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sound of his voice echo. George was hard of hearing, or at least he had been last time Frenzy had seen him. A pack of feral dogs had caught wind of his noxious odor and pounced, ripping off both ears before George had been able to fend them off.
    Shifters could heal. Normally. But after George had been exiled from the pack, his ability to heal himself had dwindled down to almost nil. Most of the magic a shifter boasted came from the combined efforts of the pack. A lone wolf was truly at the mercy of the world.
    Goddess, it was almost a crime what Lise was asking him to do to Mila. As much as he despised mortals, turning something into a hybrid was plain cruel. There were so few cases of hybrids he could recall, and most of them had died grisly deaths because it was never a sure thing what a hybrid would become. It would gain either the best traits of both creatures or the worst, and you could never know from the onset. The few he’d known of had died due to the madness that’d infiltrated their brains from the moment they’d woken.
    Studying a hybrid was difficult because in order to create one the circumstances had to be just right. Once you were turned vampire, or shifter, or even zombie, that was all you could ever be. A hybrid was created right at the moment of death. When life hung precariously between the two, the infinitesimal period was the only time to have it happen. Which meant you had to have two willing and opposite monsters turn the kill at the exact same moment.
    George’s bite would come several minutes after the vampires; granted, Lise had placed the woman in stasis, so perhaps there was still a chance that she was fresh enough to become the hybrid Lise required her to be.
    If he had to guess why Lise wished it to be George who bit her, his guess was that unlike vampires, shifters still retained their souls. Meaning, while the “raw meat” obsession was strong in them, so was their desire to retain their humanity. They weren’t mindless killers, unless, of course, in life they’d been soulless monsters to begin with.
    A shuffling drag came at Frenzy from the left. Turning, he inclined his head at his old friend.
    George stopped ten paces in front of him. The grizzled wolf looked nearly the same as he had last time Frenzy had been around him.
    Most of his parts were where they should be. It looked like something had maybe taken a nibble off the tip of his hawkish nose, and his skin was a slightly grayish pallor, but that was to be expected when the shifter refused to go aboveground. Extremely pale blue eyes sat in a face that never failed to remind Frenzy of the priest George had once been. There was an open and honest look about the man that made a person instantly want to trust him. Frenzy had no way of knowing just how far the desiccation of George had advanced since last he’d seen him because the priest had covered his body in a monk’s brown robe.
    Shoving a lock of dull gray hair out of his eyes, George lifted a brow.
    “Should I thank you for the offering?” His English lilt was still very much evident, as was the sibilance of his s . As long as Frenzy had known him George had always had a slight lisp.
    The cave smelled strongly of elderberry and pine, thanks to the pine needles and berries scattered throughout the cave floor. Clearly the wolf was trying to mask the sickly sweet odor of his body from scavenging predators. Without a pack to help protect him, George was in a very vulnerable position.
    “You should know, death, I don’t eat humans anymore. I find them very gamey, if it’s all the same to you. Though I thank you for your kindness.”
    Chuckling, Frenzy nodded. George had been a vegetarian when he’d first met him as a human all those years ago and had never eaten a human so far as he knew. Well, he was vegetarian by shifter standards—which basically meant he ate any meat that wasn’t of the Homo sapiens variety. “I’ll remember that.” Searching the room for a bench