Pocket Apocalypse: InCryptid, Book Four (27 page)

“The mice still like you.” Shelby looked relieved. The rest of the Tanners looked bemused, their expressions barely visible through the gloom. My eyes were adjusting. I shrugged. “The mice were able to tell from my wounds that I hadn’t been infected. They adore Shelby—they consider her a priestess, which makes her holy, and makes anything that endangers her a very big deal. Even if she’d been in Australia during the initial attacks, which she wasn’t, the mice would have freaked out if they’d smelled infection on her. She’s clean. She can’t be our traitor.”

“I could’ve told you that, but it’s nice to hear you stand up for my girl,” said Riley. He still didn’t sound terribly impressed with me. That wasn’t a surprise. Honestly, the only things I could think of that might get him on my side were martyrdom and grandchildren, and I wasn’t ready for either one.

The road in front of the car suddenly lit up. We all froze, barely allowing ourselves to breathe as the police cars that had earlier rushed by on their way to the meadow went roaring in the other direction. Apparently, there was only so much they were willing to do about a bunch of dead sheep after dark, even if the field looked more like a slaughterhouse than it had any right to.

“Right,” said Riley, and started the engine. “Let’s go see who’s unhappy to see us.”

Everyone was unhappy to see us.

We pulled up in front of the temporary headquarters of the Thirty-Six Society to find the whole place lit up like a Christmas tree, to the point where our little walk through the woods—something these people seemed ungodly fond of—was a joke: no one was going to drive past this compound and not realize that something was going on just past that thin layer of foliage and forestry. There were too many angry voices raised from the direction of the house, and the floodlights weren’t even in the neighborhood of what I’d call “subtle.”

“Oh, what are these bastards doing now?” Riley scowled and barreled forward, shoving his way through the underbrush. It sprang back with almost cartoonish speed, closing the path behind him.

“Sorry, kids, I need to go make sure Riley doesn’t murder anyone for no good reason,” said Charlotte. She started to dart after him.

Shelby grabbed her mother’s elbow. “What if there’s a good reason?” she asked.

“Then I’m going to help him hide the bodies.” Charlotte shook off her daughter’s hand and dove into the brush. Again, it snapped back into place behind her with frustrating quickness, leaving no path for us to follow.

“They do this,” said Raina, continuing forward at an only slightly hurried pace. “It’s best if you just let them get it out of their systems.”

“Daddy’s frustrated because he can’t punch werewolves without getting infected, and Mum just wants him to stop being tempted to try,” added Gabby, pulling back a branch. “It’s business as usual. I’m surprised Shelly didn’t tell you about it before she brought you here.”

“I’m not,” I said, flashing Shelby a quick, tight smile. “She wanted me to actually come.”

Shelby shrugged, an unrepentant smile on her face. “You were going to have to meet them eventually.”

“It might have been nice to do it under less crisis-ridden circumstances,” I said, and pushed forward through the brush, following her parents. When I reached the other side I stopped, blinking rapidly against the glare, and just stared. I heard the Tanner sisters come crashing out of the woods behind me; then all three of them stopped as well, and we were briefly, unexpectedly united in our sheer bemusement at the scene in front of us.

What looked like the entire Thirty-Six Society was gathered on the lawn. The question of how they moved their equipment through the woods was answered by a row of little red wagons—literal little red wagons—laden with guns, ammunition, and some more exotic weaponry. I had to admire the
Evil Dead
-level dedication that went into thinking “I’ll take a chainsaw into battle against a werewolf,” even as I wanted to find out who thought it was a good idea and shake them until they realized the error of their ways.

Almost everyone was shouting. Some were shouting at each other; some were shouting for the sake of shouting; and a ring had formed around Riley and Charlotte, all of them gesturing wildly while they shouted at the Tanners. It was the very picture of chaos, and for one ignoble moment I was tempted to grab Shelby’s hand, skirt the crowd, and return to the quarantine house, where we could lock ourselves in and let the Thirty-Sixers shout themselves out.

The moment passed. I started forward, ignoring the twinging from my injured left arm, and pushed my way through the ring that had formed around Charlotte and Riley. Roughly half the people who had previously been yelling at them stopped dead, looking confused by my sudden appearance. I kept pushing, finally coming to a stop next to Riley. “What’s going on?” I had to half-shout to make myself heard, thus continuing the vicious chain reaction of the crowd.

“Someone told
all these people
that we were dead!” Riley roared. There were no half-measures for him: he was making sure that everyone in range heard him as loudly and clearly as possible. I had to admire that, even as I started really wishing for a pair of earplugs. “Said we’d been ravaged by werewolves in the south meadow, and now no one wants to believe what’s in front of their eyes!”

“Wait,
who
said that?” I asked. “I mean, that seems sort of important—”

“You’re standing there
with
a werewolf!” someone shouted, not waiting for me to finish. “You expect us to believe you when you’re standing there
with
a werewolf?”

“Fuck off, North,” shouted Charlotte, somehow manage to make the suggestion sound almost genteel. That was a talent she definitely shared with her daughter, who could sound perfectly pleasant while suggesting anatomical impossibilities. I’d just never heard it done quite so loudly before. “Alex has a clean bill of health from a doctor
and
the Aeslin mice.”

North—whoever that was—didn’t reply. Apparently, “the mice said he’s okay” was starting to carry weight with these people, probably because they were desperate and the old books all said that Aeslin mice were trustworthy. I made a mental note to give the mice extra cake at their next banquet.

Sadly, the rest of the shouting just redoubled in the wake of Charlotte’s words, becoming a loud, muddled mess from which only the occasional syllable could be picked free. Shelby pushed her way through the crowd next to me, a worried look on her face.

“I think these folks are likely to get violent soon,” she said. “Not that I mind a little rumble, but does anybody know how to calm them down?”

“They’re your people,” I said. “When my whole family fights, we do it in one room, not an entire yard.” Maybe there was something to be said for not having that many members. Fewer people to help, sure, but that also meant fewer people to fight with you. “Who told them we were all dead?”

Shelby scowled at me for a moment before her eyes lit up and her scowl became a grin. “You’re right! They’re my people! Daddy, cover your eyes.”

“What—” began Riley. Charlotte, who was slightly faster on the uptake, reached up and clapped her hand over her husband’s eyes, interrupting him before he could say anything else.

Shelby whirled to face the crowd, and shouted, in her best “I am in charge of this tiger show, and all you visitors better shut up and sit down” zoo employee voice, “We have not been bitten by any werewolves! Look!” And then she pulled her shirt off over her head and spread her arms, putting every inch of her torso not covered by her polka dot lace bra on display.

The shouting stopped instantly. You could have heard a pin drop. Then Raina pushed her way past me, snorting laughter all the while, and stopped next to her sister. Jett followed, tail wagging, and stopped next to her new mistress. A nice wall was building between me and the hostile parts of the crowd, really.

My left arm gave another twinge. I resisted the urge to apply pressure to the wound. Reminding these people that I couldn’t pull the “take off your shirt to prove you haven’t been bitten” trick didn’t seem like a good idea at the moment.

Shelby continued, “We were set up, and someone wants you to think we all got torn to bits, but since we’re all here, and mostly not too covered in blood—”

“—except for Alex,” interjected Raina.

“—yes, all right, except for Alex, but that’s because he gutted a werewolf and got the insides all over his clothes,
thanks Raina
,” said Shelby, giving her sister a poisonous look. “He wasn’t bitten a second time. None of us were bitten, even though we were out in a meadow full of werewolves without any silver bullets, thanks to someone on this property. So can you all calm the fuck down and let us tell you what happened?”

The crowd still wasn’t shouting, although they weren’t quite as quiet anymore. A low murmur ran through the assemblage. It could have meant anything. It was unlikely to mean total acceptance of Shelby’s words, which was potentially a problem for us. I’d never been lynched before. I wasn’t looking forward to starting now.

“For the love of God, Shelly, put your shirt back on,” said Riley, pushing in between his daughter and the crowd. A few people were gauche enough to make disappointed noises, and in that moment, I think Riley and I finally found common ground in the desire to beat those people into pulp. He scowled at the assemblage, hands balled into fists, and shouted, “We were set up! Someone sent us out there to get eaten by werewolf sheep. One of
our own people
sent us out there. I knew that some of you didn’t like how I’ve been running things, but I always thought better of us. I never thought any of us would be
cowards
.”

“Werewolf sheep?” asked one of the Thirty-Sixers, looking confused. “That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“They were sheep that had been infected, so they turned into wolves,” said Raina. “How does that not make sense?”

“What kind of wolf bites sheep and doesn’t eat them?” demanded the Thirty-Sixer. “Wolves kill sheep. Everyone knows that. They don’t just have a nibble and trot away.”

I blinked.

“We don’t know what werewolves do,” snapped Raina. “Maybe the werewolf wasn’t hungry. Maybe it hated farmers. Maybe it just didn’t like the taste of mutton. You can’t look at wolf behavior and apply it wholesale to something that isn’t actually a
wolf
.” Jett made a small buffing sound, as if to support her new mistress’ point.

“One sheep maybe, but how many are you saying attacked you?” The Thirty-Sixer folded her arms, and I suddenly realized why I recognized her: she was the model from before, her face now scrubbed clean of makeup to reveal a spotty olive complexion, complete with bags under her eyes and freckles across the bridge of her nose. It was like Verity always said—the best disguise a woman had was makeup, well-applied, and removed when necessary. “I don’t think it makes sense.”

“It does, actually.” I pushed my way between Shelby and Raina. Shelby still hadn’t put her shirt back on. For once, I didn’t allow that to distract me as I focused on the woman with the folded arms. “What’s your name?”

She blinked at me, looking taken aback. “I beg your pardon?”

“I asked your name. You were at the quarantine house earlier, telling me off for having been bitten, and now you’re here, stirring everyone up again. I like a little dissent, but you seem very focused on causing it. Now, what’s your name?”

The woman scowled. “Chloe,” she said. “Chloe Bryant. If you think I like dissent, you must love it. You’re causing it everywhere you go.”

“It’s a gift,” I said. “Look: we have established that whoever sent the Tanners—and me—to that meadow was trying to set a trap. They
wanted
us to be hurt, even killed. Werewolves are only bestial when transformed. Even if a wolf-form lycanthrope would be more inclined to shred sheep than infect them, that doesn’t mean our werewolf couldn’t have gone there while he or she was human, and injected the sheep with saliva, or bled into their open mouths, or something.” The more I thought about it, the more sense injections made. Lycanthropy is hard to catch. A syringe and a supply of infected blood or saliva would increase the odds of a successful infection—and even then, our plotting werewolf could easily have injected the entire flock, only to get the six that had attacked us.

Or maybe only to get one: the old ram that had been the first to change forms. He could easily have turned the other five members of his flock without even intending to, nipping at them during ordinary sheep things, or spraying them with saliva during his first partial transformations. Maybe our werewolf had only needed to infect a single animal in order to turn the herd . . . and maybe that had been the plan.

“The Covenant boy is right, but that’s not the whole of it,” said Riley. “The sheep had been turned before he or Shelby even got to Australia. Somebody’s been planning this for a while. Somebody wants to change the way things work around here. Is it you, Chloe?”

Chloe glared at him. “I want to change the way we do things,” she snapped. “I’ve never made any bones about that. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to use werewolves to do my dirty work, you bastard.” She spun on her heel and stalked away, elbowing and shoving her way through the crowd.