Chapter Seven

As Serena stood at the front of the Windy Gap council room, she was reminded power wasn’t always in who held the high ground. The three elderly women seated below her at the table in front of her were the most powerful of the thirteen member pack council. So powerful that, even though the other ten members weren’t here, she knew they held her job in their hands.

“The McReynolds woman, Glenna, she’s stable?” Anna Truewater, council spokeswoman, a fierce woman with steel grey hair and an even steelier expression, eyed her over alligator green reading glasses. Not even coming close to the five-foot mark, Anna was known for having a warm personality and keeping careful track of each member of her pack, but woe betide anyone who crossed her.

Serena didn’t know her well. In fact she didn’t know any of the women on the council well, with the exception of Esther, the thirteenth member and shamans’ circle rep. This was Windy Gap, and Serena had only lived here for two years. Two years of trying to prove herself, not just as a top dreamwalker and shaman, but also prove to the tight pack that she hadn’t caused the trouble between Gabe and his twin, Sam, on purpose.

She was finally making friends with pack members her own age, but she wasn’t sure how most of the councilwomen saw her. She thought they respected her work, but due to the incident with Sam and Gabe, she was surprised they’d asked for her on Glenna’s case at all. But they had. And she now she was in charge of the woman’s mental health—for better or worse.

“Yes, she’s stable.” Serena forced herself to keep her fingers by her side, not twisting together like they wanted to. “I was able to get her to put up a very solid wall and contain her memories of the attack. She doesn’t remember it happening, not even in her subconscious.”

“How can that be?” Cila Walkerson frowned up at her, the wrinkles in her face pulling together. “Surely she remembers on a subconscious level. Don’t we store that sort of stuff down there?” Cila was the oldest of the women, and she was someone who’d made her opinions of Serena plain over the last two years, with her cutting remarks deliberately made just within earshot.

Serena kept her expression smooth, and put on her best shaman-as-teacher voice. “We store our memories, as well as the things we’ve simply forgotten, on the conscious level. It’s like having a closet and only seeing the things in front, not the things hiding on the second shelf behind the clothes rod. Your long-term memories are back there, and you can find them, but you need to look for them on the back shelf.”

She checked their faces for understanding and received a brief nod from Anna, pinched lips from Cila, and a tight smile from Mart, the youngest at seventy-two. Most pack members understood a little of what dreamwalkers did, but usually the shamans’ circle took care of shaman business. Not the council. And definitely not a small, closed section of the council.

“Then there is the subconscious. It’s not a memory storage; it’s more the connection that helps us link things together. It’s where our conscious selves link to our higher selves. The memories in the conscious brain are all accessible to the subconscious, so it sometimes reminds us of things we have on that shelf. But the memories are still stored in the conscious brain.”

Serena took a deep breath. They looked like they were following so far. “What Glenna and I have done is built another storage unit. Think of it like having an extra cabinet in the back of the closet with a heavy duty lock on it, and then the shelf in front of it piled with stuff, and then the rod with the clothes. She put the memories of the attack in and locked them away. Unless she remembers to look for them, she won’t know even where they’re stored, let alone be able to find the key to open the cabinet.”

“You’ve screwed us, big time, dreamwalker. How are we to find the ones who did this?” During Serena’s speech Cila had clamped her hands on the arms of her chair and now her voice was harsh with accusation. Her eyes gleamed and her voice roughened as her wolf rose to the front. “How are we to know who attacked an innocent human and infected them with the Bite if we can’t question the girl?”

“And we need to find out why he chose her. She must know.” Mart’s querulous voice rose higher and higher with every word. “She survived the fever, but does she have the right DNA to become pack? We know she has the antibodies, but we don’t know if she’ll turn. What if there’s a way to figure out if a human has the DNA? What if the government can track us? We need to know!”

“Shush, Mart.” Anna patted her arm. Mart settled back against her chair, her soft wrinkled hands shaking as she bundled them tightly together in her lap. Anna gave Serena a stern look over her glasses. “Serena, it’s imperative you get her to remember who did this.”

A hard knot formed in Serena’s gut.

“I don’t think you understand. What happened to Glenna was horrible, she can’t face it yet. She may never be able to face it.” She put her shoulders back and squared off with the women who had control over her entire world. “I can’t do it. I won’t do it. It’s not only wrong, it’s a violation of my healing oath.”

“Surely she’ll be able to deal with this eventually?” Anna asked.

“Someday, maybe, but only when she’s ready to.” She had to make them understand. Had to force them to realize that opening that door for Glenna could cause her permanent emotional damage. A damage she might never come back from. “It’s not just that this is a trauma that could break any one of us. For Glenna, now is the worst time to be unstable. We have no idea what’s going on with her body. She has the Bite. She might be about to go through the change any day now.” Serena leaned into the hard, remote faces, as if getting her own body closer would make them feel her desperation to protect her patient. “We haven’t had an adult change in centuries. We don’t know what will happen. You can’t expect her to deal with finding out about wolf shifters, go through the change, and deal with an attack that had her waking up screaming for weeks. The mundane world thinks this is a made-up disease, that it’s not real. Glenna is about to find out that it’s very real. That’s more than enough trauma for one person.”

Anna softened her voice into something almost sympathetic, but her expression stayed emphatic. “Normally we wouldn’t ask this of anyone, but someone is out there attacking women and infecting them somehow with the Bite.” All the women exchanged uneasy glances. “Luckily for Ms. McReynolds, the police showed up. But all that means is the perpetrator is likely to try again. And every time he does, we’re exposed.”

Serena’s mouth dried. “You think he’s going to try again.” All the women exchanged glances. “You think he’s after something specific? Maybe someone specific?” She reached for the bottle of water on the table in front of her and took a good swallow. “Good God, I’d heard there had been other attacks but I didn’t realize someone actually has the Bite.

The Bite. The virus that gave everyone in all the packs their powers—that activated their sleeping DNA—was tightly controlled by the pack councils. That someone had violated their most sacred rule and exposed them to the world, was unthinkable.

She’d been too distracted with her patient and the situation with Sam, but now that she thought about it, stealing the Bite was the only logical way that Glenna could have the antibodies. Male shifters had the active virus only when they had the mating fever, but someone with the fever was focused on one woman, not several. She ought to know, it was what had happened between her, Gabe, and Sam. And the mating fever wasn’t something you could hide, not for very long.

This wasn’t one male, wild with the mating fever. This was something else. Someone from the packs had stolen the Bite and was attacking women—and infecting them. And Glenna could identify him—if she could survive remembering the attack.

“What we’re saying is—we need to know who did this.” Anna leaned forward, her green eyes intense through the thick lenses of her glasses. “We don’t want to hurt her unnecessarily, but by codling her, the security of all the packs is at risk.” She rose from her chair and stepped forward, looking up at Serena and pinning her with her clear gaze. “We know from our sources that the government is aware of our existence now. And they are trying to find us. Look at the misinformation they are putting out about the virus—telling the world that you go crazy and think you are a wolf. It’s ludicrous. But it means that everyone is on the lookout for strange behavior. The public is afraid of us without even knowing who or what we are.” She shook her head, the chains of her reading glasses swinging from side to side. “That stupid CDC. The odds of a human catching the virus are astronomical, yet they have every attack victim of any sort tested for antibodies. They’re on a fishing expedition. Our people are doing what they can to hide us from view, but it will happen. They will find us. And with every attack they have more and more reason to look.”

“But this was the only time someone has tested positive for the antibodies. Right? The other victims didn’t have the virus.” Again the three exchanged uneasy looks. Serena’s stomach tightened further. “Wait a minute—you’re saying the other attack victims did have the virus. How many others and does the CDC know? Did they survive? Where are they? I thought it was all just media hype. What the hell is going on?”

“We’re saying that you have a job.” Cila’s face was cold. “Do your job. The council is in control of the rest of the situation.”

“You’ve been keeping secrets from me, from all of us. This is Glenna’s life. If you’d told the pack, maybe she wouldn’t have been attacked. Maybe this person would be in prison.” Or, if the pack enforcers had gotten to him first, dead.

“We do what’s necessary. Of course we feel sorry for the woman, but pack comes first.” Even Mart’s face was hard. “And don’t think we haven’t been doing our best. The enforcers know what to look for, but there is no reason to let the general public know. No reason at all.”

“Pack morality aside, you have no idea what that woman has been through.” Serena looked from one woman to the other, searching for some empathy in their soft, wrinkled faces and finding none. “You’re asking me to throw away my vows, expose her to excruciating pain, and possibly watch her go through the change, all after traumatizing her?”

“We’re not asking.” Anna’s voice was hard. “This is your job, Serena. Can you do it? If not we’ll have to send someone else in, and I can’t imagine that would be best for the girl.”

Someone else.

Someone who Glenna didn’t know and didn’t trust, invading her dreams and forcing her to face her attackers. What was worse? For a stranger to invade her dreams and do the dirty work? Or would it be better for Serena to betray Glenna and force her to rip off her scabs?