The Society of the Eleventh Hour

Lycanthropy

I wake up to the sound of someone pounding on the door, incessantly. My head hurts so bad I can barely think, and I vainly attempt to pretend I can't hear them. Perhaps they'll go away.
Of course, they don't. The door is unlocked, and the only person who would continue to knock this aggressively and not simply turn the door is Morgan Ivers. Because she's pissed at me, and still polite enough to wait until I'm ready for her to enter.
I don't bother to put anything over my chemise before I answer the door, because she's FAR more familiar with my body than she's willling to admit, and I don't see any reason to entertain her prudish fancies any longer. (And perhaps, also, because I want to make her regret so thoroughly rejecting me.)
Morgan's face does indeed flicker with momentary surprise and embarrassment when I open the door, but that's hardly what I can focus on. Her face is mottled with bruises, dried blood staining the collar of her shirt from a nastily split lip. Oh, Gods. If I hadn't sent her out, if we hadn't fought… I feel a sudden surge of regret. I really had pushed her too far, been too familiar with her when she wasn't quite ready and provoked her anger once I did cross the line.
"Morgan - -" I say, but she ignores me soundly. Between us, she thrusts the front page news of the Libitina Chronicles.
'Libitina Butcher kills two in woods - - third escapes'
"Get dressed and me at the bakery, as soon as possible. We've got work to do." Morgan asserts, calmly. "We have no time to fight, so leave it at home, and I will do the same."
She then shuts the door on me. Ouch. I am certain she wanted me to make much more haste in getting ready than I do, but it is not something that can be helped. The victims are already dead. My discomfort won't bring them back; and I am in a great deal of discomfort already.
I am wracked with wet, painful coughs as I struggle to get into my dress, and have to lie down on the ground and catch my breath after I do succeed and realize I then have to lace up my boots.
Gods help me. I clip my sword onto my belt with a heavy sigh, and throw on the heavy Pieromalan cloak Javier gifted me. Even within the Society's cavern and Morgan's apartment, I feel as if I have stepped into some sort of arctic tundra.
I don't think it's actually this cold outside, so I resign myself to the fact that I have a fever as I walk out the door and trod through the short walk to the Crawford's bakery, having to stop several times to catch my breath.
By the time I get to the front door, I feel as if I am about to pass out. Several of the Crawford's cats run to greet me as I enter, rubbing their backs and heads on my calves in ecstatic relief and ownership. I notice that they leave, abruptly, when I stray towards the table she's chosen.
Back corner, of course. Her face seems to have mottled a few shades darker, in my absence. Her eyes are cold when she looks up at me, but her tube changes quickly enough when I collapse into the seat opposing her, panting like I've run the whole way there.
"You look like hell, Lucy. What on earth is wrong with you?"
"Well, I've not been butchered, that's for sure. It's always bad news when the town gives the killer a name - - it makes them bolder, wets their ego." I scowl at her. "Does the newspaper lay out the situation in any detail?"
She continues to look at me with soft, concerned eyes. We're fighting, you bloody idiot. Focus on the mission!
"… it's not great, but I've heard enough to form a theory. Two women; both society students, both the same age that the killer normally targets. However, the methods used are starkly different."
She hands over the newspaper for me to read, and I do, avidly. The first victim they found: vivisection, no signs of a struggle, like all the others. I'm sure if Petra was announcing all the information she's gathered publicly the police report would mention injection marks. It's just so perfectly textbook.
The second is entirely different. The victim, as it is described in the paper, was massacred. She's got blood under her fingernails from clawing at her attacker, and she seems to have been shredded more than she has been "dissected." It's brutalistic, in comparison to the others. I raise my eyebrows at the words "bite marks."
"What's your theory? Gods, this seems completely out of left field." I murmur to myself.
Morgan sighs.
"It is out of left field, Lucia. The killers, as far as we've figured out, are dead set on revealing the Society as dangerous and destroying it. This, I believe, is the Society's attempt at fighting back," She grimaces. "The Society has become nervous, at how long this investigation has extended, and particularly with the irregularity of the terror. They found a scapegoat."
I blink at her.
"Who?"
A sharp, irritable intake of breath. A slow exhale, as if she is trying to calm herself.
"There are many legends of shapeshifting people, who pass easily between animal and human form." She pauses. "It should not be such a leap in logic, to believe that one or two might exist within a magical society such as ours. What might shock you more is to hear of incomplete shapeshifters."
I blink at her.
"Incomplete?"
"As inâ€" someone whose transformation from woman to wolf was not done at will, as is the way of her species, but rather tied to the cycles of the moon. Not capable of being done when she wishes it, or of being stopped when she doesn't wish it."
I think, suddenly, of Morgan's illicit tome chronicling the existence of Lycans, people from another unreachable place, either hidden on this earth or impossibly out of it. I think of the way she held it with such regard, and suddenly it makes so much sense.
That book is not only what remains of her late mother… it was also the only thing she must know of her father, too. In giving it to me, she was begging me to understand her, and I remained deaf to it all.
I am too used to ignoring other people's secrets for the sake of politeness. It is merely instinct, for me, not to look into private lives unless completely necessary. (Because as far as I know, my discretion may be what keeps Javier in good standing at my court, or Petra's position as detective safe.)
"Oh, Morgan." I say, softly. The way someone else might say I'm sorry. "It was… a full moon last night, wasn't it?"
She frowns.
"No, it wasn't. It looked awfully close, though. The real full moon should break today, or tomorrow, but no one else will know the difference." Morgan tells me. "If the Society is revealed by the real killers, they're going to turn around and tell people it was me. I think they had that girl killed to prove their sick theory."
I hesitate. Change directions.
"So, you think it was a coincidence that the real killers and the Society's faker struck at the same time, in the same woods?"
Morgan hesitates.
"To a certain extent." She sighs. "As far as I know, the Society picked the woods because it seemed the most Wolfish. The real killer didn't pick the woods at all - - he was chased to the edge of town, tried to hide in the treeline, and the victim was dragged along with him against her will."
I blink at her. Clearly, she knows something I don't. Morgan points to the part of the headline that reads "third escapes."
"Nicholas Santiago is currently in critical condition. I got him the good medicine, of course, courtesy of the Society's hospitality… but he hasn't been able to talk much." Morgan scowls.
What the hell was he doing out there? I wonder, feeling a twinge of fear and guilt, if he was trying to investigate on his own. Both of the delegates from Pieromal seem extremely anxious about the "progress" we've made… it's not unreasonable to consider that one of them would take action.
Shit.
"If he didn't witness anything, we're fucked. Every single one of the Windsors could've been there, that night, not to mention William. Lucas was nowhere to be found, the old man was gone for most of the early evening… even Lorelei could've gone out after I left, in the cover of the rain." I scowl. Perhaps I should've demanded an escort.
"There's always the autopsies, Lucia." Morgan reminds me, calmly, as if she's speaking to an excitable child.