Page 8 of The Devil on my Chest

“I am sorry. I didn’t mean to cause you any further distress.” Doctor Nelson sighed and rubbed his hand over his face. “I’ve had no sleep, waiting on results from the lab about the bloods, and responses from a few of my colleagues who are familiar with curses as well. But first, I need to ask, have your friends heard anything more about where Rocky came from – his original pack.”

Mal glanced at Rocky who was focused on the doctor. “There was an email waiting for me this morning,” he said quietly. “Simon managed to track that lead with help from our council friends. Doc, our doctor in Arrowtown, sent Rocky’s blood to a contact he had at the Shifter Council, and they matched it… to samples taken from a cadaver. That’s a dead end, literally a dead end.”

Rocky stuck his nose under Mal’s elbow, but not all the way. It was as if he was hiding his eyes. “Hey,” Mal said softly. “It’s all right. You’re here with me and we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“It was the Shiloh Luna Pack, wasn’t it?”

Mal looked up to meet the doctor’s eyes. Doctor Nelson already knew. He nodded.

“That fits.” The doctor stabbed his paper with his finger. “That absolutely fits with my hypothesis that Rocky was cursed before he met you. The whole pack was. This is incredible.”

Doctor Nelson looked so exceptionally happy, but Mal didn’t see why. “According to Simon’s email, that whole pack died, Doctor. Every single pack member from the alpha to the smallest child died within a year,” he snapped. His wolf could sense Rocky’s distress. “Is it any wonder Rocky never told me where he came from? I don’t know the details…”

“But I do. I studied this case decades ago, and I can only blame the passing of time for not remembering that pack situation when you first came in,” Doctor Nelson said. “And I’m sorry if this is causing Rocky distress but those details are important. They could be the key to freeing Rocky from his curse now.”

“Simon didn’t have any other details, or at least he never gave me any.” Mal blinked suddenly as his vision blurred. “What happened to that pack was decades ago…”

“Back when Rocky would’ve been a child, yes. His survival is genuinely a miracle.” Doctor Nelson referred to his notes. “According to what the Shifter Council learned, the alpha of the Shiloh Luna Pack was an arrogant SOB who was trying to take over the land owned by a small coven. Witches, not vampires. They conducted a ritual and cursed the entire pack, the main focus being that for as long as the wolves stayed on their lands they would all die out. The alpha didn’t believe in curses and he and his enforcers killed the whole coven, but then his pack members started to die off.”

Mal latched onto the one shred of information that killed his hope. “If the alpha killed the coven that laid the curse, then there’s no one to break the curse for Rocky now.” He couldn’t even look at the poor wolf, not wanting to show his tears.

“I’m sorry, that was clumsy of me,” Doctor Nelson said quickly. “That case was a long time ago and to find a survivor of that curse now… From an academic perspective it’s fascinating.”

“While realistically, it’s a death sentence for Rocky and me, if we’re mates as you claim. I won’t survive Rocky’s death, and you said yourself if he stays in wolf form, he’ll lose his humanity. You can be as fascinated as you like, but forgive me if I’m not happy dancing about it.”

Mal’s heart broke. He thought his heart had broken before, every time Rocky went out for the night, but sitting in the bland hospital room, knowing there was no hope for his dearest friend, was more than Mal could stand. Flinging his arms around Rocky’s neck, he couldn’t have stopped the tears if he tried.

Chapter Six

“Mal…Mal…please, you have to listen to me. We can break this curse. You and Rocky just have to work together on this.”

Doctor Nelson’s words broke through Mal’s pain, although it might have also been Rocky who was trying to get on his lap, and he was far too big a wolf for that.

“Rocky, it’s fine. It’s fine.” Mal gave the wolf a push on his solid chest. “You can’t get on my lap, there’s not enough room.”

Mal sniffed, wiping over his wet face with his hand. “I don’t see how we can break the curse,” he said through his sniffs. “You said yourself we had to know where the curse came from to be able to break it, but I assumed that meant we needed that person who cast the curse to remove it.”

“Fortunately curses do have a little more wiggle room than that,” Doctor Nelson said. “Every curse, by nature of its construction, has an out clause – a condition that has to be met that will automatically break the curse.”

“All right.” It’s not like Mal knew anything about curses. “I still don’t understand. If Rocky’s been cursed since he was a child, then why did his condition only get worse decades later.”

“You said it yourself, it was after he tracked down Theodore Western, who’d abducted your friend Simon. I checked the case notes on that tragic business, and Western was dabbling in magic. There’s no way of knowing when he traded his lion for a demon and allowed himself to be possessed, but there are frequent mentions of magic and witches in that case.”

Mal nodded. “Rocky was one of the ones who stayed with Western while he was waiting for his plane to arrive.”

“If we can imagine that Western was more than pissed off at having his plans thwarted, we can also assume the words ‘I’ll curse you,’ passed his lips more than once.”

Rocky whined and nodded.

“And that’s what we call a retrigger.” Doctor Nelson was fond of pointing his finger. Mal imagined him doing it in a lecture hall, probably chastising students who weren’t paying attention. “Rocky couldn’t be recursed, and indeed the chances of any curses yelled by an angry shifter who was pissed off at not getting his own way actually working are slim to none. But you saw yourself how Rocky, the human side, was impacted when he tried to even say the word. That’s a failsafe from the original curse, designed to prevent the person cursed from ever mentioning it to anyone later.”

“All right.” That all made sense to Mal so far, although he still wasn’t hearing any answers. “So if we assume that Rocky was cursed as part of a pack curse, and then someone, presumably a relative in the pack, believed enough in the curse to drive or convince Rocky to leave the pack grounds, because that’s where the curse effects were the strongest...and then, what? He lives with the curse, with no apparent side effects until his curse is retriggered by a man with an angry attitude?”

“Pretty much. As I said, Theodore’s curses wouldn’t have had any effect on anyone in the normal course of affairs. Think of it like a road rage incident where the person was already speeding off miles into the distance. The words are heard, but the effect is negligible beyond leaving you with a headache. But because Rocky was already cursed, he would’ve been negatively impacted by the words, as you saw when he tried to say it. From the notes you gave me, it seemed Rocky was shifting less and less after that time, was that about right?”

Mal nodded. “I remember he shifted to help out Deputy Joe against another buffalo shifter, and that was after the Western mess. But thinking back, once Cam’s mate Fergus came into town – he’s a baker – all Rocky cared about from then on was sweet foods. He might have shifted a couple of times, but only when there was a definite threat or need to.”

“Which all fits with what has been recorded about that specific curse.” Doctor Nelson referred to his notes again. “What we know about the original curse is that it hit the wolves on pack grounds the hardest – that was the intent of the original wording. We can only assume that the alpha kept everyone there, even once his packmates started dying, because he was determined not to lose face with his pack.

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