by Anne Bishop
“Well, even in this form, you’re a lot tougher than a human,” Lorenzo said. “You’re battered and deeply bruised, no question about that. You might have some hairline fractures that I can’t detect without taking X-rays, which I can’t do here. But I’m not feeling any obvious broken bones or anything that’s dislocated. All I can prescribe is rest. Give yourself time to heal.”
“Once Simon shifts to Wolf, I can tell if there are problems inside,” Jane said.
“Can’t shift to Wolf,” Simon muttered. “Have to talk to humans about—”
Meg sprang out of the chair and was in his face so fast, he jerked back . . . and then whimpered because the move hurt, hurt, hurt.
“You do not have to stay in human form,” she yelled. “You do not have to talk to any humans until you’re better. You need to be a wolfy Wolf! And if you get stupid about this, I’ll . . . I’ll paint your tail orange!”
He thought of pointing out that he wouldn’t have a tail if he stayed in human form, but Jane nodded and said, “That’s a good threat. Come on, Meg. Let’s step out so Simon can shift and the human doctor can look at Nathan.”
After giving him an “I whack bad Wolves” look, Meg limped out of the examination room.
“Let me give you a hand down,” Lorenzo said, bracing a hand under Simon’s elbow. “I won’t offer a painkiller because I don’t know how a terra indigene would react.”
Simon didn’t know how he would react to human painkillers either, but he thought giving Meg a couple of licks would make him feel better. He always felt comforted when he gave her hand a couple of licks while they watched a movie. But what about Nathan?
“Tell Jane to have Meg hold one of the chamomile cookies for a minute and then give a bit to Nathan,” he said.
Lorenzo studied him. “So the sedating quality isn’t just carried in cassandra sangue blood? Just having Meg hold something provides enough contact to transfer some of that calming effect?”
Cassandra sangue blood had been used to make the drug feel-good, which could make someone so passive he couldn’t respond to any kind of threat. It was easy to argue that taking blood from the girls was a bad thing, especially when the girls were treated like livestock. But Simon was suddenly reluctant to tell anyone, even Lorenzo, that a blood prophet might slip a mild tranquilizer to someone just by handling food.
After all, the comfort he felt might just be from giving his friend an “I’m with you” lick.
“The cookies always taste better if Meg handles them,” Simon finally said.
Lorenzo seemed to consider that for much too long. “That’s definitely something to think about. Now, you shift and get out of here so I can look at your friends.”
He hurt just as much in Wolf form, and his forelegs didn’t want to take his weight because his shoulders weren’t working quite right. But he hobbled out of the examination room, swiftly replaced by Nathan.
Yeah, he wasn’t going to be jumping up on a bed for the next few days, and sleeping on something cushiony would feel better than sleeping on the hard floor.
Meg stood by the open office door, staring out at the square. But when Nathan, in Wolf form, limped out of the examination room, she turned and stomped back to where the three of them were standing.
At another time, it would have been funny—Meg in a stompy-bison mood with her puppy-fuzz hair and a determined look in her gray eyes. Now . . .
Please don’t whack me, Simon thought, grateful when Vlad stepped between the Wolves and the blood prophet.
“Nathan is coming home with us,” Meg said. “He needs quiet and rest as much as Simon, and if he’s in the Wolfgard Complex, the puppies will pester him.”
Vlad knew the adult Wolves wouldn’t allow that. But the Sanguinati was oddly silent. Of course, all Simon could see at the moment was Vlad’s back and not Meg’s face.
“Nathan is coming home with us.”
A moment of surprised silence.
Simon thought about Nathan, trapped and alone in the overturned bus, cut by glass and the sharp rocks that had been thrown at him through the broken windows. Which would be more comfort, being with the pack at the Wolfgard Complex or being with a smaller pack that included Meg?
He looked at Nathan.
* * *
Even though he wasn’t going to participate, Elliot felt the interview with the police would have more weight if it was held in the consulate’s conference room, and Tess agreed. That was why she and Nyx were sitting across from Captain Burke—and why they’d chosen the seats that would keep Burke from noticing Vlad, in his smoke form, blending into the shadows in a corner of the room.
Burke held up a small notebook and pen. “All right if I take notes?”
“Of course,” Tess replied. She saw the flash of alarm in the man’s eyes when her hair began to coil, but the hair remained brown, a sign that she wasn’t feeling angry or threatened.
After a moment’s hesitation, Burke opened the notebook. “Mr. Wolfgard said he’d been warned to leave the stall market, that they were in danger. I’m assuming that warning came from Ms. Corbyn?”
“Yes,” Tess said.
“What can you tell me about what happened here?”
Tess told him what she knew. She’d been in A Little Bite. John Wolfgard had been unpacking books in HGR’s stock room, and Elliot Wolfgard had been doing some paperwork at the consulate when they all heard a weird-sounding howl. Then Sam and Skippy howled a warning that brought them running in time to see Meg dash up the stairs to the efficiency apartments and fall, cutting her knee. John grabbed the youngsters and took them away before Meg began to speak, leaving Elliot and Tess to hear the prophecy.
No, they didn’t take notes. They’d been unprepared, and there was no time. Meg had held on for as long as she could before speaking. The prophecy? Thieves entering the apartments to search for something. Danger to Simon, to everyone who had gone on the field trip to the stall market. Meg had fainted out of fear of what she’d seen. By then many of the terra indigene who had been in the Market Square had gathered in response to the howls.
Elliot called Simon. Meg was taken to the medical office. Tess, Nyx, and Blair removed the personal belongings from the apartments to thwart the would-be thieves. They were in the process of moving the belongings to a safe place when the thieves must have broken in. As far as the Others could tell, none of the furnishings provided with the apartments were taken. There was some urine on the floor of Merri Lee’s apartment. Assuming it was some kind of gesture of contempt, Tess had cleaned it up.
No, she hadn’t seen a vehicle and could only assume there had been at least one human.
“That’s it,” Tess said, looking past Burke. “Anything you want to add about the attack at the stall market?”
Burke jerked as Vlad shifted to human form and joined them.
Watching Vlad, Tess thought the decision to close their stores to the general human population was a good one. She didn’t think the Sanguinati or the Wolves were going to have much tolerance for human misbehavior for a long time.
Vlad placed his hands flat on the table and leaned toward Burke. “The rallying cry of the humans who attacked us was ‘Humans first, last, and always.’”
“That sounds like an HFL rallying cry, but there is no proof that the HFL movement planned the attack,” Burke said.
“The shots came from behind us,” Vlad continued. “Two guns, two shooters. I heard four shots. I don’t know who else was hit. I don’t think they’d intended to shoot across that much distance and take the chance of hurting humans. I think they had planned to lure us to the back half of the building and wait until we were close to the table where men were selling what looked like trinkets but the packages they handed to their customers made me think weapons were being sold.”
“Which would be illegal at that stall market,” Burke said. “There are knife and gun shows where weapons are bought and sold, but selling weapons at the weekly stall and farmers’ market is a violation of permissions granted to the building’s owners by the city.” He sighed. “But in the chaos that followed the shootings, and the amount of . . . merchandise . . . that was rearranged by gusts of wind, it’s not likely we’ll find the guns.”
Burke’s mobile phone rang. “Excuse me for a moment.”
Tess watched sadness fill Burke’s eyes as he said, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Problem, Captain?” Vlad asked when Burke ended the call.
“That was Lieutenant Montgomery calling from the hospital. Officer MacDonald didn’t survive his wounds.”
The three terra indigene exchanged a look.
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Vlad said.
“We liked him,” Tess said.
Burke put his notebook and pen in his pocket, a sign he was preparing to leave. The sadness had burned out of his blue eyes, leaving behind a fierce fire. “I may not be able to find the guns used to kill my officer and the Crow, but I will damn well find their killers. That’s a promise.”
Tess looked at Vlad, who straightened up as Burke pushed away from the table and rose.
“You won’t have to look far,” Vlad said. “You’ll find them among the dead.”
Burke stared at him.
Vlad smiled, a bitter yet satisfied expression. “I wasn’t close enough to stop them from shooting, but I caught them before they could blend in with the other humans and escape.”
Burke continued to stare. “Anything I should know about those deaths? Anything that would make someone think a Sanguinati was responsible?”
Vlad shrugged. “Lots of things flying around when Air blew to the rescue. Sharp things that might slice a person’s throat. Easy enough for someone else to slip in all that blood and fall the wrong way, breaking his neck.”
Burke nodded. “That’s plausible. I imagine quite a few people had similar, if less fatal, injuries.”
“Quite a few, according to the special news report I heard,” Vlad said.
In other words, nothing that would point to one of us killing “innocent” humans, Tess thought. Of course, there were attackers who were killed by tooth or claw. But that’s a problem for the city and the police.
Burke pulled out a card and handed it to Vlad. “I need to get to the hospital. If you think of anything else, let me know. Or give Lieutenant Montgomery a call.”
“Tell Lieutenant Montgomery and Merri Lee that we tidied up the apartments and put things back as best we could remember,” Tess said. “We don’t want them to be alarmed if they notice that something isn’t exactly the way they left it this morning.”
“I’ll tell them.”
* * *
Someone knocked harder on Simon’s front door.
Meg jerked awake and caught the book sliding off her lap before it conked Simon on his already sore head. She set it aside, pushed herself off the sofa, then stepped around tails and limbs in order to answer whoever was knocking on the unlocked door.
Simon and Nathan stirred, even looked like they were going to try to stand up and challenge the intruder.
“You two.” She pointed at them. “Stay.”
Grumbling and limping, she reached the door and opened it, saying, “It wasn’t locked for a reason.”
Steve Ferryman stared at her. “You cut your hair.”
Meg huffed. “Yes, it looks like puppy fuzz. No, you can’t pet it.”
He worked hard not to smile. Then they both heard at least one Wolf trying to get to his feet.
“Simon, stay!” Meg snapped.
The whine sounded more like an annoyed protest, but it was still a whine.
“He needs to rest, so I won’t come in,” Steve said. “What happened at the stall market is all over the local news. I came by to let you know that the Intuits and Others on Great Island will give you any help you need. And to bring you this.” He set a large basket just inside the door. “Wolf cookies for them, including freshly baked chamomile, and a couple of sandwiches and bakery treats for you.”
“Thank you.”
He looked at her knee. “You okay?”
She looked at her heavily bandaged knee, which was wrapped that way to prevent the Wolves from licking the wound. “It’s not a serious wound. I was trying to locate the source of the pins-and-needles feeling and fell on the stairs.”
“And spoke prophecy.”
“Yes.” Meg shuddered. She couldn’t recall the images she’d seen, which was for the best right now, but she still felt residual terror because of what she’d seen.
She jolted when Simon and Nathan howled. So did Steve.
“Are they hurt?” he asked. “I mean, freshly hurt?”
“No, that’s the ‘We want the cookies’ howl,” Meg replied.
“Gotcha.” Steve took a step back. “You take care, Meg. And call us if you need anything.”
“I will.” She hesitated, but he was here. “The girls who were rescued from the compound. How are they doing?”
“Better now that we’ve lessened the visual stimuli in their rooms. The girls have a very fine line between enough and too much stimulation or information. The woman we hired to help them has a good feel for where that line is. The more successful outings the girls experience, the easier it is for them to let someone know when they’ve had too much. Hopefully they’ll learn other ways besides cutting to cope when they’re feeling overwhelmed.”
“They’re cassandra sangue,” Meg said. “Eventually, they’re going to cut.”
“But not as soon, and even once they start, maybe not as often.”
She thought of the information Jackson Wolfgard had sent about cs821. “Wait. Another cassandra sangue who is living with the Wolfgard in the Northwest is revealing visions through drawings.” She rubbed her left arm, trying to quiet the prickling. “Maybe that is something other girls could do to delay cutting.”
“Other girls,” Steve said softly. “But not you.”
“No, not me.” The prickling faded with the words, confirmation of a truth.
Steve took another step back. “Thanks for the suggestion. Get some rest, Meg.”
She closed the door, hefted the baske
t, and limped to the kitchen, ignoring the soft, whiny howls coming from the living room.
Were injured Wolves usually this whiny, or were they trying to play the sympathy card to get more attention . . . and more cookies? She’d ask Jane when the bodywalker dropped by this evening to check on the patients.
After putting away the food that needed refrigeration, she limped back to the living room with a tray that held a sandwich, two small plates with various flavors of cookies, and a pitcher of water for all of them. She filled Simon’s and Nathan’s water bowls halfway, then poured the rest of the water into her glass.
She didn’t want to watch television while they ate. And the radio kept talking about the attack at the stall market, so she couldn’t listen to that either, especially after hearing the one report. . . .
No. Simon was hurt, and Nathan was hurt, his face all cut up from the broken glass and whatever else the people had thrown at him while he was trapped in the bus. So, no, she wasn’t going to tell anyone yet that hearing Nicholas Scratch commenting about the attack in Lakeside had made her skin buzz.
CHAPTER 50
Watersday, Maius 26
Monty rubbed his hands over his face and looked around the efficiency apartment.
Long day. Long, terrible day. There would be physical and emotional repercussions. There would be the potential for reprisals. Local members of the Humans First and Last movement were loudly blaming the Others for the deaths, injuries, and destruction of property. If the Others had stayed in their designated piece of the city, where they belonged—if they belonged in any part of Lakeside—the incident wouldn’t have occurred, turning a friendly place like the stall market into a battleground. Mayor Rogers had waffled when interviewed, refusing to acknowledge that members of the HFL movement had incited the conflict and had been responsible for the shooting death of a police officer.
Nicholas Scratch, on the other hand, hadn’t waffled. Speaking from a safe location in Toland, he had been heavy on condolences for the families of the slain and emphasized how the HFL movement was rallying the whole Northeast Region to provide emotional support and physical assistance to those families. And he laid the blame on the terra indigene in the Lakeside Courtyard for making the people at the stall market feel so threatened, they had lashed out. And while it was regrettable that a police officer had been killed, along with several other humans caught in a senseless fight, such a reaction should have been expected.