The Mountain's Shadow

“You kept me around after what?”

“I got a letter before I went to Atlanta. GeniTech was interested in you, but they didn’t want to seem like they were poaching you, so they approached me first and asked about you.”

I caught my breath. GeniTech was the big dog in the industry. Going to work there would have been the next step to the shining career I’d wanted.

“I told them that you wouldn’t be interested.” His eyes locked with mine. “I wanted your brain, your body, and your talents, and I couldn’t stand the thought of you having the opportunity I’d wanted for most of my professional career.”

“You sabotaged me.”

“I used you, and it’s something I’ll never forgive myself for, especially since I could have spared you from all this.”

I noticed then how the lines around his mouth had grown deeper, and I felt all of the eighteen years separating us. “But you didn’t. And now we’re here.”

“I won’t be for much longer. I made sure there’s no one at the house, only the sheriff’s man out front in his car.”

“Oh, so they’re in on it, too? I should’ve guessed when they took everything after Louise died.”

“Knowles is taking orders from someone, but I haven’t been able to find out who. Probably Hippocrates.” He reached over to brush my cheek again, but I flinched away.

“I can’t believe you did that, sabotaged my career for a little fun so you could use me.”

“Joanie, there’s no time to argue now. Go in there and don’t come out until you have something. I’ll lead them away.”

I felt my chest tighten with the shame of knowing I had to follow his orders, even now after I knew he’d betrayed me. I wanted to say more, to scream at him or claw his eyes out, or at least his throat so that we’d have matching pain. I’d forgotten how much I hated it when he ordered me around. The mist enveloped him, and the black wolf reappeared and bounded into the woods. I looked after it and bit my lip to keep from crying.

“Did he really mean it, Iain? That he used me? Did you know about GeniTech?”

Iain wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Let’s get to work.”

Armed with my grandfather’s notes and equipment, Iain’s background knowledge and theoretical research, and my experience, we set up in the underground laboratory. First I made sure that all the doors were locked, but we still avoided turning on any lights or giving any other indication that the house was occupied. I didn’t want Sheriff Knowles to turn up and insist that he urgently had to question me. I was surprised to find that Ron wasn’t in the house, but perhaps he’d decided to make himself scarce.

My grandfather had, through his own research and experience as well as reading my work, isolated a genetic component to the expression of CLS. The Landover Curse, it had been called in our family. In other families, it had been called other things, and some didn’t even have a name for it. I guess that sort of information tended to be swept under the rug when it could get you and your family burned. It was more common, I had found in my research, in families of Germanic and Scandinavian descent, which made sense considering that part of the world had spawned the best werewolf legends. Other cultures might have similar tales, for example, the dolphin-men of the Amazon, and they might carry through as well, but there was something about CLS that made it more common, at least in the U.S. This area, with its Dutch, German and Scandinavian heritages all intermixed, would be the perfect area to find subjects, which is likely why the local kids, and not the newcomers, were the targets.

“So what can make a genetic trait more likely to express?” I asked Iain after we’d hashed all this out. “This has to be complicated considering all the parts of the transformation, several genes at least.”

He steepled his fingers and sat back. “Whoever came up with this has to be a genius in the field. They took your heredity and epidemiology work as well as our work in the genes themselves and found a way to make the traits express in a temporary fashion.”

“Do we know anyone with that capability?”

He arched an eyebrow at me. “We know several, but the question is who would be unethical enough to do it and to ‘experiment’ on children as well as other victims of the tainted vaccines?”

“It depends on how much money is involved, I guess. To create a problem so you can monopolize the cure…” I shuddered. “It’s hard to say. Let’s get back to the question of how they tainted the vaccines. What could be in them?”

“Some sort of chemical? I’m just guessing what could be transmitted trough vaccinations.”

“Maybe, but what?”

We once again turned to my grandfather’s notes. He had been working with—surprise!— wolfsbane, also known as aconite, which could either be used as a topical anesthetic or a poison if taken internally or if too much is absorbed through the skin. He was in pursuit of the legendary use, which was to bring on a state of lycanthropy or to banish it. He hoped for the latter. His aim, according to his notes, was to use my research on the causes and spread of the disorder to figure out how wolfsbane may act on the nervous system of the CLS victims.

“So if he was looking at wolfsbane to prevent the expression of CLS, what could be the cause of it?” I mused.

“Let’s think of what one finds in vaccinations,” Iain suggested. “Perhaps it’s something that’s already in there or that could be tweaked rather than something that’s introduced that the FDA would be able to trace.”

“Good call. There’s the active ingredient, which is a dead virus, part of a live virus, a less problematic but similar one…”

Iain’s eyes unfocused, and I could almost see the calculations going on in his head. “And what do viruses do?”

“They inject their DNA into a cell and cause it to replicate little viruses.”

“So what if a virus was to be engineered to do that, but to cause the cell’s DNA to express CLS symptoms if that propensity were there?”

“As in a viral vector? You know, that makes sense. Instead of using the viral vector to inhibit the patient’s CLS gene expression, it enhances it. CLS is recessive, but with the vector, only one of parents needs to have the gene.”

“So why kidnap the children?”

“Because adolescence is when the CLS really takes off along with the expression of secondary sex characteristics, acne, the works. All the victims were pre-adolescents.”

Everything fell into place then, like a perfectly arranged Tetris grid. I only had two more questions. One was how my grandfather had gotten hold of records from a pediatrician’s office. The second was for Peter Bowman. Why had his son been taken? Sure, the family had the gene, but little Lance was too young to participate in the CLS “field research”. His kidnapping had to have been for other, more sinister purposes.

“I have some friends at the FDA,” Iain told me and broke me out of my reverie. “I’m going to give them a call first thing in the morning. They’ll probably be very interested in these ideas as well as possible contamination of the vaccines with viral vectors for a genetic disorder.”

“But what if the viruses are so cleverly engineered that they won’t be able to detect them?”

He drummed his fingers on the metal tabletop. “I wish there was some way we could get a sample of it. Without it, we don't have any proof, and I’m sure they’ve got clean materials to give to the FDA if requested.”

The hopelessness of the situation struck me. “You’ve got me there. I don’t know how to get a contaminated vaccine or a sample of the viral vector.”

“Still, I’ll call in the morning.”

“Just stay hidden until then. If you need to go upstairs for anything, try not to turn on any lights.”

“I’ll also try not to kill myself stumbling around in the dark.”

“Good call. And stay away from any explosive devices too.”

“That’s not funny, Joanna.”

“None of this is.”

“And where are you going?”

“I have to speak with a mother and a lawyer.”

He looked up from the notes in his hands. “You’re going to sue Robert?”