Cry Baby Hollow (35 page)

Aubrey couldn’t fathom where this was going.

“Yes,” she told him.

“Because you’d get pinkeye?” John asked.

Aubrey nodded.

“But you can’t catch a virus from yourself. The thing is, there are several forms of conjunctivitis. One is viral, the kind you get from other kids, then there’s the bacterial one you can give yourself through bad hygiene, and there’s also one caused by allergies. Lycanthropy… Werewolves,” he clarified, ”are the same way. There are different types that all look the same to a layman. Celestine Wynn…”

“Stop saying
The Bitch
’s name in my house!” Vina bellowed through the door.

“
The Bitch
,” John corrected himself smoothly, “has the genetic kind. She can’t pass it through a bite. As far as we know, the viral type has completely died out. We’ve certainly never seen it.”

“She isn’t a werewolf anymore, anyway,” Joe told her. “She’s retired like Vina and the others.”

Aubrey sighed in relief.

“So I’m not a werewolf?”

Joe and John shared a look.

“What?” She demanded, looking from one to the other. “What?!?”

“Well,” Joe told her soothingly. “Your grandmother was, and I checked you when you gave me your DNA in the hospital. You have the genes for it, so technically…”

“I would know, wouldn’t I?” Aubrey looked around in disbelief. “I couldn’t be one and not know!”

“You aren’t,” John assured her.

“And this is why they were talking about hurting me?” Aubrey finally asked.

“Hurting you?” Joe asked. “Nobody around here would ever hurt you, darlin’.”

“I heard,” Aubrey told him. “I was out for a walk and I was going to stop here and rest and I heard you talking about using force, about…”

“I told you I heard someone!” Lettie crowed triumphantly from the kitchen.

“They weren’t talkin’ about hurting you. That was just a little disagreement among friends,” Joe told her. “Some of us wanted to tell you as soon as you got here and some of us didn’t think you ever needed to know. There’s been a truce with the Mosleys since after your Grandmother was killed, and Rose won’t be one much longer so…”

“She’s retiring,” Charlie said. “So we thought you never had to find out.”

“Vina argued that since you have the gene and could pass it on to your daughters, you needed to know about it but… Well, we never really reached any kind of agreement.”

“Then why were they talking about forcing me? You said you’d lock me in a closet! Why? To keep them from telling me?”

Joe shook his head.

“To keep them from changing you,” he told her.

“You aren’t one now,” John said. “But you could be. We never knew why you and your mother didn’t change, but something you said in the hospital gave us an idea. Your mother was on birth control pills? And so were you? How old were you when you started taking them?”

Aubrey shrugged, glad that the bourbon was making her numb.

“Right after I got my first period,” Aubrey told them reluctantly. “My mother said she didn’t want me to have a baby young and ruin my life the way she had.”

Charlie shook his head. “A real class act, your mom,” he said in an undertone.

“It’s all hormonal,” John explained. “It’s related to a woman’s cycle. That’s probably where the full moon legend came from. In ancient times, people believed that the phases of the moon controlled a woman’s fertility. But birth control pills trick a woman’s body into not ovulating by making it think she’s already pregnant. It’s probable that the pills also inhibited your ability to change.”

“But I’m not on them anymore,” Aubrey told him.

“It wouldn’t matter,” he said. “It’s the huge surge of hormones that comes with puberty that triggers it. I could simulate it with fertility drugs.”

Aubrey looked at them in disbelief. “They wanted to force me to become a werewolf?”

“We told them we wouldn’t do it without informed consent,” Joe assured her. “Vina wanted to slip you a werewolf micky, so you couldn’t refuse, but we thought you should be given the choice.”

“Why the hell would I consent to becoming a fucking werewolf?!?”

“It’d fix you,” Vina screamed from the next room.

“Fix me?” Aubrey asked. “What does she mean?”

Joe sighed.

“Having wolf DNA doesn’t mean anything without the mechanism to change back and forth. You remember the stuff about the DNA having a lot to do with cellular metabolism and stuff?” He asked.

Aubrey nodded.

“What do you know about stem cells?” John asked.

“I saw the South Park episode where Christopher Reeves eats babies,” she told them.

John rolled his eyes.

“And I’ve read articles in magazines. They can grow into any kind of cells, but adults don’t have them the way a fetus does,” she said.

“Most adults,” John clarified. “You and the others, your cells are basically all still stem cells. They can change.”

“So?”

“When Germaine was little,” Joe told her. “She and her brother were choppin’ wood and she missed and cut off three of her fingers. The first time she changed into a wolf and back, her hand was whole again. Your neck, your leg, your heart… You’d be healthy again. Vina’s right. It’d fix you.”

“She was a little shorter after that,” Vina screamed from the kitchen. “On account of the extra stuff for the new hand had to come from somewhere.”

“She’s just pulling your leg,” Germaine called.

Aubrey shook her head in wonder.

“That’s why they’re all so healthy,” John told her. “Your body is essentially remade every time you transform. Vina may be over a hundred, but her body is basically that of a sixty year old because that’s how long its been since her last time.”

“Vina is over a hundred?” Aubrey asked in disbelief.

Joe nodded. “She won’t tell us how far over,” he said.

“But I’d be a werewolf?” Aubrey asked. “I’d be healthy, but I’d be a werewolf.”

“Only for part of the time,” John told her, “and only until menopause. You acquire the ability to change when you ovulate. It lasts about a week.”

“You don’t have to change though,” Micejah said, speaking for the first time. “Emaline has always hated it. Even when she still could, she hardly ever did.”

“That’s why Rose has become erratic? Menopause?”

John nodded. “Her cycle is slowing down, getting ready to stop. Sometimes she can’t change even when she thinks she can, and sometimes she does it unexpectedly.”

Aubrey leaned back and tried to process it all.

Vina opened the door and brushed past Charlie with the other women hard on her heels.

“If you don’t, we’ll all have to move,” she told Aubrey. “
The Bitch
was a lot of things, but at least she respected the truce and the old ways. Whoever is in charge over there now doesn’t care about secrecy or nothin’. They want revenge and Rose can’t hold ‘em off all alone.”

“I am so sorry I scared you dear,” Rose told her. “They were following you in the woods though, and when I saw that you’d past Vina’s… Well, they were laying a trap for you, and I knew I had to get you to turn around. I tried to change back to warn you, but I could only make it halfway. I knew you’d be frightened, but I couldn’t let you go any further. I thought maybe if you saw Drake and I getting along, you’d figure out that I was friendly but…” She shrugged.

“I’m sorry I shot you,” Aubrey told her.

Rose smiled. “I’m good as new now, dear. Don’t you worry about it.”

Considering the vast number of other things on her mind at the moment, Aubrey doubted she would.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Joe hopped up
into the truck and slammed the door. He looked over at Aubrey. “You okay?” He finally asked.

“What do you think?”

Joe look
ed down at her white-knuckled grip on the Beretta and past her at Drake, happily enjoying a ride up front, since Aubrey wouldn’t hear of him being in the back, exposed.

“I think you could use another drink,” Joe observed. “You know Rose said they’re all gone.”

“For now,” Aubrey corrected. “She said they were all gone
for now
.”

Joe shrugged. He started up the truck and pulled out of Vina’s driveway, turning right instead of left. After he’d gone a few dozen feet, he stopped and put the truck in park.

“What the hell are you doing?” Aubrey asked.

“I’m getting’ your cane,” Joe said. “You dropped it along here someplace.”

Aubrey grabbed his shoulder.

“Are you insane?” She asked him. “They could be out there, waiting!”

“They been here a hell of a lot longer than you or I have,” Joe pointed out. “And they ain’t done me in yet.”

He hopped out of the car and Aubrey sighted the Beretta at the surrounding trees. Joe climbed back in a moment later and handed Aubrey her cane.

“You want a run through town? We can pick up dinner,” Joe suggested.

Aubrey agreed gratefully, though dinner wasn’t what she had in mind.

When they arrived
home an hour later, dusk was settling in and Aubrey insisted on standing on the porch with the shotgun while Joe unloaded the car. When he had all the boxes inside, she backed in after him. She closed and locked the door and placed the shotgun on the kitchen counter, within easy reach.

“Did you buy every shotgun shell Larry’s had?” Joe asked.

Aubrey shook her head. “Only the slugs. I figured bird shot would just piss ‘em off,” she said with a grin.

“You saw how much good bullets do,” he pointed out.

Aubrey shrugged. “As I understand it, if you hurt them, they just change and then they’re healed, right?”

Joe nodded.

“So what if I hurt them so badly they can’t change back? That’s why they rip people’s heads off, right? It must be so they know they’re really dead, that they can’t change and heal.”

“Noah wasn’t one of them though, and neither was Wayne’s wife,” Joe pointed out.

“Maybe it’s a habit or a ritual,” Aubrey suggested. “And even if it isn’t, I’m betting that blowing their heads off will at least give them pause.”

Joe nodded in agreement and set their Sonic take-out down on the table.

“You got any more questions?” Joe asked.

Aubrey rolled her eyes. “About a thousand,” she told him. “Like why did they kidnap Wayne’s daughter if the genes dead-end in men and he couldn’t pass it on?”

Joe looked shocked. “It never occurred to me that they had…”

“They killed his wife before she could leave with his daughter,” Aubrey told him. “They must have wanted the baby in case it was one of them, but you say it can’t be.”

“It can’t,” he agreed, “but the Mosleys aren’t exactly privy to my research. I mean, they might have an inkling that I’m doin’ it. Everyone around here knows what I do for a living, but I ain’t bloggin’ about it. They may not have any idea how it’s passed down. You gotta remember, they do a lot of marryin’ within’ their ranks. If both your grandmothers are, and you are, who’s to say where you got it from?”

Aubrey nodded her understanding.

“Next?” Joe asked.

“Any idea who killed Noah?” Aubrey asked. “You all seemed pretty sure it was one of them.”

“Well, it wasn’t Rose,” Joe assured her. “Even if we believed she was capable mentally, that had to have been done by a half, and she can’t hardly ever manage it.”

“A half?” Aubrey asked.

“There’s human, there’s wolf, and then there’s half, part of each. Only a half is actually a lot more than either. It’s the one you see in the movies,” he told her. “But as I understand it, you have to start to change and then stop it and most of ‘em never learn how. Rose could never do it at all until menopause started makin’ her hormones all wacky. Vina says it used to be a mark of purer blood, but we haven’t seen any proof a that. Of course, we don’t exactly have a wealth of test subjects.”

“She was like that when I saw her,” Aubrey pointed out.

“Yeah,” Joe said. “But she didn’t hold it long. She never can.”

“She held it for a long time the other night,” Aubrey said. “When I shot her on your dock.”

“Oh, hell no,” Joe told her. “That wasn’t Rose. Rose was in your front yard, growlin’ and barkin’, tryin’ to get you to wake up cause she thought they were up to somethin’. She’s been followin’ ‘em and jumpin’ around, tryin’ to get your cameras to catch ‘em so you’d figure it all out. Rose was one of the ones who thought you should be told everything, and she was tryin’ her best to protect you and give you hints, without actually breakin’ her promise to Vina to keep her mouth shut.”

“So the one I saw on the dock, that’s the one who killed Noah?”

Joe shrugged.

“Maybe, or maybe one of the others can half too. There’s no way to know.”

“I can’t believe I’m related to these people. I can’t believe my father is over there in that cove,” Aubrey put her head in her hands.

Joe shrugged. “All we really know is that your father is a relative of Dunns. He’s got non-Mosley relatives too. He’s related to Germaine and Armistead through the Dunn side. If you really want to know, I can run the sample you gave me against my whole database and see what it turns up. You only asked me to check it against Dunn, so that’s what I did. I figured you’d be pissed if I just ran it against everyone.”

“That didn’t stop you from checking to see if I was a werewolf,” Aubrey said pointedly.

“I was only verifyin’. We know your grandma was one, so we knew you must a had the gene. It’s persistent. So you want me to do it?” He asked.

“What, right now?” Aubrey put down her burger.

Joe shrugged.

“If you want. All my Melungeon data is here. This isn’t exactly the kind of research the university funds. It’ll take a while for the computer to pour through it all, but I got a lot a samples, we may turn somethin’ up.”

“At least wait until morning,” Aubrey said.

Joe raised his eyebrows.

“I know you’re still adjustin’ to all this,” he told her, “but I’ve been living here for ten years, and I’ve known the woods were full a werewolves for six of ‘em. I don’t own a gun, and I’ve never needed one.”