Page 26 of Plaidypus
Nancy snickered. “I tried. He ran away. But, my momma’s a vampire, too, and she’d view him as quite the snack. I can’t say I blame him, but he could have at least waited for me to finish the sentence before fleeing.”
A rather bedraggled Leonard stepped out of the kitchen wearing my apron and wielding my favorite spatula. “What nonsense are you tossing around now?”
“We were talking about how you ran away when I suggested I should take you home to my mother.”
Leonard sighed. “Your mother is a vampire, has zero tolerance for anyone who isn’t also a vampire, and views me as her dinner—and you said she was having an elf over that same day. Frankly, I didn’t want to find out if elves think vampires are tasty.”
“They don’t. Something about hating dry meat,” Nancy replied with a grin. “How goes your cooking adventures?”
“Breakfast is ready, so come dish out however much you want, Nadine. Everyone else can wait, and if you polish off everything, they’ll survive. You need every calorie you can get right now.”
Leonard wonover both of my animals with his cooking skills. Food coma hit hard and without mercy, and I spent the day either sleeping or eating. By the time the next morning rolled around, I marveled over what a difference a ridiculous amount of food and some sleep could do.
Without any help from the vampires, the lycanthrope, two sex demons, and my brother, I cleaned the entire place out of food. They foraged on pizza from town, and I assumed they all played at being lycanthropes, judging from the obscene number of boxes piled near the door for disposal. While I’d slept, the blizzard had hit full force. When I checked on Icy, the zombie moose dozed in her shelter.
“Why do zombies sleep?” I asked, pointing at my moose.
Leonard joined me at my window and peered at the frost-covered animal. “I don’t know. There’s no information in my scanner about zombies needing sleep. It could be a trait from the hotspot. I expect she’ll be tested and studied. Nothing harmful to her,” he added, raising a brow at me. “New species always catch the CDC’s attention.”
“You better be paying her in attention, good food, and grooming. You can have the damage from the accident fixed, too. She might be a zombie moose, but she’smyzombie moose, and you will take good care of her.”
“I see you fully intend on being unreasonable about this.”
“If you were to put a new truck in my driveway and give me the choice between the truck and Icy, I would cry, but I’m picking Icy. She gives cuddles. Honestly, she’s the world’s best behaved moose. Do you know what moose typically do if you get too close? Especially if there is a calf nearby?”
“They attack with the intent to kill,” Leonard stated. “While I may not be a country boy, I’m still Canadian, I travel, and I’ve survived several encounters with moose. I’ve also downed and eaten several moose while a wolf. You are not the only person here who hunts moose. I just use my teeth to do it rather than a rifle.”
I licked my lips. “That’s a perk of lycanthropy right there. Do you know what a platypus can’t do?”
“What can’t a platypus do?”
“Down and eat a moose. Their bills aren’t suited for the consumption of moose, much to my platypus’s dismay. She’s a weird platypus. Her favorite food is meat. Do you know what regular platypus eat? Small marine animals and insects. Do you know what my platypus dislikes?”
Matthieu snickered from his place on his preferred armchair, which had once belonged to our mother. “There’s only one correct answer to this question, and if you get it wrong, she will lecture you for at least an hour. She’s a far better wolf than a platypus. Her platypus is basically an oddly shaped wolf with an attitude problem. She likes things done her way, and she’d be happy to show you the highway if she were only a little larger and equipped with biological weapons. The lack of spurs really drives her and my sister insane. Of course, it’s probably a good thing she lacks spurs, as I’m certain she’d have a rap sheet a mile long by now if she came equipped with toxic spurs she could wield at her leisure.”
I shrugged, as it was true. “My platypus loves hunting, she loves anything to do with eating meat, and if I could skip the bugs and the seafood, she’d be happy. I like seafood, but I don’t tend to have it all that often. The sight and smell of it turns her delicate little stomach. As I have no desire to eat bugs, she wins that one by default. But the fastest way to send my platypus into hiding is to make a shrimp platter.”
“That’s quite odd. The platypus is not known to be particularly aggressive unless provoked. They’re also marine animals.”
“Mine is weird. She’s also Canadian. She will set aside her prejudices against seafood for proper Canadian lobster, but that’s about it. Her favorite food is chocolate and moose. Her heaven is hot cocoa with her dinner of moose, and she doesn’t really care what format the moose comes in.”
“Well, that explains how easy it was to get you to indulge,” Leonard replied, and he chuckled. “I often have some difficulty convincing new lycanthropes, especially among the women, to eat more. Society has taught them eating too much is a sin.” With a shrug and a shake of his head, he added, “If you have been convinced you need to maintain a size zero, the CDC offers complimentary therapy for lycanthropes. It can lead to dangerous situations, so they’re quite serious about resolving any form of food-based trauma or mental illness. One of my cases last year involved a young woman who’d been accidentally infected during a bus accident. She suffered from undiagnosed anorexia. Anorexia and bulimia can be particularly dangerous for lycanthropes. Both can do significant damage to the virus or lead to death. Fortunately, as the virus matures, it becomes easier to treat the disorders. The animal helps. If you have any sort of eating disorder, it’s best to tell someone now so you can get the best care possible.”
“It’s not a problem. My diet is fairly simple. If I see food, I’m generally pleased to eat it. I will need to know what the appropriate amount to eat is. I’m guessing my metabolism will be changing.” I wrinkled my nose at that. “As it is, I already eat more because of the platypus. I cost us a fortune—and not just in chocolate.”
“Matthieu had expressed some concerns that you may not be eating enough, even before becoming infected with the lycanthropy virus. You should take advantage of the free testing the CDC offers to hotspot victims. It comes with a diet evaluation and recommendations from a dietician, and they’re already used to working with shapeshiftersandlycanthropes, so it shouldn’t be difficult to get you on a meal plan. There’s a clinic in Toronto, so you could detour on the way to meet your new truck.” Leonard winced. “When I was recruited, I went through the health evals, and let’s just say I got reamed. I didn’t have a good excuse for not eating well. I felt fine, so why would I have had any reason to believe thingsweren’tfine?”
“I’m pretty bad about that,” I admitted. “Why should I go waste some doctor’s time when I feel fine?”
“My doctor told me I was an ostrich, sticking my head in the sand because of my refusal to look for potential health problems to stop them before they start. I’m a lycanthrope. We’re supposed to be tough and rarely get ill. Why clog the health system unnecessarily?”
“I bet your doctor scolded you.” Mine, the rare times I went to see her, spent most of the exam yelling at me for not doing precisely what she wanted, when she wanted. On a good day, she even believed shapeshifters had different metabolisms than vanilla humans. On a bad one, she claimed I wasn’t even a shapeshifter at all.
The first bad day, I’d shifted on the examination table and unleashed a volley of platypus curses her way, creating so much of a fuss someone had called my parents and my brother to retrieve me for being a pest. To add insult to injury, every damned time the woman goaded me into shifting, she had me tested for lycanthropy in her quest to prove I lied about my species.
I would not be continuing my relationship with that doctor.
She hated lycanthropes even more than the folks in town hated the undead.
