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those even real?”
    Sam, Derek and I all had similar reactions of shock, but the other three men in the room didn’t feel surprised at all.
    Father Patrick pursed his lips, ignoring my comment. "What would a lycanthrope be doing here?"
    "I don't know," Ryder said. "But we’ll find out."
    Derek started nodding. "That's why I couldn't smell a shifter. I’d of course heard myths of werewolves growing up, but we never believed they existed."
    Father Patrick frowned, still distant. “This isn’t typical behavior for them.” He looked at the Bishop, his voice controlled but firm. "You and your people had better deal with this.”
    "We will.” Bishop Sarlo stood, with Ryder following. "We will return in a few days with our belongings."
    My own anger finally boiled to the top, at least I thought it was my own. I was still learning to separate other people’s energy from my own, and there was enough anger, fear and anxiety in the room to make anyone lose their cool. I pushed to my feet and faced the intruders. “You can’t just come in here and take over. You can’t control us.”
    Ryder stepped in front of me, a foot taller than me. Few people were able to tower over me in this way. “You’d better hope you’re wrong about that. Because if you can’t be controlled, you’ll be destroyed.”
    Derek and I could have taken them and ended this right then, but Father Patrick gave us that look he has, and we both reined our emotions in as the Bishop and Ryder left, shutting the door behind them.
    The tension in the room deflated, but the anger still filled me. I spun on Father Patrick. “You’re just going to let them take control like that? Threaten us like that?”
    "Of course not," Father Patrick said. "But we must tread carefully. They are very powerful."
    Derek laughed without humor. "More powerful than us?"
    Father Patrick nodded. "Lycans," he said, his voice low, "are all leaders in the Catholic Church."

S EVEN
     
You Are Not Fit
     
R OSE
     

     
     
    If your mind dislike any thing, obey it. I will forestall their
    repair hither, and say you are not fit.
    — William Shakespeare, Hamlet
     
     
    I UNDERSTOOD CURTIS' grief. He felt like he failed his cousin, but I wasn’t convinced he could have done anything to make things better. We drove in silence, the GPS giving us directions to the next victim’s house.
    Curtis opened the newspaper, rereading the article about Phoenix Allen, a young woman who had died too young. “Do you think her brother, Billy, really saw what did this?”
    The news reports had been vague, and Billy didn’t look like the most reliable witness in the television news clips, with his skinny tattoo-covered arms and rotten teeth indicative of a meth user. Still, we didn’t learn much from Mr. and Mrs. Barley, so we had to follow every lead no matter how hopeless it might look. We couldn't let any more people die.
    “I’m not sure. Maybe. We’ll know soon enough.” We pulled in to another run-down lot, but this didn’t look like the last house, worn by years of owners too old to put the work into maintaining it. This was a doublewide trailer with beer cans littering the front yard. A huge German shepherd barked at us the moment we left the car and approached the door, lunging at us until the chain choked it, pulling it back with a whine.
    That didn’t stop the dog from barking. In another life I would have been scared, but I wasn’t that timid little witch anymore. I let my inner wolf blaze in my eyes and stared down the dog, growling until it whined and dropped to all fours, rolling on his back in a submissive pose.
    I scratched his head as Curtis looked on wide-eyed. “That’s badass," he said. "I wish I could do that.”
    Adrenaline from the wolf pumped through me, and I smiled. “It is pretty badass.”
    Billy opened the door and glared at us. “What the hell do you want?” He noticed his dog, panting in joy under my belly rubs. “What the hell did you do to