The conclusion she left the audience with had been my own—taking soldiers and making them werewolves was ill-advised. They had training that made them excellent warriors, but none of the skills they needed to control the terrors that came with lycanthropy. A more successful project was taking werewolves, people who had already successfully adjusted to lycanthropy and had learned to deal with the drawbacks as well as the abilities, and training them to be soldiers.

Even that left something to be desired, I thought. Probably because I wished we didn’t need soldiers at all.

Tyler answered questions at the end.

Joseph Tyler was a solid black man, tall and broad, with a stern expression and distant gaze. He held himself apart, and his quiet strength was intimidating. At first, the questions came slowly, as people hesitated, unsure of him. He loomed over the podium. But he was articulate, and met the gazes of everyone who spoke to him. People were able to talk to Tyler the person and not Tyler the big scary werewolf. They asked personal questions about his choices, his emotions, the fallout, his recovery. He answered calmly—or politely declined to—and even said “yes, sir” or “no, ma’am.” I wondered how much of his military training was keeping him upright.

At the end of the session, I hung back to watch as people mobbed Tyler. Some asked questions, some tearfully thanked him and expressed sympathy—pity—for his predicament. They seemed to be thanking him for his simple existence. A few handed him business cards. Tyler handled it all with grace, though he kept glancing at the exits as if looking for escape. As she put away her presentation, Shumacher looked on like a proud teacher.

Finally, my turn came. Tyler saw me and smiled wide. “Kitty! Good to see you.”

“You look great!” I said, opening my arms and feeling gratified when he stepped forward into a hug, which wasn’t at all a wolfish gesture, but he was special. One of my extended pack members—family, practically. “You’re pretty popular, I see.”

He winced at the handful of business cards people had given him and drew more from his suit pocket. People must have been mobbing him all day.

“Recruiters, can you believe it?” He handed the cards to me, and I read them: private security firms, foreign militaries, government offices. “Mostly consulting jobs. At least that’s what they say now.”

“You think you’d ever go back to that? Take up one of these offers?”

“I’ll tell you, I’d never go back, and I wouldn’t even be here, except I’m pretty sure some of these outfits have already tried recruiting werewolf soldiers, who may be sitting in a cage somewhere, out of control and miserable like we were, with nobody there to help them.”

“And you want to help them.”

“Not even because they’re werewolves, but because they’re soldiers.”

I squeezed his arm, a gesture of solidarity. Tyler was one of the good guys.

As I shuffled through the last of the cards before handing them back to him, a name caught my eye. The card itself was simple, just words on white stock, no logo, no affiliation, no business name or government listed. But the name blazed forth: DR. PAUL FLEMMING.

I held the card up. “Where did this come from?” The edge to my voice was sharp.

“Same as the others, some guy wanting to recruit.”

“Describe him.”

“Kind of mousy, bookish. Didn’t wear his suit well. He smelled like he doesn’t get out much. Kitty, what’s wrong?” His brow furrowed with worry.

“He’s here? At the conference?” I looked around, scanning the few faces remaining in the lecture hall.

“Yeah—”

“Dr. Shumacher?” I called over his shoulder.

She’d put away her laptop, collected her things, and brought them over to join us. She was a contrast to Tyler: a prim white woman with short dark hair, glasses, and a focused expression. She wore a cardigan over a blouse and skirt. “Yes?”

“Flemming’s here.” I showed her the card.

“He wouldn’t dare,” she muttered, but she looked at the printed name and her eyes widened.

“Who is he?” Tyler asked.

“He ran the center before I took over,” Shumacher said. “He wasn’t entirely ethical.”

“Yeah,” I grumbled. “I recommend not taking a job from him.”

“What are we going to do?” he said. The card had a phone number and e-mail address, but not a physical address. And want to bet the number went to a pay-as-you-go untraceable cell phone?

Shumacher shook her head. “I’m not sure there’s anything we can do. I think there’s still a warrant for his arrest outstanding in the U.S., but I’m not sure what good that does here.”

Tyler took back the card. “I’ll drop this off at the embassy. Let them know he’s here.”

Maybe they could track him down and at least let us know where he was staying, so we could avoid him. And here I’d thought the conference was going to be the safest place this week.

* * *

“… AS THE work of my colleagues has shown. Dr. Brandon demonstrates here that the cellular stasis present in vampire physiology prevents the mitosis necessary for embryonic development. On the male side, the motility of sperm appears to be zero in every case. Male vampires simply do not produce sperm and female ova appear to be entirely inactive.

“Moving on to the lycanthropes involved in our study…”

I perked up and readied my pen to take notes.

“Unlike the victims of vampirism, both male and female lycanthropes appear to have entirely normal, viable sperm and ova…”

I knew I had viable ova. That wasn’t the issue.

“In fact, we have evidence that male lycanthropes have fathered normal, healthy children with uninfected women.”

I had evidence of that myself. I was reasonably sure that General William T. Sherman had been a werewolf, and had been one during the Civil War. One of his sons had been born after the Civil War. Too bad I’d decided to keep the evidence I had of Sherman’s lycanthropy secret.

“The obstacle in sexual reproduction among lycanthropes is not fertilization or embryonic viability, but gestation. Implanted embryos do not survive the physical trauma of shape-shifting.”

Again, this wasn’t anything I didn’t already know.