“I wasn’t even in the country when Raina decided to stop paying you,” protested Shelby. “You can’t punish me because she’s an unthinking brat!”
“Can, will, am,” said Basil. “You’re the older sibling. You should have drilled it into her head that she needed to keep paying me while you were away. You didn’t, and now you’re paying the price. Sucks to be the eldest, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does,” I said. All three of them turned to look at me. “I’m the eldest in my family, and I’m betting you are too, Basil. You know it’s your job to make sure your younger brothers and sisters are taken care of. That they understand right and wrong. Don’t you?”
Basil frowned slowly before he nodded and said, “That was my job before we all left home, yeah. Someone’s got to do it.”
“Well, we’re here, and asking you to please, ah, get the boat,” I gestured toward the boat, just in case he was the sort to interpret my words to mean “any boat he could find” and dredge one up from the bottom of the swamp, “so that we can go and help Shelby and Raina’s other sister. The one who isn’t standing here in front of you, being very sorry that she didn’t get your cookies when she was supposed to.”
On cue, Shelby dug her elbow into Raina’s side. Raina reddened, looking down at her feet, and said, in a staccato rush, “I’m sorry I didn’t bring you the Tim Tams I promised. There was a new Pokémon game and I really wanted it, but I should still have kept my word to you before I did something for myself and I’m sorry.”
Basil blinked. “See, that’s all I wanted,” he said. “Apologies are the glue that makes the world go ’round. Wait here, you lot, and I’ll expect everything that’s coming to me to be delivered here before the full moon, or it’s no more Mister Nice Yowie.” He stood up still further, rising out of the muck until it became very clear that the hypothesized evolutionary link between yowie and Sasquatch was more truth than fiction. Scratching his mossy bottom one more time, he turned and lumbered toward the boat.
“Do you think he’d give me some hair and maybe a blood sample for later analysis?” I asked, transfixed by the sight of the giant green man wading through the swamp.
“That’s my little scientist,” said Shelby, sounding amused. “Tell you what, how about you come back here and negotiate that with him after we’ve finished handling the current crisis? I’ll bring popcorn.”
I blinked, the strangeness of the scene finally crystalizing into something logical, if bizarre. I turned to Shelby. “Your father didn’t even want us to call Dr. Jalali, because the Society doesn’t treat nonhumans as people. How is it that you and your sisters are friends with a yowie?”
“We found him,” said Raina. Her head was up again, and her coloring was back to normal. Embarrassment was apparently not a long-term thing with her. “He’d been bit by a snake. Was all sick and moaning and making a muck of things here on the bank. Right over there, in fact.” She pointed to a spot a little farther along.
“Luckily, Jack and I were with them that day, and since he was already training to be Dad’s assistant, and I wanted to do anything he was doing, we both had our snakebite kits and medical supplies on us,” said Shelby, smoothly taking up the story. “Basil never did tell us what had bitten him, and we thought he’d die even after we suctioned the venom out and gave him some basic medical care, since we couldn’t provide antivenin if we didn’t know what he needed. But it turns out yowie are tougher than anything living has the right to be. As soon as we got the bulk of the poison out of him, and some fresh water into him, he bounced right back. Was up and moving about normally by the end of the afternoon.”
“Jack insisted we come back here to check on him; said that once you’ve saved something, you’re responsible for it, even if it’s as smart as you are. Basil started asking for Tim Tams after the third time we came by. He helped us build the playhouse, and the skiff.” Raina paused, looking down again. “They were real good friends. He hasn’t been the same since Jack died, you know? He’s still friendly enough, but it’s like he’s not really glad to see us, not like he says. He’s just going through the motions so we don’t get upset enough to tell our parents he’s down here. So we haven’t visited much.”
Which explained why Raina had been willing to seize on the excuse afforded by the reduction in her allowance. They couldn’t come to visit Basil. They couldn’t afford the cookies, and that meant they had no business bothering him. Keeping my voice as gentle as I could, I asked, “Did you let him come to Jack’s funeral?”
“No, of course not,” said Raina, sounding baffled by the idea. “He’s not a people. He’s just Basil.”
I looked to Shelby. She looked horrified. Good. At least one of the Tanner sisters understood why the yowie was angry—and while I could forgive Raina for not seeing him as a person when she first met him, I couldn’t forgive her for continuing to see him as something less than she was after spending all the time she had described in his company. Basil wasn’t human. He should still have been allowed the opportunity to join in the mourning for his friend.
Shelby’s thoughts seemed to have run along similar channels. When the yowie waded back to the bank, now dragging the small boat in his wake, Shelby ran and splashed a few feet out into the water, throwing her arms around as much of his thick, weed-covered torso as she could manage. “I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed. The water swirled around her ankles as Basil blinked bemusedly down at her. She continued, “I should have realized you missed Jack almost as much as we did. I should have told my father you were coming to the funeral, so that you could say good-bye, and damn anyone who thought you didn’t belong there. I didn’t realize I was being horrible, Basil, and I’m so sorry. Can you forgive me?”
“Ah,” he said, and raised one muddy hand to pat her shoulder, awkwardly—less, it seemed to me, because he didn’t want to offer comfort, and more because he was so much bigger than she was that he was afraid of hurting her. He could easily have crushed her, but all he did was pat twice and then pull his hand away. “It’s all right, Shelby, don’t cry on me, all right? You know how I hate getting wet.”
Shelby lifted her head and laughed thickly. She was crying, and the funereal look she always had when she wasn’t smiling had deepened, becoming an almost overwhelming sadness. “You’re always wet, you swampy bastard. You haven’t been dry a day in your life.”
“And I hope never to be,” Basil said. “I brought your boat.”
“Thank you.” Shelby swiped a hand across her eyes and turned to me. “You should probably stay out here. The boat’s only built for three. We used to have to play ferry to get all four of us over.”
“No problem,” I said. “I’ll keep watch for more werewolves.” I didn’t want to let Shelby and Raina go to the playhouse without me, but I knew that neither of them would stand for being left behind, and if anything would convince Gabby to come out and let us help her, it was the presence of her sisters.
Raina seemed to sense my reluctance. She paused as she walked toward the water, long enough to touch my arm and murmur, “Thank you.” Then she was joining Shelby in the boat, and the two of them were producing oars from the bottom of the vessel and rowing away, leaving me and Basil standing on the shore. Jett sat down on the bank nearby, whining as she watched her mistress row away.
Basil looked at me. I looked at him. Neither of us said anything. Shelby and Raina reached the tree that housed their rickety hideaway. They tied the boat in place and got out, swarming up the boards that had been nailed to the tree trunk like gravity and the Tanner sisters were not well-acquainted.
Basil snorted. “When we first put those boards up for the girls, they used to fall off every time they tried to climb,” he said. “I was forever catching them before they could hit the water.”
“Oh?” I asked, neutrally.
“Yeah. This water’s no good for humans to be splashing around in. You people take sick
so easy, there’s no point in making it any harder on you, is there?” He crossed his arms, forcing a few drops of water out of the moss that covered him. It dripped back into the swamp at his feet. “I always caught them. Put them back in the tree. They just needed to learn how to climb on their own.”
“It sounds like you did a lot for them. Thank you. I’d be sad if Shelby had drowned before I got to meet her.”
“I’d say you would be. Fiancé, huh? I don’t suppose I’ll be getting an invitation to the wedding.” It was impossible to ignore the bitter note in the yowie’s voice. He’d been so important to the Tanners when they were children, and Shelby had never thought to mention him to me, because she’d never really considered him a person.
Wait. “I thought Shelby and her family weren’t from around here,” I said. “How did you know them when they were kids?”
“They came here for training, Society business, all that,” said Basil. “I only saw them once or twice a year most of the time, but that was more than enough for me. They were always smiles and laughter when they were little. Makes me want to go find a nice girl and have some kids of my own, you know? And don’t think I didn’t notice you dodging the question.”
Shelby and Raina had vanished inside the playhouse. I watched the side of the building, searching for any hint of what was going on in there. “I wasn’t dodging it, I just don’t know yet,” I said. “We only got engaged a day ago, and I need to talk to my family, find out where the wedding is even going to happen . . . if we get married in Australia, you’re more than welcome to attend. Given how little her parents seem to like me, I’m expecting we’ll get married in the United States, or maybe on a ship in international waters where no one can say we’re starting things off by favoring one side of the family over the other.”
Basil laughed. “Oh, you humans. You sure do know how to muck things up, don’t you?”
“We’re pretty good at it,” I admitted. Something banged inside the playhouse, causing bits of sawdust to detach from the bottom and drift down to the swamp. I tensed. “Did you see that?”
“They’re just slamming around. They do that.” For all his calm words, Basil kept a tight eye on the tree. “What’s going on, anyway?”
If the Tanners hadn’t told the local wadjet community about the werewolves, I doubted they’d told the yowie either—and Basil weighed four hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce. The idea of something that large catching lycanthropy was enough to make my blood run cold. “Have you ever heard of werewolves?”
“Oh, that lot? Nasty bunch. They tried to bite me a few days ago. I drowned three in the swamp before they realized it was a bad idea.” Basil sounded utterly calm.
I blinked at him, mentally adding “drowning” to the list of things that would kill a werewolf, rather than just inconveniencing them for a little while. “You do realize they’re contagious, yes? If they’d bitten you, you could have turned into one of them.” Yowie are mammals. Big, intimidating mammals.
“Oh, yeah?” Basil shrugged. “No one told me that. Besides, it’s not like they managed to break the skin.”
Something rustled in the trees behind us. The sound was followed, an instant later, by the long, low rumble of a lupine growl. Jett was behind me like a shot, pressed against my legs and whimpering. I went stiff, feeling my blood chill in my veins. “Well, it looks like they’re back for another try,” I said. “Don’t let them bite you.” And please, Shelby, stay in the playhouse, I thought, wishing more than I had ever wished before that I had Sarah along to play telepathic relay and keep everyone informed as to what was going on. Take your time with your sisters, and don’t come out.
I’m not a telepath, and Sarah was on another continent; Shelby wasn’t going to hear me pleading with her. That thought all too firmly in mind, I turned to face whatever was coming out of the wood.
Fifteen
“Most people would very much like to believe that humans invented the ambush. It makes them feel like we’re special. Smart. Try telling that to the trapdoor spider, to the octopus, or to the wolf. They’ll be delighted to hear how special you are, as they’re draining the marrow from your bones.”
—Jonathan Healy
Standing on the bank of a swamp in Queensland, Australia, probably about to be attacked by werewolves
EVERYTHING WAS ABSOLUTELY STILL. Nothing rustled; nothing moved; no birds sang. The growling from the trees had stopped, however temporarily, and it was almost possible to convince myself that I’d imagined it. I might have made that fatal error, if it hadn’t been for Jett hiding behind my legs and Basil standing at the edge of the water. He’d heard the growling, too, and he looked as uneasy as I felt.
“You sure that was your wolves?” he asked. “Maybe we scared them away.”
As he spoke his final word, the woods exploded.
Three wolves bounded into the open, all of them displaying the foaming drool that would increase their odds of successfully infecting us with a single bite. I didn’t know how much of that was intentional—but if all our theorizing about intelligent werewolves was accurate, and not just paranoid delusion, they might be working themselves into a froth on purpose. If you can’t beat them, recruit them. Once we were infected, we’d probably be a lot less enthusiastic about the idea of killing all werewolves.
I pulled the gun from my belt and clicked off the safety, but kept it low, pointed at the ground rather than at any of the approaching wolves. They were eating up ground, their legs churning as they flung themselves toward us. I still had a few seconds. “If you stop where you are, I will not shoot you!” I shouted.
They didn’t stop. “They’re not stopping,” observed Basil.
“I noticed!” I raised my gun and fired once into the ground a foot or so ahead of the lead wolf. That got its attention, even though words hadn’t been able to do the trick. It yelped and scrambled away from the impact site, almost falling over in its hurry to retreat. The other two wolves dug their paws into the ground, bleeding off speed at an impressive clip, and pulled back into an uneasy circling motion. The lead wolf drew back its lips and snarled at us. Saliva dripped from its jowls, pooling on the ground in foamy puddles.
“They stopped,” said Basil.
I risked a sidelong glance in his direction. “Are you always this fond of stating the obvious, or am I just the lucky recipient of your sarcasm?”
“Bit of both,” said Basil.
“Right.” I refocused my attention on the wolves. “I’m going to lower the gun now. I’m not going to put it away, but I’m going to lower it, and if you don’t make any threatening moves, I won’t either.”
The wolves didn’t do anything but continue to pace and circle. I took that as at least something of a good sign. Taking a long, slow breath, I lowered the gun.
“I know you can hear me, and I’m hoping you can understand me,” I said. I was unable to prevent myself from speaking slowly and clearly, like I was trying to make myself heard and understood by a quarry golem. (They don’t have ears, and mostly function through lip reading, sign language, and throwing things. It works out reasonably well for them. Being ten feet tall probably doesn’t hurt matters.) “I don’t want to hurt you. I’m hoping you don’t actually want to hurt me. Please. Can you shift back to human? I need to talk to you. This will be an easier conversation if you can talk back.”
“So talk.”
The disappearance of Cooper’s body had been enough to convince me—mostly—that he was one of the werewolves, if not the source and patient zero for this particular outbreak. But there had still been a small amount of doubt, a small chance that I was wrong. The sound of his voice put any lingering questions to rest.
He walked calmly out of the woods into the open, still dressed in the bloody remains of the clothes he’d been wearing when we were attacked. He’d had plenty of opportunities to change since then, if he’d been
able to reconvene with his werewolf buddies. He was making a point, and I didn’t like it.
“Hello, Cooper,” I said, keeping my gun pointed resolutely at the ground. I didn’t want to bait him any more than I had to. “You’re looking a lot less dead than I’d expected, given the way I last saw you. Didn’t know the Society had a ‘resurrection’ policy.”
“Didn’t die,” he said, with a broad shrug. “Lost a lot of blood, which dropped my pulse low enough that you lot didn’t find it. I was hoping that would be the result. I guess I got lucky.”
“I guess I did, too,” I said. “I’m still clean.”
Cooper blinked slowly, looking bewildered. Then he whistled once, short and sharp and shrill. The three werewolves—the other three werewolves—stopped circling and prowled over to sit down in front of him, forming a loose, protective semicircle of lupine bodies and narrowed, feral eyes. “What do you mean, clean?”
“I mean the treatment I brought with me kept me from getting sick, Cooper.” There was no point in telling him that the infection hadn’t managed to take hold of me in the first place: letting him think we had a guaranteed cure for lycanthropy could only work in our favor. “I’m not going to transform. I’m not contagious. I’m not infected.”
“Then we’ll try again.” Cooper made the statement sound perfectly reasonable, like he was proposing a dinner date. “We’ll try again, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll keep trying until we manage to bring you over to our side. I want you, smart boy. You’re quick, you’re loyal, and you’ve got science in your back pocket. That’s going to come in handy.”