Page 37 of Wolf Bane (Marked #3)

“No thank you.” I took the indicated seat—a recliner across from Celestine’s perch on the sectional sofa—and offered a small smile.

“ As I told your son, I’m making some house calls since the clinic is out of commission for the time being.

We’re setting up some temporary buildings but those won’t be ready until later in the week.

Given the situation with, ah, everything, I thought I’d stop in and make sure everyone was doing well.

” And also maybe ask about your neighbor and how your kid managed to turn him into a werewolf. You know. The usual questions.

Celestine glanced past me to where Vinnie was standing in the doorway. “Where are the children?”

“Out back.”

She nodded, returning her gaze to me. “You can see Vinnie in here. I’ll be in the backyard, minding the little ones.”

Vinnie lumbered over, towering above me to glare down. “I’m not pissing in one of Mom’s cups for you.”

“Ah. No need. Just a few questions.” I gestured for him to sit down. After another glare, he took up Celestine’s abandoned seat across from me. In the stretchy silence, a car door slammed and someone called out for Ellie. A screen door creaked. Vinnie just glowered.

“You’re not scaring me,” I said quietly. “I’m well aware of how most of the weres out here feel about me and there’s little to nothing I can do to change your minds. But I’m not afraid of you.”

Vinnie’s lips twitched. “Liar. I can smell it on you.”

“Maybe I should change deodorant then,” I said, plastering a serene smile on my face. “Now, just a few questions to follow-up regarding your UTI.”

Vinnie glowered but complied, answering with brusque efficiency. “We done here?”

“Almost. I have a report of your neighbor being bit by a dog. Your dog, specifically. Now I’m supposed to report this bite to the county…

” I paused, the quiet heavy and dangerous.

Because we both knew they didn’t have a dog.

But he did have two kids. “The person in question is currently undergoing observation and treatment for the resulting… problems. I’d like to get a blood sample so we can rule out some things. ”

Vinnie stiffened. “Robards is a liar,” he spat. “My kid didn’t bite him!”

“It was a dog.”

Vinnie straightened, holding his breath. The air felt like the moments before a thunderstorm: heavy, electric, still.

“I didn’t say it was your kid. It was a dog. Robards said it was a dog that bit him. And your mom gave him some painkiller after helping him clean the wound.”

Vinnie exhaled slowly, his eyes fixed firmly on me.

“Vinnie, which kid bit Mr. Robards?”

“You need to leave now,” Celestine said from the doorway behind me. “You’ve done what you came to do, haven’t you? Accused my grandchildren of harming some old man who needs to mind his own business.”

I rose to my feet, unwilling to take my eyes off Vinnie, but at the same time, desperately needing to keep Celestine in my line of sight.

I didn’t need the were traits in my blood to let me know she was the more dangerous of the two.

She took another step into the room, filling my peripheral vision as Vinnie stood across from me.

The only way out was past Celestine, out the locked door and down the walkway.

I was fast, but not faster than two true weres.

And I was on the verge of answers—actually, I was pretty sure I had at least part of one.

“How’s Melly doing anyway? Any coughing, fever, uncontrollable shifting?”

Vinnie and Celestine didn’t move, didn’t change expressions. Both were watching, intent rather than wary.

I was fucked.

“They’re awfully quiet for kids playing outside. Are you sure they’re okay?” Even with my better-than-average-humans hearing, I couldn’t pick up even a stray giggle from outside. But I did feel the prickles of being stalked, being hunted.

Someone was moving in on me.

I could juke past Celestine, maybe make it to the front door before she was on me.

Had they locked it? I couldn’t remember.

The window was open but there was a screen in place.

If I had to, I supposed throwing myself through was an option, but I’d seen enough internet fail videos to know how well shit like that worked out in real life.

I’d probably end up just bouncing back into Vinnie’s waiting claws.

Which, honestly, seems like it’d be par for the course for me.

Stay still , I thought. Just stay still and wait.

“Mr. Robards is a kind old man,” Celestine said finally, her smile a bare twitch of the lips. He was likely only a year or two older than her, but their demeanor was entirely different. “It’s a shame he was bit, but as the saying goes, blood will out.”

“Gloves off then, huh?”

She smiled, giving me a thin-shouldered shrug. “Vinnie, check on the children.”

“Ma—”

“Make sure they’re playing nice with the neighbor’s little ones, please. Melly does get feisty lately.” Her smile was empty when she added, “It’s good for little ones to have friends. So important to build ties, isn’t it?”

Vinnie obeyed without another complaint, going just slow enough to intimidate as he crowded past me. His steps creaked down the hallway, and a moment or two later, the sound of a screen door cut through the quiet. Celestine didn’t move.

“Gloves off,” I repeated, and her smile grew just a fraction.

“Ethan Stone had the makings of a fine leader,” she said, swerving right when I was expecting a handbrake turn to the left.

“But he forgot, or perhaps Clive never taught him, where his loyalty lies. With us. Not with humans. Not even with shifters, though there are some among us that are more forgiving for that failure. Shifters are not like us, Doctor Babin. Their ways may be similar, but they are a pale imitation of us. The few weres who pollute our community by bringing in shifter blood are rarely welcome. It’s strange to me that some clans welcome human pollution so freely.

They trust humans. Just because we may look similar to them sometimes doesn’t mean we are the same,” she added with a snarl, eyes gleaming with hate.

“We can’t be so different, not if weres and humans are able to have children together,” I pointed out. Not if some latent gene in me was triggered so easily ?

Celestine’s face wrinkled in disgust, teeth and pale gums bared. “I know what you are, Landry Babin. Don’t you ever wonder about your daddy?”

Ice bloomed in my veins, sharpening my senses until they were just focused on Celestine Clemens. Her snarl, her glittering eyes. Her thickening voice. It took almost more energy than I had to keep my mouth shut, to keep my reactions schooled.

“He left you, didn’t he? That’s what that Cleverly woman told you, hm? Left you and your mama. Let your mama just die for her sins. Drank himself to death somewhere, or maybe shot himself up with something? That what she told you?”

“I suppose it’s not uncommon knowledge,” I said slowly, swallowing the hard lump of fear in my throat. “I mean, how many folks out here have similar stories? Drug and alcohol abuse is endemic in many rural populations thanks to economics, lack of opportunity?—”

“Devereaux Babin,” she interrupted, her gaze far-off as she pulled something from her memory. “You know that name, hm?”

“My grandfather. He died before I was born. Over a decade before I was born. He?—”

“Was killed in a hunting accident in 1980,” she completed.

“Or that’s what his family said. But we know better.

Tina-Marie Goode. Your granny, hm? Had an accident driving down the river bend in 1979.

Your daddy was just a tiny little thing then, hm?

” She shook her head, tsking sadly. “Gil Thomas, bad case of food poisoning.

Died in ‘86. Horrible what happened to the Lovett family, wasn’t it, back in ‘99? Do you remember them?”

A twinge of remembered grief—Sonny Lovett had been a friend of mine in school.

We’d played at recess every day until one day we didn’t.

Aunt Cleverly had been the one to tell me why my teachers were so sad—Sonny and his family had all died in a weird accident.

Carbon monoxide poisoning, in the middle of a Texas spring when no one ran their heaters.

At the time, it hadn’t made sense because kids don’t die .

And the fact Sonny had, had fucked up my world view in ways that took me years to untangle.

It’d made me paranoid. It’d made Cleverly paranoid, too.

Always checking our AC unit, two winters of using tiny space heaters and electric blankets instead of the central heating.

Haunting my side whenever I stepped out the front door.

“What are you talking about?” I finally managed to rustle out of my fear-dry throat.

“This little area of ours has a bad history of accidents. Of illness.” She finally focused her gaze back on me, her entire body fairly quivering with a barely restrained shift. “It’d be a tragedy in other circumstances.”

Vinnie’s heavy steps preceded his looming presence behind Celestine. “She’s good,” he said, pinning me with a glare. “You can go now, Doctor Babin.”

“Ms. Clemens,” I began, but she shook her head.

“I’ve given you enough to be getting on with,” she said dryly.

“You’re a smart one, I’ve heard. Too bad about Ethan Stone being one of those mongrel-lovers.

It’s folks like you that’re destroying our communities.

Tainting us with the human softness.” She sniffed, glancing up at Vinnie. “Show him to the door, Vincent.”

“Mr. Robards shifted in my exam room,” I said flatly, confidentiality be damned in this one instance. “After your Melly bit him. After you gave him a painkiller. He’s not one of you. Hell, he’s not even something like me. What happened, Ms. Clemens? What really happened?”

Her expression, so carefully cruel before, slipped towards surprise, maybe even shock, before she wrangled it back into neutral lines.