she said softly. “She’s angry and hurt that you left without even saying goodbye, but she still loves you.”
“I wish she didn’t. I wish she never had. I didn’t deserve her. I didn’t appreciate what I had until I lost everything.” Vance took a deep breath, his voice steadying. “I started getting headaches, nightmares, dry eyes. People began acting oddly around me. I’d be talking to someone—a patient, or a colleague—and then they’d go rigid, unresponsive, for as long as I was making eye contact with them. I didn’t know what was happening. Didn’t know that this, this thing was growing in me. Getting stronger. Until one day, it burst out.”
“Late onset shift syndrome,” Wystan breathed. He looked around at them all, sudden understanding dawning in his expression. “He’s a latent shifter. One whose animal awakened much later in life than usual. It’s rare, but it does happen. More often to women, due to changing hormones at menopause, but I’ve heard of men being affected too.”
“This has happened to other people?” Darcy heard Vance scramble to his feet. Raw desperation filled his hoarse voice. “Is there a cure? Can you fix me?”
Wystan started to open his mouth, then hesitated. Catching Darcy’s eye, he pressed his lips together, and shook his head.
“We’ll do everything we can to help you, Vance,” she said, which was at least true. “Is that why you left your wife and hid yourself away? Because you can’t stop yourself from shifting?”
Vance made that pained laugh again. “I wish it was just that. Even when I’m human, I’m still a monster. Anyone who meets my gaze, even for a second, falls into a coma. I tried covering my eyes, but that made my creature too agitated. I’d black out, and then wake up to find myself miles away, blindfold shredded. For your own sake, don’t let me out of here. I can’t be around anyone.”
“Why are you down here at all?” Darcy asked. “Has Lupa been trying to persuade you to use your powers against her enemies?”
“She asked, but I refused. I don’t want to hurt anyone. But that wasn’t the reason she helped me.” Vance sighed. “I was doing experiments on myself. Studying my biochemistry, trying to find a way to reverse whatever had happened to me. I discovered some compounds in my bloodstream that turned out to have unique properties.”
“The anti-shift serum,” Wystan said. “You are the person who’s been making it for Lupa.”
“Out of my own blood,” Vance confirmed. “Plus venom from my monstrous form, and a few other chemicals. I may not be able to stop myself from shifting, but at least I can help others.”
“You think you were helping people?” Rory’s tone was just a step above a growl. Fury shone in his leonine eyes. “You handed Lupa a weapon! A weapon that she used to hurt my friends!”
“I only gave her a way to defend herself!” Despite Vance’s words, there was an edge to his tone that made Darcy think he was desperately trying to convince himself that was true. “Lupa has her own beast, but she never lets it free. Not even to save her own life. I made the serum so she could help other shifters, ones who didn’t have such self-control. The ones ruled by their monsters, like me. Like the Thunderbird.”
“Wait, what?” Joe said. “The Thunderbird’s not a shifter. Is it?”
“Of course it is,” Vance said, sounding a little baffled by Joe’s surprise. “That’s the whole point of all this.”
Darcy looked around at the squad. From all their faces, this was news to them too. “Lupa thinks the Thunderbird is a shifter?”
“I should think she should know. She’s dedicated her life to destroying that monster. She told me about the wildfires it’s caused, the people it’s killed. It’s lost all humanity. It has to be stopped.”
“With the anti-shift serum?” Wystan’s eyebrows drew down. “But she’s had that for at least a year, and she hasn’t used it against the Thunderbird. At least, not with any effect.”
“Because I hadn’t perfected the formulation,” Vance replied. “The Thunderbird is powerful, not to mention very large. I had to come up with a concentrated form of the serum. And making it required a very large quantity of my blood. It took me a long time.”
Took. Darcy’s heart clenched as she noted the past tense. “But you succeeded. And that’s what Lupa’s doing now. Hunting down the Thunderbird.”
“Yes,” Vance confirmed. The squad all tensed, turning as though about to charge after Lupa that