I discovered a broken window in the back bedroom, a torn screen, and a missing waterhound when I got home. I shouldn’t have left him alone so long. If only that damn werewolf hadn’t attacked us, I would have been home in plenty of time to let him outside to do his business.
Although that assumed the waterhound was house-trained.
A quick search confirmed Hopper took off. I didn’t blame him. A wild animal didn’t belong stuck in a cabin, even if he’d enjoyed the bathtub. I just hoped his injuries didn’t bother him too much and the sasquatch didn’t find him. I rubbed aloe on my arms and neck where the sunburn still ached, and changed into PJs after tossing the steak in the fridge. I’d eat it myself, then.
I meant to stay up and make more lists, maybe check a few things off the old ones, but the moment I sat down on the couch, I listed sideways and dozed. Not even the panel and its mysterious evidence kept me focused. I gave up and crawled into bed, sleepily thinking that adrenaline or fear seemed to counteract the vampire blood’s energetic properties.
Something cold and furry scampered across me. I half-sat, groggy. “What?”
Chirps and clicking answered, and a wet nose pressed behind my ear. I groaned and shoved Hopper away. He bounced across the bed a couple of times, then disappeared into the pitch-black cabin. A pillow over my face muffled the sounds of things getting knocked over, broken, and shredded.
The waterhound woke me twice more, and each time pulled me out of nightmares that left me in a cold sweat. Dragomir and the wild man alike hunted me in my dreams — Dragomir to bite me and drink my blood, the wild man to tear me limb from limb. A whole pack of werewolves ran down from the mountain and surrounded the cabin, howling. They tore Archer to bits in front of me, then turned into Jamie and demanded I join them. Then Jamie lunged for my throat with vampire fangs and creepy white skin.
By the last waterhound alarm, I didn’t bother trying to go back to sleep regardless of what the clock said. Hopper sprawled across two thirds of the bed and managed to claim most of the blankets. For a while I just watched him dream, his paws twitching and teeth chattering. What an incredible difference from the sasquatch and the werewolf, from Dragomir. The waterhound acted more like a cat, despite being the size of a St. Bernard, and seemed perfectly at ease in the cabin. He’d made himself right at home. And he’d protected me from Dragomir. I covered my eyes and repeated it to myself over and over. Do not anthropomorphize the cryptid. Do not anthropomorphize the cryptid.
That was as likely to work as Mom insisting we didn’t name the stray cats.
I shook my head and pried myself out of bed. Every inch of me ached, and I regretted a great deal of the rum I’d had the night before, but I couldn’t risk another nightmare where Jamie tried to chew through my throat by staying in bed.
Yawning didn’t make me more alert. Neither did coffee or Coke or the pep pills I’d taken in grad school to stay awake. But the brick of cash Dragomir left on my porch helped. I fanned myself with hundred-dollar bills and smiled. Better not to think about where it came from.
The hardware store in town opened at the ass-crack of dawn, though there weren’t many customers. I talked with the owner and described the generator I wanted. I’d added up the kilowatts needed to power the lab equipment and the house, and factored in additional load if added a fridge or other appliances. The owner, Mr. Harrison, liked a puzzle when it had to do with tools, and he hummed and muttered to himself as he flipped through ancient catalogues stained with greasy fingerprints and random drips of oil.
He tapped listings at random. “You might need that Cummins model. Can’t say I know much about Caterpillars or the Generacs. This one here is contained, runs on diesel. Most cost effective, that one. Still a pretty penny for the kilowatts you’re talkin’ about. We might find a pre-owned one for less, but not by much.”
Mr. Harrison pondered some more and checked another catalogue, then peered at me with his good eye while the glass one pointed toward the door. “We’re talkin’ twenty-five thousand dollars, Doc. You sure you need that much power?”
The price took my breath away after so long scrimping and scratching for every penny, but I kept my poker face. “I’ve got new equipment chewing through everything I’ve got. Can you get that big one here soon? Delivered and setup?”
He pointed his toothpick at me. “You ain’t doin’ anything illegal for that money, are you? Young lady, your pop would haunt me forever if you…”
I forced a smile. “Nothing like that, I promise. Just… insurance payout.” I shrugged and looked away, hoping he wouldn’t ask.
It did the trick. He patted my hand and took fifteen thousand cash as a deposit, and agreed to take the rest on delivery. With that errand checked off, I got an espresso from the coffee shop next door and hobbled back to the truck. I definitely needed to cut the damn cast off. It itched something terrible, and a forest of leg hair must have sprouted in the week since I’d last seen my calf. If I waited much longer to take it off, my leg would compete with the sasquatch’s hirsute limbs.
I drove an hour to Oak Ridge so I could sneak into the university library and dig into their archives and online subscriptions for all the topics I’d outlined over the last three days. So many things to look into. I started with immunology and virology after what Archer said about a werewolf virus, then infectious diseases, then porphyrias and dermatology for Dragomir. The librarian looked at me sideways when I pre-paid for copies with a hundred-dollar bill, but perked up when I offered a research challenge: folklore and mythology around werewolves and vampires, particularly connections between the two, causes of the symptoms, and ways to defeat them.
I loved research librarians. They knew where everything was, they had miles of random facts in their brain, and typically they were so curious they dove into every topic eagerly. I’d never had a librarian tire of a subject before I did, and my local librarian still mentioned books to me as references for projects I’d worked on in elementary school. Granted, my elementary school science projects were somewhat more complex than the typical baking soda volcano, but a sonic cannon prototype wasn’t that outlandish.
When I took a break and got coffee, I brought her a cup as well and stared in amazement at the pile of documents she’d accumulated in just a couple of hours. Between that and all the articles I’d downloaded onto a thumb-drive and printed myself, I’d be reading around the clock for the next year just to make a dent.
She laughed when she saw my face, and brought out a sturdy box for me to load up. “I know, I went a little overboard. I haven’t had so much fun in months. So many dreary questions about history of technology in the Middle Ages. I’ll keep looking around and let you know if I find anything interesting.”
I could have hugged her. We exchanged email addresses so I could send her more questions and she could forward all the crazy journals she planned to look up. So I actually felt pretty good as I left the library and wandered through the brown grass of the quad in the direction of the big-ass parking lot where I parked.
I paused to rest the box on a bench, catching my breath, and looked around the campus. Students hunched over against the weight of straining backpacks and scurried between buildings. A few more played frisbee and lay around on blankets. Watching them felt like observing a troop of primates. Monitoring their social reactions, looking for anomalous behaviors or abrupt aggression, evaluating relationships. Listening for vocalizations. I never did any of their activities in college. No one wanted to play frisbee with a ten-year-old or listen to jabber on and on about whatever obsessive interest I had that week.
“Dr. Montgomery?”
I cleared my throat, wiping my cheeks, and turned to find one of my favorite people approaching. Professor Anders had been close friends with my parents and a mentor for my early interest in chemistry. He recommended an advisor for my first PhD and marked up my dissertation before I submitted. He saved me from an embarrassing mathematical error, and I still hadn’t figured out how to pay him back. One of the proudest days of my life was when I returned home after defending my dissertation and Anders called me “Dr. Montgomery” for the first time.
His rumpled cardigan and feathery gray hair looked exactly the same as it did when I was eight. He smiled warmly and adjusted his dark-framed glasses. “What a surprise to see you here. And busy, too.”
I hugged him, unable to resist. He always reminded me of good days at the cabin, reading near the fire, arguing with Jamie over who stole the funny bone from the Operation game when Anders snuck it out every time and then miraculously ‘found’ it after we promised to grade his papers for him.
Professor Anders patted my back, then picked an article the pile in the box. “My my my. Virology? Biomedical engineering? Gene splicing and editing?”
At least I put all the vampire stuff on the very bottom. Anders knew we chased cryptids and treated it like an outlandish hobby, but he never approved of me walking away from a professorship at MIT to do it full-time. “Yes. Just taking advantage of the excellent library.”
He eyed me shrewdly. “And what kind of research are you up to now, Dr. Montgomery? Attempting to reanimate the dead? Again?”
I groaned and laughed at the same time. “Okay, I did that once and I’m never going to live it down.”
“I do not wish to call you Dr. Frankenstein,” he said, wagging a finger at me.
“Okay, but you’re ignoring that I almost succeeded. It would have been ground-breaking.”
“Thank Galvani you didn’t.” He tilted his head toward the parking lot. “Are you going to be here for lunch?”
“Heading back to Chilhowee,” I said, hefting the box once more so we could walk together. “I’ll call the next time I’m up here. Maybe we can meet and hypothesize on some impossibilities.”
The top of his head just met my shoulder, so he had to scowl up at me. “Do not tell me you are still pursuing that ridiculous travesty of pseudoscience.”
I smiled. A long meal or two with Anders would create opportunities to float theories past him. Despite his opinion of cryptozoology, Anders loved a puzzle. He would speak in hypotheticals only, but he could get caught up in even ridiculous arguments. We’d had a months-long correspondence attempting to prove and disprove whether there existed a rule without an exception, which devolved into absolute absurdity within two weeks. Since he believed in the Many-Worlds Interpretation, he took the easy route and simply countered my every argument with the existence of a parallel world with or without an exception to the rule in question. There was no debating someone like that.
But I could turn him loose on the ‘vampire math’ challenge and he would probably come up with multiple models. The sunlight problem, the werewolf problem… I could posit an entire alternate realm of folklore truths and debate with him until we uncovered a winning theory.
I paused next to my truck to put the box o’ knowledge on the passenger seat. “I’m pursuing a variety of fields, Professor. One happens to have strayed into genetics and how viruses might fundamentally alter DNA and the expression of certain traits.”
His head tilted. He polished his glasses with his stained tie, then perched them on his nose so he could peer at me. “Young lady, you are not going to draw me into one of your ridiculous conspiracies.”
My smile broke free and I shrugged widely. “I just enjoy asking questions, Professor. And I’m sure there’s a parallel world in which you enjoy answering them…”
He swatted my arm, guffawing and calling me an ‘insolent pup’ and any number of funny old man phrases. “You have not changed an iota, Ada. Very well, you may propose your farcicalities to me and I will entertain them. I’ll talk with Leigh about having you over for dinner.”
“I’d like that.” I hugged him again, suddenly tongue-tied, and cleared my throat before I trusted myself to speak. Running into him was like running into my dad. “Give her my love, okay?”
Anders squeezed my arm and grumbled, fussing with his glasses again to distract from his own red-rimmed eyes. “We miss you, my dear. Do stay in touch. I was concerned, after the news… Well. It is good to see you well and back to causing headaches for others. Did you leave any of the librarians conscious or have their brains all melted?”
I laughed more, about to respond that the librarian melted my brain instead, but trailed off when a black SUV rolled up just a few spaces away. The door cracked open and I thought I recognized the profile and beard. It couldn’t be. How did he find me?
Archer got out of the SUV and waited politely. Anders noticed my distraction and raised his eyebrows when he found the tall drink of water standing behind him. “Ah ha. And here I thought you had no interest in biology.”
“Professor!” I stared at him, aghast, as my entire face burned and I went lightheaded.
He toddled to his car, still giggling over his joke, and left me entirely off balance and facing Archer. I bumped the passenger door closed with my hip. No reason for him to see the box o’ knowledge. Particularly the articles at the bottom. “What are you doing here? How did you even find me?”
“I needed to get more ammunition from the hardware store, and I happened in while the owner was ordering a hell of a generator.” He straightened from his lean and took a step. I braced, not wanting to retreat, but his posture screamed ‘hunter.’ “Strange thing, too. Someone came in that morning asking for something powerful enough to practically run the football stadium, and paid in cash.”
“That is interesting, but…”
“Fifteen thousand in cash,” he added thoughtfully. Another step, slightly to my right. I shuffled a bit to keep the distance between us. Archer’s head tilted. “With another ten or so due on the other end. Cash, though. Not many people go around with that much cash on them. One might even call it suspicious.”
My mouth dried out. What did he care how I bought my generator? And why did it make me so nervous, the way he stalked closer with each step? “People can call it what they want.”
“That’s what I like about small towns.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Everybody knows everyone else’s business. Can you explain where you got the money, Ada? Did someone wire it to you from Chicago? From Sighisoara Development, maybe?”
“I don’t have any connections to Chicago.” I forced myself to stand my ground even as he got closer. “And it’s none of your business how anyone buys a generator. What are you doing here?”
“Harrison at the hardware store said you’d headed to the university. I took a chance and drove up here.”
“But why?” I wanted to shake him. His tone said he suspected me of something awful, and he’d badgered me with questions about my story. But he’d also sat on my couch and hugged me and brought me dinner and protected me. I couldn’t take the confusion, the games and subtext, the social whiplash of being around him. I wasn’t good at any of that. I really wasn’t. And I hated constantly feeling off-balance and uninformed. “Why are you doing this? I don’t understand. One minute you want to hold my hand and you’re… you’re really sweet, and then you flip a switch and suddenly it’s business and you’re accusing me of… of… I don’t even know what! What the hell is going on? I can’t keep up.”
An aggravated noise escaped the iron line of his jaw. He looked away. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Are you kidding me?” I planted both hands on his chest and shoved him. “Are you going to keep doing this shit, not knowing why, until my entire life is fucked up? What do you gain? Is it for the show? Do you get your jollies off confusing people and making them feel… feel like…”
Like they’re special and interesting and beautiful, and the only girl you look at that way. Like you understand them. Like they matter.
I clutched my head and slid in the snow as I turned. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t take that look in his eyes or the dimple or the potential of leaning into that unmovable body and letting someone else hold me up for a while. Not if it meant opening myself to being disappointed and hurt when he turned around and accused me of stealing money or hiding cryptids or making up a story about being injured. I couldn’t keep up, and I couldn’t deal with not knowing who he would be when I called.
“Ada,” he said, voice hoarse. Archer caught up, holding the back of my jacket. “Ada, wait.”
“I can’t, Archer.” My voice cracked. A tear escaped. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair for him to sweep into Chilhowee and promise the world, encourage me to go to Nepal and find adventure, and then crush me into feeling small. “I can’t wait. If I wait, this will destroy me. You will destroy me. I don’t have any defenses against you. I don’t. I never had… any of this. I won’t survive you.”
“You’re killing me,” he whispered. He seized my face and dragged me up on my tiptoes as his mouth descended and then his lips, warm and dry and firm, crashed against mine.