It was all I could do not to jump, from the combination of the pain and the question. “Yes, I’m sure,” I said. “It looked like a werewolf, it moved like a werewolf, and it sure as hell wasn’t a dingo.”

“Dingos don’t look much like wolves, actually,” said Shelby, who was resolutely not watching as the needle darted in and out of my flesh. One corner of the room seemed to have become particularly fascinating to her, and she was staring at that instead of anything involving me, Helen, and the medical bag.

“That’s . . . odd,” said Helen, and tied off her sutures. “Werewolves aren’t supposed to be capable of thought once they’ve transformed, but whatever bit you did it like they knew exactly where to aim. None of the major arteries were involved, and while there’s muscle damage from the bite, it’s not severe enough to keep you out of commission.”

“Meaning that if the infection were to take, I’d be primed to do a lot of damage when the twenty-eight-day incubation was up,” I said slowly. “That’s . . . Shelby, do we have pictures of the other werewolf bites? I need to know whether this is coincidence or a pattern.” Once would be a lucky accident that had kept my injuries from becoming too severe. More than once would mean we might be dealing with something impossible, and terrifying.

A werewolf that remembered how to think.

Werewolves were capable of spreading the infection that made them at a fast and deadly rate without tying human intelligence to their rage. Give them the ability to think, to plan, to work on any level above “beast,” and we could be looking at the kind of outbreak the world had never seen before.

“I’ll get them for you,” said Shelby.

Helen picked up the jar of cuckoo blood—now more than half-empty—and began slathering it generously over my stitches. It would help keep the wound from becoming infected, since it would create a virtually anaerobic environment. Wherever cuckoos were from, it wasn’t a place where our native bacteria thrived. “Wouldn’t intelligent werewolves be a good thing?” she asked. “I mean, you could reason with them. Explain why their behavior is inappropriate, and convince them to stop.”

“Rabies attacks the brain and central nervous system,” I said. “People who become rabid have been known to kill their friends, their loved ones, even their own children. It’s not universal—most rabies victims die without hurting anyone—but it happens enough to be a common fear throughout the mammalian world. Lycanthropy is worse. No one has ever encountered a calm or passive werewolf, and before you say that’s Covenant teachings talking, I’d like to note that almost all werewolf killings can be classed as self-defense. The others have involved werewolves that have already attacked, more than once. We can’t assume that an intelligent werewolf would be friendly.”

“There are days when I am simply ecstatic to have come from a different branch of the evolutionary tree,” said Helen, packing her suture kit away. “Now, your antiserum. You really want to go through with this? Even with your mice saying that you’re clean?”

“My mice are, if they’ll forgive me for saying this, mice,” I said. “I have absolute faith in their teachings, and if they say I’m clean, I’m sure they’re right. But I need to be able to go to Shelby’s father and say I’ve done everything in my power to make sure I can’t hurt anyone. That includes using the treatment I’m going to recommend for everyone else who’s been exposed.” Although I was also going to recommend the mice check everyone who was even suspected of harboring a lycanthropy-w infection. If they gave any result other than “clean,” we’d have something resembling proof that they could do what they said they could.

“It’s your funeral,” said Helen. “Lay back on the bed, open your mouth, and think about something more pleasant than what I’m about to do to you. Because . . .”

“I know,” I said, cutting her off. “This is going to hurt. Now do it.”

And she did.

Nine

“That probably wasn’t the smartest thing you’ve ever done. Points for style, I guess. Points off for being too stupid to live.”

—Kevin Price

Waiting in one of the quarantine rooms in a secluded guesthouse in Queensland, Australia

THE FEELING STARTED COMING back to my tongue an hour after Dr. Helen Jalali administered the werewolf antiserum. There was still a sharp, almost burning sensation at the root of it, and I couldn’t keep myself from drooling—not the best thing when you’re a) trying to present yourself as a professional and b) dealing with people who are terrified of accidental fluid transfer—but at least my temporary lisp was gone. That was a good thing, given the pitch I was about to make.

The door was closed, and had been closed since Shelby had walked the doctor back to her car. Helen had grumbled about blindfolds the whole time, which made me suspect that the Society still wasn’t playing nicely with the sapient locals. That was a bad sign. They needed all the help they could get to come through this reasonably intact—and that help included me.

I reached the wall, turned around, and paced back in the other direction. I was getting tired of waiting for Shelby to come back for me, and knew that I couldn’t move until she did. The inside of my mouth still tasted like aconite and ketamine, which accounted for the continued drooling. The body knows when it contains things that shouldn’t be there, and will try to flush them out through whatever means are necessary.

The mice were arrayed in a loose circle on the bed, watching me pace. Every fourth circuit around the room they shouted “HAIL!” for no clear reason. It seemed to be keeping them happy, and while I was sure they had some religious explanation for their behavior, I was equally sure I wouldn’t be able to get them to shut up about it if I made the mistake of asking. The last thing I wanted to do was have Riley walk in on the Aeslin mice in full-on religious ecstasy.

Although the look on his face might be worth the argument that would be sure to follow. I smiled a little at the thought, and was pleased to feel the muscles on either side of my mouth pull upward at the same time. Facial numbness and temporary paralysis were possible side effects of the antiserum. (They were among the milder, more desirable side effects, mind, since the others included fun things like “seizure,” “heart failure,” and “death.” Modern medicine is occasionally deadly, but there’s a lot to be said for having access to machines and lab technicians capable of refining deadly toxins to a slightly less deadly state.)