“Oh, yeah?” Basil shrugged. “No one told me that. Besides, it’s not like they managed to break the skin.”

Something rustled in the trees behind us. The sound was followed, an instant later, by the long, low rumble of a lupine growl. Jett was behind me like a shot, pressed against my legs and whimpering. I went stiff, feeling my blood chill in my veins. “Well, it looks like they’re back for another try,” I said. “Don’t let them bite you.” And please, Shelby, stay in the playhouse, I thought, wishing more than I had ever wished before that I had Sarah along to play telepathic relay and keep everyone informed as to what was going on. Take your time with your sisters, and don’t come out.

I’m not a telepath, and Sarah was on another continent; Shelby wasn’t going to hear me pleading with her. That thought all too firmly in mind, I turned to face whatever was coming out of the wood.

Fifteen

“Most people would very much like to believe that humans invented the ambush. It makes them feel like we’re special. Smart. Try telling that to the trapdoor spider, to the octopus, or to the wolf. They’ll be delighted to hear how special you are, as they’re draining the marrow from your bones.”

—Jonathan Healy

Standing on the bank of a swamp in Queensland, Australia, probably about to be attacked by werewolves

EVERYTHING WAS ABSOLUTELY STILL. Nothing rustled; nothing moved; no birds sang. The growling from the trees had stopped, however temporarily, and it was almost possible to convince myself that I’d imagined it. I might have made that fatal error, if it hadn’t been for Jett hiding behind my legs and Basil standing at the edge of the water. He’d heard the growling, too, and he looked as uneasy as I felt.

“You sure that was your wolves?” he asked. “Maybe we scared them away.”

As he spoke his final word, the woods exploded.

Three wolves bounded into the open, all of them displaying the foaming drool that would increase their odds of successfully infecting us with a single bite. I didn’t know how much of that was intentional—but if all our theorizing about intelligent werewolves was accurate, and not just paranoid delusion, they might be working themselves into a froth on purpose. If you can’t beat them, recruit them. Once we were infected, we’d probably be a lot less enthusiastic about the idea of killing all werewolves.

I pulled the gun from my belt and clicked off the safety, but kept it low, pointed at the ground rather than at any of the approaching wolves. They were eating up ground, their legs churning as they flung themselves toward us. I still had a few seconds. “If you stop where you are, I will not shoot you!” I shouted.

They didn’t stop. “They’re not stopping,” observed Basil.

“I noticed!” I raised my gun and fired once into the ground a foot or so ahead of the lead wolf. That got its attention, even though words hadn’t been able to do the trick. It yelped and scrambled away from the impact site, almost falling over in its hurry to retreat. The other two wolves dug their paws into the ground, bleeding off speed at an impressive clip, and pulled back into an uneasy circling motion. The lead wolf drew back its lips and snarled at us. Saliva dripped from its jowls, pooling on the ground in foamy puddles.

“They stopped,” said Basil.

I risked a sidelong glance in his direction. “Are you always this fond of stating the obvious, or am I just the lucky recipient of your sarcasm?”

“Bit of both,” said Basil.

“Right.” I refocused my attention on the wolves. “I’m going to lower the gun now. I’m not going to put it away, but I’m going to lower it, and if you don’t make any threatening moves, I won’t either.”

The wolves didn’t do anything but continue to pace and circle. I took that as at least something of a good sign. Taking a long, slow breath, I lowered the gun.

“I know you can hear me, and I’m hoping you can understand me,” I said. I was unable to prevent myself from speaking slowly and clearly, like I was trying to make myself heard and understood by a quarry golem. (They don’t have ears, and mostly function through lip reading, sign language, and throwing things. It works out reasonably well for them. Being ten feet tall probably doesn’t hurt matters.) “I don’t want to hurt you. I’m hoping you don’t actually want to hurt me. Please. Can you shift back to human? I need to talk to you. This will be an easier conversation if you can talk back.”

“So talk.”

The disappearance of Cooper’s body had been enough to convince me—mostly—that he was one of the werewolves, if not the source and patient zero for this particular outbreak. But there had still been a small amount of doubt, a small chance that I was wrong. The sound of his voice put any lingering questions to rest.

He walked calmly out of the woods into the open, still dressed in the bloody remains of the clothes he’d been wearing when we were attacked. He’d had plenty of opportunities to change since then, if he’d been able to reconvene with his werewolf buddies. He was making a point, and I didn’t like it.

“Hello, Cooper,” I said, keeping my gun pointed resolutely at the ground. I didn’t want to bait him any more than I had to. “You’re looking a lot less dead than I’d expected, given the way I last saw you. Didn’t know the Society had a ‘resurrection’ policy.”

“Didn’t die,” he said, with a broad shrug. “Lost a lot of blood, which dropped my pulse low enough that you lot didn’t find it. I was hoping that would be the result. I guess I got lucky.”

“I guess I did, too,” I said. “I’m still clean.”

Cooper blinked slowly, looking bewildered. Then he whistled once, short and sharp and shrill. The three werewolves—the other three werewolves—stopped circling and prowled over to sit down in front of him, forming a loose, protective semicircle of lupine bodies and narrowed, feral eyes. “What do you mean, clean?”

“I mean the treatment I brought with me kept me from getting sick, Cooper.” There was no point in telling him that the infection hadn’t managed to take hold of me in the first place: letting him think we had a guaranteed cure for lycanthropy could only work in our favor. “I’m not going to transform. I’m not contagious. I’m not infected.”

“Then we’ll try again.” Cooper made the statement sound perfectly reasonable, like he was proposing a dinner date. “We’ll try again, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll keep trying until we manage to bring you over to our side. I want you, smart boy. You’re quick, you’re loyal, and you’ve got science in your back pocket. That’s going to come in handy.”