Reflected

by Rhiannon Held

  Felicia kept whining and Silver wished she could make the sound properly with her human throat. Finally, Tom’s wild self relaxed enough for her to roll him over to see the wounds. The torn and abraded skin wasn’t knitting, which meant his healing had more important things to do, like repairing smashed organs. They needed to get him out of the river to help.

  Not river. Path. Having a plan focused her, and Silver found that understanding with a bubble-pop of relief. They needed to get him off the path. Felicia must have been thinking along similar lines, because she crouched and began to switch her wild self for tame with hands useful for carrying.

  “No,” Death snapped.

  “No!” Silver held out her hand to stop Felicia before she even quite understood what Death was reacting to. Another growl approached from up the mountain, more uneven in tone than the beast that had hurt Tom. Felicia, surprised by Silver’s order, settled back onto four feet as a human arrived and stepped out of her vehicle. A vehicle, not a beast.

  “Oh, my God! Your poor dog!” The human woman smelled of children, though she had none with her at the moment. She jogged up and leaned over Tom, slippery black hair fanning down to hang over her shoulders.

  Silver smoothed Tom’s ears, trying to imagine he was a pet, not a Were she was desperate to get away from human eyes so further healing at werewolf speed would not raise alarms. “If we can just move him out of the way, my friend’s around, we’ll—”

  The woman gasped in objection. “That’ll take too long. I’ll give you a ride down the hill, the—” She said a word Silver didn’t understand but could guess at. One who healed pets, not humans. The last thing Tom needed, though he could have used a Were doctor. “—we use, she’s really great. I’m sure she can do something for him.”

  Silver looked again at Tom’s wounds. Which was the greater risk? Going along to the pet doctor, hoping that Tom’s healing, without additional sleep or food, would stop short of the torn skin, leaving something to at least explain the blood? Or would it be better to knock the woman down, run for it?

  And how would they take Tom with them if they did run? Felicia couldn’t help carry him as her wild self, couldn’t switch to her tame in front of the human. Silver couldn’t drag him one-armed without showing strength greater than a human woman should have. She seemed to have no choice but to pray to the Lady the doctor would see nothing more than a pet with wolf ancestry.

  “Thank you,” she told the woman, accepting. She helped the human lift Tom into her vehicle and glanced back to see Felicia standing in the path, stock-still and smelling of anger at Silver’s choice. Silver squashed exasperation she had no time for. Even if Felicia had a better idea, circumstances didn’t allow her to share it, so better she put her effort into making this one succeed.

  “Run, girl,” Death said in a woman’s accented voice that belonged to Felicia’s and her father’s past, not Silver’s. Silver saw what he meant immediately. If Felicia ran off, Silver could justify coming back to find her later, after treating Tom. Meanwhile, Felicia could warn John what was going on.

  But of course Felicia couldn’t see Death. She stayed where she was, and the human woman turned back to her. “C’mon, boy,” she crooned in a voice for a pet or a baby. “There’s room in the back for you too.” She got a grip in Felicia’s ruff.

  Too late. Silver would have to bring her other “pet” too. She almost called Felicia by her real name, but of course that wasn’t a pet name. Silver wanted to snarl a curse. Names were hard enough for her to remember as it was. Glaring at Felicia’s wild self, she remembered a thought she’d had on first meeting the girl: so much of her childhood had been shaped by flames.

  “Smoke,” Silver snapped, using an alpha’s command in her tone before Felicia could decide to fight free of the human. “Come.” She took over the woman’s grip on Felicia’s ruff, pushed her into the vehicle, and climbed up after. She smoothed Tom’s fur along his head, one of the few places free of blood, and wondered what in the Lady’s name she was going to do once they reached their destination and the only one who could speak was the one whose sight was obscured by shadows.

  The human woman chattered in a bright tone as they traveled down the hill, but Silver could smell the stink of her worry. She seemed to think Silver would fall apart if she wasn’t distracted. Silver would have preferred silence, though if the woman could have gotten Felicia to stop staring at Silver with wide, frightened eyes, Silver would have hugged her. She needed to think.

  “I’d do it now, if I were you,” Death said. He used what Silver thought of as “his” voice, though of course he had none of his own since the Lady had taken his from him. This voice must have belonged to someone long dead.

  Silver pressed the heel of her hand between her eyes. Even if she could have said “do what?” out loud to Death with the human listening, he would have just laughed. She knew what he meant. She could see past the shadows, but the pain that caused had been worth it only once before.

  She checked Tom again first, to stall. He was still unconscious, and the tears across his side seeped slowly and did not heal. Silver had no food for him, to give him more energy to heal, so perhaps the doctor would find something to explain all the blood after all.

  But there would still be questions. Her name, the location of her home, payment. Silver knew she couldn’t give the kind of answers the humans would want without one of her pack members with her. Unless she did what Death had already decided she must do. Lady, wasn’t there any other choice?

  She supposed not.

  2

  When their path flattened at the bottom of the hill, Silver could put it off no longer. Lady help her. Or more rightly—Death help her. Silver tried to catch Death’s eyes, though they were perfect darkness within the greater darkness of his fur, and were not for someone to ever meet straight on. She couldn’t ask him, but he knew what she needed anyway.

  A name.

  “Selene,” he said, in her brother’s voice once more. That voice had a name too: Ares. Those names had childhood teasing: Why were they named after human gods? Why didn’t they have normal names? That childhood had a home: Seattle, then Bellingham. And Bellingham had a massacre.

  Selene doubled over, digging mental fingers into the name, to hold it to her even as the memories tried to hurt her so much she let it go. Yes, her brother, her niece and nephew, her whole pack was dead, bleeding out slowly from torture, but there was a young man here and now who was not yet dead. If she wanted “cell phone” and “credit card” and “veterinarian,” she had to reach into the very heart of the fire of memories and pluck them out. Out from among the feeling of liquid silver injected into her arm, burning away parts of her mind; the bright joy of the one who had done it; the children’s dying screams.

  Things snapped into crystalline clarity, every surface ready to scrape her skin away until nothing was left, but Selene had what she needed. When the SUV stopped, she opened the back door before the human woman reached it, and jumped down. Tom sprawled, blood staining the carpeting on top of a row of folded-down seats, while Felicia had to crawl out from where she’d pressed herself under the next upright row.

  “I bet Dr. Sarrento has a burly vet tech. Let me go get him,” the human woman said after frowning at Tom. She probably remembered how heavy he had been when they loaded him.

  Selene pressed a palm flat to a taillight and swallowed nausea along with the feeling of a phantom burning stealing up her arm. The silver nitrate was gone, leaving only scars and an arm she couldn’t use. “I left my cell phone and wallet in my car,” she told the tech when he arrived, more weedy college intern than burly anything. “Can I use your phone to get my boyfriend to come out here? It’s not far, he should be back by the time you’re done stitching him up.” Belatedly, she remembered she was a worried pet owner, and she gave tech a wan smile, implying her hope stitches would be the only thing needed.

  “Sure.” The tech gestured inside without looking, too deep in calculating
angles that would allow him to lift Tom without jarring the injuries.

  A bell tinkled as the human woman pushed back out through the glass-paneled front door and held it open for Selene. “Calling my boyfriend,” Selene said and nodded inside. “Thank you so much for your help…”

  The woman chattered more reassurances—Selene was very welcome, she was sure her dog would be fine—until Selene slipped past with a worried grimace. The woman seemed to read that Selene’s attention was on her pet, not conversation, and left for her car with a final wave.

  The vet’s waiting area was shiny and clean, with a linoleum floor, plastic couches, and acrid odors of sickness and cleaners. The scent made Selene’s eyes water and she wavered until Felicia arrived and pressed herself against her leg. It didn’t give her quite the feeling of security Death’s presence did, but Selene couldn’t see Death—if he was even real. That question was far, far more than her mind had room for at the moment.

  The counter had no entrance from the waiting room, only from a hallway that led somewhere back behind the exam rooms, but Selene could see the phone. She stood on tiptoe, snagged it, and set the whole thing where she could punch the buttons.

  She smacked into a mental obstacle with a force that felt almost physical. She didn’t know Andrew’s cell phone number. Or the numbers of any of her pack, because she’d met many of them after her memory could no longer grasp such things. Selene stifled a sob at the promise of being able to speak to her mate coming so close and then being yanked away.

  But she could do this. John. Her beta and her cousin. She’d known his number before, when she’d been Selene. She didn’t think he would have changed it. He’d be closer than Andrew, even, because he was at the hunting grounds just up the hill rather than at the pack house a twenty-minute drive away.

  John picked up on the second ring, voice flat and distracted. “Hello?” He didn’t recognize the number, Selene realized.

  “John.” She was anxious to get her words out and hang up before he asked questions about her mental state, or other things she couldn’t properly answer with humans around. But a name for Tom escaped her. What did humans name their dogs? She accepted the first name her memory threw at her, from television or something. “Lassie got hit by a car. Someone stopped, so we were able to get him to the vet right away, but I left my wallet in the car—can you drive down here and pick us up? We’ll probably be done before Andrew—” Selene caught herself. As Silver, she always called her mate by his last name. “Dare could get here, so if you do call him, tell him to meet us at home, okay?”

  John’s silence was resounding for a breath, before he apparently set aside everything that was wrong with what she’d just said and ran with the part that did make sense. “Which vet?”

  Selene’s head swam for a moment. She hadn’t looked at the name above the door. Fortunately the business cards in a holder next to her elbow had it in large font: Squak Mountain Animal Hospital. She read it out to him, then hung up and offered the whole phone back to the gray-haired, white-coated woman who had arrived from the back. The vet, she presumed.

  “We let our dogs off-leash on our land, up—” Selene pointed in the vague direction of the hunting grounds. “There must have been a hole in the fence, he got out onto the road, and the car came out of nowhere…” She scrubbed at her face. “I’m sorry, I’m pretty shaken.”

  “We’ll take good care of him,” the vet assured her with a brisk smile.

  “Thank you.” Selene made it to one of the plastic couches before her legs collapsed. Felicia watched Tom being carried in and whined as the door to the back shut behind the staggering tech. It took her two trips from the door to Selene and back before Selene got it: the vet wouldn’t let another dog in to watch her work, but she would allow the owner back.

  Selene leaned over her knees and pressed her palm to her face to hold herself together. Her prayers to the Lady would be no more fervent for being made from Tom’s side rather than in another room. The blood scent twisted into her nostrils even from here, though that might be the lingering scent of his passing through the entryway. Blood had been in every breath when her pack had been killed, blood and silver metal. Each breath now brought her one step closer to reliving those moments in full sight and smell.

  “Hold down the den for me, would you, girl?” Selene buried her hand in Felicia’s ruff and surfaced gasping from the bloody memories into Silver again.

  Silver folded over, forehead to her knees, and held herself together. John would be here soon. Death said nothing, but his silence had an approving quality as he sat straight upright beside her.

  * * *

  Felicia tried going back to the door to the exam rooms one more time, even though she knew Silver had understood her. Apparently Silver preferred to go off into her own crazy land rather than check on Tom. Felicia paced back and forth from the counter to the couch on the opposite wall. Lady, how could she have been so stupid? It was her fault Tom was hurt, and now she couldn’t even help because she was trapped as either a dog or an inexplicably naked woman in front of the humans.

  Silver had handled everything better than Felicia had feared, she had to admit. She’d thought the woman couldn’t use phones unless someone dialed for her. She smelled upset enough about it, though. Some of her pure white hair had slipped from the long braid she kept it in, hiding her face from Felicia’s angle. She looked frail, sharp angles under pale skin, hard to match with the intensity of her normal body language as alpha.

  Felicia’s nails scritched on the polished floor. Wasn’t this all sort of Silver’s fault in the first place? If she hadn’t showed up, they never would have run toward the road. The moment she thought it, Felicia knew that wasn’t fair, but she indulged the tight satisfaction of imagining things that way for several paces anyway. In the end, it was Felicia’s fault. Her fault for getting Tom hurt.

  A vehicle turned into the clinic’s parking lot, and Felicia pricked up her ears as she recognized the engine’s sound. Tom’s pickup. John must have found Tom’s jeans and keys and brought down the vehicle that would be better for transporting Tom home.

  Felicia darted to the front doors and accidentally forced John to shove her aside with the glass because she forgot they opened inward. He looked reassuring at least, the solid muscle of him in the doorway, brown hair disordered as usual. Felicia skidded on the way to the door to the exam rooms, but the infuriating man stopped at Silver first.

  “Selene?” John set a hand on her back and she slowly sat up. The rank mixture of her fear and worry wafted to Felicia. “Are they working on him right now?”

  “Silver,” Silver said, almost too soft to hear. “He’s—” She gestured vaguely in the direction of the back of clinic, then scrubbed at her temple and frowned at Felicia. “Take her in, would you?”

  Felicia waited, ears pricked high for sounds of what was going on in the back of the clinic, but John opened the front door instead. He waited pointedly, smelling of exasperation.

  Oh, of course. John meant to take her inside in human. Felicia sprinted for Tom’s pickup and John followed to undo the canopy and tailgate. Felicia nosed around in Tom’s detritus, including his toolbox and extra pair of hiking boots. No clothes unless you counted a raincoat. John returned from the cab and tossed her backpack onto the bed. The very blankness of his expression was a louder comment than a snicker would have been. How had he figured it out? As soon as Felicia got her nose close to the backpack, she realized. It reeked of sex, transferred from her hands where she’d touched the zipper and pulled it open.

  No time to worry about that now. The moment the tinted canopy door closed, Felicia shifted back and started pulling on her jeans before the soreness in her muscles from all the back and forth faded. She was lucky it was near the full, not the new, or she’d have collapsed by now. She dispensed with underwear and knocked on the window for John to let her out so she could sit on the tailgate and jam on her shoes.

  She jumped down and would have
sprinted right back to the clinic, but John caught her shoulder in a tight grip. Not so tight she couldn’t have escaped, but tight enough to remind her who outranked whom. “You look like you squeezed through the middle of a blackberry mound,” he said, and smoothed down her hair with rough efficiency. “Now.” He released her shoulder. “Go.”

  Felicia let herself into the exam room now that she had hands. The vet looked up suspiciously from where she was stripping off her gloves, apparently done with Tom. John entered a moment later with smooth explanations about how this was his friend’s dog, and Felicia his friend’s daughter. Felicia left him to it and hurried to the metal table that held Tom, still unconscious. His side looked strange, shaved in a wide patch, with lines of stitches here and there where the road rash had been especially bad.

  She petted his ears. Intellectually, she knew that if werewolves didn’t die of their injuries immediately, they wouldn’t die at all, given food and rest. But that didn’t convince her emotions as she stood here, smelling the blood and sheer wrongness hanging around him as a miasma.

  John nodded as the vet told him how lucky they were that the internal damage had been so minimal, and he made the right noises of embarrassment as she chided him about the lack of collar and license. Then the vet disappeared back into the clinic and the tech took John up to the front counter to talk payment. Given the illusion of being alone with Tom, even though she knew the humans could hear from the other rooms, Felicia leaned in to rest her cheek against the soft fur on top of his head. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. She hadn’t meant any of this to happen.