Page 9 of Wolf Bane (Marked #3)

“We got some lunch, the three of us. I ordered soup since it was cheap and I felt bad, her payin’.

Not because she’s a woman or something,” he hastened to add.

“Because I don’t like askin’ others for help.

It was alright, we caught up a bit. Her friend was kinda quiet and acted like I was cockblockin’ him.

Maybe I was. After lunch, my head started actin’ up like it does—that part wasn’t new,” he added before I could ask.

“I get headaches time to time, ever since.”

Ever since last year , I filled in silently.

“Anyway. They walked me back to the truck, she popped into the Walgreens for some painkiller when I said my head hurt, got me a bottle of water too, which was super embarrassing. I didn’t even get my own water.” He paused, expression shuttering. “Then I came home.”

“That’s everything?”

Justin nodded curtly, shutting down. Curled in on himself on the sofa, it was like he was willing himself to stop existing, to just nope right on out of the mess his life felt like.

I changed the subject slightly, got a list of what Justin had tried and not tried since getting sick. Had anything helped? No. Did the itching start first or the chest cold symptoms? The itchy feeling. How soon after getting back from Dallas did it start? Just a few hours.

I nodded, made appropriate doctor noises, then said I had to go look something up.

“Some other people have come down with something similar,” I half-truthed. “Tyler, can I borrow your laptop? My phone’s almost dead.”

Tyler blinked to attention. “Uh. Sure. Which one? I’ve got like… ten. What do you need it for?”

“Medical data search.” I stared hard at him, willing him to suddenly manifest mind-reading powers.

Something must’ve worked or maybe it was the crazy eyed stare scaring him because he nodded slowly and motioned for me to come with him. “You can use the one in my office. It’s still charging. Come on.”

Justin slid back down to lay on his side while I followed Tyler down the hall to what had once been his bedroom but was now his office.

And by office, I mean weird computer cave. He had some sort of mesh strung up on the walls, what looked like two or three server racks in the open closet, and a general explosion of computer parts and energy drink cans on the desks and tabletops lining the room.

“What is it?” he demanded as soon as the door closed behind us. “You’re being squirrelly. Is he really dying? Am I dying? Why do you keep shoving your hand in your pocket? Is this some sort of weird turn on for you? Oh my God, Ethan is right, I don’t want to know anything about your private life.”

“One, speaking as a doctor, it’s my professional opinion you’re drinking way too many Monsters. Two,” I produced the flash drive with a little flourish, “I need help.”

* * *

“It’s mostly trash,” Tyler assured me as he grabbed parts off the shelves around his office to assemble his emergency file opening laptop.

“Bits and pieces I salvaged from other projects. If this thing toasts it, no big loss.” He paused mid-geekery and glanced up at me.

“Am I about to see something that’ll scar me for life, Landry?

I’m secured to the eye teeth so nothing’s gonna ping the feds, but I don’t want to give myself more nightmares. ”

“I have no idea. I don’t think so. Cullen gave it to me.”

“He seems like a freaky little shit,” Tyler muttered, fussing with his set up. “But not the sort to give you nightmare fuel.” He paused, then shrugged. “Well, not the kind I’m thinking of anyway. Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

Tyler in full on geek mode was kind of impressive, and a lot intimidating. “I remember you taking apart your dad’s computer your sophomore year of high school,” I mused behind a yawn, watching his fingers fly over keys.

“I remember him beating my ass after that.” Tyler darted a mirthless glance my way. “This is gonna take a few minutes. Cullen’s got a mess in here. Looks like he tried to layer in some encryption or something.”

Taking the hint, I slipped back out to ostensibly check on Justin. After a cursory check to find him sleeping once more and fever low, I ducked into the kitchen to try and call Ethan again.

Still no answer. Direct to voicemail again.

This time, I waited for the beep. “Hey. It’s me.

Again. Look, I need to talk to you like yesterday , okay?

I don’t know what you’re doing, and I get that it’s super important, but right now I’m kind of on the edge of a crisis and I need your help.

Or advice. Or something.” I closed my eyes, swallowing down the tired babble threatening to keep spilling out. “Call me. Love you.”

“Doctor Babin?” Justin called softly, voice rough. “Or am I hearing things again?”

“It’s me,” I said just loud enough to be heard, padding softly towards the living room. “You look rough.”

“Thanks.” He smiled faintly, a shadow of his old self moving across his drawn features. “Um. I feel like we have a lot to talk about, but also… what the hell, man?”

I snorted. “That about sums it up.” After bringing Justin back from being a man-sized lab rat for Garrow fanboys, things had been… well, awkward isn’t a strong enough word but weird gave the wrong connotation.

Stilted? Quiet?

Okay. Weird.

“Anything you want to jump in with?” I prompted, sitting gingerly at the far end of the couch. Justin huffed softly, one eye open and watching me.

Justin stared at me from under half-closed lids for a long few moments. “I don’t know,” he finally murmured. “You and me, we’re… alike, yeah? With the whole weird animal thing going on?”

“In some ways,” I said cautiously, “yes. I was born with the traits in my DNA. What was done to me when I was a child just triggered those changes to take place.”

Justin was quiet for so long, I leaned forward to check his breathing. His lips curved in a small smile. “I’m just thinking. I… I don’t think those changes were supposed to happen to me, Doc. What they did, it hurt.”

He sounded so childlike, so scared. “I can say I know how you feel, but I don’t think I do. What they did to me, I grew up with it. I didn’t even know they were doing something to me for most of my life. By then, I knew Ethan and Tyler and a handful of other weres. I knew they existed.”

“But you didn’t know you were one.”

“I still don’t think I am,” I admitted quietly, knowing Tyler could damn well hear me if he was trying. “And I don’t think I’m entirely human.”

“I… I don’t think I am anymore, either.”

“When I first found out what had been done to me… There were things that made sense, you know? Like… oh, that explains why I’m always on high alert—it’s the were part of me, on guard.

But other things…” I blew out a breath, the remembered untethering of my world, of what I thought I knew, not so very long ago, sending uneasy ripples of anxiety through my veins.

“People like us—you, me, Mal, hell probably even Mariska—we’re not going to be entirely one thing or the other.

Our human parts are always gonna be uneasy with our were or shifter parts.

Whether that’s our brains, our bodies, or our spirits. ”

Justin shifted, pushing up on his elbow to look at me more fully. “Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me. Whatever they did to me, my body’s not made for that. It’s trying to reject it and just tearing itself apart in the meantime.” He drew in a long, shaky breath, squeezing his eyes tight.

“Justin…”

He smiled, small and bitter, eyes still shut. “Yeah, thought so. There’s literally nothing to say about it, huh? The people who did this to me… there’s no undoing it, is there?”

I shook my head. “No,” I whispered. “Not as far as I can tell anyway. Maybe…”

“Don’t give false hope, Doc. It’s as bad as lying.”

“I hoped for a long time. Hell, I still do,” I admitted softly. “But it’s part of me. Part of you, now. And the people who did this… They’re not going to undo it. Even if they could.”

Justin nodded, curling up small as his long, lanky frame would allow. “Maybe this flu thing will kill me, and I can stop worrying about it.”

“Justin—”

He burrowed deeper in the thin blanket, pointedly giving me his shoulder.

Fuck.

“Hey.” Tyler’s low, tired voice caught me from down the hallway. “Come and see what I found.”

I gestured helplessly at Justin. “He needs help,” I said softly, tapping my temple. “More than any of us can come up with.”

Tyler eyed him warily, giving me a slow nod.

“Yeah. Well. Who doesn’t these days?” With a jerk of his chin towards his office, Tyler turned and left me to follow.

He was waiting in his janky desk chair, the thing held together with duct tape and sheer will, when I entered a few moments later.

“Before I show this to you, you need to spill, Lan. What are you digging into? You said Cullen gave this to you. Why? Where did he get it? And have you spoken to Ethan today?”

“Reverse order: No, have you? Not entirely sure. Because he thinks the info on it is something I need to know. And yeah, he gave it to me, and what do you think I’m digging into?”

“A fucking pile of shit,” he grumbled. “It took less than a minute to get this open—I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing security wise but it’s jack shit.

No encoding, not even a middle school computer science class level password.

So, I took some initiative,” he added with a small smirk.

“Nothing is untraceable. Nothing. You just have to know where to look for the footprints.”

“You’ve been watching one of those CSI shows, haven’t you?”

He wiggled his brows as I came around to his side of the desk. “I’m trying to sound more bad ass. Did a job for Waltrip last month and the lady who hired him said I sounded like a frat boy. Is it working?”

“Sounding like a frat boy or the bad ass thing?”