so that her hand found the hollow behind its ear. Its tail wagged hopefully.
Tentatively, she scratched. The hellhound’s tail picked up speed, whipping up snow.
“Ack!” Darcy pressed against the animal’s hot, soft shoulder, shielding her face from the sudden blizzard. “Fenrir! Stop that before you bury me!”
With a delighted, deafening bark, the hellhound sprang up. It bounced in a circle around her in doggy joy. Laughing, Darcy spun on the spot, trying to keep up with it. For such an enormous creature, it moved incredibly lightly.
“Okay, okay!” she wheezed. She put her hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. “Enough playtime. You’d better change back. We may be remote here, but we can’t take the risk of some random passer-by seeing you.”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” Wystan said. He stood with his hands tucked into his jacket pockets, watching the bounding hellhound with a small, indulgent smile. “Shifters of our types are invisible to most mundane humans when we’re in our animal forms. That’s how we’ve been able to stay undetected for so long.”
“Though there are the occasional accidents,” Rory added. “Which is how you get urban legends like Owlman or the Loch Ness Monster. Fenrir, you’re leaving paw prints everywhere. Let’s not start a new local cryptid rumor, okay?”
The hellhound flicked an ear in acknowledgement. It trotted around in a few more circles, scratching at the snow to obliterate its tracks. Then it shimmered, shrinking.
“Huh.” Darcy stared down at Fenrir. “Suddenly you seem tiny.”
Fenrir shook out his fur, and nudged her hand with a cold, wet nose. “Woof.”
“Can you hear him now?” Edith asked. “In your head? He’s trying to reach you telepathically.”
Darcy looked deep into Fenrir’s copper eyes, searching for any hint of connection. Now that she knew what he truly was, she could see the human intelligence behind that intent regard. But no matter how hard she tried to clear her mind, she couldn’t hear so much as a whisper.
She shook her head, frustrated. “No. I must be doing something wrong.”
“Normally, hellhounds can only talk telepathically to members of their own pack,” Rory said. “You aren’t bonded to us yet. You just need to give it time.”
Fenrir grumbled, deep in his throat.
“I know,” Rory told the dog. The corner of his mouth curled up. “Of course, it would be faster if you worked out how to shift back to human. Just a thought.”
“Why did he transform into a man yesterday?” Darcy asked. “You said he’d never done it before.”
“Good question.” Rory looked at the dog. “Fenrir?”
The dog did nothing that Darcy could detect, yet Edith and Wystan looked at him too. All three firefighters stared at the dog with rapt attention.
“This is going to get annoying,” Darcy muttered, after several minutes of complete silence. She cleared her throat pointedly. “Anyone want to tell me what you’re all discussing so earnestly?”
Wystan started, as though he’d been so engrossed in that silent conversation that he’d forgotten her presence. “My sincere apologies for our rudeness. Fenrir was telling us what happened last night. To summarize, it appears that Lupa managed to shoot him with a serum that has a particular effect on shifters.”
“She’s used it against us before,” Rory said. “Basically, it knocks out a shifter’s inner animal, suppressing our special abilities and trapping us in human form.”
“Having suffered through it myself, I can assure you that the experience is not pleasant,” Wystan said with a small shudder. “Fortunately, the drug wears off after a day or so, and it doesn’t seem to have any lingering effects.”
“If its temporary, why doesn’t Fenrir use it himself? Sorry,” she added, glancing down at Fenrir. “I shouldn’t talk about you as if you aren’t here.”
Fenrir whuffed. He leaned against her leg, warm and solid. The gesture needed no translation.
“We don’t know what the stuff is,” Rory said. His jaw tightened. “Or where Lupa is getting it from. Believe me, there are a lot of people who’d really like to find out. A substance that can disable our inner animals like that threatens the entire shifter community.”
“Fenrir mentioned that Lupa has attacked you guys before,” Darcy said. “Why? What does she want?”
Wystan gazed at the sky with a pained expression. “Now that is something of a long story.”
“And not one to have outside in the snow,” Edith said, shivering. She tucked her hands under her armpits. “Can we go back inside?”
Pure panic flashed across Rory’s face. In an eye blink, he was at Edith’s side. The woman squawked as he