“One-stop shopping?” Suzanne suggested when he paused to search for the right words.
Liam chuckled, nodding. “Yes, that’s it.” He sobered, looking around the table. “Our existence in secretwillbe coming to an end. With video cameras on every street corner, stoplight and store front, as well as cell phones and social media, it’s only a matter of time before someone is caught Changing on camera, and the whole thing goes viral. It’s absolutely crucial that we have our own physicians, surgeons and veterinarians in place, trained and board certified. We already provide protection of sorts for werewolves, and…”
“Werewolves?” Mac, Suzanne’s husband, interrupted in horror, and the others looked just as alarmed. Katerina, however, bit her lower lip, her gold eyes dancing with amusement.
“Yes, werewolves. They’re fortunately very rare, and we do all we can to contain them so no one else is bitten. Shapeshifters have taken on the responsibility to look after them and to keep everyone safe from them. We provide safe places for them to go on the nights of the full moon…”
“Like the Shrieking Shack,” Katerina snickered, and Liam laughed.
“Yes, like that. Also, as physicians we can provide letters excusing them from work for medical reasons on those days, if needed. We do what we can to see they’re able to lead as normal a life as possible, outside of those three nights per month. Our researchers have been working on a cure for hundreds of years, but so far, nothing. All we can really do is give them a safe place where they can’t hurt themselves, or anyone else, and sedate them, to make it easier on them.”
Troy, however, frowned. “I thought there hadn’t been any Weres for a couple hundred years until Beatrice, and she was sent off to some kind of sanctuary.”
Katerina was shaking her head. “No, that’s different. She’s a shifter who went Rogue. We did call her a werecat, but that’s more what you’d call a colloquial term, I guess. A werewolf is something entirely different, although the werecat term relating to Beatrice isn’t entirely off-base.”
“That was helpful,” Troy frowned at his fiancee. “Not.”
“Liam?” That was Suzanne. She seemed pale, he noted, and her hand on the table clutched that of her husband.
“Werewolves do shift shape,” he explained, “but they’re not shapeshifters. Shifters are supernatural creatures, magical, if you will. Lycanthropy is actually a disease; a virus, like rabies, and like rabies, is spread through the saliva of an infected person by a bite. Shifters can Change in and out of their animal form at will, whereas werewolves are forced into their beast form on the full moon, and shift back to human when the moon sets. And no,” he said wryly in response to the question he could see in all their faces. “Being bitten by a shifter will not turn you into a werewolf. Or into a shifter,” he added. “There is no way for a human to become a shifter.”
“That we know of,” Katerina put in, and he nodded at her in agreement.
“Indeed.”
Across from him, Suzanne gulped. “So, how many werewolves are out there running around?”
Liam smiled reassuringly. “Werewolves are extremely rare now, and becoming more so now that we are able to take care of them. They’re prevented from biting others, and we keep records of all those known to be werewolves. I might add, in our animal forms, shifters can sense the … the wrongness of werewolves, even when they are in human form. Very few werewolves have escaped detection since we began this program back in the nineteen fifties.”
The expressions of relief around the table had him laughing.
“Seriously, though. You have better odds of being struck by lightningandwinning the lottery, ten times over, than of running into a werewolf. There are only eleven known werewolves in the entire United States… and as far as we know, we’ve identified all of them… in a population of, what, three hundred twenty million or something like that?”
“Those are pretty slim odds,” Troy admitted, his gaze sliding to his fiancee. “If there have to be werewolves.”
She just grinned at him. “You can have the fun of telling Douglas.”
“Oh yeah.” Troy laughed, a deep rumble. “He’ll love hearing that.”
“I do have something else of importance,” Liam told them. “It’s nothing that affects you, but Maroulla thought you’d like to be apprised, and she didn’t want to tell you over the phone.”
He paused, looking around. He had the full attention of everyone, so he continued. “We were able to track the Rogue, Beatrice, back to Florida. Along the way, we found a string of unsolved murders that, to us anyway, were clearly the work of a Rogue. And some disappearances as well. But that’s not the worst.” He paused again as Troy pushed a cup of coffee his way. Nodding his thanks, he sipped the strong brew, then continued.
“We discovered her sister and the sister’s three grown daughters, all living in Florida. All Rogues.”
Katerina gasped, turning pale, and her hand went toward Troy, who took it in a strong clasp.
“They’ve been apprehended,” Liam assured them. “And placed in the Sanctuary with Beatrice.”
“But… but how?” Katerina stammered. “Rogues kill their offspring, everyone knows that. Andfive? When there hasn’t been even one known for ages and ages?”
Liam shrugged. “We don’t know, any more than you do. Perhaps the Rogues only kill their male offspring? It’s not like we ever knew that much about them from over two hundred years ago. There’s also evidence that there was another daughter, apparently long gone. We don’t know if she was killed, or struck out on her own, or what, but our people are on the look-out for her.”
Katerina shuddered.
“Hey,” Troy shook her arm gently. “She’d have to be insane to come here, where everyone knows about Beatrice. And we’re about overrun with shifters now. This is about the last place any Rogue would want to establish herself.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Liam agreed. “Maroulla wasn’t the least concerned about one showing up here, she simply wanted you to be kept in the loop.”
