“That last day, I slipped down to the water’s edge to get some water to drink. I heard a person coming, only when I looked at first, I didn’t think it was him. Until he said, ‘One less werewolf to hunt down!’ And began shooting. I meant to bolt, but he shot so many bullets at me, I didn’t think I could run away. Instead, I collapsed and played dead.”
Except that she’d stopped breathing and had nearly died. Allan remembered the horror of that day as if it had just happened. Debbie’s eyes filled with tears. He took her hand and held it, but it wasn’t enough. He tucked her under his arm and she relaxed against him. He could only imagine what she was feeling—that she had intended to put the wolf, Tara, out of her misery. That if he hadn’t stopped Debbie, she would have killed her.
“All of you have worked so hard to keep the pack safe from other wolves, from rabid wolves in the past, and from humans who would kill us if they knew what we were. I…I just wanted to help. I’m so sorry. I know what I did was wrong, and it could have gotten us all in a lot of trouble.” Tara looked at Debbie. “I’m so sorry, Debbie. I don’t know how you could be managing with all this thrust on you so suddenly. It’s all my fault and I feel terrible.”
Debbie swallowed hard. “We’re both alive and the man responsible is still out there. He’s the one who’s at fault. Not you.”
Tara’s eyes filled with tears and she looked down at her hands, but then she turned her attention to Debbie again. “I’m sorry I got you involved in this, but for Allan’s sake, I’m glad you’re one of us.”
Allan rubbed Debbie’s arm. “I agree with you on that.”
Lori then talked about protocols and how everyone was supposed to talk with her or Paul first before they ventured into something risky that might cause trouble for the pack.
Debbie was quiet and Allan wondered what she was thinking about all this. That she was living a real nightmare? He rubbed her arm and gave her body a reassuring squeeze.
With the pack leader business finished, Tara and her mother and brother left.
Lori said, “I hope we didn’t upset you by having you join us in the meeting, Debbie.”
Allan knew Lori and Paul wanted to include her because she’d been so involved in what had happened, and Tara had wanted to say she was sorry. They had also wanted to impress upon her, as well as Tara and her family, the importance of the pack and how everything that might involve them had to be cleared through the leaders.
“No. I was glad to be able to tell Tara it wasn’t her fault I was injured so badly,” Debbie said. “I didn’t even realize she had felt she was responsible. I…felt awful that I might have killed her if Allan hadn’t stopped me.”
“You wanted only the best for the welfare of the wolf, had it been strictly a wolf.” Lori took Paul’s hand. “Are you ready to go home? I think I need to lie down.”
“That means I’ve got massage duty,” Paul said.
“Did anyone learn anything about any local medical facility taking care of a man suffering from a gunshot wound?” Allan asked.
“No. I wonder if he took care of it himself,” Paul said.
“Maybe he won’t be able to shoot anyone else.” Debbie sounded hopeful.
“Infection, loss of blood, or both could really hamper his ability to do anyone any more harm.” Allan walked Paul and Lori out to their car. “Unless…”
“He’s a wolf like us and his healing abilities saved his life,” Lori said. “Wouldn’t that be ironic?”
“And not in a good way,” Paul said.
“I’m going to change,” Debbie said. “Night, all.”
As soon as she headed for her bedroom, Lori whispered, “Change for bed or shift into her wolf?”
“Shift,” Allan said.
“How are things between the two of you?” Lori asked.
“No courting or dating.” Then he smiled. “All that matters is a mating, so however we get there, if we do, it works for me.”
* * *
“Today, we’re starting a new routine,” Allan said after the second week of Debbie’s shifting. She was having a little more control over it as they approached the week of the new moon. He had seen how often she kept checking the lunar calendar he had bought her. She couldn’t wait as she marked off the days in black Magic Marker. “We’re going to have daily guests for a while.”
She grumbled. “I’m being treated like a new puppy that needs to be socialized with others.”
He smiled. She had often mentioned how she felt like a new puppy, learning all she could about living as a part-time canine. It had been like that for her to some extent, but she wasn’t puppy age and she had her adult human perspective on life in general. She’d been really good about all the lessons, and he hoped this would help to show their pack unity and make her feel welcome. To start out, mostly just the members of the original pack visited: Paul and Lori, Allan’s mom and sister and her mate, and Lori’s grandmother. Everyone came at different times of the day on separate days and usually alone so Debbie didn’t feel overwhelmed. Later, newer members of the pack visited. All had worked out well.
Today was special. They were having a mother and her twin five-year-olds over. This was the first time that Debbie would be exposed to the youngest members of the pack, besides Rose’s and Franny’s babies.
“Cindy Summerset is coming over with her twin girls after we eat lunch,” Allan said as they sat down to eat grilled cheese sandwiches he had made. That was one of his specialties and she loved them, so he loved fixing them for her.
He didn’t know why he reminded her of the pack member visits every day. Maybe to help her mentally prepare herself.
“I’ll be out chopping some much-needed firewood while you visit with them.” He’d tried to do a mix of visits, some where he was there with them, sometimes slipping out to give her more alone time with the pack members.
“They’re going to be afraid of me if I shift. The girls, I mean.”
“Not at all. You’ll be fine. And for the last two days, even though you had the urge to shift, you didn’t. So you’re making real progress.” He had seen the way Debbie had visibly tensed, as if she was holding back the urge to give in. Lori was visiting that day and quickly talked about swimming and diving at the lake anytime Debbie wanted. Though Debbie thanked her and seemed to want to do it, Allan noted that most of her concentration had been on forcing back the urge to shift. He’d seen the way she’d tightened her hands into fists and the strain on her face while he was cleaning out the fireplace.
It helped when a pack member talked away like nothing was amiss, though everyone could read the wolf cues. For Debbie to continue with the conversation and not totally freeze up said much about her gaining some control of her abilities. And that was a really good sign. Some newly turned wolves took much longer to adapt.
* * *
When the twins and their mother arrived, Allan made introductions and set the girls up at the table with milk and the homemade chocolate-chip cookies Debbie often made for pack visits. Rose had asked if she could sell them in her gift store along with the salsas and other things their mother made, and Debbie had loved being asked. And then Allan excused himself to chop wood.
Debbie didn’t mind. She’d rather he didn’t see her make a fool of herself if she had to shift all of a sudden when guests were here.
The girls were dressed in blue jeans and sweaters featuring flocks of fluffy sheep. The twins had backpacks, which they set on the dining table, unpacking coloring books and crayons. Debbie smiled. The twins were adorable. They glanced at her every once in a while as she and their mother talked, looking a bit curious.
“I started working out in Lori’s martial arts classes. I have so much more confidence now than when I first began,” Cindy said.
Debbie wondered if Cindy thought that if Debbie took some classes, she’d feel better about herself. She alrea
dy knew martial arts so that she could apprehend criminals if she needed to, or to protect herself. She hadn’t had any confidence issues until she began turning into a wolf. Taking martial arts classes wasn’t going to cure that.
“She has all lupus garou classes and some that are just for female students,” Cindy continued.
One of the girls, Eliza, was vigorously coloring large areas of her page with blue crayon. The other, Meghan, was carefully working on something small with a purple crayon.
Debbie wondered where Cindy’s mate was, since they mated for life. She guessed she had lost him. All she knew was that Cindy had joined the pack and was raising the girls on her own.
“Do you take classes too?” Debbie asked the girls.
They both looked over at her. “Uh-huh,” they said in unison.
“Yes, ma’am,” their mother corrected them.
“Yes, ma’am,” they both quickly said.
Debbie smiled at them. They were sure sweet.
“Momma said you sometimes shift when you don’t want to,” Eliza said. Her blond curls were a little darker than her sister’s, and she was an inch taller and her cheeks fuller.
Her eyes widening, their mother looked horrified, and she opened her mouth to speak.
“Are you going to shift? Momma said not to act shocked if you did,” Meghan said matter-of-factly.
“I’m so sorry,” Cindy said, her cheeks flushed.
“No, that’s quite all right. I don’t feel like shifting right now. Sometimes it just happens when I least expect it.”
“Did you ever get stuck in your clothes when you started to change?” Eliza asked.
Often, but she wasn’t about to tell the girls about those times.
“Oh, I did once,” Meghan interjected before Debbie could respond. “We shift when Momma does so we don’t get into trouble.” Meghan’s eyes grew big and she leaned toward Debbie as if she was about to tell her a big secret. “I wasn’t listening to Momma when I was supposed to. She said we were to get undressed ’cuz we were going to shift.”
“You never listen,” Eliza said, coloring more of her picture blue.
“I do too.” Meghan stuck her tongue out at her.
“So what happened?” Debbie was getting a kick out of the twins and was so glad Cindy had brought them over.
Meghan sighed dramatically. “I had my purple socks on still.”
“That was funny,” Eliza said, nodding vigorously. “Whoever heard of a wolf wearing socks? I would have laughed, but I was a wolf too.”
“Yeah, then you tried to pull it off with your teeth and put holes in it. Then Momma got mad at both of us.” Meghan gave her sister a pointed look.
“I was just trying to help you take off your sock. I didn’t know my wolf teeth would put holes in it. But then you grabbed it back. So they weren’t all my teeth marks.”
“They were my socks and you were trying to take one away.”
“You were almost standing on your head, trying to pull off the one, and I was just helping you.”
“So you played tug-of-war with it?” Debbie could just imagine the two young wolf pups playing tug-of-war with the purple sock, both shaking furiously, growling, and finally catching Mom’s attention.
“Yes,” their mother said. “Believe me, with two wolf pups tugging on a sock, that was the end of it.”
Debbie laughed. “I can imagine.” She figured Meghan had forgotten her question, and Debbie was glad for that.
But then Eliza asked, “Did you ever do that? Shift when you were still dressed?”
“It isn’t polite to ask,” their mother said, “unless she wants to share on her own.”
The girls looked from their mother to Debbie to see if she would fess up.
No way was she going to say how embarrassing it had been to have to shift when she wasn’t ready. She hadn’t wanted Allan to see her like that, but he hadn’t laughed, well, smiled a little when she was still wearing her panties and bra one time. She could see where there was a real benefit to living in year-round warmer climates—fewer clothes to remove in a crisis.
“Your mother is right. I will say the first time I ever shifted, I was taking a bath, so I was one wet wolf.”
The girls giggled.
“Momma never washes us when we’re wolves because she’s a wolf at the same time. But we swim across a stream to practice swimming at night sometimes and then we’re wet wolves when we get home. Momma makes us shake a lot before we go inside.”
Debbie was having a lovely time with the girls and their mother. But while she and Cindy were having hot tea and chocolate chip cookies, she felt the urge to shift. She swore Cindy knew it, and so did the girls.
Debbie wasn’t sure what gave her away every time, but usually whoever was visiting would hurry to take over the conversation. She thought they were trying to help get her mind off the impending shift. In truth, she had to concentrate on making the urge go away while still acting as though she wasn’t zoned out.
“Do you want to shift now?” Meghan asked. “If you do, we can too, and you can remember what we look like as wolves if we see you later like that.”
Meghan and her sister looked back at their mom to see if it was all right with her.
“Sure, but only if Debbie wants to. She might not want to be a wolf right now,” Cindy said.
Seeing the girls really wanted her to, Debbie hesitated for only a moment. “All right. That works for me.”
The girls’ faces lit up. They dropped their crayons on the table and then jumped down from their chairs.
“Be back in a minute,” Debbie said, not sure what to expect or how to act around the girls when they were wolf pups.
For the first time ever, her company actually wanted her to shift. And she was actually happy to. When she returned as a wolf, the girls were wearing their wolf coats. Both were tan wolves with a little black on their faces and ears and the tips of their tails. Their mom was a wolf too. Debbie knew the girls were excited about it, but she hoped their mom truly hadn’t minded.
They were cute, just like most pups were. Instead of being five-year-old wolves, which would have made them full-grown adults, they looked more like five- or six-month-old pups or younger. She’d seen yearlings on a TV show and they had been bigger than the girls.
They came over and sniffed her, which was a way of getting to know her scent and greeting a fellow wolf in the pack. And then they wanted to play with her. She had a blast. It was so different from when she played with Allan. They growled viciously and she tackled them in fun, but gently. She loved it and was glad Allan and Cindy had suggested she visit with the twins. This did not change her mind about having a litter of pups herself. But she loved this added dimension to her new persona.
Maybe she could get used to this new business after all. Not that she really had much of a choice.
Chapter 20
After the girls and their mother left, Allan said to Debbie, “Let’s do some more investigating into Lloyd and Otis. Maybe we’ll find something that might lead to a location for Otis now.”
They had two velour high-back chairs at his desk, and though she had a computer of her own, they did this together, each searching for clues the other might miss. Instead of watching a movie, reading books, or playing video games, this was what he and Debbie loved doing most. Trying to catch the killer out there.
They’d been searching for clues all along, in between visits with the pack members. After they discovered some information about Lloyd’s and Otis’s stints in the army—they’d both been snipers, with nothing remarkable about the five years they’d each served—Debbie began searching for their Facebook pages. Both had listed themselves as werewolf hunters in a LARP group in Helena, Montana. Allan and Debbie knew they had hit pay dirt. They began reading all of the posts about werewolves—how to locate them and kil
l them. One of the men had said, “If you want to join us, we’re hunting every last one of them down.”
They had hundreds of comments from people who loved the idea of pretending to be werewolf hunters. They also had hundreds of comments from “wolf packs” condemning them for their stand against werewolves.
It all looked fairly harmless, except that Otis most likely had murdered both Lloyd and Sarah. The day that Allan and Debbie had searched Lloyd’s submerged car, hoping to find the driver alive, was the last time Lloyd had posted on Facebook. Even then he was touting his werewolf-hunter status, although he had been a lupus garou for some time.
Just as they found his status comments on the page, Debbie swore, jumped out of her chair, and began stripping out of her clothes. Allan wished she was doing it because she wanted hot sex with him, not because she couldn’t control the urge to shift.
Instead of growling and pacing like she often did until she got her annoyance under control, she jumped back on the chair as a wolf and began reading the comments again. Allan smiled at her. “Tell me when you want me to scroll down.”
And that’s how they did it. Her wolf half wasn’t going to stop her now, and he loved that they could deal with this in a more positive way.
Lloyd wrote: We’ve found a nest of werewolves near Bigfork and have caught one already. I’ve been pumping her for info on where the rest of the pack is. We’ll keep you posted.
And that was the last time he had been on Facebook.
Debbie nodded her wolf’s head, and Allan scrolled down a bit more.
Otis wrote: We’re working on infiltrating one of their packs, and we’ve learned some things we didn’t know. You can drown a werewolf. He’s not invincible. Of course, we all know silver bullets will kill them.
Debbie barked.
“Sarah must have told Lloyd our kind could drown, unless Otis had already killed someone that way,” Allan said. “Although he killed Lloyd with a blunt instrument and then submerged the car. In any event, Otis wrote this before he murdered his friend. Lloyd must not have seen it coming. On the Facebook page, there’s no indication that Lloyd had been turned. He acts as though he’s a hunter and nothing more. There’s no sign that he wanted Otis to kill him for what he had become either. But it appears he knew about our pack.”