Long Shadows: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 2 (36 page)

Max decided to seal up the dungeon lab and make it Henry’s and Carrigan’s tomb. He looked so haggard after he was done that I took him by the hand and led him to the beach, where large rum drinks waited for us.

A little forgetting right now might be a good thing.

“Are we celebrating?” he asked. “That doesn’t seem right.”

“No, we’re finding normalcy. Trust me. I’m a professional.”

“Don’t worry, I do trust you.” He frowned at something in the surf.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Do you see all those dark shapes in the water?”

I walked to the edge of the ocean, and Max followed me. A school of hammerheads swam just offshore. “Do wards last after someone dies?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, and I didn’t even think about that. We’re defenseless.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I need to reset everything.”

I touched his hand, and the electric buzz just below his skin startled me. “You’re exhausted and losing control. Don’t worry about the island’s perimeter. Plus, you have me here, so you don’t need to worry about the wolves attacking.”

“We will guard your shores,”
the hammerhead I had spoken to the day before told me, his voice faint in my mind.
“Do not fear attack by sea.”

“Thank you,”
I said.

“What are you doing?” Max asked.

“Talking to a shark. Why?”

He shook his head. “You’re never going to stop surprising me, are you?”

“Nope!” I grinned. “But they say they will guard the shore from attack.”

“And they won’t eat swimmers?”

“Will you refrain from eating humans and wizards?”
I asked.

“Yes. They’re not fish. We do not like the way they taste, especially wizards.”

I relayed his answer to Max, who saluted and called out, “Thank you, Guardian!” The shark swished his tail above water in response.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

“I’m still feeling off,” Max said later that night as we cuddled in his room, which was much nicer than mine. “Even more than I would expect considering the day’s events.”

I turned to him and traced the lines of his face with my fingertips. “What do you mean?”

“Something happened this morning when you fought through your memory block and just before you changed. It was like power flowed through you, which made my memories come back, but I also felt Henry’s power.”

“I’ve been wondering if something about me acts as an augmentation of the power of those around me. That would explain how I could give your memories back, I simply absorbed and augmented Henry’s power.”

“That makes you a formidable wizard,” Max said and pulled me closer. “What about his blood magic?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want that, only to free you from it. Could I have passed it on to you accidentally?”

“We have a lot to figure out,” he said. “I’ll do some reading.”

I had almost drifted off to sleep when a thought hit me. “Max, what if between the Luridatone and blood magic we could reverse lycanthropy for people who didn’t want to be werewolves?”

He frowned. “I suppose it’s possible, particularly if we bring in your friend Joanie and her colleagues to guide us with the genetics and other medical parts. The chemical plus the viral vector directed with a little blood magic might just do it. But why would werewolves want to stop being what they are?”

I lay awake long after his breathing evened out and pondered his question. Wolf-Lonna was silent on the subject, but I could feel her disapproval.

“I’m not thinking about for me, silly.”
She didn’t respond, and I don’t think she believed me.

The next day, a helicopter landed on the beach, and my heart thudded along with the rhythm of the blades.
Has retribution for Carrigan and Henry come so soon?
The servants hadn’t said anything after I explained what happened, but they didn’t like the leader or his son, either.

“Do you know who that is?” I asked Max.

“Those are European markings,” he said, squinting.

My heart dropped, and I turned to flee, but he caught my arm. “Let go, Max! They want to come and experiment on me and turn me into human anti-aging products.”

He squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry, you are under my protection. I’m the highest-ranking wizard left in this territory, and they wouldn’t dare touch you.”

His reassurance loosened the panic in my gut, and I focused on my potential opponents. Three men in suits exited and ran along the sand.

“How are they not getting sandblasted?” I asked and watched them warily.

“One of them is an air wizard. He’s keeping it away from them.”

“Nifty.”

He put an arm around my shoulder. “Wizard-kind is pretty interesting. We have as many variations in power as wolves do in color and markings. Still, I wonder what they’re doing here.”

We met the men in the front hallway.

“We are here as representatives from the European and North American Wizard Tribunals,” one said. He had an Austrian accent, kind of like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He also had a square jaw and a humorless face.

“Is there a problem?” asked Max.

“Yes, we are looking for one Master Henry Corvelland,” another one said. He had an American accent, and I arched an eyebrow at him. “American Wizard Tribunal, ma’am.”

“You had better come to the library,” Max told them. “We have some sad news.”

I turned to go to the kitchen to tell Saraya to bring snacks, but Max held my arm.

“You can come. You’re a wizard too,” he said. “In fact, I’ll need you to corroborate my story.”

I nodded and smiled at the warmth in his gaze.
I finally belong somewhere.

“I’m sorry for being rude,” the third man, whose very fair skin was already starting to turn pink from the sun, “but are you a
vargamore
? I’ve never seen one in person.”

I smiled. “I am wolf and wizard. Please, gentlemen, make yourselves comfortable. We’ll join you in a moment.”

“If they’re from the American and European tribunals, what are we?” I asked Max once they’d settled in. “Just give me the quick version.”

“Carrigan was the head of the Caribbean Tribunal. Although the population is small, it’s a magic-dense enough area to warrant its own governance.”

“Magic dense. Great, I’m going to have to learn another system, aren’t I?”

“Oh, you’ll have plenty of homework.” He winked. “Not all of it unpleasant.”

“Focus,” I said and pushed him into the library ahead of me.

Saraya and Alistair put together some quick snacks, and I opened wine for our visitors. They ate and drank silently while Max told our story. The three men all looked shocked when he described his memory erasure and the blood magic. I held my breath after Max finished telling them of Henry’s and Carrigan’s ends. He gave them the truth in cold, clinical terms, but it still made for a lurid tale of jealousy and bloodshed, and the appearance of the wrinkles around his eyes showed me how the betrayal and loss of his mentor strained him.

“Well, damn,” the American, whose name was Kurt, he said. “I knew Henry was running around my territory, but I didn’t know he was up to all that. Stalking this young lady was only the start.”

“And I think he took my aunt’s body,” I said.

“That he did,” Kurt told me. “That’s what clued me in something was wrong. We intercepted an unregistered werewolf woman’s corpse at the Atlanta airport, and the plane she was headed for belonged to one of his companies. He’d nested the ownership a few times, so it took us a while to trace it back to him. Otherwise, we’d’ve been here sooner.”

“It sounds like you took care of a big problem for us,” the pale wizard, who had still not given us his name, said.

“
Ja
,” the Austrian—whose name was, coincidentally, Arnold—agreed. “If we had known he practiced the blood magic, we would have sent reinforcements. I am impressed with your quick thinking, Miss Marconi.”

“Thank you.” Relief at knowing where Aunt Alicia had ended up released the rest of the band of tension around my chest. Max squeezed my hand.

The pale wizard only smiled and murmured, “It will be interesting to see what the lycanthropes think of you, Miss. You do know you’ll have to present yourself to them, right?”

“No,” I squeaked.
I don’t know if I can face a bunch of lycanthropes knowing what I am and the threat I could pose to them.

“We do have someone who can help you,” Arnold told me. “His name is Peter. He is an American wizard late come into his powers, and he has been spending time among the European lycanthropes.”

Max glanced at me. “Are you okay with that?”

“Yes.” I smiled at him. “I can handle him.”

“Good, we will send him along, then,” Kurt said. They all stood. “We won’t impose on you for lodgings, and thank you for your hospitality.”

“Are you sure you want to involve Peter?” Max asked after they left for a neighboring island with an airport big enough to accommodate their private jets.

“Yes.” I snuggled into his side. “He has tried to be helpful, and there really is nothing between us anymore.”

“Good,” he said and pulled me into a full hug. Then we did things on the couch in the library that Carrigan would not have approved of.

Bless his heart.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Six months later

Joanie’s daughter Lissa looked up at me, opened her mouth, and let out a wail that would ring in my ears for weeks.

“Loud baby,”
Wolf-Lonna moaned.
“I’m going to disappear for now.”

“Go ahead,”
I told her.
“I’d like some privacy with my friend.”

“I don’t think she likes me,” I said and handed the wriggling infant back to her mother.

Joanie, her eyes ringed by dark circles, laughed and soothed the infant with a bottle. “She wakes up hungry, even more so than normal babies. I just can’t keep up.”

“There’s nothing wrong with supplementing. So you’re sure she’ll end up being one of us?”

“Iain’s done the tests, the lycanthropy gene is there, and she’s got all the early signs in the book Peter sent me from the Lycanthrope Council.”

She looked at me, and I could tell she was gauging my reaction to hearing Peter’s name, which didn’t give me any sort of emotional reaction beyond polite interest.

“Wow, you are truly over him, aren’t you?” she asked.

I smiled at the sapphire that sparkled on my left ring finger above the platinum band. “He was just a practice run for the wizard I was supposed to be with. I’m glad he’s being helpful.”

She snorted. “If I had Arnold looking over my shoulder, I’d be cooperative, too.”

I’d told her the entire story of my intentional and unintentional travels including meeting the wizard version of the CIA and learning their infrastructure. In the months since all that happened, I’d met several more, and none had been creepy like Henry or condescending like Carrigan. In fact, they’d been relieved to speak with a lycanthrope who had enough of both bloods to act as a liaison, and a new treaty was in the works.

Apparently things had been tense since the attack on the beach, which had been masterminded by Henry, we later found out. He hadn’t wanted Deirdre to marry Max, so he hired a group of werewolf mercenaries to disrupt the party. They’d gotten out of control in their blood lust and killed his sister, which he hadn’t anticipated or wanted. That had been the final push to his seduction by blood magic.

Max and Leo walked in from the yard outside, where Leo had been showing Max the architectural features of the new Wolfsbane Manor. The workmen completed it just in time for the arrival of Leo and Joanie’s daughter.

“You have a lovely home, Doc. I mean Joanie.” Max sat beside me and put his arm around me.

I leaned into Max to kiss him on the cheek. He turned his head so my lips found his, and his kiss thrilled me to my core.

“Oh, stop it, you two.” But Joanie sounded more amused than annoyed, especially after Leo gave her a full-on smooch as well. All trace of discord between them had disappeared. Joanie had told me once the men went outside that Leo had improved greatly since my visit in February.

Just as it had previously, the living room looked out over the front lawn and down to the woods around the drive. I fought a sense of déjà vu, and I noted the absence of the resentment that had previously plagued me. Leo poured drinks from the bar in the corner, but I refused his offer of Chardonnay.

“You’re not one to say no to a glass of wine,” Joanie said and raised an eyebrow. “Is there something you need to tell us?”

“I wanted to wait until Max was with me to tell you. Nothing’s certain yet, but I suspect Lissa might have a playmate in about eight months.”

“Cheers to that,” Leo said and raised his beer bottle. Max clinked his glass of bourbon against it.