The sequel to The Werewolf Whisperer! Jazmine Carmichael is the leader of a pack of werewolves living in Eclipse, California. When two of the pack members die under mysterious circumstances, she's determined to get answers.
Blaze Petrofsky and two other researchers often played a game of what if. What if werewolves were real? They set about creating the virus, meeting failure after failure, until he buys an old trunk in an auction. In a small silver tin, he finds werewolf cream. One of his colleagues tries it out, and it works. Before Blaze can look for a cure, he's removed from the project and the government takes over.
Now, five years later, the nightmare has come back to haunt him when a beautiful, mysterious, sexy woman brings him a wolf to autopsy. A wolf who, on closer inspection, is human. When Jazmine is arrested, Blaze follows the clues she left behind, hoping to pay back the debt he owes for rediscovering and unleashing lyncanthropy. But is he too late to save the woman he's come to love?
Excerpt:
A strange, unpleasant odor drew Jazmin Carmichael from the haze of sleep. She took a deeper breath and then came awake with a start. She knew that smell. Decomposition and death. What the hell? Looking around the room, her gaze came to rest on the body lying next to her.
Even the thick coat of fur couldn’t disguise the cold emanating from the carcass. The chest no longer rose and fell, and the limbs were fully extended and stiff. She stifled a shriek as she leaped away from the bed. Freezing floor tiles sent a shock of sensation through her. She stared, feeling colder by the moment. This couldn’t be happening, yet here was the gruesome truth in her bed.
Last night, she’d brought Patrick Talbot home and taken him to her bed. Not so much a lovemaking session as a job interview. In just a few days, with the rising of the full moon, she would go into her first mating heat. Anecdotal evidence suggested if she didn’t take a mate, her mental status might be affected. A few of the common werewolf myths even theorized her body would shift back to human form and leave her mind forever feral. Was it just an ancient explanation for insanity, as Serena thought, or something more concrete? As leader of the pack, she couldn’t take the risk. So, she had been picking through the available males, looking for a suitable one to choose as her mate. So far, she’d only had two candidates. Michael O’Toole, the horror writer was one. However, he was near the bottom of the pack order and, despite one lustful encounter, she couldn’t picture herself with him for life. Besides, he was smart—too smart—and would probably question her decisions. She wanted a partner, not a competitor.
Which is why Patrick had been much more to her taste. Tall, buff, tan, pretty to look at, but not overly blessed in the brains department. Exactly what she wanted.
And now…
She circled the bed, hoping against hope she’d only imagined this. Perhaps it was a nightmare. The cold seeping into her joints convinced her that this nightmarish situation was real. She closed her eyes and then opened them again. The face on the pillow wasn’t attractive. The eyes were open and blank, the corneas already cloudy with death. The creature’s nose was dry and the lips were pulled back in a feral smile revealing overlarge canines.
Damn.
After running her shaking hands through her hair, she reached for the bedside phone, then thought better of it. A cup of coffee would go a long way toward calming her nerves.
She pulled on a pair of sweatpants and the white wife-beater hanging over the end of the bed. It engulfed her and hung nearly to her knees. Oh God, it was his shirt!
Shuddering, she cut her eyes toward the stiff corpse and ripped the garment off her body. Bile rose in her throat as she threw the shirt to the floor. She grabbed her bathrobe off the back of the door and fled to the kitchen.
By the time she’d measured out beans and ground them, her insides had stopped churning. While the coffeemaker gurgled, hissed and spewed forth the black sludge she called coffee, she realized she felt calm, too calm. What was happening to her? Shock? Was that causing her to feel so disconnected? She had liked Patrick, really liked him. Why wasn’t she crying and hysterical? Instead, she was making coffee. What the hell was wrong with her?
Just because she was the leader of the pack, everyone assumed she had self-confidence galore. Pah! She had good looks and lots of sex appeal.
Unfortunately, those qualities only got you so far. She did have chutzpah though, in spades. Fake it ‘til you make it, was her motto. She had gotten really good at faking it. Had she gone too far, to a place where her real emotions were locked up too tight to be shown?
She poured a cup of coffee and took the first bitter sip, savoring the taste. As she drank, the kick of caffeine seemed to clear her mind, allowing her to focus. She needed to call for help. Thankfully, Jackson answered on the first ring.
“Eclipse sheriff’s department.”
It must be a slow day at the office for him to sound so eager for excitement. Well, she certainly had the news to jump-start his day. Why did she feel so numb and disconnected? A man had died, for God’s sake!
“Hello?” Jackson’s voice had an edge of impatience. “Is there someone there?”
Suddenly, the impact of what had happened hit her. She tried to speak around the huge lump of emotion in her throat, but her voice caught in a sob. Then the damn broke and a wail burst out.
“Hold on. I’ve got caller ID pulling up here.”
Shuffling sounds ensued, and she could almost see him frantically pushing buttons on his government-issue phone.
“Jazmin. Is that you? I’m on my way.” The line disconnected and Jazmin sank to the kitchen floor. It wasn’t until she heard the car pull up in front that she realized she had to get up and unlock the door. Too bad her legs refused to work.
* * * * *
There were only three blocks from the station to Jazmin’s residence, but it seemed to take an eternity. While he drove, a myriad of scenarios danced through Jackson’s head, each one more outlandish than the previous one. As he approached, he noticed a strange car sitting in Jazmin’s driveway. He slammed on the brakes in front of her house. He knew that car. It was Talbot’s little sports car. Opening the car door, he surged out and then he paused when he slid his hand to his thigh. Although his holster was strapped to his leg, it was empty.
His steps faltered. Should he go back to the station and pick up his gun or head into an unknown situation? He knew he was out of practice dealing with real crime. Heck, the last emergency occurred when Tom Owens got drunk and ended up freezing to death in the desert this past winter. Being rusty was no excuse for negligence. He also seemed to be having trouble focusing. Here he was, standing stock still in the middle of the yard like a damn statue. He made one hell of a target, if a gunman lurked inside the house.
He glanced up and down the street. Everything seemed quiet, preternaturally silent. There had been no calls reporting gunfire or anything unusual.
Taking a deep breath, Jackson forced himself to keep moving forward. Once on the porch, he knocked. When no one answered, he pounded on the door. As he backed up to give the metal panel a kick, it swung open.
He stared.
Jazmin’s tousled hair and pale complexion spoke volumes. A quick glance revealed no bloodstains on her or her clothing, so perhaps it wasn’t as severe as he thought.
Her blue eyes filled with tears. A wash of sympathy passed over him but he shook it off impatiently. He was the sheriff first and her friend second.
“He’s in the bedroom,” was all she said.
So, it was Talbot. Again, his hand dropped to his holster. He would have loved to have used his scent to scout out the way, but the entire house smelled like French roast. Talbot stood over six feet tall and weighed over two hundred pounds. If the situation turned ugly, he sure would be more confident if he had a weapon. With a sense of trepidation, Jackson stalked through the living room of the small ranch house. He’d been here enough to know that the large master bedroom was at the end of the back hallway.
He slowed as he approached the door. It was wide open and his sensitive hearing detected no movement from inside, but there was an odd scent in the air. Perfume mixed with something more organic. A quick look revealed no one inside, unless Talbot was in the bathroom. Jackson slid into the room and skirted the wall, heading for the bathroom. It, too, was empty. The smell, however, had gotten stronger and sent an uncomfortable shiver down his back. He turned, his sense of frustration rising, and he wished he’d asked Jazmin for more details. The only place someone could be hiding was either in or under the bed.
At first, he couldn’t take in what he was seeing. The bed was mussed, clothing strewn around as if by a whirling dervish, or, by a couple in the throes of passion. He stepped closer.
“What the hell?” He turned and found Jazmin leaning against the doorjamb looking ill. He sought out her eyes.
“He was like that when I woke up.”
“Dead?” The question sounded stupid as soon as it left his lips.
“Of course he’s dead.” Jazmin’s snapped reply only accentuated his feeling of detachment.
“Did you kill him?”
“No,” she replied, hugging herself tightly. “I just woke up this morning and he was…” She made an ineffectual motion with her hand toward the body.
“Natural causes?” Jackson murmured to himself. Talbot was a big guy and seemed relatively healthy. Perhaps he had a heart condition? Or was it more than an urban legend about men being killed by sex? Who knew? He shook his head as if to shake out the fog clogging up his mental processes. “I need to call in Doctor Brown. He’s the coroner. But there’s something wrong…”
“Wouldn’t he be human if he were dead?” A soft voice wondered.
Jackson turned around. Serena stood in the doorway gazing sadly at the bed.
“What? And how did you get here?”
“I called her,” Jazmin’s voice shook.
“Did you call anyone else?” Jackson tried to keep the impatience out of his voice. All he needed was for the entire town to show up and contaminating the crime scene. If it was, indeed, a crime.
“No.”
“So what happened?”
“We came in late last night, and after, well, you know.” Jazmin’s face contorted from her effort to keep from breaking down again. “He was fine when we fell asleep. When I woke up this morning, he was dead.” Jazmin ended in a swallowed sob.
Serena put her arm around Jazmin. “That doesn’t explain why he’s turned wolf. When Tom died, he stayed in his human form.” Serena took a step forward but Jackson waved her back. “Patrick’s reverted to wolf and there’s still three days before the moon is full.”
“What does the literature say should happen?” The low voice made Jazmin squeak, and everyone whirled toward the doorway.
“Shit, Michael! What are you doing here?” Serena asked.
“Sorry, Sis. I live next door, remember? So, did old man Hyett document any similar deaths?”
Jackson looked up at his lover. She stared off into the distance, deep in thought. He could almost hear the gears grinding and the file cabinet drawers opening in her mind. Not only was Serena the only full human in town, but also because of her family’s connection to the previous watcher, William Hyett, she was the new government guardian. When Michael had been turned into a werewolf, he’d given her the Victorian fortress with its werewolf safeguards, silver reinforced doors and walls, and moved into the town’s tract housing.
Along with the mansion came the old man’s enormous library. It’d be fair to bet that every book written about werewolves sat on a shelf or existed in digitized format on the hard drive of the computer. If there was documentation concerning what happened to werewolves after they died, Serena would be able to find it.
“I’m not sure. I’ll have to dig around in the literature more, but from everything I’ve read, it sounds as if the body is always in human form after death. So how can this be?” Serena stepped closer and knelt down.
“Don’t touch anything,” Jackson cautioned.
Serena gave him an impatient look. “There’s a really odd smell coming from the body.”
“I smelled it earlier, too. Could it be cyanide?” Jackson suggested.
“No, this smells nothing like bitter almonds,” Mike interposed.
“Maybe some other poison?” Jackson asked.
“I didn’t poison him,” Jazmin objected.
“No one said you did, sweetie.” Serena shook her head. A puzzled frown creased her forehead and she sniffed again before standing up. “Perhaps our resident mad scientist and the Centers for Disease Control will find something. Meanwhile, I’ll go back and do some more research. Maybe there’s a simple explanation for this.”
Jackson noted she didn’t sound very confident. After one last look, Serena left. She wouldn’t stick around to be in the same room as the doctor, especially after he and the pack’s previous alpha, Ben Rawlings, tried to capture and turn her last fall. Although Jazmin, previously Ben’s mate and now the alpha leader of the pack, and Serena were fast friends, Serena couldn’t find any forgiveness for the men who had mercilessly hunted her.
“Well, I’m going to go get something to eat before the circus arrives,” Jazmin said.
Circus was right. Jackson had to first clear out the small crowd of neighbors gathered by the front door. They left after he gave his assurances that everything would be handled. Doc Brown arrived first in his yellow Hummer. Jackson thought it odd that the doctor didn’t come in, and when Jackson went out to talk to him, he wouldn’t even roll down the window.
Men from the CDC arrived in full HAZMAT suits. No one spoke to Jazmin or to him. They simply walked through the house, taking readings, and then they removed the corpse. One lone man, speaking like Darth Vader through his breathing tube and plastic facemask, told them not to divulge any of this to anyone. Then he, too, left.
Obviously, they knew more about the situation. For the first time in a long time, Jackson was afraid.
copyright 2009 - Ericka Scott
www.erickascott.com
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