Winter Wolf (40 page)

My father’s expression turned stony, but he said nothing. Lisa pursed her lips and likewise remained silent.

With a low, dry chuckle, Richard flicked one of my ears. “Suicide by angry Fenerec, then?”

“There are few dumber things I can think of than raising a hand to a Fenerec female,” Harding said. “If she doesn’t rip your face off, one of her pack
will.
If one of you did happen to pull the trigger, it might be wise to ensure the gun is properly melted down so it doesn’t resurface. It wouldn’t do the Inquisition—or you—any good if a Normal poked around and happened to discover the murder weapon. I have power to twist some things, but those bullets will remain as evidence. The ‘murder weapon’ will be registered and put in storage, where it is lost in some clerical error. It happens sometimes.”

“Thanks, Detective,” Alex said. “We’ll make sure the weapon disappears permanently.”

“Once you find it, of course,” Harding said, arching an eyebrow.

“Of course,” Alex said.

“Get out of here. This is a crime scene, and I won’t have any of you making more of a mess of it than you already have,” Harding ordered, pointing at the gate. “If you do happen to find the weapon… I don’t want to know about it.”

I stared at Harding in amazement, and it wasn’t until Richard shoved me with his knee that I realized the others were waiting for me. Huffing, I followed the others to the street.

“Let’s go to my place. I’ll take the Desmonds. I don’t think Nicole will fit in my car,” Amber said.

“It’ll be a tight fit in mine, but we’ll manage. I’ll need directions,” Richard replied.

After arrangements were made, Richard took me to his car, bowing to me after he opened the back door. “Ladies first.”

I managed to scramble inside without shredding the leather upholstery.

~~*~~

By the time we reached Amber’s condo, I shook with exhaustion. I only made it several feet into the sitting room before flopping over with no intention of moving. Richard stared down at me, nudging me with his sock-covered toe.

“You’re going to be in the way if you stay there,” he said.

“So step over her,” Amber said from where she sat on her couch. “I took the liberty of ordering pizza. I’m in no condition to cook right now.”

“Why do you have a cooler in your refrigerator anyway?” Lisa asked from the kitchen.

“They’re samples of the plague and various cold viruses. I recommend leaving them alone.”

“You have the
plague
in your fridge?” my twin asked incredulously.

“I certainly can’t keep them on the
counter
. Where else would I put them?”

“Why do you have plague samples?” my father asked.

With a sigh, Amber lurched upright and gathered things from her coffee table, ferrying them to one of the adjacent rooms. “We were doing tests trying to work out a cure for the plague. Can’t work on a cure without samples of the plague, now can we?”

My father went into the kitchen and pulled out the cooler, carrying it back to the couch to set it on the coffee table. Dish by dish, he emptied the cooler, reading the labels. “I see. Did you make any progress, then?”

“Some. Unfortunately, our efforts were cut short.”

“So they were. I was hoping for something more concrete. With the full moon on the rise, a lot of Fenerec will die if something isn’t done soon.” My father held up one of the dishes, frowning at it. “It seems switching bodies bought my daughter some time at least.”

“Alex is looking better too,” Amber pointed out. “Why?”

The younger Murphy brother pointed at me. “You’d have to ask her.”

“Which we can’t do until she’s able to return to human form.” Amber crossed her arms over her chest. “I was serious. You can’t try to force her until she has a chance to rest and heal. You’ll kill her.”

“What did she do, Alex?” Richard asked, sitting down on the floor next to me. Drawing a deep breath to catch his scent, I considered whether or not I wanted him so close. With so many Fenerec nearby, it was hard to tell which one of the cinnamon scents belonged to him. While I tried to puzzle out what my nose was telling me, he made himself comfortable.

“I’m not sure. After you left, I… was having trouble controlling my wolf. When she noticed, she bit me. That’s when the temperature dropped.”

“It got cold when Dominic and Patrick were shot too,” Lisa said.

“Dr. Cerimino said the plague would live for almost two months in cold temperatures,” Amber said, standing and heading into the other room. When she returned, she held a microscope. She set it down on the coffee table and plugged it into an extension cord coiled under her couch. Taking up one of the samples, she put it under the magnifier. She spent several minutes with her eye glued to the scope. “I can’t tell if it’s still alive or not.”

“Let me look,” Lisa said, bouncing down onto the couch next to Amber. The witch made space for my twin. “I can’t tell either.”

“I don’t see how this is relevant,” Richard said.

“Your scent has changed,” my father said, pointing at Alex. “You don’t reek of illness nearly as much as you did earlier tonight. Lisa’s scent has likewise changed, although I was under the impression it was due to taking over her sister’s body.”

Richard shook his head. “You know for fact you were infected, Lisa?”

“Yes.”

“Then explain to me why I don’t smell any plague at all on Nicole? If she took over Lisa’s body, she should be infected with the plague too, right?” Richard sounded worried.

“I have no idea how to take a blood sample to check,” Amber said.

“It’s unnecessary. Nicole, unlike Lisa, is immune,” my father said.

“What?” a chorus of voices demanded.

“How is that possible, Desmond?” Richard asked with a hard edge in his voice.

“The same way that you and I are immune, Richard. She was born that way, unlike her sister.”

“Father?” Lisa asked in a small voice. “What are you talking about?”

“Your mother is the better person to ask about this, I’m afraid. I don’t know the details of how it was done.” My father rubbed at his brow. “When you were born, we had to keep you separated. One night, your mother decided to take matters into her own hands.”

Richard sat stiffly at my side. “You’re making no sense at all, Mr. Desmond. What
exactly
are you talking about? I was under the impression the only people immune to the plague were purebred humans, purebred wolves, and True-born Fenerec. Are you saying she’s a full wolf now?”

“No, I’m saying she is as she was born: a Fenerec. We had to make a choice. We either had to let Nicolina turn her sister into a Fenerec or make Nicolina an ordinary human like her sister. We meant to spare Lisa from the fate of being a Fenerec, but it seems our intentions were made pointless when Lisa chose to become one of us on her own.”

Stunned silence descended and I gawked at my father, unable to believe what he was saying. I wasn’t a
Fenerec
. I never had been a Fenerec.

“Is that even possible?” my twin asked in a whisper.

Amber shuddered. “It’s a form of sorcery, but done by a witch. I’ve never heard of anyone who had actually
done
it.”

“My wife lost her powers as a witch as a result, but Nicolina no longer appeared to be a Fenerec when she was finished.”

“That’s horrible. That’s absolutely horrible. How could you do that to your own daughter?” Splotches of red colored Amber’s cheeks.

“You murdered her wolf,” Richard whispered. I recognized the bitter undertones in his scent as rage.

“An infant cannot survive the ritual to become a Fenerec. Nicolina didn’t understand why her sister wasn’t like her. It was her
instinct
to change her twin. We had two choices to keep our daughters alive; sever Nicolina from her wolf or keep the girls separated.” The anguish in my father’s voice shocked me almost as much as his admission. “We tried keeping them apart, but Nicola couldn’t tolerate it. They both lived because of what we did. How could I sacrifice one for the other?”

Lisa turned sickly pale. “You didn’t want us going to Canada because you
knew
she couldn’t become a Fenerec…”

My father nodded.

“Wait, Canada? What does Canada have to do with anything?” Amber asked.

Lisa stared down at the floor. I trembled. Memories I didn’t want to acknowledge surged up from where I locked them away and I shook my head in order to deny them.

“I guess this part is my fault,” Alex said, covering his face with his hands. “I was the one who invited Lisa to come to Canada. We’d met a few years prior and got to know each other. Her father agreed only because Nicole and Richard absolutely hated each other at first sight.”

I gaped at Alex. I had known Richard in the past? Why didn’t I remember him? I’d remember someone like Richard. Why would I have
hated
him? I didn’t hate Richard. Sometimes he annoyed me, especially when he tried to act protective. But hate?

What had happened and why couldn’t I remember it?

Alex sighed, staring at the wall with a blank expression time before saying, “They had met before I met Lisa, when Richard went to San Francisco for pack business. With the fur flying between those two, Mr. Desmond never dreamed Lisa and I would consider becoming Fenerec.”

Amber pinched the bridge of her nose. “Wait, you’d want to consider becoming Fenerec? You weren’t a Fenerec then?”

“No, Lisa and I underwent the ritual together,” Alex replied.

“Together,” Amber echoed in a weak voice. “You mean as a couple?”

“We’re mates,” Lisa confirmed. “When I joined the Inquisition, it was under some very specific conditions, including the allowance to return to my mate and pack at any time I chose. That’s not the point though. Nicole was there. She and Richard were fighting as usual. That’s when something went wrong.”

“What exactly went wrong?” my father asked. “You never saw fit to tell me.”

When Lisa didn’t say anything, Richard sighed. “I never was able to figure it out. The pack is usually very well contained during the ritual moon. There were sixteen hopefuls. Lisa was among them. Nicole was
not
,” he said, his tone one of displeasure. “I never got proof on who attacked her. Three young wolves of the pack, however, were murdered a year or two later.” At that, Richard stared at Lisa with an arched brow. “I have some suspicions on who dealt with them.”

My twin sniffed, lifting her chin defiantly.

“Anyway, Nicole had been at the lodge when it happened. I was busy overseeing the ritual, which I assure you she was not invited to attend. By the time I found out what had happened, she was gone.”

I turned my ears back and stared at Richard, trying to figure out why I would have spent so much time arguing with him when we seemed to get along. Something wasn’t adding up, but I couldn’t dredge up the memories to figure out what.

“A few years later, when I saw her in a film, I made a deal with the Inquisition and started working in L.A.,” Lisa said. “Richard and Alex came to Vegas often to visit.”

“When Lisa didn’t check in, we took up residence in the Venetian as a temporary headquarters. The suites are owned by the Inquisition, but seeing that they’d manage to lose one of their top operatives, they deemed giving it to us for their use was a wise idea.” Richard snorted. “I’m still not sure which one of us they’re more afraid of—Alex or me!”

I had a hard time believing anyone could be afraid of Alex
.

“So, let me see if I understand this correctly. Lisa and Alex were a couple and decided to become Fenerec together. Nicole, who was supposed to be the chaperon, let this happen?” Amber shook her head with a puzzled expression. “So while Richard, Alex, and Lisa are at the ritual, Nicole is left at this lodge, where someone attacks her. She disappears and shows up several years later in L.A.?”

“She took the car too,” Richard muttered. “I never found out what happened to it.”

“She
stole
your car?” Amber asked, incredulous.

Richard pursed his lips, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, mumbling soft enough I was the only one who could hear him. “It was her car too.”

How could it have been
my
car? Frustrated over the things I couldn’t remember, I bared my teeth at Richard and growled a little. Nothing added up. All of these years, I had believed
my sister
had tried to turn me into a Fenerec. But if what Amber said was true, she hadn’t been responsible. It’d been someone else.

“But why would anyone attack
Nicole?
” Amber asked.

“Pack politics probably,” Alex said. “There were those in the pack who didn’t approve of Nicole’s presence when she had no intention of becoming a Fenerec and was very upfront about it. Lisa was accepted because she
wanted
to be a Fenerec. But Nicole? Not a chance. Wanted nothing to do with the idea. More than a few wanted Nicole in the pack, too, which didn’t help matters any. Considering how often Nicole and Richard bickered, it wouldn’t surprise me if a few thought getting rid of her would be better for the pack. What I think happened is that a few of the young ones thought it possible to force someone to become a Fenerec. It doesn’t work that way.”