and I couldn’t speak, only look at him and let the knowledge of what he had become sink in.

“You’re a werewolf,” Iain said. “You’ve got it, CLS.”

“The phenotypic expression, yes.”

“How?” I choked out.

“I had hoped you would find that out by now. You must be close.”

“Did you have a vaccine? A flu shot?”

“They shot me up with something, but I don’t know what it was. All I know is that I lost a few weeks. When I woke up, I had it. Remember when I was supposedly in Atlanta for the final merger briefings?”

“Who did this to you?”

“Hippocrates Pharmaceuticals.” He crossed his arms, and I wondered if the chill in the air was getting to him. “They would have done it to you, too, if they’d had the chance. That’s why I had to get you out of there. Oh, Joanie, it hurt so much to lose you.”

“I thought that’s why you let me go, because you thought it was my fault.”

He shook his head, but he didn’t hold his arms out so I kept myself from running into them. This certainly was not how I pictured our reconciliation.

“You were there. At the fire.”

“I was. They set it, but I made sure to distract you so you’d get out of there.” He reached over and brushed a tear off my cheek. I grabbed his hand and held it to my face. “I just didn’t expect you to get caught on the stool. How’s your arm?”

“The shoulder is fine. The wrist is hurt from other things.”

“Why did you want to see us?” Iain broke in. “You’re one of them now. What could you possibly want with us?”

“To give you one last warning.”

My heart skipped a beat. “What?”

“You have to work fast to isolate the ingredient in the vaccines that’s causing this. Your grandfather was close to finding out something, but they got him before he could.”

“Why do we have to work fast?”

“Isn’t it obvious? They’re trying to kill you so you can’t. And they’ve just gotten a contract for the new bird flu vaccine for the whole nation, not just this area.”

I caught my breath and heard Iain do so as well. With the media hype about the new pandemic, that would be a very popular vaccine, even more so than the regular flu shots.

“Why create a problem without a cure?” asked Iain. “Or were they planning to cause an epidemic and then have the only way to treat it?”

Robert didn’t answer, but I knew it was true. He was stuck with them, but I wasn’t.

“Listen, Joanie, they’ve already killed Louise.”

I remembered the terrible night she died and the black wolf outside the kitchen window. “You brought her to the Manor. Why?”

“I found her by her car. She needed help but was so far off the road, there was no way I could get help to her in time. I thought you might be able to help her, so I changed and explained it to her, and I carried her most of the way there. I couldn’t let you see me because I knew it would frighten you. I didn’t mean to walk by the light near the kitchen.”

That explained the intense look on her face when she’d told me, “The black wolf knows.” It hadn’t been fear; she was trying to make me understand. Had he told her we’d been lovers?

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Why are you warning us and telling us all of this now?”

“Because they’re on my heels waiting for me to lead them to the van Doren boy. And because…” He shook his head, his turn to be choked. He pulled his hand away. “Because I shouldn’t have. That is, we shouldn’t have.”

“No, it’s okay, I wanted it to happen. I was happy there, with you. I’ve missed you terribly.”

“You helped me feel like a young man again, Joanna Fisher. That’s why I kept you around long after you could have gone on to your own lab.”