Page 58 of Crave

“Give that to me.”

Cujo sat down at my feet like she was the best-behaved werewolf in Major’s Saturday morning remedial obedience class, and we were going to pretend she hadn’t just totaled her apartment. Setting aside the jar of peanut butter, I texted The Spoke, telling Javier to put a rush on a takeout order. Brisket. Ribs. Potato salad. Mac and Bleu. Then I dialed Brody.

“You’re thinking this is some sort of delayed reaction to the biologic agent, the wolf’s counter response to being forcibly subdued all this time?” he said at last after I’d filled him in.

“Maybe. This seems like your typical bad post-shift reaction. I’m going to try to get some protein into her, see if she’ll be able to shift back.”

Shifting burned a crazy number of calories. Bittens always had more trouble than Borns learning to control their shift, but Lacey had been a werewolf for nearly a decade. Whatever was going on had to be due to the biologic agent she’d been dosed with.

“If she’s been trapped in here for days, transforming uncontrollably at the mercy of her wolf due to some freak overreaction to the drug—”

“She might not have even been fully aware of what was happening,” Brody finished.

“She said something just before we got cut off, that it might have been London who reinfected her.”

Brody was silent for a full minute, and I could almost picture him pacing back at the ranch on the back patio, trying to work the variables out in his head. “Here’s what doesn’t make sense,” he said at last. “When Lacey got dosed the first time, it was by vampires. We don’t know how this biologic agent is even delivered. There were multiple prototypes they were testing in the information on the thumb drive River went over. Is it injected? Delivered as an aerosol? Ingested and breathed onto the face of the target? Absorbed through the skin? Water supply?” He paused. “You want me to go on?”

“You’re saying London couldn’t have infected Lacey without being affected herself.”

“I’m not ruling anything out. We’ve dropped the ball too many times with this already. I’m calling her in. Either she’s got an answer I buy for what’s going on, or I’m going to have to tell River we know where she is.”

I thought back to what London had said at the park.

The best we have to go on is that we think the bloodsuckers were originally trying to develop a drug that would spike viral loads in our people. Something that would drive werewolves mad at the full moon and cause mass chaos in the process. Maybe even be the catalyst that turned some of them permanently feral.

Maybe we’d all been wrong. It wouldn’t matter if in the initial stages the drug lessened viral load if it triggered such a cataclysmic overreaction from our wolves that we couldn’t keep from going mad.

“Call me back the minute you know something.” I slid to the floor. Cujo padded over and put her front paws in my lap, regarding the jar of rich and creamy hopefully. “One, you’re not getting all of this. I don’t care how hungry you are. Pretty sure all that salt can’t be good for wolves. Two, if you bite me, I’m stuffing your fluffy butt in the bathroom for timeout and getting out that plastic cone Brody uses on Major.”

She wagged her tail, blinking innocently like it had been Fancy who went all Slayer on the sofa cushions. Letting my head thump back against the refrigerator, I unscrewed the lid, which would have been easier without a hundred-pound werewolf up in my grill.

“No. Teeth.”

10

Lacey

I AWOKE SHIVERING ON MY KITCHEN FLOOR in a pile of half-eaten bones and empty cupcake wrappers. Something sharp pinched the crook of my elbow. I struggled against the hands pinning me down, blinking to block out the light strobing overhead like a sun about to go nova.

Worst. Hangover. Ever.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Naomi sang from behind a protective mask and shield. She twisted a tube of blood free from the needle in my arm and snapped off the tourniquet. “All set. Any dizziness? Nausea?”

I groaned. “Less. Talking.”

After shining a tiny penlight in my eyes that I unsuccessfully attempted to bat away, she performed a quick physical exam that determined I could probably be taken out by the nearest squirrel, but was otherwise okay. “I’m going to get this blood out with a courier right away. I’ll run some tests at the lab here in town in the meantime. Get you preliminary numbers.”

“You talked to Brody?” Dallas said from the doorway.

In the two days since I’d seen him, Dallas had somehow managed to go from promising me the world under a starlit December sky to looking like your everyday brooding bad boy. A faded gray Henley fit tight across his pecs. Ripped jeans hung low on his hips. And of course he had on those damn flip-flops like the forecast wasn’t calling for sleet.

My gaze traveled up the length of his body, everything south of my navel going tight and tingly. Quickly, I looked away. I’d spent the last two days reminding myself why we couldn’t be together. I’d made the mistake of letting things go too far. It was time to end this before we wound up in a place from which our friendship could never recover.

Naomi hoisted the bag containing her medical gear over one shoulder, smoothing her braids back with one slim brown hand. “I won’t know anything for sure until we get the lab work back, but this presents differently than what we saw a few weeks ago.”

My pulse quickened. “How so?”

She shook her head, halfway to the door. “I don’t want to guess at this point. I’ll call as soon as I know more. In the meantime, stay inside and rest.”