Chapter
Three
The
snapping jaws were so close that droplets of spittle struck her
face . . .
Zoey flailed awake and tumbled from the
couch, yelping as her battered ribs made contact with the floor.
Disjointed memories of the past night crowded into her awareness as
she fought clear of the pile of quilts and struggled to sit
up.
“A wolf! Holy crap, a wolf, a goddamn wolf right in the middle of town!” Her
system was hollering for coffee, aspirin, and food, but she had
other priorities. The first was to phone the RCMP, the local Fish
and Wildlife office, Dunvegan’s mayor and whoever was in charge of
animal control in this area. The creature was still out there
somewhere and Zoey wasn’t going to let anyone else be attacked if
she could help it. People needed to be warned, and once she’d
talked to the authorities, she’d write up one helluva front-page
story.
“The paper comes out on Monday, but is
that soon enough? Maybe I should put up posters or . . . ow!” She
paused in the middle of getting to her feet, eased herself to the
couch instead, and inspected her right leg. It was wrapped neatly
from ankle to knee in white gauze, but there was a sharp-edged ache
in many places beneath the smooth, even bandage. The veterinarian
had probably done a good job but she should have her leg checked
out by one of the clinic doctors or—
The vet. Omigod.
Her face heated as she remembered all too clearly being carried up
the stairs to her apartment like Scarlett fricking O’Hara. Although
Scarlett hadn’t complained so much about it. Please, please, please don’t let any of the neighbors have seen
us. But the stranger had done more than carry her and treat
the bite. He had saved her life. Embarrassing or not, she knew
she’d needed the rescue. She could have been killed. She could have
died last night if it wasn’t for that man
showing up when he did.
She sat down on the couch and hugged
herself until the shaking subsided. Suddenly making all those phone
calls could wait. She was alive, and she just wanted to savor that
for a while.
Connor was almost sorry for the
exquisite night vision he possessed. Had he been human, the
darkened house would have softened the effect of what he was
seeing. The old man’s face was bruised and swollen, flayed open
diagonally in several places. One eye was puffed shut, a jagged cut
across the purple lid still leaking blood, staining the white beard
stubble on his cheek.
The damage was daunting from a medical
point of view. The healer in him winced inwardly at the sight, yet
his usual sympathy was far outweighed by his growing respect for
Zoey—and his determination to keep her safe. You
did a good job of defending yourself, little falcon. The vicious
old bastard deserved everything he got and
more.
“I see you went out on the town last
night, Bernie,” Connor said calmly as he opened his kit. His
working hands were steady and sure, like his voice, never betraying
the waves of rage that flooded his gut. “I thought we had agreed
that you were going to stay here, lock yourself in the cellar or at
least come to me when the urge became too strong.” The man hissed
as antiseptic bubbled over the fearful cuts. “You’ve been losing
control for a while now, Bernie. You’ve always been a selfish
bastard, a nasty drunk, even a thief. The Pack has looked the other
way, let you live however you chose. But now you’re a
killer.”
“Piss off. I don’t need a lecture from
a goddamn dog doctor.” The man tried to shove Connor away and get
up, but Connor only moved in closer. One large hand pressed down
hard on Bernie’s plaid-shirted shoulder.
“This is no lecture, Bernie. This can’t
go on. You killed a dozen animals in Ralph Wharton’s herd last
month. You didn’t need to eat; you just killed for the pure
pleasure of it. Last night you tried to kill a human being, a
woman.”
Bernie went still. “I don’t remember
that,” he rasped slowly, a look like fear creeping into his good
eye. “I wouldn’t do that. I’ve never done that! That’s not true,
you son-of-a-bitch, Macleod. You’re trying to trick
me.”
Connor shook his head, his hand
unmoving, the pressure unwavering. “No tricks, Bernie. You’re too
dangerous to be allowed to Change anymore and you know it. I let
you talk me out of it last time, but not today. I saw you in the
road. I knew it was you. And the woman you attacked defended
herself, cut your face. Marked you.”
He held a tight rein on his emotions,
kept his voice calm but he knew Bernie would see the rage plainly
in his eyes if he looked. Something primal was frighteningly close
to the surface, and Connor was sweating with the effort of holding
it back. Please, dear God, let him accept this. If
I have to fight with him, I just may kill him. And I’ll want
to.
“You know what has to happen, Bernie.
Jessie leads the Pack and she’s ordered it.” And even if she hadn’t
ordered it, Connor knew he would still be here, still be doing
this. Because of Zoey.
The older man opened his mouth as if to
protest, but no sound came out. Moments passed. Suddenly Bernie
turned his ruined face to the wall and remained motionless as
Connor rolled the frayed shirtsleeve up, swabbing the inside of the
arm over a vein. The vet drew a large syringe from the kit, then
reached in his pocket for the same bottle of silver nitrate he’d
used on Zoey’s wounded leg.
The young RCMP officer flipped his
notepad closed, put his hat back on, and left. Zoey knew he hadn’t
believed her about the wolf even though she’d unwrapped her bitten
calf for the sake of evidence. He’d been sympathetic and hadn’t
treated her like an idiot—the deputy mayor had already done that
over the phone—but it was still very clear that the cop thought it
was a dog attack.
She threw her slipper across the room,
which only irritated her aching ribs. “I may be from the city but I
know damn well that was no dog!” In February she had photographed a
major dogsled race on the frozen river. Every breed of sled dog was
present, and even some dogs that were genuinely half wolf. She’d
watched in horror as two teams suddenly sprang on each other
between races, and vividly remembered the blood-chilling sound of
twenty large dogs roaring and snapping at each other while their
owners waded into the melee to haul them apart. Still, nothing
looked remotely like the beast that had attacked her, nothing was
that big, that bent on killing.
Zoey sat back and surveyed the large
teeth marks on her calf, thankful that she wasn’t squeamish. It was
a bad bite, but it looked clean and there wasn’t a lot of swelling.
There were butterfly closures on several of the punctures and they
seemed to be doing their job—there was only a little blood on the
gauze she’d removed. Still, she didn’t kid herself. There was no
denying that if the wolf had been able to get any traction on the
slippery ice, if she hadn’t hit the beast just right on its
sensitive nose and muzzle, she might well have lost a sizeable
chunk of her leg. At the very least. She’d
seen the horrible results of two separate dog attacks in Vancouver.
One of the victims, an elderly woman, had died. The other, a strong
young man, had been maimed for life.
She shivered and turned her attention
to the dilemma at hand. How could she warn people if she couldn’t
get the authorities to believe there was a wolf? The village
officials thought she’d been bitten by a large dog, which was an
unpleasant but relatively more acceptable problem. Maybe she should
work with that.
“Okay, okay, the point is that people
need to be on the lookout for something,”
she said aloud, testing the idea. “So what if they’re looking for a
big ferocious dog instead of a wolf? Does it really matter?” It was
a tough call. Tell the truth and be labeled a
loony. Then the story would be dismissed. No one would
bother looking for a creature of any kind, no one would be on
alert. Tell a half-truth and maybe people would at
least be careful. Maybe no one else would get
hurt.
Zoey sighed and tried to rewrap the
gauze on her leg, feeling clumsy as she did so. She felt clumsy
about the story too. She could just see the headline now:
Giant dog bites editor. Details on page
11.
Of course she wouldn’t title it like
that, but frankly, she didn’t know if she could make it sound much
better. She might not mention who the victim was either, although
she knew darn well it wouldn’t stay a secret in such a small town.
But she could place the article somewhere on
the front page where it would be seen and people might be on their
guard for a while. Might be a little more alert, might watch their
children a little more closely.
But damn it all, it had been a
wolf, a genuine call-of-the-wild wolf that
had attacked her, and not being able to say so was frustrating
beyond all words.
Thankfully, it had been a quiet day at
the clinic. No calvings, no emergencies, no urgent calls. Connor
had left Bernie, dragged himself through the morning’s scheduled
surgeries, then gone home at noon. To bed. The strain of many days
without adequate rest and the intense emotions of the past
twenty-four hours combined to send him into a dreamless sleep
almost before his head hit the pillow.
It was well past midnight when he
finally awakened. He lay on his back looking up at the bright moon
through the tall windows that stretched almost floor to ceiling on
the west wall of the master bedroom. His headache was gone but his
heart hurt. There was little anger left in him now, only a deep
aching sadness and questions that had no answers. Why hadn’t Bernie
asked for help? The old Changeling had no love for the Pack, but
the Pack was bound by its own laws to assist him, work with him.
Younger, stronger Changelings could have been assigned to watch
over him when he was in wolfen form and keep him out of trouble.
Keep him from hurting anyone. If all else failed, every Pack
maintained a haven, an iron-barred place of
safety in which an out-of-control wolf could be confined until his
senses returned.
At least Bernie would have still been
able to Change.
Applied to the wound within twelve
hours of being bitten, silver nitrate would prevent a human from
becoming a Changeling. Applied at least once more, the colorless
liquid not only stopped the genetic shift in its tracks, it
reversed it. Silver nitrate had just as dramatic of an effect on
someone who had been born a Changeling, and only a single ample
dose was required. Once injected into Bernie’s veins, it would have
quickly spread to every cell. By now, his inner wolf would be
permanently suppressed, forever a prisoner in its human
form.
What would it do to the old Changeling
to look up at the moon, knowing he could never answer its call
again? How would he stand it?
Connor got up and went to the balcony
door, clad in only plaid pajama bottoms. The air was cold on his
exposed skin as he stepped outside, but it blunted the painful
emotions a bit. He stood for a long time, scenting the air, then
walked to the cedar steps that led from the balcony to the ground.
Come. He called out the wolf within and
trotted briskly downward, first on two feet, then on four. Paused
in the yard and shook himself all over. His silvery pelt was marked
with a blanket of black over his shoulders—a rare saddleback wolf.
Soundless, he bounded away into the night.
Behind him, the only evidence of the
Change was a faint whiff of ozone in the air, a crackle of static
electricity, and a handful of tiny blue sparks that fell to the
ground and winked out at the foot of the stairs.
The wolf was nature’s perfect running
machine. With long loping strides that ate up the miles, Connor
raced for hours until flecks of foam began to fly from his lolling
tongue. He finally slowed near the top of a hill, his flanks
heaving, mouth wide and lungs burning for air. He slaked his thirst
at a tiny spring, then padded to the crest. The moon was high now
and brilliant in the clear starry sky, almost blinding to look at
directly. Instead he looked out across the river valley and lay
down with his head on his paws.
In the small hours of the morning,
Bernie was awakened by the howling of a wolf. He lifted his ravaged
face, his swollen eye crusted with a mixture of dried blood and
tears. Humans usually couldn’t tell the direction such a sound was
coming from, but the old man knew at once that the wolf must be up
on Elk Point, said to be a sacred place. The animal sang as if its
heart was broken, the mournful refrain taken up by the wolves in
the surrounding hills.
Bernie swore softly. He knew the
sorrow-filled song was for him, knew it was Connor who sang it. The
tears began again.