Eileen Wilks - Only Human

"No and no. Old wives' tales." He pushed the button for the basement level, which held the parking garage. The elevator doors shut.

"I thought it might be. I'm afraid a lot of what I know is the sort of garbage spread by movies like Witch Hunt”

"At least you know it's garbage."

He was tense. She wasn't sure why she was convinced of that—he stood easily, spoke smoothly, and that remarkable face was still, unrevealing. "I've also heard that lupi are claustrophobic."

"It's hardly a phobia. We simply prefer open places."

Not small, enclosed spaces. Like an elevator. Abruptly she pushed the button for the next floor down, and the elevator slowed.

"Why did you do that?" he snapped.

"There's no reason for you to be uncomfortable. We can take the stairs."

The elevator halted smoothly and the doors opened. Two people were waiting to get on. The woman was a civilian, fortyish and plump—a clerk or secretary, from the look of her.

Lily knew the man slightly, a Vice officer named Burns. She nodded at him.

He didn't notice. He was staring at Turner. If he'd been a dog, his hackles would have been raised. The woman was staring, too. But the expression on her face was entirely different.

The tableau lasted only a second before she and Turner got off, the other two got on, and the elevator doors closed. She glanced at him as they started down the hall, wondering if he'd noticed the woman's reaction. She had to look up, of course. He was too blasted tall.

He was looking straight at her, those rainy-sky eyes amused and knowing.

"You tend to evoke a reaction from people, don't you?"

"Usually. Why don't we start my expert consultation with listening? You can tell me what you think you know about lupi and I'll correct any misinformation."

"Good enough." The door to the stairwell was metal with the usual red Exit sign over it. She reached for it.

Somehow he was there before her, opening the door and holding it for her. He hadn't seemed to rush, yet he'd moved very quickly. Lily stopped, studying him. He looked elegant and not at all civilized in spite of his trendy black clothing. "Legend says lupi are fast. Really fast."

He just smiled.

Something shivered down her spine. She got her feet moving and didn't speak again until they both were on the stairs, headed down. "I know the legal history best. Until 1930, the only federal law related to lupi was the one making it a crime not to report someone, ah, afflicted with lycanthropy. State laws varied widely. Most of them treated lupi as humans who had a dangerous disease. Some called for them to be killed outright. Then Dr. Abraham Geddes proved that lycanthropy could not be transmitted, as had previously been believed."

"The Change isn't catching," he agreed mildly.

"Right. It's an inherited condition. Folklore and experts alike agree that the trait is sex-linked. There are no female lupi."

"True."

"I guess the experts can't be wrong about everything. Anyway, soon after that came Carr v. the State ofTexas. The

Supreme Court's ruling effectively made lupi legally human, but with a congenital disease, one that, well..."

"Makes us mad. Incurably insane. We were locked up, if discovered. Usually in chains."

"Yes. Well, that was some time ago. There continued to be a good deal of debate about whether lupi were human. Some of those of the Blood are obviously nonhuman, of course."

"Gremlins, brownies, the odd pooka or banshee."

"Pookas? I thought they were—never mind." She shook her head. Later she could ask if pookas were really extinct or not.

They'd reached the fourth-floor landing. He was still moving easily. She was, too, though her heart rate was up slightly. She wondered if he could hear it. Lupi were said to have extremely acute hearing. "In 1964 Dr. Beatrice Pargenter discovered a serum that inhibited the Change, and everyone who considered lycanthropy a disease applauded. It was considered an enormous, and humane, breakthrough. Congress passed the registration laws, which remained in effect until five years ago."

"You do have your legal history down."

"I've boned up."

Rule Turner's forehead was smooth. No tattoo, nor any sign that one had been removed. The authorities had used a special, silver-infused dye to tattoo the registration number, since the body of a were would otherwise have healed the tiny wounds inflicted by a needle within minutes. "You never registered, did you?"

"Why, Detective, I do believe that's a personal question."

"And I do believe you're obnoxious. That's a personal comment, by the way. I understand the drug was very unpopular with the lupi."

"Since the side effects ranged from vertigo to nausea to impotence—yes, it was unpopular. But even if they'd been able to refine their damned drug, no one wanted it."

His voice had lost its subtle balance between seduction and mockery. The emotion she heard was real, and personal.

They'd reached the subbasement. He pushed open the door and held it for her, as he had before. She went through it, uncomfortably aware that he was inviting her to expose her back to him.

The parking garage looked like others everywhere—gray and ugly. The air was hot and smelled of exhaust fumes. The light was flat, fluorescent, and grimly bright. "You didn't want to give up the Change."

"We no more wish to give it up than you would want to be chemically lobotomized. Still, I suppose it was an improvement over being killed or castrated."

She paused, startled. "Castrated?"

"Ah. A gap in your legal history, Detective." His eyes were oddly pale in the artificial light. "Yes, for a few years some states dealt with 'the lupi problem' the way scientists have dealt with fruit flies—by rendering us unable to breed. It was considered more humane than shooting us on sight, like rabid dogs."

He radiated anger, far more than the glimpse she'd had before. His face was taut with it. An old anger, she thought, but one that hadn't lost any of its power over time. Over the castration? Yes, she decided. His people had been killed, imprisoned, chained, drugged, tattooed, but it was the castration that made him vibrate with suppressed rage.

Had he been...

No, that was stupid. According to the file on her desk, Rule Turner had two sons, by two different mothers. Neither of whom he'd bothered to marry.

Even if he hadn't been a lycanthrope, he would so not be her type. She nodded to the left. "My car is this way."

"Mine isn't. I prefer to drive myself."

"Life is full of these little disappointments." She started walking without waiting to see if he followed.

After a bare second's pause, he did. "Are you used to having your way, Detective, or simply testing my willingness to cooperate?"

"I'm used to driving myself.Californiahasn't allowed the kind of vigilantism you described for over three decades, you know." And never castration.

"Which is one reason my clan chose to settle here."

Lily knew about the Nokolai enclave in the mountains outside the city, of course. She'd gone there shortly after the first murder—and been turned away at the gate, politely but firmly. It was outside the city limits, so she lacked the authority to insist she be allowed inside. The lupi were a secretive people. Not without reason, given the persecutions of the past. But

those persecutions hadn't been entirely without reason, either.

Before the change in the laws, the enclave had masqueraded as a religious commune. Most people knew differently now, but they didn't realize that the land that made up the enclave was owned by the Nokolai chief personally. So was the other property Lily had found—a ranch in northernCalifornia, some choiceL.A.real estate, and several condos here inSan Diego.

The Nokolai chief was a rich man. His son seemed to do pretty well for himself, too.