Page 6 of Wolf Bane (Marked #3)

I had a feeling Mariska’s enthusiasm and stubbornness didn’t give them a choice but to welcome them into the fold, and the fact they were all shifters rather than weres probably helped.

They were far less clannish than weres, overall, far less likely to close ranks on a newcomer.

And as much as it ruined my introvert, borderline misanthrope street cred, I kind of missed the way Mal and Mariska would just sort of show up unannounced and make themselves at home when I came back from work.

Over the past few months, they’d settled into a new routine of work for Mal, school for Mariska, and socializing with the local shifter community in small doses.

It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, but Mal was looking way less paranoid lately, and Mariska had ensorcelled a pack of young shifters who liked to raise Cain around the neighborhood on weekend, the group of them running wild along with her puppy, Boo.

Well. Dog, I suppose. That thing was too big to be a puppy.

That the little makeshift play pack pissed off a lot of the were community was just kind of a bonus in my book, but I was petty like that.

Tonight was a scout night, and Tyler was… Tylering… so I was on my own. I let myself in through the front door, not wanting to deal with the carport, already plotting what to order for dinner, when I caught a whiff of expensive cologne and wolf.

A brief, fluttering excitement lit me from the inside— Ethan’s home early— before my brain kicked into gear. He never wore the pricey stuff, the only bottle I’d given him sitting on the dresser in our room, barely touched except for the rare special occasion. And that wolf-scent wasn’t his.

Carefully, I set my bag down inside the door and toed off my shoes.

The smell was mingling with the usual ones of the house, wolf and pine and wood and the faintest trace of coffee and the sweet floral honey scent that seemed to cling to the kitchen.

Maybe it was Tyler, stopping by earlier, I mused, stepping quietly further into the house.

“About time.”

“Shit!”

Cullen’s appearance out of the dark of my living room had me jumping like a cat and, ironically, shifting into a partial form, hands and jaw lengthening to accommodate the sharp bits, body hunching into a half-wolf crouch.

It wasn’t pretty, but it was the best I could do on short notice.

“You’ve gotten faster,” he said, disdain rather than approval coloring his words. “But no more accurate. Shift back, you’re embarrassing yourself.”

It was painful, a full body muscle cramp and spasm that cracked my joints in just a heartbeat of time. Colors dimmed, scent became less profound, and I was in my regular shape once more.

“You’re supposed to be in Chicago!”

“It’s amazing, how air travel works, isn’t it?

This morning I’m in an actual city with actual culture, this afternoon I’m…

here.” Cullen glanced around my living room, his expression neutral but with a hint of disdain.

“And I’m checking on my rental property, ensuring the little hellion and her slavering hell beast haven’t destroyed it and ruined the property value. ”

“You love her, don’t lie,” I muttered, flipping on the hall light and taking a vague satisfaction in Cullen’s wince. “Why the hell are you here?”

“Ethan’s been chatty. Change your clothes. We need to talk.”

I glanced down at my ruined socks and my ripped-at-the-seams trousers. “God damn it. Sit in the kitchen. Don’t touch anything.”

“Please. The feel of plastic and artificial granite makes my skin crawl.”

It was best to ignore Cullen when he was trying to get a rise out of me, something I remembered most of the time, so I just headed down the hall to my room and shucked off my ruined clothes, shoving the socks into the bedside trash bin and the trousers into the pile of things to be mended.

I might have been practicing shifting a lot lately. Maybe hoping to surprise Ethan when he got back. Maybe.

Cullen was perched delicately on one of the kitchen chairs when I found him a few moments later, as if he was afraid for any of the furniture to touch him.

“Oh, calm down,” I muttered. “You’ve been here before and nothing happened. I’ve seen you drinking a Shiner on my back porch, leaning on the railing, when you thought I wasn’t looking.”

He sniffed, but I could swear I saw the corner of his lips twitch.

“Ethan’s a chatty thing, isn’t he? Kind of surprised me.

I had been harboring the impression of him as one of those stoic country boys who gets things done and doesn’t have time for nonsense.

” Cullen swept a gaze over me in my worn joggers and one of Ethan’s t-shirts from high school.

Go Belmarais Bobcats. “He’s doing fantastically, just in case you were wondering. ”

“He told me he’s enjoying it,” I admitted begrudgingly.

Act like an adult, Landry, I scolded myself.

Though the urge to stick my tongue out at Cullen was strong, I offered him a drink.

He shook his head politely, putting his fancy leather satchel on the table with a flourish.

“I’ve come to share information with you that is… hm. Concerning.”

“The virus?” I sat down heavily across from him, my unopened beer forgotten on the counter for the moment.

Cullen’s expression, already pinched and disdainful, soured a bit further. “It’s not a virus. Viruses are communicable.”

“Not always,” I muttered. Ignoring his scoff of annoyance, I reached for the small drive he set down on the table. “What’s this?”

He slapped his hand down atop the silver rectangle. “No. This is ICW property.” Reaching into the satchel, he produced a sheet of paper and laid it on the table in front of me. “This is a summary, to begin with.”

“Which you’re about to explain to me like I’m a toddler,” I pointed out. “What difference does it make if I do the reading or you do?”

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “Listen to me. I am not free to tell you any of this, but contrary to popular belief, my head isn’t up my ass.

This isn’t some strange little cold going around.

There’s a pattern emerging that, given your history, is concerning.

To put it mildly. There are six known groupings of this outbreak, all in semi-rural areas.

Most centered in Texas and Oklahoma, but now one in Colorado and one in Maryland.

The infected…” He trailed off, uncertainty tinging his words for the first time in since he’d opened his mouth.

“I’m seeing a pattern, Landry. I just can’t figure it out!

” He shoved the paper at me, sending it sliding across the slick surface of the table.

“That’s shit research,” I muttered, grabbing the sheet. Names, location, date of diagnosis. “Death?”

“Some of them, yes,” Cullen rasped, pressing his hands over his eyes. “The ones that survive, they shake it off easily after about a month. They do experience heightened senses, heightened sensitivities . Some?—”

“Aggression?” I demanded, Kayley’s bite, Melly’s sharp teeth, flashing through my thoughts. “Are they especially aggressive?”

Cullen hesitated. “Some,” he admitted. “The younger ones. They… burn out,” he said, the words sound like a quote more than his own.

He produced a few more pages, thick paper from a fancy office stock that told me he’d been sneakily printing this off at the office.

That, for some reason, amused me. Probably more than it should have.

But I bit back my smirk and spread out the other pages.

“Fevers that spike around a hundred and six and stay there, metabolism stuck in overdrive… Uncontrollable shifts far too young.”

For the first time in our short acquaintance, he sounded scared . And that worked under my skin more than anything else.

“How young are we talking here? Weres, the average age for the first full shift is what, eight? Nine?”

“Like humans, it depends on a lot of factors. It’s not analogous to puberty,” he added with a faint sneer. “Sexual maturity has nothing to do with shifting.”

“Just the average age.” I sighed, grabbing another sheet. More names, dates. Some more deaths. The locations were in Texas, though, not Oklahoma like the first sheet. I set them side by side, two stacks started.

“Nine, on average, though it’s rarely an easy process and the second shift tends to come later.

Shifters… are different. Some, like our little friend next door, start quite early.

Others don’t achieve a complete shift until their teen years, depending on the form of their change and, well, I suppose many other factors. ”

I started making neat piles of the print outs. “Why print and not just email me?”

“You’d ignore an email. And this was safer.”

“Safer?” I looked up. “For whom? From whom?”

Cullen was quiet, purse-lipped and hooded-eyed, for a long moment.

Finally, he wilted just a little, admitting, “This information is not supposed to be shared yet. And I find myself at odds with the upper echelons of the ICW over this. Ethan is getting a talking to today about his choice to inform you of the situation, and he will be silenced. So, prepare for that. But I…” He huffed softly.

“Well, it’s nothing so noble as bravery. ”

“What is it then?”

“Let’s say I’m guarding my own interests,” he said after the longest pause in the history of pauses. “Right now, this is being treated as a simple annoyance. But I’m not convinced and, to be frank, neither are many of the higher-ups.”

“So why come to me? Or are you visiting all your pet doctors this week?”