The hours passed into the early evening and James had yet to find anything at all. Feeling frustrated, he decided to undress and shift. Maybe this way he could pick up something. However, the beast had other plans. He was much more interested in the delicious scent left by a deer. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast and the beast wasn’t one to work on an empty stomach. So the few precious hours of daylight left were spent tracking, stalking, killing, and finally dining on a large buck.
It was nearly pitch black when the sated beast shifted back to James. “Great,” James complained, wiping the blood off his face. He was covered with blood and other things he preferred not to think about. The cold winter wind blew past him, causing goose bumps to break out on his skin and he complained silently as he quickly made his way towards a small river nearby. “I will never forgive you for this,” he cursed the beast as he bent down to the edge of the water.
The water was ice cold, but he had no choice, he couldn’t go to the Roberts’s covered in blood and gore. He cupped some water and splashed it on his face, then on his arms and chest. By the time he was finished he was shivering from head to toe and was worried he might’ve actually caught hypothermia. “I will never ever forgive you for this,” he repeated through chattering teeth and dashed off to find his clothing. He’d never been happier to put on a shirt and jeans before in his life, but they did little to ward off the chill. He ran as quickly as he could to the Roberts’s home.
“What the hell happened to you?” Chris asked as soon as he saw him enter the house, still trembling.
“I shifted to see if I would have more luck finding a scent, but the damn beast of mine preferred to spend the evening deer hunting and leaving me to clean up the mess,” he told him and Chris rubbed his chin, obviously trying not to laugh. “It’s not funny man, do you know cold it is out there, not to mention the Appleton River is like ice!”
Chris lost it then and slapped his thigh, laughing until tears ran down his eyes. James balled his fist with every intention of knocking a few of Chris’s teeth out when Sandy entered the room.
“Oh James, you look nearly frozen! Go into the kitchen now… let’s get something warm into you before you catch your death. I swear I don’t know what you’d all do without me,” She demanded pointing in the direction of the kitchen.
“You got lucky this time,” he warned the other werewolf, only half serious. Chris paled and suddenly stopped laughing.
Sandy shook her head with a disapproving look. “Now quit that James! How can you expect people to see more than the beast if you keep acting like some wild animal?” she lectured him as she led him into the kitchen.
“We were just joking Sandy, no need to get all worried,” he replied. Chris agreed with his usual smile, but James noticed it was a bit weak. Maybe he was too much of a brute with people. He sat down at the table and Sandy placed a large steaming bowl in front of him as Andrew came in.
“There you are James, I was starting to worry. Where you’ve been?” he asked and James repeated what he told Chris. He frowned as Andrew had the same reaction as Chris, except for the tears. “That must have been… rough,” he admitted through fits of laughter. Why did everyone see his brush with frostbite so funny? After a few more minutes of laughter, Andrew calmed down and turned serious.
“I don’t think we will find Greg anytime soon. The forest is massive and there is no way we can effectively search it all, especially with winter snows about to fall at any moment,” Andrew explained and James could see just how difficult it was for him to admit defeat.
“There’s something else. I had a talk with Lily while… your beast was out… hunting. Placing the impostor at her house wasn’t a show of power. That bastard called her. He knew she had the pills and wanted her to continue to examine them as some sort of morbid test against her,” Andrew explained and James frowned as he took a spoonful of the broth in front of him. A content sigh escaped him as he felt the liquid start warm him from the inside out.
“I don’t get it,” James admitted. “He hates her. The psycho accused her of pretending to be one of us and something like a groupie for werewolves,” he explained and Andrew nodded with a sigh.
“Yes, that is a common conception of most the pack but it appears somewhere our psychopath has changed his mind. Which I am afraid won’t mean good things for my daughter. We have to figure out what he is planning James and stop it at all costs,” Andrew demanded.
“Of course Alpha,” James replied, but he knew as well as Andrew that such a thing was easier said and done. Both men sat in silence and James took another drink of the hot broth. He couldn’t help but wonder what that crazed loon could want with the human. He had to admit she was attractive, apparently intelligent, and smelled nice, but she was only human in the end.
With a sigh of frustration, James stared down at his bowl of steaming broth as if hoping to see the answers he sought in the creamy yellow liquid. No matter how he looked at it none of this made any sense to him at all.
Lily stared up at the ceiling of her old bedroom and watched the morning sun fill the room as she enjoyed a few moments of doing nothing. She had spent the last two days attempting to reschedule her school workload, find another job, and appease her landlord. The school was time-consuming, but she’d managed to cut down her six classes to three. There weren’t any other crime labs in the area so she was going to have to look for something minimum wage which would hurt her bank account badly. The landlord totally flipped when he’d seen the apartment and started threatening to call the police, press charges, sue, and any other legal action he could think of.
If it wasn’t for Andrew stepping forward and offering to repair the damage done and pay for all of it his own pocket while also paying the rent due each month until the apartment was good as new, she wasn’t sure what she would have done. She tried to offer to pay back the money to Andrew, but he refused, claiming she was in this mess because of him and it was the least he could do for her.
If only he knew, she thought darkly. Ever since she got over the fever, she’d felt different and it gotten worse with each passing day. She hadn’t told anyone yet; she’d wanted to make sure that she wasn’t paranoid. She sat up on the bed with a loud sigh. She picked up the classifieds of the local paper scanning them once again, before tossing them to the opposite edge of the bed. Her phone vibrated across the little nightstand.
“This is Lily,” she stated with a bored tone.
“How are you feeling Lily?” The mechanical voice asked and her blood ran cold.
“What do you want?” She snapped, shivering from the chill that ran through her.
“Let’s not be rude my guinea pig,” he told her with a teasing tone.
“I am not your guinea pig so don’t call me that,” she snapped once more.
“Too late for making such demands… guinea pig,” he replied.
“So I’m not paranoid then?” Lily asked as she held her breath waiting for the answer. Please don’t let it be true, she pleaded silently.