The Better to Hold You by Alisa Sheckley Page B

mind.
    “Officially, I’m not.” Malachy shambled over to a computer that looked at least ten years old. “But I couldn’t just abandon my work to a bunch of incompetent wankers, now could I?” He tapped a few keys and an image came up on the screen: the familiar image of human DNA, a double helix. “Do you know that human chromosome 17 shares linkage with canid chromosome 23?”
    I shook my head. “Not specifically, no.” I knew we were all mammals, and that we shared a common ancestor if you went back far enough, but I’d never delved too deeply into genetics.
    Malachy tapped out a key and a segment of DNA removed itself, turned upside down, and then was reinserted. “This suggests that at some point, there was a mutation—an inversion, probably.”
    Behind me, the Dalmatian growled as it fought off the effects of its sedation. “Dr. Knox,” I said, trying to call his attention to the animal.
    “But wait. Look what happens when you reshuffle a few more genes.” On screen, the DNA began to shift and recombine. “There you go—the sequence for canid DNA.”
    “But that’s at the genetic level,” I said, suddenly grasping his point.
    “Exactly,” said Malachy. “I always suspected that the lycanthropy virus could affect cell function, and I surmised that there might even be some shift at the level of the nuclear DNA, so that one cell would start looking and acting like another kind of cell. But it took me a while to understand that the change was taking place in the mitochondrial DNA.”
    I looked at Malachy, suddenly wondering if, in fact, his illness was muddling his brain. “If you’re telling me that my husband could have been infected with this virus, I’d like to know exactly what you think that means.” Because at the moment, every werewolf movie I’d ever seen was running through my head, ending, disconcertingly, with an image of my husband turning into Jack Nicholson.
    Malachy raised his eyebrows. “My dear girl, that is what I’m trying to find out. No one knows precisely how mitochondrial and nuclear DNA interact, but clearly, it’s complex. All I can say is, there’s a genetic factor, and then there’s an environmental factor. But I do think it would make sense for your husband to pay me a little visit.”
    I could just imagine how that suggestion would go over. “I don’t think—” I began, but we were interrupted by a long moan from the Dalmatian.
    “Blast. I’d better check on him. What I really need, of course, is a pure wolf specimen.” Malachy knelt down awkwardly to open the cage door, and before I could react, the Dalmatian rushed him, snarling and going for the throat. I tried to reach for the animal’s legs, to pull him up off-balance, but I couldn’t move fast enough. I could see blood, and Malachy’s hands were raised, trying to block the dog’s head.
    “Telazol,” Malachy shouted, “in the fridge.” I opened the small refrigerator, grabbed the syringe, and plunged it into the dog’s flank. The Dalmatian lashed its neck to the right, releasing Malachy as it reacted to me, the new threat. Growling, the Dalmatian curled its upper lip as it prepared to pounce.
    “Oh God,” I said, knowing the sedative was not going to take effect in time. And then the dog was on me, his front paws pressing down on my shoulders, and I couldn’t help it: I closed my eyes. There was a sharp crack, and I screamed as the full weight of the dog came down on my chest. I looked up, and there was Malachy looming over me, except that for a confused second he didn’t look like Malachy at all. His eyes seemed to glow with an eerie, phosphorescent blue-green light, and he looked bigger, wilder, stronger, his arms grotesquely attenuated, as if he had stretched them out from across the room to break the Dalmatian’s neck.
    But that’s impossible, I thought, and then I passed out.
    “Jesus,” someone said.
    “Is she bleeding?”
    I was wondering the same thing myself as I came back