“Is who here? Her? Really?” the guard said, glancing at Larson. Grudgingly, he stood back from the open door. “He’s asking for you. Come on in.”
I stuck close to Larson as she slipped through the door, while the guard held back the rest of the reporters, most of whom were protesting loudly.
Male locker room. There’s no other smell like it. Lots and lots of sweat, new and old, stale, baked into the flat carpet, into the paint on the walls. And adrenaline, like someone had aerosolized it. Like someone had lit a scented candle of it. Pure, concentrated, competitive maleness. Wolf didn’t know whether to howl or whine.
“This way,” the trainer said and guided us through the front, a brightly lit area filled with lockers, to a smaller, darker side room with only one light in the corner turned on.
The smell of alcohol almost overpowered the smell of maleness here. It looked like an infirmary. Cabinets with clear doors held gauze, cotton balls, bandages, and dozens of bottles. On a padded massage table in the middle of the room sat Jerome Macy.
A shadow in the dim light, he smelled of sweat, adrenaline, maleness—and wolf. His eyes were a deep, rich brown. I could almost see the wolf in them, sizing me up. Challenging me. I didn’t meet his gaze, didn’t give him any aggressive signals. This was his territory. I was the visitor here, and I didn’t have anything to prove.
“It’s okay, Frank,” Macy said to the trainer, who lingered by the door. The man gave a curt nod, then left, closing the door behind him.
So not even Macy’s trainers knew. The three of us were alone in the room, with the secret.
His hands were raw, chapped, swollen. Tape bound his wrists. He leaned on his knees and let the limbs dangle. Werewolves had rapid healing, but he’d still taken a beating. Macy kept his challenging stare focused on me. I started to bristle under the attention. I crossed my arms and lurked.
Larson drew a small digital recorder out of her pocket and made a show of turning it on. “Mr. Macy. Is it true that you’re infected with the recently i
dentified disease known as lycanthropy?”
His gaze shifted from me to her. After a moment, he chuckled. “It’s not going to do me any good to say no, is it? You planned this out pretty good.”
He was almost soft-spoken. His voice was hushed, belying the power of his body. It gave him a calculating air. Not all brute force, this guy. I wanted to warn Larson, Don’t underestimate him.
“I think the public has a right to know,” Larson said. “Don’t you?”
He considered. Sizing her up, like a hunter deciding whether this prey would be worth the effort, gazing at her through half-lidded eyes. He was making a challenge. In wolf body language, the stare, the shoulders, the slight snarl to his open lips, showing teeth, all pointed to the aggressive stance. I recognized it. There was no way fully human Larson could. For all her journalist’s instincts, she wouldn’t recognize the body language.
He said, “What would I have to pay you to keep you quiet?”
I was betting he couldn’t have said anything that would make her more angry. She said, “Bribery. Real nice. Be smarter about this, Macy: You can’t suppress this. You can’t keep this quiet forever. You might as well let me break the story. I’ll give you a chance to have your say, tell your side of the story.”
She approached this the way she would any other stubborn interview; she turned on her own aggression, glaring back, stepping forward into his space. Exactly the wrong response if she wanted him to open up.
The boxer didn’t flinch. His expression never changed. He was still on the hunt. He said, “Then what would I have to do to keep you quiet?”
That threw Larson off her script. She blinked with some amount of astonishment. “Are you threatening me?”
I stepped between them, trying to forestall what the press would call an “unfortunate incident.” Glancing between them, I tried to be chipper, happy, and tail-waggy.
“Jerome! May I call you Jerome?” I said, running my mouth like always. “I’m really glad Jenna asked me to come along for this. Normally I wouldn’t give boxing a second thought. But this. I’d never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. How do you do it? Why don’t you shapeshift when you’re in the ring?” Larson still held her recorder out, and she let me keep talking.
I had seen animals in cages at the zoo look like this. Quiet, glaring. Simmering. Like a predator who was prepared to wait forever for that one day, that one minute you forgot to lock the cage. On that day, God help you.
“You’re Kitty Norville, right? I’ve heard about you.”
“Great!” I said, my bravado false. “Nothing bad, I hope. So are you going to answer my question?”
He straightened a little, rolled his shoulders, and the mood was broken, the predator image slipped away. His lip turned in a halfsmile.
“I think about my hands,” he said. Which seemed strange. I must have looked bemused, because he explained. “I have to punch. I can only do that with human hands. Fists and arms. Not claws, not teeth. So I think about my hands. But Kitty—just because I don’t shift doesn’t mean I don’t change.” Some of that animal side bled into his gaze. He must have carried all his animal fighting instinct into the ring.
That was creepy. I had an urge to slouch, grovel, stick an imaginary tail between my legs. Please don’t hurt me . . .
“So you do have an unfair advantage?” Larson said.
“I use what I have,” he said. “I use my talents, like anyone else out there.”