III
Later that morning I was sitting barefoot and crosslegged on my motel room bed working on our field report on my laptop when the connecting door opened to a brief knock and Mulder walked in. Good thing I wasn't walking around in dishabille, but then I knew to lock any doors between us before doing so as he frequently didn't bother with knocking before wandering in. "I was right, Scully, MacLaine-Bryant is the one paying Coppolia's bills and she outright bought her that property in 1994. Janice used to work for her, too, for years—it was about seven years ago that she was first institutionalized, but MacLaine-Bryant got her released and put her up in that house. The interesting thing is that as far as I can tell, she never goes to visit Coppolia although some of the other townies do, including both Dr. Bryants, father and son, and there's a cleaning service who goes out there twice a week."
"Odd," I agreed, closing the lid of my laptop and giving him my full attention. "What did Coppolia do when she worked for her?"
"Secretary, assistant, that sort of thing," Mulder said, still pacing around the room. "Our local vet, Dr. Bryant, used to help her show dogs when he was in high school, but MacLaine-Bryant hasn't actually shown her dogs in years—she just breeds and sells on a very limited basis now."
"What, does she just have a show dog kennel? No other business?"
"That's what it looks like."
"I don't know much about dog shows or breeding, but I always thought it was a backyard kind of thing, not a business."
Mulder looked thoughtful. "Everyone I talked to about her made it sound like it's a big business type of thing. She's not only very famous, both she and her husband are very well-liked around here. Apparently they're quite the philanthropists and volunteer for just about everything that needs a warm body to help out—animal shelter, soup kitchen, grade school fundraisers, you name it."
I took off my glasses, setting them over on the nightstand, and rubbed the bridge of my nose. "So when are we going to talk to them?"
He stopped and gave me that big Muldergrin across the room, the one that was like a newborn nova shining into my soul. "As soon as you've got some shoes on those little bitty feet of yours."
One little bitty shoe hit the door, but by that time he'd ducked out. I'd get him, one of these days.
We pulled up in front of a large, rambling two-story farmhouse, which despite its equal distance away from civilization immediately appeared to be much more well-cared-for than both Kneese's and Coppolia's. There was a large gray-stone barn not far behind the house, although I didn't see any other outbuildings. The barn looked a little odd, almost shimmery on the outside, and as we walked to the front door I finally made out what it was: wire-fenced dog kennels spread out from both sides of the barn. There was also a large white-fenced field with a couple of horses in it, although I saw no other animals.
I switched my attention from the barn to the house as we climbed the wooden front steps, Mulder with his hand in the small of my back as usual. Despite its obvious age—my guess was from the turn of the century or even older—the house was in very good repair, appearing to have been recently painted without any sagging or creaking boards as we walked across the large wrap-around porch. As Mulder raised his hand to the doorbell the inside door swung open, and we found ourselves staring at another couple who were, in some way I couldn't quite describe, very similar to us.
They were at least twenty or more years older, I guessed in the few seconds we stood staring at each other though the beveled-glass storm door. The woman was taller than I but shorter than Mulder, perhaps five-six or -seven, slender with a medium build, probably in her early-to-mid-fifties. Her hair was nearly the same color as mine but wavy with streaks and rivers of gray shot through it, not as short as I'd seen it in the photo in Dr. Bryant's office but not quite as long as mine, either. She was wearing a pair of too-long stone-washed pegged jeans that wrinkled over the top of her tan moccasins—just like Janice Coppolia's, I noted--and a faded-almost-white but clean men's denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows.
The man standing partly behind her was probably a few years older, with a thick headful of silver hair and a shorter, stockier although not fat build, about the same height as she. Even at his age, which I estimated to be in his mid-to-late sixties, there was no sign of a paunch and they both seemed to be in good shape. His resemblance to the other Dr. Bryant was striking; I was sure that the younger man would look just like this in twenty years or so. Had I not already been told that this was his father, it was obvious they were closely related. He had the same clear, direct green eyes and although his hair was completely grey, it was just as thick as his son's and probably had once been just as blonde. He wore a red and black checked flannel shirt and jeans with what appeared to be thick-soled leather hiking boots peeking out from beneath the denim. Both of them were grinning widely at us through the glass storm door.
After a few moments I snapped out of my mild surprise and reached inside my coat for my badge. "We're--" I began, but was cut off when the woman unlatched and pushed the door open with a smile.
"We know who you are, you're Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully from the FBI," she said, holding the door open as the older man stepped back to allow us in. "We've been waiting for you."
Mulder made a slight gesture for me to go ahead of him, which I did. "I assume your son called you, Dr. Bryant?" he said to their backs as they preceded us into a large, dim, low-ceilinged living room. Quite a few open and closed doors led from it, as well as a wide, half-moon-shaped staircase that led to an upper hallway which could be seen through the open wooden-post railing.
"Oh, no, not to tell us you were coming," the woman, Lauren MacLaine-Bryant, said as she turned to face us. It was then that I noticed that they were holding hands, her long slender fingers interlaced with his shorter, stockier ones. "We brought you here. We expected you yesterday when we heard you'd arrived in town, but today works just as well. We've kept the whole week free, in fact."
"You... brought us here?" I repeated. "Are you saying you called the FBI and asked for agents to come and talk to you? We didn't receive any such request."
She shook her head then exchanged a glance with her husband, and it was impossible to miss the deep connection between them. He stepped forward a bit, disengaging his hand from hers and yet, I noted, their upper arms still touched. "Why don't we start over?" he said in a gravelly, whiskey-and-cigarettes voice that I was immediately captivated by. Putting a hand out that Mulder and I each shook, he said, "I'm Frances Bryant, better known as Doc, and this is my wife Lauren."
We all shook hands, standing by the doorway to the foyer in the large living room. There was a pause and in that second, a beam of sunlight broke free from the overcast and lit up the whole room from multiple windows, which until then had been rather gloomy. It was paneled in golden cedar with a low beamed ceiling, and now I saw that every available inch of wall space was taken up with framed photographs of the ubiquitous German Shepherd dogs, most at shows with MacLaine-Bryant in them though some were body and head shots. The focus of the room, however, was a large oil painting over the fireplace which featured a mostly-black dog standing on a rise with her house and barn in the background, the heads of four other similar dogs painted in each corner. Unusual and eye-catching.
"Please, come in, sit down; would you like something to drink?" Lauren said, gesturing to a long plaid couch in front of a bank of windows that looked out onto the long covered front porch. "We've got fresh-brewed iced tea, coffee, or Diet Coke."
"Iced tea would be good," Mulder said, heading for the couch. I murmured agreement as I followed, then stopped as Doc walked up to us.
"I don't know where our manners are, can I take your coats?"
Lauren stood next to him and squeezed his shoulder as he reached out to take our coats before we seated ourselves on the couch. "We're just excited, Doc. Not every day we get real FBI agents in our house." As he'd recently begun doing Mulder sat far too close to me, but I couldn't move away without calling attention to ourselves so I just put up with his shoulder brushing mine.
Doc chuckled, going to hang our coats in a closet just to the left of the doorway we'd come in through. "I'll get the drinks," he said, and walked back over to his wife to give her a one-armed hug and brief kiss on the forehead before disappearing though a doorway at the back of the room. She turned to look at him after he kissed her, and again I saw that wordless look of love pass between them. I'd known them less than five minutes and didn't think I'd ever seen such an openly affectionate couple in my life. I found myself wondering how long they'd been married; I'd known honeymooners who didn't touch each other as much as these two did.
Lauren seated herself in one of a pair of large wing-back chairs facing the couch across what looked to me like a turn-of-the-century antique coffee table, laying her arms along the armrests and crossing her legs at the knee—very clearly confident body language. "I'd like to wait until Doc gets back to talk, but I did want to mention how much I enjoyed your episode of 'Cops'," she said, smiling at both of us. "I knew the minute I saw you two arguing by the ambulance that you were just the people to help me."
"You saw that," I said flatly, turning to glare briefly at Mulder. He totally ignored me, grinning happily as he always did when someone recognized him from that stupid show.
"Of course! That's what made me start thinking about having you two come up here and help me figure out. . . well, I don't want to say too much now, just suffice to say that you two are uniquely suited to helping me," she said, still looking directly back and forth between us. Whatever in the hell she was talking about, I could tell that she wasn't hiding anything from us—yet, at least—and clearly believed whatever it was.
Mulder leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. "Mrs. MacLaine-Bryant--"
"Oh, just call me Lauren, and Doc'll have a fit if you call him anything else," she interrupted, turning to glance briefly back where he'd disappeared. "What'n the hell is taking him so long?"
He'd been gone less than five minutes at the very most. Were these two joined at the hip?
"All right, then, Lauren. What makes us the right agents for your problem?" Mulder asked.
She gave a small, almost sad close-mouthed smile. "You clearly believe in the supernatural, Agent Mulder, and you, Agent Scully," she nodded at me, "have to see it to believe it. And you're a doctor, you can order lab tests and stuff like that. Between the two of you and us, I think we can figure out the truth behind the bullshit that I was fed when I first found out what I was."
Mulder glanced back at me and I shrugged; I hadn't a clue.
"Oh, I know, I'm being obtuse," Lauren grinned at us, a real smile showing straight white teeth that lit up her clear blue-grey eyes. Again she glanced back. "I just don't want to say too much without Doc here so we don't have to repeat everything."
At that moment he appeared out of the kitchen, carrying a small tray with two tall glasses and two brown coffee cups on it.
"What took so long?" she called to him.
"You forgot to turn on the coffeemaker, Lauren," he said as he got close, raising his bushy grey eyebrows at her. "Gettin' senile in your old age, beautiful."
She blushed slightly, which was absolutely charming on a woman her age, and snapped back with no malice, "Oh, bite me. At least I don't forget to put my teeth in in the morning."
Doc roared laughter, luckily having already set the tray down on the coffee table. "Can't bite you without my teeth, darlin'." Then he leaned over her, putting both arms around her shoulders, and whispered something in her ear that made her laugh just as hard. She then put one hand on the back of his head to pull his face over to kiss her. This wasn't a brief polite peck, this was a full-blown open-mouthed kiss of the kind that made good romance movie endings. I looked away, not embarrassed but giving them a bit of privacy, and caught Mulder's eye. He was smiling, eyes amused, as he reached for one of the glasses of iced tea on the tray.
When they came up for air Doc handed Lauren a cup of coffee and, with his own, perched on the arm of the chair she sat in. It couldn't have been comfortable, but he leaned over slightly to put his arm around her shoulders and she snuggled in next to him, the hand that wasn't holding the cup on his thigh.
"How long have you been married?" I asked out of simple curiosity. If these two weren't recent newlyweds I'd eat one of my rubber boots with the disgusting mud from the Kneeses' farm on it.
"Almost thirteen years, isn't it, Lauren?" Doc said, leaning down to brush the top of her head with the side of his face, one of the most intimate gestures I'd ever seen.
"Yeah, come June. We were married in 1987," she agreed, glancing up at him lovingly. "We'll have to do something special for this anniversary."
He smiled back down at her, their eyes locked. "Don't we always?"
I was floored—and glad I hadn't made the boot comment to Mulder or I'd be buying a bottle of A-1 sauce on the way back to the motel. Thirteen years and both over fifty and still acting like they were on their honeymoon, touching and kissing and gazing lovingly at each other almost constantly? There was hope for the human race. And it wasn't an act; these two were about as real a deal as I'd ever seen. I glanced at Mulder and wondered if my face was as thunderstruck as his.
Lauren laughed, bumping Doc's side with her shoulder. "I think we've shocked them," she smiled up at him, then over at us. "Trust me, when you've been through what we have, not just to be together but to be happy, accept who and what we are, you don't take a second of your time together for granted," she said, glancing briefly up at her husband. "We were friends for years before we realized what we meant to each other, and we're not wasting another moment."
Doc nodded. "We did cause a bit of a scandal when we got married less than three months after my first wife passed away. But it was her death that made me realize how precious life is, and to waste a moment of it is criminal. And like Lauren says we're not wasting another moment, either one of us."
It was then that I remembered Sheila and Holman Hardt from that weird-weather case in Kansas last year; we'd gotten a Christmas card from them through our Bureau address with the happy news of their impending miniature Hardt. I vaguely recalled a discussion with Sheila in the bathroom of the high school gym, where I'd advised her to grab happiness while she could with someone who could be more than a friend--or something to that effect. Unlike my partner I don't have an eidetic memory, and a lot had happened since then. But I did remember thinking somewhere in the back of my mind that I should take my own advice, and finding myself unable to do so up to this day.
With an effort I brought myself back to the conversation at hand that had gone on around me while I was off on my little trip down memory lane.
"So," Mulder was saying, "Lauren, you started to tell us why we were the people you needed to talk to."
Luckily it appeared that I hadn't missed much, if anything, in my little mental side trip.
The older woman nodded at us. "Yeah. But I think it would be better if I showed you rather than tried to explain. In fact, if I tried to explain I'm sure you won't believe me, so I may as well just show you."
"Lauren, I'm not sure that's a good idea," Doc said immediately, gazing down at her with a worried look on his lined face. "What about your clothes? And they are armed, I'm sure."
"Oh, I'm sure they are," she said, glancing over at us before looking back up at him. "But I'm not going to do it right here. I was going to see if Agent Scully would come upstairs with me so I can show her, alone, first. I really want her medical opinion before anything else."
Although this didn't sound right, I felt no alarm bells from my usually-accurate intuition at the suggestion. I looked at Mulder and he raised his eyebrows, shrugging, and I caught his thought: you can handle yourself. He knew I had my Sig in its usual hip holster, just as I knew he was wearing a shoulder holster today. "I can do that," I said, standing up as the older couple did, all of us setting our cups/glasses on the tray. I was so used to their constant touching even after this short time that I barely noticed as they kissed before she moved away from him. "Agent Mulder, will you stay with Doc?"
"Sure, we'll stay right here and talk about manly stuff until you get safely back," Mulder said, his meaning clear. "So, Doc, you follow sports?"
"You better believe it! Spring training's really looking interesting this year—who's your team?"
I got up and followed Lauren up the stairs as I heard discussion of the Tigers vs. Yankees begin behind me—would Mulder even notice I was gone?
She took me to a large, airy room at the top of the stairs, not closing the door behind us. I saw only one other door, that one open and leading to a bathroom; I could see the bathtub enclosure and a pedestal sink. This was clearly their bedroom, large with peach-colored walls and a huge, soft-looking wooden four-poster bed against one wall, richly burnished wood underfoot. Against another was a beautiful high-backed antique Shaker bench with cushions that matched the bedspread and curtains, while on the far wall was a pair of overstuffed light brown easy chairs with footstools, a small table between them that was almost covered with a mishmash of loosely stacked books. The chairs faced a large bay window, an unlit cast-iron freestanding woodstove in the corner on a broken-mosaic tile base. From where I stood I could see that the view out the big window was of the far-reaching unbroken forest into the distance, with a bluish haze on the horizon that may have been the lake.
"That's our end-of-the-day corner," Lauren said, noticing how my gaze stayed on the chairs in front of the window. "If we're here, no matter what, an hour before bedtime we both come up and read either until we get sleepy or, most often, until one of us decides jump on the other," she grinned.
I couldn't help but smile back even though I privately thought that was more information than I needed. "It's a beautiful room, large and airy," I said, wondering when she was going to show me what we'd come up here for.
"We knocked out two walls to make it," she said, looking around with clear pride. "This house used to have four bedrooms, but now it's just this one and the guest room next door, and both of them open onto the bathroom. With just us and the dogs we didn't need all of them."
I just looked at her silently, raising one brow meaningfully.
"Oh, all right, I'm putting it off," she admitted. "First of all, would you do a basic physical exam to verify that I'm a normal human being?"
"As opposed to what?" I said back unthinkingly. "An abnormal human being?"
"You'll see," she said with her earlier confidence.
"I didn't bring my bag," I said, "So I can only do a visual exam."
"I'm sure that'll be good enough," Lauren said, going over and sitting on the Shaker bench to toe off her fur-lined moccasins, showing bare feet. "Should I get totally undressed?"
"You can leave your underclothes on," I said, "And lay down on the bed."
A short time later I stood back and looked up at her after I'd put her through the reflex and basic sobriety tests. "Well, Lauren, you are about as normal a human woman as any I've seen. Is that what you wanted me to see? That you're not abnormal in any way?"
"It is," she said, standing in front of me. "Now I'll show you why. You'll want to move back a bit, and please, don't be scared or worried. No matter what you see, it's still me, my mind, inside it. Nothing is going to hurt you. I have to get totally undressed for this, just so you know why I'm stripping down."
As she put her hands behind her back to unhook her bra I stepped back towards the door and reached under my blazer to surreptitiously unsnap my holster. If nothing else, I had to admit that she was in amazing physical shape for her age, which I estimated to be in her early fifties, probably no older than fifty-two or -three. She was in better physical condition than I, very tightly muscled and toned. I knew she must work out for hours every day, probably ran and lifted weights, too, to--
I froze. Just a moment before Lauren had been standing naked in front of me, then before I could blink I thought I'd seen her melt and re-form, and now a huge light-colored wolf stood in front of me where she had been, its large splayed paws on top of her bra and panties.
Ho-lee shit, as Mulder would have said.
The wolf had long, thick silvery fur with a reddish tint along the back and on top of its—her?--head. The eyes were black-rimmed and slanted, a deep yellow with round pupils, and above the blunt black-nosed snout were two smallish, upright ears. I'd never been so close to a wolf before so I had no idea if she was usual-looking for that species or not, but a moment ago she'd been a perfectly normal human woman, that much was for sure.
Mulder was going to love this.
The wolf moved and I braced myself, pushing my blazer aside to show the gun. If it really was Lauren and not some kind of illusion she'd know to stop—and she did. Instead of coming any closer, she picked up the panties from the floor and carried them into the bathroom, coming nowhere near me, where I heard a click-clack and then she came back, doing the same with the bra. She then went to stand over by the fireplace and I stepped over to glance into the bathroom, my body still facing her and right hand hovering near my side, to see that she had put the underclothes in a three-quarter-full wicker hamper next to the sink that had its lid standing open and resting against the wall.
Jesus God.
I turned to her and said hesitantly, "Lauren?"
She nodded and sneezed, taking a few slow steps toward me. The wide yellow eyes were open and guileless, her tail straight out and body relaxed as best I could tell. Watching me the whole time she walked slowly to the door, then lifted one paw to point at the stairway.
I got it. Let's go downstairs. If Queequeg had been half this expressive I never would have had to try and figure out if he'd wanted food or to go outside. "Okay," I said, feeling indescribably odd in speaking to an animal that I knew could understand me, "But let me go down and explain to my partner first, all right? He may react far more violently than I did since he didn't see you... change."
Wolf-Lauren nodded again, then huffed out a breath through her nose and stepped back so I could go through the door first. I started into the hall, then a thought hit me and I turned back to say, "You can't speak when you're like that, can you?"
She gazed up at me with expressive, wide yellow eyes, then shook her head and sat down abruptly as if to say, you think?
"Sorry, silly question, I know. Let's let Mulder get a look at you, then if you'd be kind enough to turn back into a human I have a lot of questions for you."
She sneezed again, shaking her head. The thick silvery ruff around her neck shimmered and rippled, the long guard hairs waving. I took this to mean I bet you do. Then she pointed at the stairway again with one silvery-white paw.
"All right, I'm going," I said, still a bit uneasy about turning my back on her. But she'd pretty much proved to me that she wasn't going to hurt me, and I remembered her words from earlier as well. She seemed to understand the reaction people had when she turned into a huge, dangerous animal.
I went down the stairs to see Doc and Mulder now both sitting on the couch, a book on the cushions between them. My partner looked up and saw me, saying, "Hey Scully, check this out. Doc always keeps score when he watches a game and has most—are you all right?"
He must have seen my face clearly as I got closer, and I had no idea what my expression must have looked like. "Yeah, I am, but you're in for a big surprise."
Doc closed the thin book and set it on the end table atop a stack of similar ones. "Quite a shock, ain't it, Agent Scully? Imagine, the first time I saw her do that was in the middle of the forest when we'd been out searching for her all morning. I almost shit myself."
Mulder looked from Doc to me and back again. "Do what?"
"First, let me assure you that what you're about to see is not dangerous—I've been up there with her most of the time I was gone, so don't overreact."
He frowned at me. "Scully..."
I turned. "Lauren, come on down," I called, going to sit on the couch next to Mulder. His gun was on the other side, but he'd reach for it with the arm that was next to me so I was certain I could stop him if need be. I watched his face as the huge silvery wolf appeared at the top of the open stairs and slowly made her way down, watching him as closely as he was watching her. "Mulder, that's her, that's Lauren," I said with barely concealed excitement. "I watched her change. She's a werewolf."
"Shapechanger," Doc corrected me, leaning over so I could see him on the other side of my partner. "Trust me, she can do more than a wolf."
At that moment, it all clicked. Unfortunately, I was too busy watching Mulder to sort through it. I wondered if I'd looked as thunderstruck as he did, watching this huge silvery wolf come padding across the room towards us. She was panting, and I could see the huge teeth in her mouth which made me a bit nervous—but at this point I pretty much trusted her in wolf-form as much as the human version, which was just enough to not draw my weapon at the moment. The holster was still unsnapped, however.
She walked over to the side of the couch where Doc sat and he reached for her, wrapping one arm around her neck as she leaned up against him with her head in his lap. From their positions it was damn clear how much he trusted her; those gigantic teeth were right next to his crotch. Mulder was now leaning sideways away from her against me, totally unaware I'm certain, and still had not said a word. I couldn't see his face now, but I had no doubt it was still just as shocked.
"Mulder," I said, "say something. Anything."
"Shapeshifter," he drawled slowly.
"You were the one who thought that might be what it was," I agreed. "A little less flippant when faced with the reality, I see."
He turned to glare at me and we damn near bumped noses, we were so close. I was pinned against the arm of the couch by his big body and now gave his shoulder a shove. "Get off of me, Mulder, I think you can see by now that she's not going to attack you."
Lauren gave a little snort out of her nose and Doc laughed outright. "You're the first folks we've ever shown Lauren's ability to, so you'll have to excuse us," he said, giving the huge wolf another hug. "Don't mean to laugh at you, but it is pretty funny."
Mulder slowly sat up and took his weight off of me, though he didn't move any closer to Doc and Lauren. I got up and moved to one of the wing-back chairs, making no effort to hide my enjoyment at his discomfiture. "It's, uh, pretty startling," he finally said.
Doc looked down at her. "Mebbe you should turn back to human-form so we can talk," he said. "I don't think you'll need to be anything else. They're convinced."
She moved back a step or two and sneezed, then looked back and forth from Mulder to me as if wanting confirmation.
"Why can't she, uh, do it in front of me? I'm not going to shoot her if that's what you're afraid of," Mulder said.
"Clothes," I said.
"She's naked--" Doc said at the same time, then waved a hand for me to continue.
"She has to undress first, her clothes don't change with her," I explained, tipping my head to Doc in thanks. "That's why she had me go up there with her."
Lauren let out a huff that wasn't quite a bark, then pointed a paw at me. "You want me to come up there with you again?" I said, and she nodded and trotted off towards the stairs before pausing to look back at me.
I raised my eyebrows over at Mulder as I got out of the chair. "Back in a few."
Upstairs, I watched again as Lauren turned from wolf to human woman, so fast that I could barely follow the transformation. "Whew, that gets frustrating, not being able to talk," she said, standing naked and relaxed at the foot of her bed but not making a move to get dressed. "Would you like to see a couple others? Here's a puma, though I don't do it often."
As I watched, she transformed again, this time into an unbelievably large mountain lion. But she just stood there looking at me with large round yellow eyes, the tip of her thick, heavy tail twitching. Then she was Lauren again.
I couldn't say a word.
"Panther?"
A great black cat stood there, and even at this distance I could see the faint spots in its jet coat.
Then Lauren was standing there saying, "How about the Bigfoot that's had everyone up in arms the last few weeks and brought you here?" She grinned, then there was what looked like the blurry photos I'd seen of Bigfoot standing in front of me—but different somehow. I noted that the creature was smaller than Lauren, about my height, but much more massive and muscular if just as hairy as I'd imagined.
Then she stood before me again, and sank down on the side of the bed. "Whew, that wears a girl out," she said with a weak grin at me. "I don't think I've ever done all of those one after another like that."
"Let me examine you again," I said, and she scooted back on the bed and laid down. I found her heartbeat elevated and probably her blood pressure as well though I couldn't really tell without a cuff, her pupils normal. I palpitated her body and found nothing different than I had the first time, or unusual for a normal human woman. She said she felt no pain or soreness and watching her face as I manipulated her muscles, had to admit that it appeared to be that way.
As she went to a dresser and chose fresh underclothes I asked, "Does it hurt to transform like that?"
"No, it just kind of tingles, like when your foot falls asleep and you have to stamp it on the floor to wake it up," she said, stepping into a pair of plain blue panties. She, like I, was a natural redhead. "But holy God and sunny Jesus, does it make me hungry! I hope Doc remembered to make me something to eat, because I could tuck away an entire cow at this point—and he knows it."
Again I was impressed by her physical shape; I don't think I've seen such a perfectly muscled human being in all my life nor will I ever again. "How often do you transform?" I couldn't resist asking even though it really had nothing to do with this "case" and was perhaps a bit of a too-personal question. But she didn't seem to mind and offered an answer immediately.
"Before the last couple weeks? Maybe once every few months, if I even thought about it," she said, although I noticed that she kept her eyes averted as she stepped into jeans. "For a while last fall we had a fisher raiding the henhouse and I took wolf form to dispose of him, but before that I think it wasn't since mid-summer if I remember correctly."
"Why before the last couple weeks?" I asked as she buttoned up her faded-almost-white men's denim shirt.
She looked over at me, surprised. "Because to bring you and your partner here, I let at least a dozen people see me in wolf or Bigfoot-form. I didn't exactly kill Kneese's cow, but I did eat it—I was pretty damn hungry at the time and since it was already sick and going to die, I figured it was a good stunt to grab attention.
"C'mon, Agent Scully, I have to eat, and eat soon," she said with a worried look on her face, heading for the doorway.
I caught her edge of desperation and stepped between her and the doorway. "Why is that, Lauren?" I asked, leaning against the jamb.
She snorted and looked meaningfully into my eyes, causing me to step aside. "Because unless you want to deal with a real wolf, one that doesn't have me inside it, we must needs fuel the beast."