* * *
Someone was watching him. Paddington spotted the same car when he left Quentin’s that he’d seen at the station. He was being followed. Tracked? Hunted?
Possibly. The existence of werewolves wasn’t common knowledge, which meant someone was keeping it a secret. His knowing their secret was a threat to their very lives.
Logically, they had every reason to hunt him.
Sometimes Paddington really hated logic.
He tried doubling back and finding out who was in the car, but didn’t succeed. The idea of losing his tail – as they said in spy films – crossed his mind, but he doubted he’d succeed and while it was content to wag along behind him, Paddington was content try ignoring it.
Twenty minutes after leaving Quentin’s, Paddington arrived at Dominic’s garage, which was empty of potential werewolves. The one man working there said Dom had the day off, but gave Paddington Dominic’s address.
It was only a street away, so Paddington decided to walk. Walking was good for thinking. Stretch the legs and the mind. Find a way out of the hole he’d dug Lisa into.
Ah. Bad choice of phrase.
Paddington ran through his options for freeing Lisa. There weren’t many, but he hadn’t even reached the list’s end before men who had been walking by or waiting at the bus stop or chatting pleasantly became a ring around him.
He was completely surrounded.
“Detective,” one of them said from behind him.
“Yes?” Paddington spun to face the group’s spokesman, but the circle around him was still turning and he wasn’t sure which burly young man had spoken. The only thing he was sure of was that it couldn’t be Dominic, who was thinner than the rest and slightly out of step.
“We hear you have visitors,” another said behind him. Again he spun, but he couldn’t place the speaker.
Then they were all firing questions at him – who were the Mainlanders, where did they come from, how many were there, what did they want, make them leave – always behind him. It was disorienting. Paddington spun, the circle spun, the world began to tilt…
“Stop it!” Paddington yelled.
“We just want what’s best for Archi,” one said.
“You!” Paddington pointed an unsteady hand at Dominic and tried to ignore the others. “I need your help.”
The group stopped circling and faced Dominic. Dominic froze.
Paddington stepped forward and whispered, “Did you ever bite Lisa?”
Dominic’s panic indicated this wasn’t the best time to ask, but Paddington couldn’t wait. Lisa didn’t have time.
The others must have heard the question, because they backed away.
“I know what you are,” Paddington continued. “I won’t tell the Mainlanders.”
The others had already reached the street corner, leaving Dominic alone with Paddington only because Paddington had hold of his arm.
“Is there a cure?” Paddington shouted, as Dominic pulled free of his grip and ran after his friends. Paddington gave chase, but ran out of puff after a few streets. With a few turns, Dominic disappeared from sight.
Paddington tried asking passers-by if they’d seen men running this way, or where Dominic might have gone, but all anyone would talk about was the Mainlanders. The word on the street was that Lisa must have summoned them, since Paddington had escorted her to see them. That rumour was better than the truth, so Paddington left it alone and dragged his feet back to the station.
He tried to avoid his mother by sneaking in the side door, so naturally she was reading a magazine beside it. “Have you asked them to leave yet?” she asked.
It had been a long morning. The last thing he needed was more criticism. He got enough of that from himself.
“No I haven’t,” he said. “And I’m not going to.” He wanted to tell her to mind her own business, but, well, this was her business.
Andrea put down her magazine. “James, I never liked Lisa. She’s poor stock badly raised, you’re too attached to her for no good reason, and she’s a technophile to boot. I only set you up so you could realise there’s nothing special about her and get over her. Instead you’re more obsessed with her than ever.”
“Great. You don’t approve of me. Still. Can I go now?”
Andrea stood. “But I’ll say this for Lisa: I liked you a hell of a lot more when you were with her.”
Then she was gone, back to her desk by the front door. Paddington tried to shake away her comments, but they irked him. After all she’d done to try to break them up, was his mother now trying to get them back together?
And why hadn’t she mentioned werewolves? She would have worked it out; she was good at that. Why not mention it? Because it annoyed him not to? Because she didn’t consider it a fault? Because she didn’t believe it? Yes, that would be it: she was a rationalist, not a Believer.
Paddington shook his head, not that it cleared his thoughts; too much was happening. At best it rattled the problems around. Putting one aside only meant another leapt to the front: like the six soldiers of the Supernatural Help and Investigation Team blocking the interview room door where, presumably, the other two were interviewing Lisa.
“I need to see the prisoner,” Paddington told the group at large. And it was a large group. Skylar alone would have been enough to stop him.
“No one goes in,” she said.
“Orders from Mitchell,” Truman said, with Southern drawl and an apologetic smile.
Paddington eyed them, armed with only his fury and a coat stained with werewolf blood. “You’re in my station, on my island,” he said. “If I want to go inside, you can’t stop me.”
In fact, the soldiers made no move to stop him. But they also ignored his attempts to pry them far enough apart to slip through.
Then, without a word, they parted, the door behind them now open, and the scientist exited carrying a small black bag. With a final glance at the wall of muscle guarding Lisa, Paddington followed McGregor to Quentin’s desk.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you, doctor, about not being able to find Archi.”
“Um, yes,” McGregor said. “There’s no record of your island anywhere. History, encyclopaedias, maps: all blank.”
Archi was private, but surely there were traces of it on the Mainland. There had to be. Didn’t there? After all, no one could hide an island, could they? And if they could, why bother?
“Then how did you find us?” Paddington asked.
“I determined the satellite that sent your email’s location. It seemed to be in the middle of a military no-fly zone, and the satellite images were of blank ocean, but I convinced Mitchell to take a look.”
Before Paddington could ask about the various bits of equipment McGregor was setting up, Mitchell exited the interview room. “Fill us in, doctor,” he said. The four mutes, the American, and the woman closed in all around Paddington and began looming.
McGregor’s face lit up immediately. “It’s remarkable. Truly incredible.”
“You’ve got something?” Truman asked.
“Lots of things.”
“Like what?” Paddington asked, before reminding himself this wasn’t some beast he was investigating or a theory on the internet; this was his girlfriend.
Still, he needed to know what had happened to her. What to expect.
“Her hearing is above average, but not suspiciously so,” McGregor said, “maybe eighteen hertz at the low end to twenty-four kilohertz at the high. Uh, I think her heart’s oversized, lungs too, but I can’t be certain without x-rays. Still, the percussion and palpation tests were exciting.”
The Team nodded sagely, like McGregor’s words were so obvious they almost weren’t worth saying aloud. All in a day’s work.
“What?” Paddington asked. He felt it conveyed everything he was feeling.
“He put his hands on her,” Mitchell explained, “tapped a bit, and thought she sounded big.”
“I… she… patient!” McG
regor stared at his captain in horror. “The percussion test takes years of training. I can hear tumours and air bubbles inside the organs, can ascertain a person’s internal workings by sound alone!”
“Relax, doc,” Mitchell said. “What else?”
“She isn’t colour-blind,” McGregor said, sighing. “Oh, and I don’t think her lupine transformation is dictated by the moon…” He hesitated, with significant glances at Skylar. “It’s, uh, delicate. We should respect her priv—”
“Spit it out,” Mitchell said.
“Right, ah. From the timing of your emails, detective, and a few questions I… She’s about to ovulate. There, I said it.”
“Yeah, we bleed on the inside,” Skylar said. “Gross, huh? And if you touch us, you get girl germs.”
“I had that once,” one of the mutes said.
“Shut up Normson,” Mitchell said. “Doctor.”
McGregor nodded. “In the, uh, period – as it were – between menstruation and ovulation, the female body produces high quantities of oestradiol: oestrogen. I think that controls her metamorphosis.”
“She turns into a wolf based on what time of the month it is?” Paddington asked. Was McGregor serious? What about the full moon? Wasn’t it always the moon?
“It’s not so strange,” McGregor said, to general disbelief. “Etymologically, it is a short jump from mensis to moon. The word ‘mensis’ is Latin for ‘month’, after all. Or, take ‘lunatic’. Lunatics were people with fluctuating mental states and the word comes from the Latin ‘lunaticus’—”
“Sir, McGregor’s making up words!” a mute interrupted, with a raised hand.
“McGregor, don’t invent words just to prove your point,” Mitchell said.
The doctor uttered a series of short exhalations. “…which means ‘moon-struck’. People thought the moon could make you crazy; why not make you a werewolf too?”
“So, to clarify,” Skylar said, “you’re saying women become crazy once a month?” Her eyes didn’t so much smoulder as burn.
McGregor wilted. “That’s not… It’s not a metaphor, it… No.”
“So what makes the males change?” Mitchell asked.
“It’s unlikely to be oestrogen,” McGregor said. “Probably another hormone.”
“It’s not the full moon?” Paddington asked. The internet had been wrong. What other monsters were nothing like their stories?
“No, it’s hormonal,” McGregor said. “She didn’t turn human in the daytime, did she?”
“She was gone,” Paddington said. “For two days and three nights.”
McGregor nodded. “Once she turns into the wolf she stays that way until her oestrogen drops back below a certain level – about one nanomole per litre, at a guess. Day, night, full moon, new moon; it doesn’t matter.”
There was a silence. Paddington waited for one of the paranormally experienced soldiers to speak. This was over his head, but it was all in a day’s work for them.
A few seconds ticked by in silent contemplation before Skylar said, “You mean it’s real?”
“Well, yes,” McGregor said.
Panic exploded around him. Mutes demanded verification and more tests, or asked whether she’d have a tail, or vowed to leave, or just swore. The only Mainlanders to remain quiet were Truman, who clenched his jaw and tightened his grip on his rifle, and Mitchell, who watched them, nostrils flaring, before bellowing, “Shut it!”
The soldiers stood at attention, brave in the face of the unknown except for occasional flickers of terror.
“What’s the move, sir?” Truman asked.
Bubbling anger rose in Paddington. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Aren’t you the experts?”
Most of the Team studied new and interesting patterns on their boots. Only Mitchell met his eyes. “This is the first case that hasn’t been either a hoax or a mistake,” he said.
Paddington stared back. “You’re joking.”
“No. In twenty years we haven’t had a single verifiable supernatural occurrence.”
“But…” That couldn’t be true. Except, as he looked around the worried faces, he knew it was. “Why didn’t they shut you down?”
“For such a day as this,” Mitchell said. “And I assure you, detective, we know what we’re doing.”
“You’ve just never done it before!” Paddington said. This was all going wrong. He shouldn’t have involved Mainlanders.
“We’ll take her back to London for further study, obviously,” McGregor said.
“Granted,” Mitchell said, ignoring Paddington’s forming objection. “Before that, however, we need official orders. I’m not cocking up our first real case.” He turned away to mutter into his collar.
“Get us some silver bullets, too,” Skylar called, then continued fiddling with her gun’s safety.
“What do you want silver bullets for?” Paddington asked.
“Werewolves can heal from any injury.”
“Really?” he asked hopefully.
“I saw it on TV,” she said, and Paddington’s hope faded. “A silver bullet to the heart is the only way to kill a werewolf,” she finished.
“Wait, what?” Paddington said. They looked at him in surprise. “Why are you talking about killing her? She is sitting in there, terrified! She’s no threat.”
“True,” Truman said, as resolute as the others were jittery. “But we also have to deal with the werewolf that bit her.”
Paddington thought of Dominic. Snivelly, unkempt Dominic. What chance did he have against seven big, broad Mainlanders? Even protected by his friends… his pack.
What would happen to them? Would the Team kill all of them too?
“Isn’t there a cure or something?” Paddington asked.
Everyone turned to Doctor McGregor, who stammered, “Possibly. I mean, all we need to do is keep her oestrogen down.”
“That’s controlling,” Paddington said. “What about curing?” How could he have put Lisa’s life in their hands? What was wrong with him?
“Until I examine her in a proper lab—”
“I can’t get a signal, detective,” Mitchell interrupted. “Any idea why that is?”
“No. Our police radios work fine.” He led Mitchell to the station’s radio beside the kettle and asked, “Can I see her?”
“What for?” Mitchell stared at the knobs and dials with distrust.
“To make sure she’s all right. She’s my prisoner; she’s… under my care.”
Mitchell glanced at him. “Fine. But we’re not bailing you out if it all turns hairy.”