Helix: Plague of Ghouls (19 page)

Ferox’s face itched.
Yeah, that’s great. Perfect timing.
Moving from a bipedal to a quadrupedal form required a lot of loud skeletal reorganization. Fortunately, the change was progressing far more slowly than expected. This close to a changing lycanthrope, Ferox’s own transformation should have been as fast as that of a kernel to popcorn.

The man retreated to the woman’s side. “I told you this was a bad idea,” she said. “We should have met closer to the road.”

“Where people could see us as they drove past? Idiot.” He added, “I smell new fur.”

Shit
. Ferox covered Helen’s body with her own, for all the good it would do.

“Two fledglings in their false starts,” the woman said. “Won’t remember a thing come morning.”

“I don’t trust luck,” the man said. He spun and rushed away.

The woman followed, clumsily, falling over her feet five or six times in the dark. She called after him. “Hey! Mary and
Joseph
, why the hell didn’t you tell me where we were headed?” Their voices faded, but now that they were speaking overtly again, Ferox had no problem identifying the woman’s voice. “I woulda worn mukluks. With
cleats
.”

Ferox’s face was hot.
Son of a bitch. What the blue hell is Angie Burley doing out here in the middle of the night?

Granted, it was a werewolf’s prerogative to go strolling at night, especially at Varco Lake. But it was odd that Burley would come out to the woods wearing high heels, that orange blossom perfume, and such a nice blouse.

Helen moved under her, trying to breathe. The change was coming on like contractions. Ferox felt the girl’s hips breaking, and Ferox braced for a scream and the gunshots that were sure to follow. Instead, silence. An owl hooted. Ferox cracked open an eye. Helen’s mouth was trying to scream, but no sound came out. She clawed at her own throat. The airway was stopped shut. Ferox eased up, but she kept both hands on the girl’s form. Helen rolled over onto her hands and knees as her spine snapped. Ferox grimaced and looked over her shoulder toward where Burley and her guest had gone. They weren’t coming back.

“Come on,” Ferox said, into Helen’s fuzzy ear. “We have to get you some place safer than this.”

Helen’s face contorted as if she was retching.
Probably not far from the truth. She needs to change all the way, but nothing’s coming up.
She still hadn’t breathed.

“Helen, honey, can you hear me?” Ferox asked, feeling Helen’s face and ears. Helen’s ear had grown—was still growing—but there was no guarantee that sound was getting past the ear drum, not until the change was over. Helen’s left arm gave out. Finally, the airway opened and she sucked in a whistling breath before her trachea swelled shut again. “We have to get you back to Shuffle. Helen, just keep trying to breathe!” Ferox lay on the ground and wriggled partway under Helen’s breaking body and all its gruesome sound effects. A quick push up, and Ferox was on her feet with Helen riding piggyback. Ferox wavered under Helen’s surprisingly long and heavy form. She listened for the rivers, then turned toward the Hollow. For now, she didn’t care about stealth. Ferox’s fully feral form had a lot going for it, but even half-human, she could generate a lot of speed over uneven terrain.

Smells changed from autumnal to frosty to boggy. She was in the Hollow. On all sides, the ground rose, but Ferox ran through a narrow valley onto spongier turf. She didn’t need to give a note of warning. Dep was already out of his sleeping bag and running toward her from the one side, while Mary Anne and Shuffle were coming out of the hut on the other. They all met somewhere in the middle, and Shuffle easily lifted Helen off Ferox’s drenched shoulders.

“Catch your breath,” Shuffle said, his voice awfully loud. Dep put Helen gently on the ground, letting her lie on her side. “Get a light,” Shuffle said to Mary Anne, who limped off at a peg-legged trot.

Dep peered up at her. “
Es-tu correct
?” His voice was deeper than it had been two days earlier.

“Yeah, I’m all right,” Ferox said. She was winded, and between the arrested change and the cross-country run, she ached all over. “Water.”

Dep disappeared without another word.

“What happened?” Shuffle asked. “Is Helen all right?” His knees popped when he knelt to check her over. Sometimes, Ferox could see the expert motions of a trained physician in Shuffle’s mannerisms—now more than ever, since Ishmael’s strain had taken effect. She wondered what else he’d begun to remember.
Maybe he remembers me . . . from before . . .

“I was tracking her,” Ferox said, “just in case there were any bozos who might try to take advantage of her false starts.”

Shuffle lifted his chin. His nostrils flared. “And instead you found . . .” He sniffed the air.

Ferox nodded. “I found Angie Burley out in the woods talking to some guy with an English accent. His scent’s familiar.”

Shuffle’s voice was a thoughtful rumble. “And you ran?”

“Angie Burley doesn’t come out into the woods unless it’s her time of the month, and it’s very obviously not her time of the month.” Ferox tapped her nose, which had broken and flattened in the shallowest first stage of the change. “Secondly, if she wanted to talk to somebody in private, why not bring him up to the big house and lock her office door?”

Mary Anne returned with the flashlight, shining it first on her husband’s bearded profile. Shuffle was frowning, and his nostrils were wide. His eyes reflected the light.

And yet he’s not changing.
She ran the back of her hand down her chest.
Hell, I’m down-cycling already.

“Gun oil,” Mary Anne slurred. Like Ferox had once been, Mary Anne was trapped between forms. Unlike Ferox, who’d been quantum-locked as a perfect hybrid of fox and human, Mary Anne was a motley of fur, bare skin, and tumours, with no rhyme nor reason to what went where. She was naked, because one of her arms was dog-like, and because her tail had been fused to the side of her right leg. Why she wasn’t Lost already, Ferox couldn’t understand.

“They didn’t see us,” Ferox said, finally. “But they knew we were there.”

Mary Anne angled the flashlight beam on Helen’s shivering body. The worst was over, it seemed. With luck, the girl would shift back to human form in an hour at the most, especially if she felt safe.

“Congratulations,” Shuffle said. “It’s a cat.”

Mary Anne moved the flashlight up Helen’s body. She’d been wearing a tank top, no bra, and if she’d left wearing jeans, she was wearing cut-offs now. Her curved, muscular legs were covered in fine black fur, though her feet were relatively unchanged. Her arms had metamorphosed the same way. Her neck was far wider than it was in human form, and her head was square, like Ishmael’s was when he was in-cycle. Ferox knelt beside her, close to the girl’s face. In the filtered flashlight glow, Helen’s tired, vacant eyes reflected green, and when the angle of the beam changed, Ferox could see Helen’s irises were much larger than usual, but they’d retained their natural rich brown colour. Helen’s upper lip had split and swelled into two pouches, bearing short, feline whiskers.

Helen whimpered and clawed at Ferox’s arms, desperate to crawl into her lap and whine against her chest. Ferox welcomed the girl, smoothed fur-enriched long black hair, and told her that everything was going to be all right, that this change was scary but natural, that she was safe, and that she could close her eyes if she wanted to.

“You sure it was Angie?” Shuffle asked.

Dep returned with a refilled canteen. He gave it to Helen first, but the girl couldn’t figure out how to get her shortened, curled fingers to grasp it. Ferox held it for her, looking for all the world like a mother giving her baby a bottle.
And Daddy Dep by my side.

“I can smell her perfume,” Mary Anne said, as she hovered nearer. “I don’t recognize his scent though. Dep?”

Dep’s ears were pointed and slanted back, and his teeth pressed against the inside of his mouth, as if he was already growing a muzzle. Ferox smelled no change pheromones on him.

“I can smell ’im on ’er,” Dep insisted, “but I don’ know ’im.” His accent was almost as thick as when they’d first met.

“Could have been a tryst,” Shuffle said.

Ferox laughed. “She doesn’t do
anything
in secret.” She pointed to her ear. “Trust me.”

Dep nodded knowingly. “Even I ’eard ’er sometimes. An’ I was outside.”

Shuffle raised his hands to all of them. “It’s Wyrd business, not ours. Let Ishmael handle it.”

“Ishmael’s gone,” Ferox said.

The only one who didn’t react was Helen.

“Ishmael, Bridget, Padre, and Holly,” Ferox said. “Angie sent them out on assignment.”

“When was this?” Shuffle asked.

“Yesterday. I’ve been trying to get out here since I heard the news, but Helen’s been running amok for the last forty-eight hours, in and out of changes, and running for her life all over Varco Lake.”

“Where did dey go?” Dep asked.

“I don’t know. Padre said something about an outbreak in Ontario. Second generation strain.”

“Shit on a stick,” Mary Anne said.

Shuffle shook his head. “This doesn’t involve us. We look after our own. If Padre wants to keep Ishmael company, that’s his choice. But we stay here. And we look after Helen.” And after Dep, his worried eyes seemed to say.

“Right,” Ferox added, “except Angie Burley’s split up our Pack, and it was Angie out here tonight. If they’d wanted to attack us, they wouldn’t risk going against the full Pack. They’d wait until two of us are in false starts, then split the Pack, and
then
attack.”

Dep cracked his neck. “Except dey forget we spend the last two year fighting again’ the Lost Ones. Any one of us could take four of dem.” He grinned and wrinkled his nose. “Especially now.”

“So who was Burley meeting with?” Shuffle asked. “There’s the question of the night.”

“I’ve got an even better question than that,” Ferox said. She took a sip from the canteen and brushed shedding fur from her face. “I just carried a new were-kitty on my back for the last fifteen minutes. Why haven’t I been changing all the way? And why am I changing back?”

Shuffle’s face went slack.

“What do you mean?” Mary Anne asked.

Dep cracked his knuckles. By his twitching and grinning, Ferox could tell he was on the verge of another false start himself. She should have been up-cycling with him.

Wendigos didn’t give off a change pheromone. That’s what gave them their predatory advantage. Wendigos couldn’t sneak up on a werewolf, especially if they triggered into a sudden change. But they could chow down on a flat-eared human being before they heard them coming.

Helen stopped staring at her cramped, half-furred hands long enough to reach up and touch Ferox’s human face. Her eyes were terrified, trusting, and nearly glow-in-the-dark.

They sat in silence. Mary Anne turned off the flashlight.

THAT FRIDAY MORNING
was loud at Elmbury North High. It was a few minutes shy of the morning bell, and students were screeching, guffawing, and air-kissing each other as they dashed from a students-only parking lot loaded with Nissans, Toyotas, two Dodge Chargers, a Humvee, and a flock of trucks. The students were dressed better than business casual, and every one of them had electronic devices tethered to their ears, or held out front with camera flashes winking. Two-Trees walked in through the side door, earning himself a few openly disgusted looks from a pack of young girls. Teenaged boys took turns pushing each other into lockers. By contrast, the ’70s kids at Waabishkindibed must have seemed perpetually stoned. Most of his classmates had dropped out by Grade Eleven, wearing the same jeans and t-shirts they’d worn in their freshmen year. His senior year saw only twelve graduating students; the rest were already employed and living out of their own houses around the Reserve or in town.

Two-Trees’ father and grandfather both had lived at an Indian Residential School. They never, ever spoke about what school had been like for them.
And these kids will never learn what it was like.

Teachers were running in and out of the office on last minute errands. One of the secretaries was getting ready to read the morning announcements. Two-Trees introduced himself and explained his purpose to the first secretary who showed interest, and she quickly relayed the news through a partially open door labelled “Principal’s Office.” The principal himself, a real walrus of a man, signalled Two-Trees in with a wave of his ball cap. Immediately after the principal closed his office door behind Two-Trees, the P.A. clicked on, and a woman’s recorded voice made an announcement. “Please rise for our national anthem.” Two-Trees and the principal remained standing during a hipper, keener, more rock-and-roll version of the anthem. Two-Trees didn’t know if he should stand at attention, like he’d done in his policing days, or if he should slouch out of spite. To his credit, he didn’t grouse at the words “our home and native land.”

At the conclusion of the anthem, the principal pointed at a chair and invited Two-Trees to sit. They conversed only briefly. The pharmacy thief didn’t match the description of any of his students, though the principal agreed Elmbury North seemed the most likely place he’d attend school. He suggested that Two-Trees try downtown, at Oxley Collegiate. Two-Trees gave the principal several copies of all his facial reconstructions, but he didn’t recognize any of them. Then Two-Trees asked, offhandedly, if Sydney Mission had ever been one of his students.