Nightshatter Read online

  “See? Me, still me. People, not eaten. Babies, born. All is good.”

  Garrett folded himself into the SUV, unimpressed. “So far.”

  I snorted. The partial I’d done was minor, but I still felt a little light-headed. “Hand me a granola bar from the glove compartment, would you?”

  He complied as I punched the clinic on speed dial.

  “Hey, Ardyth. All went well. We’re out—might as well stay that way. Tell Darlene I’ll take the farm calls in this area for the rest of the afternoon. Can you send them to me?”

  Moments later, I munched on granola as we headed to the next appointment. At each stop, I had the enforcer wait in the SUV. Although his presence offered its own challenges. He seemed to have no empathy for animals or for the situations in which they found themselves. The emotions he evoked, however, had nothing on the tsunami that had gone on between Sam and me. I drifted through the day annoyed, but in full control of my wulf.

  After my last call of the day, the farmer walked me back to the truck where Garrett waited. The enforcer stood like a silent rebuke while I exchanged the usual prolonged farewells—most of my clients loved to talk to someone other than their livestock for a change—and finally climbed into the SUV.

  I glanced over to him. “You look more pissed off than usual. What’s up?”

  He slipped into the passenger seat and glared at me. “Man, you sure can talk.”

  “They’re good people.” I shrugged. “It’s part of the gig.”

  “Well, Sam says to get out to Chris’s right away.”

  I frowned as my traitorous inner demon surged and my heart raced. I hadn’t intended on seeing Sam again so soon. “I have to call in first.”

  “We’re already late. We have a visitor from Texas. Jason wants us there now.”

  “Jason’s your boss, not mine.”

  Garrett’s brows dropped so low his entire upper face was in shadow. “You’re wulfleng now. He’s your boss too.”

  His words made my shoulders tense, and his eyes widened when I glared at him. Would tearing a chunk out of Garrett put me in a cage? Deciding it wasn’t worth it, I turned away, pulling out my phone. I needed to touch base with the clinic before signing off for the day.

  We were running late, and Ardyth had already handed things over to our evening receptionist. While Darlene and I handled the weekdays with Mandy and Ardyth, the clinic’s other two vets kept the clinic open until midnight from Monday through Thursday and handled Saturdays as well. Occasionally Darlene or I were on call in the evenings if one of the others couldn’t work, in addition to the emergencies on holidays, Fridays and Sundays.

  The receptionist put me on hold while she searched the clinic’s depths for my evening colleague. There were a couple of today’s calls that might come back to haunt the evening shift, and I wanted to update the vet who handled the evening’s large-animal cases.

  Garrett fidgeted while I waited. I ignored him. Finally, a cheerful voice came online.

  “Hey, Liam! My partner is going home because he’s sick as a dog. Can you cover?”

  She meant would I be on call for emergencies. I glanced at Garrett, whose sharp wulf ears had picked up on her request. He shook his head at me.

  “Yeah, no problem.”

  “Great. The appointment schedule is pretty open, so chances are I’ll manage fine. Got anything for me?”

  “Maybe.” I filled her in on a cow with milk fever and Luna’s twins.

  “Twins and one breech! They both lived? That’s awesome!”

  “Yeah, they looked pretty damned good, considering. The owners are experienced and competent, but they might call.”

  “Okay. You have a good evening.”

  I thought of the meeting ahead and grimaced. “Yeah, you too.”

  I disconnected and slid the phone back into my pocket.

  “You could have told her all that from Chris’s,” Garrett said.

  “Yep,” I agreed, starting the vehicle. I pointed it north, toward Sam.

  5

  Sam met us on Chris’s driveway, and my heart went ballistic the moment I spotted her. By the time we pulled up, I was breathing so hard that Garrett shot me an assessing glance.

  “Man, you got it bad.”

  I glared at him.

  He slid out of the seat. “Just calling it like I see it.”

  As soon as I stepped out, Keen assaulted me, bouncing with her silly tongue hanging out. A fraction of a second later, Havoc, my recent gift to Josh and Chris, joined her. Havoc was appropriately named—a giant puppy with a battering ram for a tail—and he almost bowled me over in his enthusiasm.

  “Down,” ordered Sam, and the dogs instantly sank to the ground, wiggling but obedient.

  “How the hell,” I said, not trusting myself to look at her, “do you do that?”

  “Trade secret,” she said and wrapped her arms around me.

  Every sense I had burst into flame. She smelled incredible and when I returned her embrace, my arms shook. I noticed that Garrett stood between the house and us. He wasn’t looking, but I could tell he was hovering, and I couldn’t let him see how close I was to losing control. “Sam,” I whispered. “You have to let me go.”

  She pulled back. “Your eyes have changed.”

  “I know.”

  She straightened and released me, her reluctance evident in the way she trailed her fingers along my ribs and down to my hip before taking a step away. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, pushing back the wulf and closing the door on his snapping, frustrated inner energy.

  When I opened them, she regarded me with pain in her gray eyes. “I hate this separation idea, but maybe you were right. If just being hugged brings you that close to the edge . . .”

  Just being hugged by Sam was like saying Everest was just a mountain. I refrained from pointing that out as we walked toward the house.

  “You should know by now you’re irresistible,” I said instead. “Men drop at your feet all the time, don’t they?”

  “Only when I’ve kneed them in the nuts.” It should have been a joke, but the set of her jaw indicated otherwise.

  The dogs passed us, taking an arcing route around Garrett, who had moved on ahead.

  “So what’s up with the guy from the Lone Star State?” I asked.

  “After I talked with Chris this morning, he called Malcolm, his contact in Texas. Malcolm hopped a plane and arrived in Winnipeg two hours ago. Jason picked him up and drove him out here.”

  I’d finally get to meet Jason. The head enforcer for Manitoba had been merely a name up to now. What got the Texas guy excited enough to travel all the way to Canada? I hoped it wasn’t me. I’d much rather be boring. Around here, exciting could get you killed.

  “How’s Peter?” I asked, bracing myself.

  “Still drugged. Doc Hayek wants him kept that way for a few more days.”

  Well, at least he was no worse. It wasn’t much consolation. What did Hayek think of Peter’s chances? Would the human ever find its way back through the wulf?

  We entered the house in a swirl of dogs. I couldn’t help but notice that another shelf in the hall stood empty. I could track Havoc’s growth by the ones he’d cleared.

  Josh met us at the door. I waved a hand at them. “More chewed knickknacks?”

  Chris’s mate smiled, revealing even, white teeth that contrasted with his deep-brown skin and long dark hair. “Broken, actually. Nothing that shouldn’t have gone in the trash ages ago. The plants—now that’s a different story.”

  Now that he mentioned it, I noticed several of Josh’s beloved potted plants were missing. I winced. “Sorry.” I’d brought them the drooling mammoth, after all.

  “S’okay,” Josh replied easily. “Moved them outside. Hopefully by the fall, he’ll be eating like a regular dog.”

  By the fall. The words fell between us like lead. We didn’t know if we’d be alive in a month, let alone until the fall.

  The smile slipped from Josh
’s face and he turned to lead me into the kitchen. A giant of a man was bending over to rub Havoc’s ears. “Now, this is a Texas-sized hound.” He smiled up at me and offered a hand the size of a dinner plate.

  Malcolm was as big as Dillon had been, but where Dillon had radiated menace, the Texan beamed goodwill. I knew at least part of it had to be an act—the man was an enforcer, after all—but I found myself smiling back at him like he was a long-lost buddy. His sandy-colored hair and freckled skin were the closest I’d seen to my own of any wulfan.

  Behind him stood a man with the type of pale skin and brown hair that should blend into any crowd, and perhaps humans regarded him that way. My wulf regarded him differently. The man radiated power, a natural energy that made the predator in me sit up and assess. When I shook his hand, his forearm muscles bulged, and something inside forced me to hang on for a second too long. He was shorter than me and his smile had lots of teeth. Big white human ones, not a fang in sight, but I could sense they were there. Unlike Malcolm, the smile barely glimmered in his eyes.

  “You must be Jason,” I said as I shook my hand free from his grip. “I’m Liam.”

  His gaze scanned me not up and down, but inside out. I swear he plucked every relevant fact straight from my brain, and although it made me uncomfortable, I didn’t look away from his pale-brown eyes. Something about him reminded me of Chris. He had that same dependability, but in Jason it was darker, intense, and more alpha. I finally pinned it, and by the automatic respect the others granted him, I knew I was right. Dominant energy, something my wulf understood. What did he think of me and the mutant infection? This man held my future—and my life—in his hands.

  “I thought it time we put our heads together on this, especially as Malcolm went to a lot of trouble to get here.” Jason had a quiet voice, but it had the ability to command attention.

  The counter was littered with a variety of finger foods, and we filled our plates before taking chairs around the table. Chris nodded to me and sat next to Josh—his chair close. My enforcer friend looked drawn, the coppery skin tight around his eyes and new lines on his face, and I could swear there were more grey streaks in his shaggy dark hair. His muscular bulk dwarfed Josh. Chris lacked my height but made up for it in width, and he looked like he could tackle anything. Josh appeared nervous, and I didn’t blame him. Along with Peter, the three of us were the subject of this meeting, and not in a good way.

  Jason sat at one end and Malcolm at the other. Sam moved to sit beside me. When Garrett stepped into her space, blocking her, she shot him a hard look. His expression didn’t change, but she relented and sat across from me instead. I took a deep breath. This was neither the time nor place to test my control.

  Chris watched the entire thing with an impassive face, but I thought I detected approval in his expression. Dammit. Why does doing the right thing always go along with me getting screwed? Or in my case, not getting screwed?

  Despite the tense situation, my stomach rumbled, my body eager to replenish reserves after the partials I’d done to save the foals. I inhaled three drumsticks before I could blink. Sam stared at me and raised an eyebrow. Partials made me eat like—well, like a wulf. My face heated and I looked away.

  Jason cleared his throat, and attention shifted to him. “Before Malcolm tells you what has been going on in Texas, I’ve disturbing news from here at home. The bodies of the wulfleng we put down in Brandon—the ones we suspect were infected with the mutant virus—have disappeared from the examiner’s morgue. Also, the samples she took from those bodies and sent to the lab in Winnipeg never arrived. We must consider the possibility they’ve gone the way of the bodies themselves.”

  We stared at him. My jaw had dropped open, and I closed it. Who the hell was behind this? How could they steal bodies and intercept samples?

  Josh thought along the same lines. “Who has those kinds of resources? Is this a government thing?”

  Malcolm shook his head. “We wondered if the human government in the States was involved, running some kind of secret research project, but we’ve found no trace of it. The fact things have moved into Canada suggests a well-financed private interest group. They often have access to big money the government often can’t touch. Money and resources.”

  Jason took stock of our reactions before continuing. “Whoever is at the heart of this, these disappearances lend credence to our mutant-virus theory. It means the samples Doc Hayek took from you and Peter last week”—his glance touched on Chris, Josh, and myself—“may be our only proof that such a thing exists, if they test positive.”

  “What if those samples go missing as well?” Josh asked.

  Jason didn’t answer, but his gaze slid to Chris.

  Chris nodded. “We’ll need protection.”

  My mind raced to connect the dots. The samples might go missing, but Hayek could always get more. So long as I, Chris, Josh, and Peter remained alive. Oh, crap.

  “They know where we are,” I said. Josh looked at me, and his eyes widened as he followed my drift.

  Jason nodded. “Sam told us about the wulfleng at your place. And we found evidence someone has been skulking in the bush around here.”

  Sam’s eyes flashed. “It might not have been an accident when Peter and Josh gave Garrett the slip and went for their run. I found traces of skunk scent on the path from the backyard, running into the bush for about half a mile.”

  I frowned, not wanting to think about Peter losing control of his humanity. “Someone lured them into the woods?”

  “A hunt tests control over their wulves,” Chris said.

  I thought of the surge of wild energy I’d sensed when my wulf pursued the wulfleng lurking at my place.

  Chris stared at me—his brows low over his eyes. “Sam said that the wulfleng you pursued wanted to see you as a wulf. These people, whoever they are, want to know if you’re infected. You weren’t supposed to shift”—his eyes flared gold—“but the fact you did, and didn’t look like a mutant, might buy us some time.” He glanced at Josh beside him. “We think they used similar tactics on Josh and Peter, to force the change to wulf.”

  Josh rubbed his face with his hands. “We went out to walk Havoc. We should have told Garrett. We didn’t think we’d go far. But I can’t remember anything other than heading out with the dog.” When Chris placed his hand on his mate’s, Josh inverted his own to intertwine their fingers. Chris’s eyes were dark with worry.

  Watching them, I experienced a surge of helpless anger. “Why lure them away?” I shook my head. “They wanted Josh and Peter to lose it to their wulf and disappear? Or . . .” Comprehension dawned. “They knew the enforcers would follow.”

  “In Texas, we’d have been ordered to put them down,” Malcolm drawled. His hazel eyes had darkened with remorse. How many times has he had to kill someone he knew?

  “Yeah, well, this isn’t Texas,” Jason said.

  Malcolm nodded. “You want me to tell my end?”

  Jason waved a hand, and Malcolm spoke. “It started about three months ago. Two enforcers were sent to take out a wulfleng that had slaughtered a herd of beef cattle as well as the old rancher, asleep in his bed. They did not return and we never found their bodies or any sign of the wulfleng. They vanished without a trace.”

  “Since then, we’ve had more problems with rogue wulfleng in the southern Texas area—so many more than usual, we figured we had an epidemic on our hands. But when we lost another enforcer and had a bunch hurt on a hunt, they came back with tales of unbelievably strong, fast, and huge beasts.”

  Malcolm gulped a long swig of beer. “The board said they’d look into it. Time passed and we realized that this had the earmarks of an uprising, but we began to wonder if we were dealing with something different—something capable of producing monsters. The board had no answers, instead they told us to bring the bodies of the weird wulfleng to a central location for disposal. We wanted to get the wulfleng checked out, but they denied our request.” He sighed and pinched
the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Then the enforcers started to get sick.”

  He glanced at Chris and Josh. “The ones bitten by the wulfleng lost their memories and started losing control over their wulves. The board sent us after our own, to put them down. Many of us refused. We wanted answers, not orders.”

  I looked at Chris. He’d left Texas because he disliked the board’s decisions in the past. Sounded as though things hadn’t changed.

  “When we refused to take action, the infected enforcers disappeared, one by one. Their trackers stopped functioning, and we haven’t been able to find them.” He took another swig of beer, his expression bleak. “Last week, my partner and friend vanished. He’d started losing his sense of time, so I stayed with him. I left to get food and came back to find him gone.”

  I cleared my throat. “Sounds like your board has an interest in those mutants.”

  Malcolm’s eyes met mine. “This issue is ripping the board apart. Several members walked, and we can’t even locate them to question. The open positions have already been replaced. Many of us no longer have confidence in the members.” He swallowed. “I think you’re right—they’re involved.”

  “Tell them about Dillon,” prompted Jason.

  Malcolm nodded. “We managed to get IDs on a few of the mutant wulfleng. They were human drifters, living in halfway houses or on the streets. We think someone’s recruiting them and infecting them with this new virus. Your friend Dillon was in jail for a year. After release, he lived in a halfway house. His parole officer said that Dillon vanished after a few months. So he must’ve been recruited off the streets. He stayed off radar until he appeared at Chloe’s university over two months later. We know they were together for about six weeks before coming to Canada.”

  “So Dillon’s infection might have occurred at any point from the time his parole officer lost contact to when Chloe’s brothers found him and Chloe . . . indisposed in the park.” I could see Chris adding up the totals.

  The big Texan nodded. “By my figuring, it occurred as much as five months before his death.”