Read Online Helix: Plague of Ghouls by Pat Flewwelling - Free Book Online

Ishmael said. “Whatever I’ve got—”
    Shuffle dropped his hammer between them. “Do they know yet?” Shuffle asked, a little too loudly. “About Holly and Foster?” He was gazing over Ishmael’s head again.
    Holly came up from the riverbank and went toward Dep. She kept her distance, and her weight was on the balls of her feet, as if she was ready to dodge and flee at the first loud noise. Ishmael couldn’t hear the words, but he could hear her voice. She was keeping the conversation light. Dep nodded and replied, then said something that made her laugh.
    “No, they don’t know,” Ishmael said. “And Wyrd will never hear it from me.”
    Shuffle seemed to deflate and change his mind about whatever he was going to say next. “Well . . . Thank you for that, I guess. I’ve never seen Holly stay out for so long. Usually something sets her off, and she’s back to being Foster again. If that happens here, they’ll interrogate her, analyze her day and night, force her to shift back and forth between forms . . . And try everything in their power to replicate what she can do.”
    Holly gave Dep a quick, light hug before leaving him to his work. Upon seeing her old friend Shuffle, her face lit up. Shuffle smiled, bending his beard. He opened his arms. She fell into his embrace like she was hugging an enormous Plushie prize at a carnival. He mock-growled as he rocked her back and forth, nearly pulling her off her feet. She stepped back, but held his hubcap hands. “How are you?” she asked. She went inside the half-built hut, but turned at the doorway and tossed the jangling, gleaming keys to Ishmael, saying, “It’s just down the hill.”
    Ishmael could take a hint. He and Dr. Grey were allies, but Shuffle and Holly were pack mates. Family. He wasn’t. Besides, he had to get up to the main house sometime. He kicked a stone out of his path.
    Dep was at his workstation a short distance away, sawing under the construction lamp. “Hey.”
    “Hey,” Ishmael answered.
    Dep cut through another piece of wood. He unclamped one of the two halves. “You get much snow out ’ere?” His accent was as thick as ever. Maybe a little worse, now that his teeth were longer and his tongue slower. Ishmael didn’t have to look into Dep’s mouth to confirm what Shuffle had said. He could tell by the change in Dep’s facial profile that eye teeth were making his upper and lower lips bulge. That can’t be good, Ishmael thought. Most lycanthropes could hide their vestigial fangs behind a straight face. Dep couldn’t hide those fang-impressions under a brown paper bag. He’ll have to grow a beard , Ishmael thought, but that made him think of Gerard Depardieu with a sagging handlebar moustache, and he decided that a brown paper bag would be more flattering.
    “Snow in the swamp?” Ishmael asked. “Or in general?”
    Dep shrugged a shoulder. “Trying to decide ’ow much insulation we’re gonna need.”
    “The Hollow is sheltered from the worst of it.” He pointed to the nearby hills, which stood between them and the prevailing wind.
    Dep unclamped the other half of the sawn board, set the two pieces aside, and began work on a new plank.
    “Shelves?”
    “Yeah,” Dep answered. “To keep da stuff off the floor—since we don’t ’ave a floor.”
    “Cool,” Ishmael said, nodding. “That’s cool.”
    He didn’t know if he should offer to help or what. Dep seemed to take pride and pleasure in his work. At Wyndham Farms, they had nothing more than a handmade hammer and a few salvaged nails to play with, but Dep worked with his carpenter square with ease and confidence. Dep was young—he’d been a teenager and very human when he’d been abducted to Wyndham Farms—but his motions seemed guided by years of practice. Apprenticeship, maybe? A hobby, before all this started?
    A bird flitted into the lamp glow and dive-bombed Dep’s collar. He laughed and the bird flew off. Ishmael smiled and watched the bird wheel