A sharp pain stabbed through my wrist and up to my elbow, and I looked down to see it in his grip. “What did you say?” he growled.
I tried to jerk away, but it was as if my wrist was caught in a steel trap. “Let go,” I hissed.
“What did you hear?” The pain clouded my awareness, a bright throbbing focus as fingers found tendons and squeezed the pain up through my bicep and to my shoulder and collarbone. My knees buckled, and then I was bowled over by something large and covered in flannel.
The pain eased, and I found myself curled in the fetal position on the lawn as two men wrestled not far from me. It was Leonard and Gabriel.
“Get off of me, you overgrown poodle,” Leonard grunted.
“Take your filthy hide somewhere else, Lothan!” Gabriel was on top of him, hands around his throat. Both men bared teeth in a feral way, and my heart beat in staccato. Gabriel had tossed his flannel robe aside and wore only his white T-shirt and boxers. He had the arms of a basketball player—lean and muscular. Leonard was built more like a football player, all knotted muscle, but neither man had an ounce of fat on him. I knew I should run, but my fascination held me rooted to the spot.
“I believe the Lady of the Manor would like you to leave,” Gabriel snarled.
“I’m sure she would.”
Gabriel sprang away, and Leonard got up and slowly brushed his clothes off.
“Until later, milady.” That last word was an insult, I knew, but I was just happy to see him walk away. The shadows of the trees swallowed him, and I turned to Gabriel, who still managed to look the distinguished butler in spite of disheveled hair and grass stains on his T-shirt.
“Let’s get some ice on that wrist,” he said. “Even so, it will probably leave a nasty bruise.”
He let me lead the way inside, and I sat on the couch in the study as he fixed an ice pack out of some towels and a zip-top bag of ice.
“Thanks.” Somehow sitting on the couch was soothing, a bit of normality in an otherwise bizarre night. The ice pack stung, but it quieted the throbbing.
“I wouldn’t be too terribly upset with Loth—Leonard,” Gabriel told me as he set down a cup of herbal tea and a bottle of honey.
“Why? He hurt me, and he knew exactly how to do it.”
“He was not entirely in control of his actions.”
“What?”
“How much honey?”
“A teaspoon. But what do you mean, he wasn’t entirely in control of his actions?”
“He was in a state where his impulse control was still impaired.”
“Why?” But part of me knew the answer, and it was in a place I wasn’t ready to go yet.
“Can I get you anything else?”
The frustration finally kicked in. “Gabriel, sit.”
He surprised me by sitting in the armchair, but he did not settle in.
“Look, it’s obvious you know what’s going on better than I do. Can we just chat like two normal people and forget you’re the butler for a little bit?”
“I can try.” He eyed me warily. I think he was surprised he had been so obedient.
“Okay, let’s back up. How did you know what was going on out there?”
“I heard you cry out.”
“I never cried out.”
Another shrug.
“I wasn’t supposed to see them, was I? And don’t you dare shrug.”
He sighed instead. “In time, you would have been introduced properly to them. But no, your grandfather wanted you to be sheltered at first.”
“So you drugged me?”
“It obviously didn’t work.”
“Obviously. Why did he want to shelter me?”
“He knew how your mind works. He felt that, after the fire, you may not be ready to see what your mind would classify as impossible.”
“But now he’s dead, and I’m in the middle of something I need to be able to understand.”
“You may be able to understand it better than anyone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your research.”
“My research?” I felt the cold sweat at the back of my neck and closed my eyes. Glowing eyes in a black face. Fangs. I shook my head to clear the images of the last night at the lab. “What does my research have to do with all this?”
“CLS.” He rose from the chair. “Excuse me a moment. I have something for you.”
I sipped the tea, which may have been drugged, but at that point I didn’t care. Before I had been let go from Cabal Industries, I had been studying a pattern of breakouts of Chronic Lycanthropy Syndrome, a new psychological disorder of impulsivity. With the help of a historian, I had been tracing family trees and gathering family medical histories on the victims. The raw data was in the lab, and I had been running analyses that night to see if there were any patterns in the variables.
Gabriel returned with a box streaked with smoke but still intact. He set it on the coffee table by my tea.
“What are those?”
“Some of the records you were working with.”
“How did you get them?”
“A friend. I cannot say any more.”
I cradled my left wrist against my chest and leaned over to the box. It smelled of smoke.
“Did any of the others…” I couldn’t believe anything had made it through the fire. The image of the lab as it had been the day after, all my data smoldering ash, flashed through my mind. For some reason, whatever had been entered in the computer hadn’t been backed up yet, so I had lost all of it. Or at least I thought I had.
“This was the only one that survived.”
I could barely make out the filing code on the side of the box. It was the most recent batch of Arkansas and Tennessee files, copies of medical records from pediatricians’ offices.
“It was still on a hand truck in the hallway. My assistant hadn’t entered the data yet.”
“Do you feel like looking at it?”
I put my head in my hands to stop the wave of dizziness and the memories that rode it. “Not tonight. Do you have any painkillers in that magical box of pills?”
“I may. Something that will dull the pain but not upset your stomach?”
“Perfect.”
He returned with a little orange pharmacy bottle and spilled out a pill. “This should help.”
“Thanks.”
When I rolled over the next morning, I wasn’t so sure I should’ve accepted the second pill from Gabriel. The first one must have dulled my judgment. What was I thinking, accepting medication from a stranger, especially one who had drugged me against my will?
The clock said ten o’clock. Drat, I was going to miss Louise.
“Ready, sleepyhead?” Lonna poked her head around the door, which I’d left ajar. If it hadn’t been for the grass stains on my feet, I would’ve thought the whole talking-wolf thing had been a dream. Actually, I was hoping the butler thing wasn’t a dream, aside from the whole illegal sharing of prescriptions. The sheets needed washing.
“Gimme a few.” I brushed my teeth and splashed cold water on my face, then grabbed a T-shirt, jeans, and flannel overshirt out of my suitcase. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I couldn’t help but smirk at the resemblance to the first-year graduate student I’d been seven years before down to the “what have I gotten myself into?” look. A purple-black bruise spread almost all the way around my throbbing wrist. No watch for me today.
Damn. What had I gotten myself into?
Chapter Five
“Breakfast, Doctor Fisher?” Gabriel set a bed tray on the gold-colored brass and glass table at the foot of the bed. “You dressed quickly.”
He showed none of the disheveled look of the previous night. Instead of a butler’s suit, he wore khaki pants and a crisp white Oxford shirt. I approved of the look. Anything more would be too formal for every day.