The hospitals were calling it Acute Idiopathic Rabies-Like Syndrome, or at least they were the last time Idessa checked the news. For a good while, the doctors had thought there was a genuine rabies outbreak in the city--two weeks ago, public service announcements had warned against bringing pets outside longer than absolutely necessary, and veterinarians had been swamped with demands to test every animal brought to a clinic or animal hospital. It wasn't to last, however; eventually physicians and politicians alike had realized the negative rabies tests weren't flukes.

It was then, of course, that the real trouble began.

The symptoms on the face of it seemed neurological: people so afflicted would complaint of insomnia, a restless energy that didn't abate with exercise, alcohol, or sleeping pills. After a day or so, they would grow irritable, snappish, and easily distracted. A fever would begin to grow with a mounting sense of anger and aggression. The fever rose; prefrontal cortex activity declined.

By the end, they lost language. They lost thought, and base recognition, and love. They were animals, and less than animals. The curse turned them into twisted parodies of animals, howling monsters fit only to haunt ER floors and nightmares. Idessa would have been impressed with her brother's handiwork, if the mere thought didn't turn her stomach.

"What's his name?" Malina asked. Her voice was very quiet, and her eyes were fixed on the glass window looking into the hospital room. There was very little to see, though the space was very well lit; a heart monitor in the corner spat out readings no medical professional would call healthy, a bedside table with flowers.

Strapped to the hospital bed, however, was a man in his early sixties. He was one of Dr. Yu's regular patients, with the doughy, comfortable body of a lifelong accountant. His hair was gray and thinning. Idessa remembered a smiling face lined from labor and laughter alike, a set of family members who occasionally accompanied him on his visits to the clinic.

His smiling eyes were wide and rolling now. His hair was plastered to his scalp or pillow with sweat, and red marks from where he strained at the straps lined his wrists. Muscles unused to any labor beyond lifting his grandchildren into the air twisted and bulged as he writhed.

"Idessa. His name."

Idessa blinked out of her reverie. Malina's face was hard as she watched the man. "Bernard LaRusso. He's been here for two days now. Smashed the windshield of someone who cut him off in traffic with his bare hands. Took three cops to bring him in from what I heard."

"Why isn't he sedated?"

"He is. Whatever Keegan did to him, it's metabolizing the drug faster than should be possible. The doctors don't dare to give him any more. It's the same with the others."

Malina closed her eyes and tilted her head to the side. "I hear it. I hear him all over that man."

It took Idessa a moment to realize what Malina meant. Magical senses were a funny thing, and no one processed them in quite the same way. To Idessa, magic was scent; she could identify a spellcaster by the complex odors of their enchantment. Malina, meanwhile, described her magic sense as music, everyone with their own leitmotif, sorceries as variations upon a theme. Idessa closed her eyes and inhaled through her nose: antiseptic and air freshener were categorized and dismissed, Malina's characteristic lilacs-and-old-books aura was only to be expected, but beneath it all was something else.

"Fur and blood. It's Keegan for sure." Idessa wasn't sure why the words hurt so much to say. After all, she had known it was him for days now, and said as much earlier. She hadn't been expecting Malina to disagree with her, and yet...

"You'll need to knock him out," Malina stated, businesslike tone a little harder than was strictly professional. "I can't fight him and the curse at the same time. What you can spare in terms of power I would appreciate loaning to me. This isn't going to be easy."

Idessa nodded, then a thought occurred to her. "How long will it take? I told the nurses you're his niece, but we can't linger too long or make too much noise without drawing attention."

"The noise won't be an issue. I've been soundproofing rooms since I was thirteen." Malina's brows furrowed. "The vitals might be an issue, though. Can you keep him stable while I work? We don't want to draw the nurses if his heart rate spikes to dangerous levels. Or worse, just kill him outright."

"I'll keep him alive. Just focus on the curse. If anyone can break it, it's you."

Malina nodded, accepting the praise as her due while keeping her eyes on Bernard. Idessa placed her hand on the door handle and murmured a short sentence in a language once spoken by skalds and storm-gods. The lock clicked open, and the two of them entered without another word.

No sooner had they stepped through the door than Idessa's stomach roiled at the stench of sweat, blood, and fur. Bernard LaRusso's eyes rolled and locked on her, mouth twisting in an awful snarl. In the corner, the vital signs spiked; blood pressure and heart rate skyrocketed, and the monitor beeped a warning--

It really needn't have bothered. In a flash, Idessa was beside the bed and pressing a hand to LaRusso's sweat-soaked chest, feeling his heart pounding through the thin fabric of the hospital gown. He snapped at her like a wild dog, but Idessa had actually been one less than a week ago and kept her arm well out of the range of his teeth. Behind her came a blast of lilacs and parchment, and the noise in the room became oddly tinny and muted. Idessa narrowed her eyes and focused.

For a moment, nothing happened. LaRusso's heart sped, and his snarls grew wilder. Then, with a sensation like cool water running down her arm, Idessa extended her awareness down and through her hand and into his body. His body recoiled at the intrusion, but Idessa kept contact relentlessly. Her power spread through the tortured muscles, the laboring lungs and heart, the overworked and failing sympathetic nervous system.

Oh Keegan, what have you done?

"Láta," she intoned. He resisted, of course, but Idessa was the best healer in Boston and beyond. Under the inexorable force of her power, his heart slowed and his muscles relaxed. A brief effort of will scrubbed the epinephrine from his blood, and LaRusso collapsed onto the bed, feral energy rapidly dissipating. "There we are, Bernard. It's almost over. Sofa."

An odd resistance fought her spell further, but Idessa poured more energy into the working until his eyes fluttered closed and his breathing steadied.

"Is he ready?" Malina's voice was brisk and cool as she crossed to stand on the other side of the bed. "Room's been soundproofed, but it's only a matter of time before on orderly or another comes to check on him."

"He's ready, for now at least." Idessa grimaced. "I don't know how much help I'll be, Lina. He's fighting me more than should be possible, especially after so many hours of stress. I have to actively suppress the effects even now--it feels like the curse is fighting for every symptom."

Malina nodded sharply. "In that case, I'll have to make it fast. Keep him in place. This won't be easy."

With that, the second most powerful witch in Boston went to work.

In its base form, witchcraft was simplicity itself. To be certain, it was enhanced by the trappings of ritual, items and components both mundane and magical which could focus, refine, or transmute the base spell. Spells could be anchored to blood, to potions, to artifacts; the movements of the stars and the very essences of the living and dead were tool, fuel, and substrate to the able witch, sorceress, or enchantress. However, at the end of the day, they had as much to do with witchcraft as a bicycle did to locomotion: without the practitioner, nothing could be accomplished. To cast a spell, only three things were truly necessary.

Malina inhaled deeply, and the scent of lilacs and parchment filled the room, a normally sweet, gentle odor turned oppressive. It mingled with Keegan's fur-and-blood before overpowering it. The first component: energy. Idessa extended a hand to her, ready to contribute her own if necessary, but Malina didn't take it. Her focus was inward as the energy swelled and LaRusso began to twitch.

Malina's eyes opened, and she narrowed her focus to a single point, immeasurably dense and tiny, on LaRusso's forehead. The second component: will. While Malina's reserves of raw energy were only middling, Idessa had known for years that her will was as hard and unyielding as diamond. It was impossible to perform magic that ran counter to one's own will, and it was no accident that Malina's specialty was warding, protection, and antimagic. Everything about her tore away supposition, intrusion, and interference with the precision of a scalpel and the certainty of glacier's advance.

Malina's hands lifted. The third component: language. Idessa had learned from her mother the secrets of magical language: old, but not entirely forgotten was key. Too young, and the language lacked the metaphysical weight of centuries or millennia of speakers, the connection through the ages to not only oneself but every human who spoke and worked and willed. Forgotten was no good either--the only language less useful than a modern variant was one where the rules and people had been consigned to oblivion in the memory of humanity. For her part, Idessa did her work in Old Norse, the precursor to her mother's native tongue. Keegan had used a West African language, allegedly related to Yoruba. Idessa had never gotten a straight answer from Malina about the origins of the sign language she used for witchcraft, but she couldn't deny its power. Her magic was as precise and potent as the rest of her.

Energy, will, and language. They were all the two of them had. It would have to be enough.

Idessa murmured soothing nothings to LaRusso as Malina spoke in short, sharp motions with clear cadence but mysterious meaning. The odor of parchment and lilacs intensified, then dwindled as the spell sank into her patient in a blaze of consuming power. He jerked as the spell made contact; Idessa gritted her teeth and forced more energy into her sleeping charm. The pain disappeared under a suffocating fog of drowsiness, but LaRusso still twitched and jerked reflexively even in his slumber.

The spell inside LaRusso began to spread, slowly at first but rapidly accelerating. The burning force of her regard ignored the threads of Idessa's magic with scrupulous care, following the tract of blood vessels and scrubbing away the fur-and-blood of Keegan's magic like bleach on a tough stain. Slowly Idessa retracted the tendrils of her own power to give Malina room to work, keeping her power restricted to the nervous system so the pain might remain suppressed. She was sweating now, despite the chill of the hospital room. The strange resistance she had noticed before was building in spite of Malina's influence--Idessa frowned. That was strange. The curse should be weakening, or at the very least fighting Malina instead of her.

The niggling worry in the back of her mind began to grow. Idessa glanced up. "Malina, something's wrong. This isn't--"

Before she could finish her sentence, there was an imperceptible shift in LaRusso, and the resistance vanished. All at once Idessa's power flooded him, racing through every fiber and cell with terrific speed. For a moment she forgot herself, awareness lost in the dance of blood and bone and nerves. As she struggled to pull herself together, Malina swore viciously and began to sign faster. The damage, however, was done-- the magic inside LaRusso was resonating with Idessa's own energy stores, drawing power from her as though she was an extension of him. Idessa's hand was fixed to LaRusso's chest, gasping as the life was pulled out of her and used to rise up against the encroaching countercurse.

For one fleeting moment, Malina stood frozen as her spell warred against the curse, neither gaining any ground. Then, very abruptly, she lost.

The incomplete countercurse snapped with a colossal crack that rattled the windows and was barely contained by the soundproofing. Malina stumbled back from the bed as though pushed, and Idessa yanked her hand from LaRusso's chest as though it were a hot stove before collapsing to her knees beside the hospital bed. LaRusso's back arched, straining against the restraints and howled.

For a while, the room was silent save for the renewed snapping and snarling of LaRusso, the irate noises of the vitals signs monitor, and Idessa's exhausted panting. She still hadn't gotten her breath back when Malina staggered around to her side of the bed, for once in her life looking absolutely rattled.

"What," she asked with deadly, delicate grace. "The fuck. Was that?"

Idessa looked up at her, eyes wide. Her hands were trembling, and not entirely because of the fatigue.

"Lycanthropy. Lina, I don't know how he did it. But this man...Keegan is turning him into a werewolf."