Wolf Fever

Chapter 24

SNUGGLED AGAINST RYAN’S HOT, MUSCLED FRAME, Carol needed a moment to realize that someone was at the basement door trying to get in, shattering her blissful contentment.

“Carol and that gray outsider have locked the damn door to the basement. I’ve tried to reach her, but there’s no answer on her cell phone. Are you sure that you have the key to the facilities down here?” Nurse Matthew asked outside the door to the lab, lounge, and laundry area.

“Oh, hell,” Carol said, scrambling to untangle herself from Ryan on the staff-lounge sofa. “We must have fallen asleep.” She searched for her bra and frowned.

Naked, his body a chiseled wonder, Ryan put his arms behind his head and watched her.

Her face heated as he eyed her breasts. If she and Ryan had been someplace else, someplace more private, and had the circumstances been different, she would have told the intruders to go away.

“Later, Ryan,” she said, her voice still hushed. “We’ve got to get dressed.”

He got up off the couch slowly like a wolf, took her shoulders, and then kissed her mouth leisurely and with meaning. He had claimed her; she was his; and everyone had better get used to the idea.

All right, all right, so she was his. And he was all hers, too. But this was not the time to prove it.

She nipped his mouth. “Help me find my bra.” She hurried to pull on her panties, her scrub pants, and then her tennis shoes.

He searched under the couch and around his pile of clothes. “Don’t see it.”

She gave him a dark look. “Fine. Get dressed. Hurry.”

“I’ve got the janitor’s keys, and one should unlock the door,” Jake said, his voice a little louder than necessary, as if he was warning Ryan and Carol to get ready for the incoming invasion. One key, then another was inserted in the lock, metal against metal.

“Jake,” Carol whispered.

“Hurry it up,” Matthew said.

“There are at least fifty keys on this ring. You know which one it is?”

Silence.

Ryan dragged his shirt on and slipped into his pants. Carol ran her fingers through her hair, trying to put it in some kind of order. Then she hurried over to the lab and retrieved the lab tech’s report and blood samples from Doc Weber in his wolf form.

“Where’s Doc Weber?” Jake asked Matthew conversationally, still playing with the keys in the lock.

Thank you, Jake, Carol said silently.

“He’s wolf napping again in his office on a dog pad they brought over from the vet’s kennel after Doc refused to lie on his bed. As fastidious as he is, he probably didn’t want to shed fur on the linens. He’s still running a fever and coughing. The shift didn’t knock out the virus like it should have. So he can’t have had human flu.”

Carol examined the blood sample under an electron microscope, observing roughly spherical shapes that were covered in rigid spikes like a halo. Some halo.

She glanced back at Ryan to see if he was dressed yet. He had finished buttoning his shirt and shoving the tails into his pants and was giving her a devilish wink and a little smile when the door lock clicked open. She shook her head at him. In his macho way, he just had to prove to Darien’s pack that she was his. Not that she minded. At least no other male would think she was fair game any longer.

Ryan zipped up his zipper and buckled his belt as Jake and Matthew walked into the room.

“The men who were shot are here,” Matthew said to Carol, giving Ryan a scathing look. “Why did you lock the damn door?”

“For protection,” Ryan said as Carol’s face grew hot with embarrassment. “In case North or his gang happened to break into the place.”

“The men who were shot?” Matthew reiterated. “Darien had to send some folks over to Doc Mitchell’s place to care for the animals in his kennel until they can locate the vet. It’s not like the doc to disappear without a word to anyone, especially when a lot of pets needed his care and no one was scheduled to take care of them in his absence.”

“He’s got canine influenza,” Carol said finally. “Doc Weber does. The respiratory illness causes coughing, runny nose, and fever,” she added for Jake and Ryan’s benefit. “We can medicate him, make sure he has plenty of fluids, and help him through this. If any of you don’t know, the virus was first found in horses, but then it transferred to greyhounds. But it doesn’t transfer to humans.”

She looked up at the men, her expression worried. “He could get pneumonia.”

Matthew frowned at her. “But that doesn’t make any sense, since the canine virus doesn’t transfer to humans. He was sick before he shifted.”

“The virus he has can’t transfer to humans. I’m sure he had a human flu virus before the shift, but we don’t have a blood test from him while he was human to prove it. If so, the virus he had before he shifted might not be one that can’t transfer to canines.

“I believe what we have here is a novel virus. One that is an offshoot of another. Maybe. I don’t know for sure. But the virus appears to affect the werewolf kind. This inability to shift back has to have something to do with the virus. Don’t you think?”

Ryan nodded. “Sounds like that could be the case.”

“You haven’t had any flu-like symptoms, have any of you?” she asked them.

Impressed at the logical way Carol dealt with a medical mystery, just like he would in a P.I. investigation, Ryan peered over her shoulder at the lab results.

“No. I think you might be right. Everyone in the pack needs to be warned not to shift if they can avoid it. Especially if there’s any indication they’re coming down with a bout of the flu. Hell, I need to notify my pack and my sister.”

He lifted his phone off his belt, hoping no one in Green Valley had been inflicted with the virus, if that’s what it was. He called his sister first.

“Rosalind?”

“Well? Did you finally see the light with Carol?” She sounded like she knew he had, even before he told her so.

“Listen, we’ve got problems here.”

His sister remained silent. She knew that when his voice took on that dark tone, he meant business. “At least one of the people in Carol’s pack has come down sick with something. A flu-like virus, it appears. It seems that if a person with this virus shifts into the wolf, he or she can’t shape-shift back into human form.”

“You can’t be serious!” Her voice was more than concerned.

“I am serious about this. I’ll call my second in command, but I don’t want you to be exposed to anyone until we can sort this out.”

“Ha! This is the biggest season for my nursery business, Ryan.”

“Rosalind.” He only had to say her name once for her to know how grave this was.

“All right,” she said tightly. “Carol discovered it, didn’t she?”

He glanced at Carol. “Yeah, Carol’s the one who discovered the sickness and the results.”

“Through her visions, right?”

He sighed. “Yeah.”

“Didn’t I tell you so?”

“Yeah, so you’ve said already, and I’ve finally… well, hell, she’s got really good hunches.” He gave Carol an elusive smile as she raised a brow at him.

“Not just hunches.”

“She’s the real deal.” His voice turned more commanding. “Don’t shift, all right?”

“All right already. I said I wouldn’t.”

He let out his breath. “I’ve got to call my sub-leader. I’ll be home soon. Keep yourself isolated from the others. All right?”

“I will.”

“I’ll call you when I know anything new.”

“Good luck, Ryan. She’ll do it. She’ll find a cure.”

“Now you can see the future?”

Silence. Then his sister said, “Yeah, just like I know that if you haven’t taken her for your mate already, you will soon.”

“Bye, Rosalind.” He wasn’t about to say anything to her about mating Carol while Jake and Matthew were listening in on the conversation. He clicked off the phone.

“Hunches, huh?” Carol asked Ryan.

“Yeah, damn good ones. It’s going to take a while to get used to you knowing things before I do… in an unscientific way, but…” He shrugged, punched in another number, and said, “Granbury, it’s McKinley. Find out who all in our pack might be sick with a flu-like virus. Upper respiratory ailments. Make sure you warn them not to shift. That has dire consequences.”

He looked over at Carol and found her observing him, a frown knitting her brow.

“They can’t shift back if they turn into the wolf. I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve got an expert on the case. No one else who can help it should shift, either. But especially those with the flu.”

“Your administrative assistant was sick this morning.”

“Hell. Has she shifted?”

“Not that I know of. She called in sick today. I’ll call her, and if I don’t get an answer, I’ll run by her place and warn her.”

“All right. Make sure she gets plenty of fluids. The canine flu isn’t supposed to transfer to humans, but the way this is affecting our people, we’re not sure of the effects with the shift. I’ll give you an update as soon as I can. And let me know what’s going on with Ingrid.” He snapped his phone shut and put it away.

Carol gave Ryan a weary smile. “Thank you.”

“I’m sorry, Carol. I guess I was just too set in my ways before.”

Jake raised his brows when Carol looked at him. He was studying her way too much. His gaze shifted from her to Ryan.

She rose from the chair and headed for the stairs. “How are the wounded men doing?” she asked Matthew.

“They’ll be fine. They’re still in their wolf form. The bullets aren’t silver. But the men lost some blood, and all three are sick with whatever Doc probably has. Three of them suffered hind leg wounds. One was hit in the rump,” Matthew said, leading the way up the stairs, Carol following behind. “If we could have found Doc Mitchell, he could have performed the surgery at his vet clinic.”

Ryan watched as Carol disappeared and then turned to see what Jake was doing in the staff lounge.

Jake glanced at the couch and drew closer. Then he bent over it and poked around. Hell. Jake pulled the silk bra out from between the back and seat cushions and took a deep breath. He shook his head and tossed the bra to Ryan.

“Looks like you two took the plunge.” He gave Ryan a dark smile. “About time. But Darien will not be pleased.”

Ryan tucked the incriminating evidence into his pocket. Carol would not be pleased to know Jake had found her bra, and while he didn’t like to keep secrets from his mate, he had no plans to tell her about this.

He took off for the stairs, and Jake followed him. As soon as Carol finished treating the injured men, Ryan had every intention of transporting her home. To his home. His bed. He had people who could keep her safe just like Darien did. Now she belonged to his pack, not Darien’s. And if his own people could suffer the same trouble as Darien’s, Ryan needed to be there for them. He rubbed his chin in thought. As long as she could do her research in Green Valley. He’d have to make sure she could.

After they arrived at the operating room, Jake and Ryan served as guards and waited inside by the door. While Matthew assisted, Carol removed the bullet from the first of the patients. Ryan admired Carol for her dedication to the patient’s care. She worked efficiently with steady hands, her deportment self-assured. Matthew aided her, his expression one of deep admiration, as if he had every confidence in her abilities. When she stitched the man’s wound closed, she looked as though she could work like this all night. She had to be tired, but she didn’t let on.

“I keep telling you that you ought to be a doctor, Carol,” Matthew said. “Before Doc Weber arrived here, you’d removed how many bullets from pack members?”

“Three men wounded in that bank robbery. We heal faster, as long as the bullets aren’t made of silver. Rifle bullets can do a lot of permanent damage to humans, but our bodies will heal from the injury, given time. So it’s not the same.”

“You have the smarts and the skill to do it, Carol,” Matthew argued.

She might believe she wasn’t capable of doing the job, but with her determination, Ryan thought differently. If she wanted further medical training, he’d back her all the way. But one thing was certain: his Green Valley pack needed a lupus garou who had the medical skills she did. He needed to arrange for a wolf doctor to start a clinic, and she could attend him. If she wanted further training after that, Ryan was all for it.

Matthew bound the man’s injured leg, and then they moved on to the next man.

Avery. Hell, he was sick now. And he’d danced with Carol. She’d been around Doc all day, too. Ryan had danced with Marilee, and she also was ill. He wondered how long the rest of them had before they shifted with no way to change back.

Ryan turned to Jake. “Where are Marilee and Becky now? They’re both sick with this crud. If they’ve got it, we don’t want them returning to their pack and carrying the virus there.”

“What if they brought it from their pack?” Jake jerked his phone out of its pouch and punched in a number. “Bertha? This is Jake. Marilee and Becky were staying at your bed and breakfast, right?” He frowned and then stared at Ryan. “Hell. All right. I’ll tell Darien and give Ryan the word.”

Jake hung up and punched another button.

“Darien,” he sighed. “We’ve got more trouble.”

Carol finished removing the bullet from the third wounded man, although concentrating had become an effort as soon as Ryan and Jake left the operating room to discuss some new trouble with Darien in private.

Matthew said, “Wonder what else is going on.”

Carol took a deep breath. “Nothing good, we can be sure.”

“You did it with him, didn’t you?”

She glanced up from stitching the man’s wound closed. Matthew looked slightly annoyed, eyes narrowed, lips pursed. “If you mean Ryan and I are mated, yes.”

“He’ll expect you to leave right away. To move to Green Valley. To take care of his people.”

“I’m staying here until we resolve this.” Beyond that, she hadn’t really thought of leaving. Just that she’d be Ryan’s mate. Why hadn’t she even considered it? Did they have a hospital in Green Valley? Certainly not one that was run by werewolves, she imagined. Would she be able to get a position? Should she even try, considering her shifting problem?

She ground her teeth and sighed. “Like you heard Jake say, if we’re all infected because we’ve been exposed to this, we can’t go spreading it to other packs.” She figured that went without saying.

“He won’t think that, Carol. He’s a pack leader. His place is with his pack. He’ll want to be there in case this hits his people. His sister and his aunt are there. Family takes priority. You wait. If one case of this sickness hits Green Valley, he’ll want to drag you back there pronto.”

She finished with her patient and was about to reply that Ryan wouldn’t be that way when Nurse Charlotte came in for her work shift. Jake accompanied her, but Ryan wasn’t with them.

Carol had a bad feeling about that.

Charlotte sighed heavily. “Looks like we have an epidemic of our kind getting sick and then not being able to shift back to their human forms. Now the humans think the wolves are invading Silver Town and the surrounding area. So they’re taking up guns to get rid of the menace.”

Jake shook his head. “Five men have already been arrested and thrown in the slammer. One said something about Darien being a wolf lover, and Darien just smiled in a sinister way. None have lawyers, so the court will appoint them.” Jake gave an evil smile.

“All werewolf lawyers. They’ll get the maximum fine—$20,000—five years suspended hunting license, and sixty days in jail for harassing wildlife on private property, carrying loaded weapons in a vehicle without a permit, firing across a road, and anything else witnesses will attest to.”

“Lupus garou witnesses,” Carol said, half commenting, half questioning.

“Exactly. Silver Town is werewolf run, and we plan to keep it that way.”

Carol chewed on her bottom lip and rubbed her arms. “Someone needs to take care of Doc Weber and watch him around the clock.”

“I’ll do it,” Charlotte said. “You run along now. My shift. You’ve already worked yours and more hours than you ought to have.”

“Thanks, Charlotte. Hopefully you’ll have a quiet night.” Carol left the hospital with Jake, flanked by Mervin and Christian. She expected Ryan to be waiting outside the operating room, but he wasn’t.

“Where’s Ryan?”

“He and the sheriff had to question Marilee and Becky at the bed and breakfast,” Jake said as he walked her to his truck. “When I called Bertha to learn if the women’s pack members were sick, she said a man had infected the two women to get back at Darien. Only now the man won’t give them the cure. This isn’t just a normal virus.”

“It’s not just a mutation of some sort that affects our people?” Carol’s head spun with the ramifications. “Some sick bastard bioengineered this?”

“Yeah, and then Miller gave it to them to infect our pack. Connor paid the lupus garou scientist to come up with the plague. Becky and Marilee wanted to start their own businesses, and Connor was going to give them a hefty sum for carrying the plague to our gathering. The only satisfaction any of us have is that Connor and some of his pack have come down with it. The women will have the same trouble dealing with it.”

Ryan drove into the parking lot, parked next to Jake’s vehicle, and hurried out of his truck. His jaw was hard, his eyes dark. The news wasn’t good.

“Did the scientist make a vaccine?” Carol asked both Jake and Ryan.

“That’s what we’re trying to learn.” Ryan hauled her close and held her tight as if he’d been away for eons. He brushed her cheek with his lips and then said to Jake, “We’re headed back to the house.”

Jake had an odd look on his face and didn’t move toward his own truck to follow them.

“Jake?” Carol said.

He frowned at her. “You saw me shift and not be able to change back.”

He finally seemed to believe her. “Maybe I’m wrong,” Carol said. “Maybe I just see you shift, but like everyone keeps reminding me, I don’t see the end result. That you shift back.”

But Jake’s expression remained dark.

She patted his arm. “We’ll find a vaccine. And a cure.”

“And this damned Miller,” Ryan said, hauling Carol into the truck. “See you at Darien’s place.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” Jake said.

As soon as they were on the road, Carol said to Ryan, “I wish I hadn’t told Jake what I’d seen.”

Ryan shook his head and tugged her close. “We’ll get this under control.”

But behind his words she was certain she heard the worry that they might not.

“Darien’s going to be pissed about us mating when we didn’t say anything to him about it beforehand.”

Ryan let out his breath, wanting Carol away from this nightmare immediately. “Even more so when I tell him that you’re coming home with me tonight.”

She looked up at Ryan as if he’d lost his mind, and he knew as soon as she did that she wasn’t going to agree with his plan. But he had his own pack and his own place. Staying as a guest at Darien’s wasn’t in the plans. He had to investigate Connor and Miller’s hideout, but he thought that if Carol was with his pack, Connor and North and the rest of them would never learn of her whereabouts and she’d be safer.

“I want to take you home with me,” he said, a little more amenable this time. He hadn’t even considered she might object.

“I have to stay and figure out a way to cure this. Unless you have a doctor in Green Valley who might have some idea of what to do.”

He sure wished he did. If the doctor had been a lupus garou, he might have helped. But as a human, he couldn’t.

“No, Carol, he’s human.”

“Human?” She said it like the man was an alien just arrived from another planet when she’d been strictly human herself not that long ago.

“We can’t allow him to learn what we are.” Ryan was unsure why the fact the doctor was human distressed her. Unless she’d had high hopes he could help with this.

“You didn’t see Doc Mitchell change in a premonition, did you, Carol?”