Helix: Plague of Ghouls (41 page)

“No,” she said, “I mean, why aren’t there any lycanthropes older than him? Genetically speaking, we should be immortal, unless someone is really, really dedicated to killing us.”

Ishmael spread his arms. “Because people
have
been really, really dedicated to killing us. Think about it. Two hundred years predates the Industrial Revolution, but not the invention of the gun or bear trap. And there were a lot of torches and pitchforks back in Bram Stoker’s day. That’s why Wyrd was formed in the first place.”

She was grimly dissatisfied. “Why those three questions?” Soundlessly, she repeated them all. “Why is he bald?
Why
? Why is he—”

Ishmael caught sight of a flash of light in the distance, and a heartbeat later, he heard a crack. Foster snapped her mouth shut.

“That was a gunshot,” Ishmael said.

She squinted into the distance, then turned to listen to something behind her. “There was a man,” she said. She turned around completely. When she couldn’t see what she was looking for, she went to the back of the truck and spied down the road. There was a car parked a good distance behind them. “He went after Two-Trees and Bridget.” She struck off toward the commotion with Ishmael not far behind. He shivered and stumbled over numb feet. She took off her coat and gave it to him, but it wouldn’t fit. He couldn’t fill both sleeves at the same time without ripping something in between. He returned the coat and hugged himself.

“Just go,” he said. “I’ll catch up.” She watched him for a moment longer. He told her again to see if anyone needed medical attention—because the last thing anybody needed was for Bridget to cycle through because of an injury.

He slowed to a stop. His left hand felt strange. Not sore, not hot, just dull, as if his sense of touch was somehow congested. He bit his fingers. There was nothing wrong with his sense of pain. It just seemed to take longer for the sensory signal to reach his brain. And he was winded. Human or animal, he never used to get winded. He was in peak condition. Or had been.

He shivered and jogged on, if only to keep warm.

He heard Foster’s voice in the distance, then Two-Trees’. There was a stranger standing near the Padre, who lay on the ground in a worse state of undress than Ishmael, and who was struggling to unbuckle the collar about his neck. Bridget stood over the Padre protectively, fists raised and chin tucked down. Two-Trees was trying to tell
her
to stand down before someone got hurt, which was odd, considering the stranger was holding a smoking gun. Two-Trees squatted and helped get the collar off. The Padre rubbed at his throat and coughed.

When Ishmael caught up, no one was speaking anymore. Two-Trees’ hair had come loose from his ponytail, so he ripped the band out and let his hair fall over his shoulders. Bridget was spitting nails. The stranger was a wiry, jumpy little guy, and he moved his gun whenever he looked from one person to the next. He turned to Ishmael next, pointing the gun in a professional but very alarmed grip.

“Who the hell are you?” the stranger asked. “Are you one of them?”

“Sure,” Ishmael said.

“A cannibal?”

Ishmael frowned. “God no.”

“Prove it.”

Ishmael slowly canted his head. “Okay,” he replied, voice rich with sarcasm. “I won’t eat you.”

Infuriated, the little man shouted, “What the
hell
is going on?”

Bridget kept her eyes on the stranger, but Two-Trees, Foster, the Padre, and the stranger were all watching Ishmael.

Ishmael shrugged and pointed at the Padre. “He’s lying on the ground naked, and you’re pointing a gun at us. Pretty sure that’s what the hell is going on. Just not sure why.”

“He wasn’t . . . a
man
,” the stranger said. “I watched him. First he was a dog, and then he was a werewolf, and now he’s naked.”

“Therianthrope,” Ishmael said.

“What?” the stranger demanded.

“He’s not a werewolf. He’s a therianthrope. Coyote-hybrid type.” He made the sign of a cone before his face. “Muzzle’s too narrow for a wolf, and his ears are too pointed. Not a wolf-man.”

“Buckle, you’ve got to put that thing down and listen to him,” Two-Trees said.

Instead, Buckle shifted his stance, bracing himself behind the gun.

Ishmael pointed at Foster. “But
she’s
a werewolf, if you’re looking for one.” He pointed at Bridget. “Hyena-woman.” He pointed at himself. “Cold and half-naked.”

“A . . . another . . .” Buckle covered up his fear with a spurt of outrage. He looked like an artery was about to burst. “Like him?”

“Melanistic
panthera pardus
, or so I’m told,” Ishmael said. “Two-Trees, by the way, is as human as you are. I know it’s confusing, what with all the body hair, but you can tell by his beer gut.” Two-Trees gave him a look of mixed disdain and amusement. “And we haven’t eaten him yet either. Besides, any idea how much cholesterol there is in human tissue?”

Foster crossed her arms. “He’s right. Man-burger is a one-way ticket to a myocardial infarction. You know, if you shoot one of us, we turn into animals, self-repair, and then
attack
in pack formation. You think maybe you should put the gun down and listen to what Ishmael has to say?”

“Why have I got to say it?” Ishmael asked.

“Senior ranking officer,” Bridget replied.

“I was demoted, remember?”

Two-Trees put his hand on Buckle’s gun. “Buckle, if they’d wanted to hurt you, they’d have done it by now. And if
I’d
wanted to hurt you, you’d be dead by now. Put the gun down. You’ve already got one bullet you’ve got to account for when you get back to the station.”

Buckle’s face went through contortions as he fought fear and horror and a hundred other emotions that were most likely walloping him all at once. He stared at the Padre, at all the hair the Padre had sloughed off, at the Padre’s shrivelled tail lying disembodied on the ground, and at the Padre’s fangs and slightly pointed ears.

Two-Trees took the gun from Buckle, flicked on the safety, and put it in his own waistband. “Is there some place quiet and warm we can discuss all this like rational beings?”

The Padre protested. “I had a trail!”

Now Buckle’s face went blank.

Ishmael nodded. “Yeah, the Padre was our cadaver dog.”

“You were in on this?” Buckle asked Two-Trees.

“From day one,” Two-Trees said.

“And . . . and . . .
Reid
?” Buckle pointed at the Padre. “Pritchard Park . . . ?” He looked at Bridget in a new light. “You were there, too.”

“Ishmael,” the Padre said, pleadingly. “I had a trail. Get me back on all four of my feet and let me follow it to the end.”

“How many?” Ishmael asked.

“At least six,” the Padre said.

Two-Trees gaped. “Six? Shit!”

“They were all over the place,” the Padre said, “washed out by the rain, and they were running all over the field as if trying to throw off the dogs from their trail—stuck to water as much as they could.”

“Which way?” Ishmael asked.

The Padre pointed north. “I have no idea how far. The trail was getting old fast. In another few hours, it’ll be gone.”

“What’s up that way?” Two-Trees asked Buckle.

Buckle didn’t answer. He was too busy watching Bridget’s arm flex when she pulled the Padre to his feet. The Padre stood unashamed but shivering in the nude. He was more concerned with crossing his arms and preserving body heat than faking modesty. Two-Trees took off his long overcoat and tossed it to the Padre, who gladly accepted it and promptly turned himself into a flasher. Bridget took off her coat and Ishmael’s jacket, giving the latter back to Ishmael.

“Buckle,” Two-Trees said.

Buckle was looking at Ishmael too, from the scars across his arm to the missing belly button above Ishmael’s waist band.

“Detective Sergeant
Buckle,
” Two-Trees said. “Think it through. Pritchard Park. One werewolf goes crazy. The other puts him down before anyone else dies.”

Buckle blinked behind thick glasses.

“This is the werewolf who
saved
your town. He’s no murderer, any more than you are. Bridget and I took him in, got him the hell out of town, put him in quarantine. That’s why you never found him. We’d come to Pritchard Park to help prevent an epidemic. And that’s why we set fire to the crime scene—to prevent a panic, and to prevent more lycanthropic infections. You’d have done the same.”

Buckle had a vacant look in his eyes.

“Ishmael,” the Padre said. “We’ve got to track these animals down.”

“Not like that, you can’t,” Bridget said.

“Damn it!” the Padre exclaimed. “After all that—this is
shit
.”

“What are they?” Ishmael asked. “Human or otherwise?”

The Padre shook his head. “It’s faint, but it’s not entirely human.”

Strangled noises were coming from Buckle’s throat.

“I don’t know which one of the trails though. There were too many, and too little time. I couldn’t . . .” He shivered. “I couldn’t hold it together long enough.”

“Then let’s look around,” Ishmael said, “see if we can figure out where they were headed.”

Two-Trees shook his head. “Look at you. You’re both frozen solid. We need to get back to the hotel, regroup, cross-reference with the maps—”

“We can’t go back to the hotel,” Bridget said, in a hollow voice.

“Why not?” Foster asked.

Bridget looked awfully like Claire Bambridge for a moment. She shook her head. “It wasn’t Ishmael. It wasn’t the Padre. It was their
room,
” she said, more confidently.

“What are you talking about?” Foster sighed.

“The Howard Johnson. The donut shop. The electronics store . . . We’re all picking up on it—that’s why we’re in a constant state of bitchiness—but in Ishmael’s condition, he’s super-sensitive to it.”

“Change pheromones, all over Elmbury,” Foster said with a snort. “In public.”

“You got a better theory?” Bridget asked.

“Of course I do. Ishmael’s broken and he’s setting us all off.”

“He wasn’t at the donut shop a couple of hours ago,” Bridget retorted. “And yet I started slipping. Ask Two-Trees. He’s the one who saw it before I even
felt
it.”

Two-Trees nodded. “And that’s why I’m saying we need to look at those maps. See if we can pick up a pattern, triangulate—”

“You’re implying that there are no less than six lycanthropes running around Elmbury shedding change pheromones,” Foster said. “You can’t
do
that without being in a state of
change!
You’re saying that there are werewolves changing in public, right under a thousand surveillance cameras.”

Bridget turned to Two-Trees. “We can still follow up on those pheromone hot spots. That was the plan. Use me as the miner’s canary. I can pull back from a cycle if we catch it soon enough. And if it’s a strong enough reaction, maybe I can trigger the Padre. Get him up-cycled closer to the trail this time.”

“How do we get the pheromones outside though?” Two-Trees asked.

“Stop,” Foster shouted. “Just . . .
stop
. Will you listen to yourselves? It’s change pheromones that set you off, Bridget. And you’re trying to tell me that in stores and hotels all over Elmbury, people are just
randomly
changing? In public? Come on. People are quick with the cameras when they see a murder suspect who’s been missing for six years, Bridget. Don’t you think they’d be even quicker if they saw somebody just up and tear their skin off?”

Bridget ran out of steam. Her shoulders sagged. Then she straightened her shoulders again. “I know one person who can change in public, and no one would suspect a thing.”

Foster was already shaking her head.

“Good God, you’re right,” the Padre said. “If Eva and Holly can do it, what’s to say nobody else can? I can’t—but I can pass for a four-legged animal and you can’t. So why is it so hard to believe that someone has a strain similar to
yours?
”

“She’s not infectious,” Ishmael replied.

“Well,
she
got it from somewhere,” the Padre said, pointing at the “she” in question. “Maybe someone else got it from a common source.”

Ishmael thought of eight young women wearing Ishmael’s fur. He’d thought he was the only one of his species too, until seeing that video.
Why
couldn’t it be the same for Holly?

Foster was shaking her head. “So what then, someone’s walking around from store to store to store, anticipating our every move? They figure we need to hit the electronics store, so they go in ahead of us and fart out a few change pheromones, then sneak back out again, all a-giggling? And then think, ‘They’re going to crave a nice cruller later’, so they visit the donut store?”