Sunday, April 13, 2025

In Good Company 2

 He heard the water running for a long time. When Genevieve emerged, she had clearly scrubbed herself of all blood and sweat in the sink and slicked her ginger hair back from her face. She looked disarmingly younger that way, and her eyes seemed large and apprehensive. Smoke-blue, they were, the whites like a robin's egg. Her color was high from washing herself up. 

"You don't have to worry, you know About her biting you."

"I wouldn't anyway. But I think I understand how it works."

"You. Do?"

"From what you've told me, it's because she's born were--possessing certain heritable traits. And then was exposed to an additional trigger--an infection? I don't know what your community knows about it, but my guess would be a retrovirus that works sort of ...symbiotically? Which wouldn't affect me so long as I'm not...susceptible."

"And you're sure you're not?' He bit his lips together watching her. 

Sunday, April 6, 2025

In Good Company

 Tom dialed the sheriff because Madeline Dupree was killing the girl with not from the FBI. 

That was how she had said it. She didn't smell like a cop and she wasn't were and there was something else he didn't understand about her, but she was going to get the investigation to back down even after she understood what Madeline was (and what he was) and now it looked like her neck was bleeding and he didn't give her a long time and didn't think he had time to intervene either. 

He was telling Le Roi where to go to pick up the body when he saw the girl get up and give Madeline a good punch to the throat and then arm-barred her down and rolled her over, twisting her arm behind her back and then sat there. On Madeline Dupree. The werewoman alive and mad as hell. And the girl also alive with hardly any business being. Just sitting still on top of her twisting her arm.

She seemed very still though. He pocketed his phone and walked to them. What was her name again? Genevieve.

He didn't know what to actually say. There wasn't actually anything to do. He saw the lights from Le Roi;s car and Le Roi was Rougarou and he wouldn't say shit if he was up to his neck in it. He let the girl get up and hand off Madeline Dupree without a word, and just nodded to Tom as if, if there was anything that needed to take place between Tom and the girl with not from the FBI, he figured Tom would go on and take care of business. 

The girl had crouched down and was feeling her way through her very large purse for a bottle of water, and then she poured it down her neck--the outside of her neck, washing it with her hands, before rinsing out her mouth 

Not a wound nor a scar. She was deliberately showing him that. And then it came into frame. 

She was ready to bury the investigation knowing what they were, because she was something else herself. And he helped her up by her elbow and led her to his own car. Wordlessly, she went with him. He couldn't think of any better place to take her than his own home. He knew it might not be a perfect solution, but he would let it play out.