Divided

The Wolf Serum

It was a bad dream. This is what Zoe repeated to herself as she was released from the hospital. She needed a vacation. Time away from the animals. She need a boyfriend, is what Bob had told her when he drove her home.

She need Wofly. She asked Bob about him, and Bob said a veterinarian who specialized in Wild Wolves came to took Wofly away to heal him, then release him to the wild. Zoe was to stay away from wolves for a while.

“You have a month off,” Bob told her. “I don’t want to see you near the sanctuary.”

She couldn’t believe this. The sanctuary was her life, she loved those animals. She loved Wolfy and now he was gone, and it was her fault. She should have just kept quiet about what she saw and taken care of Wolfy herself, then seen if he was still a man.

A man.

And what a man he was, if her memory served her right. He was tall, over six feet, long straggly dark blonde hair, beautiful chiseled face, and the eyes. Zoe closed her eyes. Soft brown, loving eyes. His body was very pleasant to look at too. It was if he had stepped off a cover of a romance novel. The type old married women dreamed of. She shook her head. He must have been a dream.

Once she was in the hospital, she kept quiet about what she had seen. She didn’t want to seem as crazy as she felt. But she knew what she saw, that this Jake person was her Wolfy.

“Zoe?” Bob repeated, Zoe turned and looked at her partner, and son of the main benefactor of the sanctuary. “I talked my father into not firing you, but you have to take time off. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Bobby, I do,” Zoe said with a smile. She wanted to slap him. He was the one person she told, then she was locked up. “You’re right, I’m just tried. I became too attached to that wild animal. It will be good when he’s back in the wild.” She reached over and gave Bob a hug. “Thank you for taking me home, I’ll talk to you in a couple days.”

“Okay, Zoe, you take care,” Bob said as he watched her get out of the car and walk towards her building. 

Zoe turned and waved to Bob as he drove off. She then turned and headed her apartment building.  Her head hurt from the medication they had given her. She had to see a psychiatrist weekly, or should would be locked back up.

Was it a dream? She wondered again. That’s what she told the doctors, she was tired, and over worked.  She could never tell anyone the truth. She went into her apartment and sat down in a chair. She looked over at the picture she had of her and Wolfy on her bookcase.

She stood up and walked over to it, looking closely at the picture of the wolf. His eyes weren’t yellow in the picture. They were light brown, like the man who came out of the water, who turned into Wolfy.

Werewolf.

She sat down holding the picture. She closed her eyes and tried to remember what he had said. His name was Jake, he was a Beta in the Northern Wolf Pack. She took out her phone and type that name into google. Wolf sanctuaries and help groups popped up, and different descriptions of wolves. She continued to scroll. Her eyes were almost blurry when she reached the last page, and saw a link to a f*******: post.

She clicked on it, which lead her to an old group from 2007, on whether werewolves were real. They listed different pack names, including the Northern Wolf Pack.  There was a contact name beside the pack name, of someone who was supposed to be their Alpha. Johnathan Rycroft.

She typed that name into google, discovered he was a rich business man, who owned one of the largest lumber mills in Northern Canada. He had died 10 years ago, leaving everything to his son Steven. She looked up his name, found nothing but an email linked to the Northern Pack Lumber Mill.

She put down her phone. She was going crazy. This was not real. The doctor’s had agreed with her that she was just tired, and stressed out from work, and it caused her to have a waking dream.  She wanted to believe that, but she didn’t.

She saved Steven’s email info, and went to bed.

The next morning, she called Bob to try and find out where Wolfy had gone. She told him she wasn’t able to relax if she didn’t know what the wolf was okay. Bob gave her the name of the Veterinarian. Dr. Anthony Siino. She thanked him then hung up. She knew that name.

She pulled out her discharge papers from the hospital. The doctor who signed her in, Dr. A. Siino. She got a chill down her back. Wolfy was in trouble.

**********

 The Alpha of the Northern Wolf Pack paced his office. His Luna was sitting on the couch watching him. 

“It’s been a year, Jessica, where could he be?” Steven asked as he sat down in his desk chair. Ever since Jake had run out of the hospital, he’d be trying to find him. There was no sign of him, under either of his names. It was like he disappeared.

“Maybe he found himself a cabin like his father had?” The Luna said. The Alpha grunted. He had woken up a few days ago with a vivid dream of Jake, being taken somewhere, in pain. His friend needed him, he had to find him.

“It’s my fault,” Steven said. He let Ella be taken away, encouraged Jake to reject her. Bought his father here, as if to rub it in his face. He blamed himself. “I should have kept Ella and Jake here, where they were safe. We don’t even know where Ella is, or if she….”

Dr. Siino had stopped sending updates a few month ago, when he said she was too far gone to connect with her wolf. He said he was giving her medication to keep her wolf away, so she could live life as a human. He never contacted them, or returned their calls after that.

“It’s like he’s the bad guy in the story,” Jessica said.

“Bad guy…” Steven repeated as he turned on his computer. “Jesus, Jess, this isn’t a crappy movie. This is our life!”

“Which can have bad guys,” Jessica said.  She watched as her husband frowned at the computer screen. “What is it?”

“This email was just forwarded to me from the office, it came in under our generic info email...” Steven trailed off as he read the email again.

Dear Mr. Rycroft,

I hope this won’t seem to weird, but I’m wondering if you have a man on your staff whose name is Jake, his position in the company might be beta? I think he’s in trouble, if you know who he is. You can called me if this makes sense.

Thank you, Zoe Johnson

Manger, Northern Pike Animal Sanctuary.

“I think we found Jake,” he called Jessica over to look at the email. They looked up the address, and found it was seven hours away.

“Grab your passport, we are going on a trip.” Steven ordered. He called two Beta’s, and within an hour, they were in a SUV, headed to America.

**********

Dr. Anthony Siino sat in his office, going through some emails. He stopped at the email he received a few days ago, from an old friend, who said his son was working with a woman who was claiming one of the rescued wolves at his animal sanctuary was a man.

Dr. Siino had replied that he would come look at the wolf, since his old friend thought him a simple veterinarian. He leaned back in his chair and smiled. His new colleagues thought he was a psychiatrist, little did they know he had no medical degree what so ever. Overall, he was a just a mad scientist, and that made him giggle to himself.

He stood up and walked over to windows in his office. When he was a child he had been lost in a forest, and another boy had helped him. This child turned out to be a werewolf. They became friends, and Anthony had kept his secret. When his friend was 14, he shifted for the first time. Anthony had become obsessed. Every time they were alone, he wanted his friend to shift.

When they were in university, Anthony decided he wanted to be a werewolf too, but wanted to have more control. His friend told him the only way humans could become a werewolf was if they mated with a werewolf. So Anthony told him to mate with him. He friend refused, saying it only works if he was his mate, and he defiantly wasn’t, since his mate was a young girl in his pack.

This made Anthony mad, and he decided he would figure out another way to become a werewolf.

It took just over five years to finish University, find a job in a science lab, and marry a rich young woman, who died giving birth to their child, the child had died too, leaving Anthony with her large fortune, since her parents had died in a car accident just a month before.

After her death, he set himself up a personal lab in the basement of the manor where they had lived.  Once he was ready, he called his friend, crying that he was so lonely without his wife that he didn’t know how he could continue living.

His good friend since childhood, came over right away. They opened a bottle of wine, and drank the night away, sharing memories of growing up. Near the end, Anthony bought out a bottle of 12 year old Scotch, he poured a shot for his friend, and one for himself. They toasted each other, then his friend drank his down. Anthony did not.

Soon his friend was passed out on the carpet.

The next day his friend’s wife came looking for him, but was told he went home that night, there was even footage of his car driving away. The car was never found, and his friend was never seen by his family again.

Anthony started his experiment the next night. He managed to discover the Wolf Gene, and extracted it from his new Lab Rat, or Lab Wolf. With a couple tweaks he made it into a liquid, ready for human testing.

That’s when people started disappearing in the local area. They would show up dead and mangled weeks later. Some looked like they had been attacked by an animal.  Anthony showed up to his job every day just like normal. He would come home and do his experiments.

Soon the death toll had grown to 20 people, the police started to searching everyone’s house in the local area.  Anthony knew he would be found out shortly. He took the Wolf Gene Serum, and all his research, bought a ticket for America, and flew out of Italy before the police raided his house and found his laboratory.

He changed his name, bought some false degrees, and started working as a Pack doctor. He hid the fact that he was not a real werewolf. His Wolf Serum hadn’t worked correctly, it gave him a weak sickly wolf, who was not strong enough to shift, but it gave him the smell of a werewolf, and that was all he needed.

He quietly kept experimenting on werewolves. He wanted to rid himself of his failed wolf, then try again. He soon discovered, that he could separate the Wolf Gene completely, making the wolf part and human part separate. Two different strains of DNA in one body. It sometimes happened naturally. They called it a Mind Split. He needed to find out know more. He found some older wolves who had this happen, and had gone crazy. It was easy enough to experiment on them, since they were crazy anyway.

He bought an old Mental Hospital, and upgraded it, to be a new Psychiatric Hospital, for both wolves and humans. He quietly continued his experiments there. Since the wolves he was working on were old and crazy, it was almost impossible to see how they would react. He need a young subject with a mind split.

When he heard about the girl in the Northern Wolf Pack, he went there right away. She was perfect. A perfect example. They pack was so eager to help her, they never even questioned his motives.

Within a few months he had perfected the separation. He successfully killed the wolf in Ella, and was working on doing it to other wolves. When he was contacted about the wolf at the Northern Pike Animal Sanctuary, he figured his was a good subject to test on, since no one knew who he was.

He easily showed up as a Vet, took the wolf and bought him back to the hospital. He forced him to turn, and to his surprise it was the mate of Ella. He first gave him the Wolf Gene suppressing serum, he had to make sure the wolf was very weak, before killing him, and making him human.