Kelly Meding - Wrong Side of Dead

“Use your own words.”

“He said before that the virus seems to work similarly to the rabies virus. He did some research and there have been successful rabies treatments using induced coma and various drugs, but since this isn’t actually rabies, it’s just a shot in the dark. But he hopes that the coma will at least reduce, um, brain damage—”

I flinched and bit hard on my tongue to stop a spew of angry cussing.

“—from the fever.”

“What are his chances?” I asked after a moment of silence.

“Not great. And if he does survive, the chances of him being the same person are …”

“Not great.”

“Yeah. I’m so sorry, Evy. I wish I had better news.”

“Me, too.”

I fought the instinct to demand Baylor drive me back to the Watchtower so I could be with Wyatt. Be there to do what, though? Watch him sleep? Hold his hand while he was unconscious, as he’d done for me so many times in the recent past? Yes, definitely. The part of me that still loved Wyatt—had never really stopped loving him—insisted I be with him. He’d been there when I died. I’d been there when he died, and if he died again today, there was no gnome healing crystal to bring him back to me.

Logic tied me in knots. The Watchtower was on lockdown. The gremlins would have information for me in three hours. If I went back, I might not be able to leave, and that was not acceptable. Not with so many other lives depending on us finding Walter Thackery and his Merry Band of Werewolves. Duty above self.

Fuck!

Someone in the van made a noise. Guess I’d said that out loud.

“You can’t do anything here,” Kismet said. She might as well have read my mind. I didn’t know all the details of her nine-year friendship with Wyatt. Just that they were close, and this had to be hurting her, too. I hated sharing my misery with others, and at the same time I was glad she was there.

“I know.”

“He won’t be alone. I promise.”

“Thanks.”

“I don’t—hold on a sec.” I concentrated on the muffled voices on her end so I didn’t have to think about the way my life was slowly spiraling down, down to its very lowest point. First Aurora and Ava, now Wyatt. There wasn’t—

“Stone?”

“Still here,” I said.

“We got a call from James Reilly. He has some information to pass along to you guys, if you can meet him.”

Reilly. His was a name I hadn’t consciously thought about in weeks. He was a private investigator who showed up in the city a few days after my resurrection, asking questions about Chalice Frost and Alex Forrester. He ended up having an agenda (seriously, does anyone not?) and knew more about vampires than any outsider had a right to.

I’d pressed the issue with Kismet once, and she’d given me the bullet points. Decorated West Coast police detective who stumbled onto a crime scene involving two half-Bloods and the full-Blood vampire who executed them. The case disappeared, along with all the files, but Reilly never forgot what he saw. His obsession with vampires grew, and after a nasty divorce he quit the force, got his PI license, then hit the road.

Reilly had definitely made an impression on the Triads when he showed up in the city. He was detained none too politely, questioned, and then put on our payroll. With the brass dead and our insight into the Police Department cut off, having a PI with his own connections had proved valuable. His specific connections had become “need to know” as well, so I didn’t press the subject. I knew the value of protecting your sources, and as long as Reilly handed us good information, I’d play nice. I just couldn’t help wondering if his motives for assisting us were really as selfless as they sounded, or if he had hidden reasons.

Then again, I’m used to seeing conspiracies and deceit around every corner, so it was just as likely that I was being paranoid.

“When and where does Reilly want to meet?” I asked.

“Nine o’clock, Sally’s Coffee Shop on Church Street.”

“I know it.” I checked the clock on the dash. We had about twenty minutes. Plenty of time from our current location. “We’ll be there.”

“I’ll let him know.”

“If anything develops—”

“I’ll call you.”

“Thanks, Gina.” I put the phone away and filled Baylor in on our new meeting, realizing for the first time that he’d pulled over in the lot of a mini-mart.

“Well, that’s something,” he said. “I’ve got a thought, too. Autumn, how good is your sense of smell?”

“Better than yours,” she replied with a toss of her auburn hair. “What would you like me to ferret out?”

Sandburg grunted.

“Think you can pick up the werewolves’ scent from the old Sunset Terrace lot and track it to wherever they went afterward?”

“I believe so. I got a good whiff of the bastards back at the construction site. I’ll have to track in my true form.”

“Not a problem. We’ll drop you off. Take Sandburg and Carly to watch your back. Paul, Stone, and I are going to meet with James Reilly.”

Sally’s Coffee Shop was a familiar, somewhat popular place for the Hunters who used to patrol in Mercy’s Lot. One of the few greasy spoons brave enough to stay open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, it was a good place to hit for a cheap plate of food and decent coffee. The patrons minded their own business, and the waitresses did the same.

Reilly was already waiting in a back booth, leisurely eating a plate of syrup-laden pancakes. He looked like someone’s underpaid, overworked office manager in a rumpled suit and tie. He had flyaway curly hair and a simple, guileless charm that made me want to like him. He quirked an eyebrow at our numbers, then slid over to make room.

I sat next to him, more for my own amusement than anything else. He’d been shocked as hell to learn my story, and the expression on his face was about the only enjoyable thing in my day so far. Baylor and Paul slid in across from us, and a waitress promptly appeared with mugs of coffee.

“You folks need menus?” she asked.

“They’ll have the pancakes,” Reilly said. “The pancakes are excellent here.”

“That sounds fine,” Baylor said.

The waitress nodded, then wandered off. I dumped sugar into my mug of coffee, unsure if I’d be able to do more than stare at my pancakes. I was hungry, but my stomach was tied up in so many worried knots that getting food into it would be an exercise in nausea control.

“When it rains, it downpours, wouldn’t you agree?” Reilly asked.

“I’d say that’s an understatement.”

Reilly nodded, then pushed his half-finished plate aside. He produced a manila folder from the booth seat and handed it over the table to Baylor. “I’ve been chatting up a young lady in Animal Control about recent sightings of wild animals in the city. Wolves, in particular, and we may have a pattern.”

Baylor withdrew a map of the city—easy enough to identify, even upside down, because of the way the Anjean and Black rivers intersected in the center to create one south-flowing river. A cluster of highlighter marks singled out one particular neighborhood, and it wasn’t Mercy’s Lot, which was traditionally where the majority of paranormal shit went down.

“Uptown?” Paul said. His face scrunched up. “Seriously?”

Reilly nodded. “It’s possible that wolf sightings in other areas were simply not reported, since odd occurrences are not abnormal in certain neighborhoods. But there have been sixteen separate reports of large, nondomestic dogs resembling wolves roaming wild through Uptown in the last three months. Forty-six over the last two years.”

Uptown was the upscale business district of the city, home to a modern art museum, the Fourth Street Library, several large banks, expensive condos, office buildings, medical centers, restaurants that served food portions the size of silver dollars, and our state university satellite campus.