I nodded. As an artist, I possessed a good eye for proportion, and I’d seen the differences he spoke of. “But these wulfleng didn’t take after their human selves?” I asked. “How do you know, if you didn’t see their human side?”
“Because they could have been cookie stamped, they were so much alike. And so much like Dillon. Uncanny. Freaked me out.”
I didn’t think there was much on this earth that freaked Chris out. “So, they might have been infected with a mutant strain of the virus. You think Dillon was infected by the same one?”
“We don’t even know if the mutant virus is real,” he conceded.
My stomach muscles tightened. “Someone deliberately infected Dillon with this new strain?”
“An excellent question, for which I have no answer. Not yet, anyway.” He hesitated and looked at me again. “Sam told you we got two bodies to the examiner—well it’s because they were so big, we couldn’t hide all five under the tarp, so we only took two. When Matt and I went back to collect the other three, they’d vanished.”
“Like Dillon and Chloe.”
He nodded. “Someone is interested in these wulfleng. And it looks like they might have access to military-grade equipment. But it gets worse.”
Of course it does, I thought. I had a strong, sudden desire to halt and even rewind time, as I sensed my life unravelling, and me having no control over it. Maybe it would be better if the last two months had never happened. But I glanced at Chris and realized I’d gained more friends in that time than I had my entire life. And Sam . . .
Chris’s brows lowered, and he tightened his mouth. “If Dillon was infected with a mutant strain—and that is still a big if—the infection didn’t end with him.” He looked at me, and a world of pain lay in his eyes.
The revelation slammed into me. Dillon had bitten me. And Peter. And he’d been with Chloe, so he’d likely infected her. And she’d bitten Josh.
Oh my God.
“We’re infected?” I could barely voice the words. “Will we become like Dillon?”
“I don’t know.” Chris grimaced, revealing strong white teeth. “Peter and Josh weren’t bitten on a full moon. The normal wulfan virus only becomes reproductive and circulates into the bodily fluids every twenty-nine days, for a twenty-four-hour period. The rest of the time, it hides. But if there is a mutant virus, who knows how it cycles and transmits? Does it affect wulfan? One might think wulfan should be at least partially immune to it since they already possess the original strain.”
Immune? Yet neither Peter nor Josh acted normally. And I wasn’t wulfan . . .
“How long would I have, before I show signs?”
“If Dillon was infected when we thought, this last full moon would have been his second,” he said.
Crap.
“But he was erratic almost immediately,” Chris pointed out. “If we’re off with our timing for his infection, he may have held on longer. And from what we’ve determined, he had issues as a human, before he ever became a wulf.”
I stared out across the immaculate lawn and gardens. “How will I know when I start to lose it?”
“So far, you aren’t showing signs of trouble. Your wulfleng form looks nothing like Dillon or the others in Brandon.”
Well, that was mildly reassuring. “But my progress to wulfleng was—unusual, you said so yourself.”
“That’s true. But it doesn’t mean it’s related to this new virus.” I read the determination in Chris’s words and appreciated his effort to keep me hopeful. But he wasn’t aware of the partial I’d done today. Was that something a normal wulfleng can do? I desperately needed to know, but now I was afraid to ask.
Instead, I said, “Dillon was a big hulking brute of a guy and he looked the same as a wulfleng. What about the ones in Brandon? What did they look like as humans?”
“When we ran the prints, we got photos on the two. They weren’t big in the pics, but they were old mug shots. Maybe they changed after they were infected.”
“But I haven’t.” I clung to hope. “I’ve put on muscle, but I’m still the same guy.”
He nodded. “This is all speculation. We can’t verify anything until we get the results back on the virus.”
“But something is wrong with Peter, and now Josh.” My head spun. Chris’s expression possessed a tension I’d never noticed before. The scientist in me groped for information like a lifeline. “So is this what happens when wulfan are exposed to the mutant virus?”
“I don’t know.” I sensed the enforcer in him struggling to maintain control, and the echo in his voice—a hint of fear and pain—of the potential for his fragile world to disintegrate, and for him to be responsible for blowing it apart.
“Sam and Garrett are coming in case . . . in case something has to be done, aren’t they?”
“They’re coming to help sort this out. But it’s not what you think. We have a lead. Garrett is a private detective with strong connections to the RCMP, and my old links there aren’t bad, either. We ran the prints on the wulfleng we put down and we found who they worked for—the son of an American arms dealer who has set up shop in Northern Ontario and Manitoba. Matt thinks the guy’s operation closed in Brandon when his wulfleng went off the deep end, but he has a home base in Winnipeg. We’ll track him.”
I absorbed that in silence. “I want in.”
“Liam . . .”
“Look, it makes sense. You need to keep an eye on me anyway. What better way than to have me with you?”
Chris looked at me and sighed. “We’ll talk about it when Sam and Garrett get here. For now, we have to figure out how to manage Peter
