by Unknown
I clicked my tongue and it swiveled its head toward me, whistling softly through its beak. The hood had kept it calm for the ride out. I refused to think it looked like an executioner's mask. This had to work. I would not accept anything less than perfect success.
I cracked the windows and locked the car, stowing my keys and digging out the key card that would allow me to get in. Kevin's office was on the lower level, near a staircase leading up to labs and an aviary at the back end.
I knocked twice and stuck my head in. He was typing but waved me in when he saw me.
"Can you help me with something?"
Kevin looked surprised. "What do you have?"
"A specimen. By the way," I added. "Bring a gauntlet."
He followed me out to the car, and I lifted the hatch to show him what was in the back. The huge gyrfalcon, hooded and quiet and very big swiveled its head toward us.
"I'll say. Where did you get him?"
A thousand glib responses flashed through my head, but the bird cocked its head at me and I decided to be straight. "It's Marek."
"Marek… Thurzo? You're kidding me, right?"
I shook my head. "Afraid not."
He puffed out a breath and I could sense his doubts. "Marek is this bird?"
"Yeah. I was there when he shifted. He had a Were confrontation, and when things got…bloody, this is what happened."
Kevin was floored. "Marek had increased the funding for hybrid research a few years ago and now he's a hybrid?"
"Wolfram," I corrected. "Hybrid sounds like a car or flower. The German Weres call him a Wolfram. It means wolf-raven."
"Weres? Well, did they mention any developments? Because we haven't gotten any farther than we already were."
I bit my lips a moment. "I've gone through some independent lab files—"
"Independent meaning Were?"
I nodded. "Nothing new."
"Okay." He eyed up the patient bird. "So what do we do?"
"This is a true Wolfram. Take samples, but don't hurt him. When you're done, I want to run something by you."
"Fair enough." He waved the gauntlet at me. "You want to do the honors?"
I strapped on the heavy leather armguard, trying to ignore the smell. It was well-used, and by well I meant tremendously soiled. Hooray. "He doesn't seem to go to anyone else, so I guess I will."
An hour later, we sat upstairs in one of the labs. Kevin had prepped slides of blood samples. I sat quietly next to a perch he'd brought up from the aviary, trying not to watch the Wolfram pick apart a strip of rabbit meat.
Kevin worked quickly and quietly. "I would never believe it if I didn't pull the samples myself. No wonder we never got anywhere with the hybrids. I don't think we ever had a real one. This is… unbelievable."
He went over to another set of computers. "There is more than one type of DNA being mapped. The bird is chimeric. Oh, wow," he said, raking his hair back. "Do you know what this means? I don't even know where to start. There is so much to do!"
"Later," I said, looking at the falcon. "A test of my own, first. If it fails, then I will release him to limited study. Post mortem."
"What?"
"Marek wouldn't want to live this way. He does not want this. You can anesthetize him for certain tests, but then…" I looked him directly in the eyes and added the authority of the Sophia behind it so that there would be no doubts. "Euthanize him. Release him."
Kevin looked down at the lab station for several long moments. I could tell from his power that he didn't like what I had to say. He had spent a long, long time studying this phenomenon and waiting for the right bird to come along. He could not reconcile finding one and losing it again so quickly.
The Wolfram keened softly to me and I held my fingers to its beak. It nibbled them, not hard enough to break the skin, but with enough force to pinch. Love pecks, right.
"What is your test?"
I stroked my fingers down along the feathered breast. "We need to feed him my blood."
Kevin seemed taken aback. "Well, never thought of that. Why?"
"Swear you will keep all of what I say confidential."
"Sure."
"No, Kevin. Not sure." I thinned my shields and reached for his power, snagging the corner of his essence and snapping him into full attention. The edges of my vision lightened, took on a bluish tint. The light blazed from his eyes, a rose-gold gleam. "I want you to swear yourself to me. Swear your secrecy, even on pain of death."
I wasn't sure if I had the right to command such a thing, and I was even less sure of its ethical consequences. Didn't matter. Right now, ethics would only get in the way.
Kevin looked as if he'd fall to his knees if I didn't release him. I did so and tucked the Sophia back down deep, deep inside. The light lingered in his eyes for several heavy breaths.
"I swear. I would have sworn before you touched me like that but…" He mopped his forehead. "I am yours and will never betray you."
Satisfied, I nodded. I am yours. Another one. Pretty soon I'd have to start a roster to keep track. "My blood has an adverse effect on werewolves. My European connection gave me a copy of an old legend that may have been Sophia-inspired. It was accidentally tested earlier this month."
I briefly explained the basics of what happened to Stohl.
"No flipping way." He shook his head. "Great gods. What a day this is turning out to be. Can I call in at least one or two of my staff? I can't be the only one to catch this bombshell."
"I'm sorry, Kevin. You can't do that. Too much of this information puts me at serious risk. You must keep this absolutely confidential." I called the Sophia just enough to light my eyes, to make him remember his vow.
It worked. His power took on the soft color of acquiescence. "So, what do we do? Let the bird bite you?"
"Uh, how about no? Ick. That's too much Alfred Hitchcock for me. Can we do a—I don't know, a line in?"
"Wouldn't it be easier to inject it?"
It was gut-sense that tugged me toward it. "Marek turned after he attacked a Were, and then Stohl bit me. The blood has to be consumed."
"Maybe a GI tube, then?"
I nodded and rolled up my sleeves as he began gathering supplies. "Does he have to be awake for this?"
"No, it would be easier to get the tube in if he's not awake. Even if it's Marek, I doubt he'd cooperate."
The Wolfram keened again, and I blew gently on its feathers, admiring the play of black feathers on white. It twisted its head and clicked its beak at the stream of my breath. "Just don't hurt him."
Kevin approached from behind. "Do you think you could hold him while I give him the injection?"
I nodded and took a deep breath. "Are you ready for this?"
The Wolfram chuuuped softly and shook his feathers out, spreading his wings reflexively, almost like a knuckle-cracking.
"Okay." I stroked my fingers down its head, over its back, then gripped him gently with both hands.
Kevin administered the dose and backed away as if he expected to be bitten, but the Wolfram only turned its head. Dignified. The slight lift of beak reminded me of the way Marek used to look down his nose when he was being snooty. I banished the memory before it could change my mind.
"Huh," the technician said. "King of falcons, that's for damned sure."
The dose administered, I felt Marek relax slightly in my grip. "I think he'll let you carry him now," I said.
Kevin put on the gauntlet and the Wolfram stepped carefully onto his arm. The drug acted quickly. The bird was unconscious by the time Kevin lay him down on the table.
I hopped up onto a second gurney. If this didn't work—
No, couldn't think like that. It had to work. But if it didn't—he'd never wake up again.
I realized I'd never had my last words.
Maybe this was better. What could I say to a bird?
Kevin peeled the wrapper from a needle. "How much blood do you think this will take?"
"Not much, I don't thi
nk. The last two incidences were just bites." I shuddered. "How much blood in a bite?"
"It varies. Were they attack bites or feeding ones?"
I grimaced and tried to avoid retching. "Hello, human here."
"No need to remind me. I've been breathing you in all morning." His tone was clinical and held none of the seducing playfulness of Rodrian's voice. It was about as sexy as a Pap smear. But still. Words like that had a personal effect on a girl, Sophia or not.
"Attack bites."
"I think an ounce would be the limit. We have to consider the size of the bird." He fitted the open and of the catheter to a valve that was already connected to the G-tube. "I'll adjust the flow rate to deliver it in a two-minute time frame. That's slow enough to monitor him and stop it if there's a problem."
He flipped the switch on a monitor, and it beeped as it came online. After entering a few settings on the keypad, he began stripping off plastic sheaves to reveal wires. "These are just leads. I'll monitor his temperature and heart rate during the transfusion."
He pulled off several pieces of surgical tape to secure the leads to the falcon, which was starting to look like a pile of lab recyclables, its body hidden beneath tape and wire.
The only thing left to do was to insert the feeding tube. Thankfully, Kevin stood between me and the bird as he did it. I didn't want to watch.
Finally, Kevin had the bird prepped. Marek and I were connected by tubes, distantly and clinically. Coldly. The telemetry unit beat with the rhythm of a mechanical heartbeat. I stared at the instrument over the falcon's prone body and prayed.
"Okay," he said. "Everything's hooked up." He tied a tourniquet around my arm and gently tapped the vein. I closed my eyes when he pushed in the needle; not because I was squeamish, but because I didn't want to see his expression. Clinical or not, I could sense his eagerness to see my blood, as if he were witnessing a holy relic. It unsettled me.
He withdrew the needle, leaving the thin catheter in place. A scarlet thread unfurled through it and he adjusted the clamp, watching my blood drip into the timing reservoir. "All set," he said.
"Do it," I whispered.
He rolled the stopcock on the Wolfram's line and the red thread slid toward the falcon. I stretched out my awareness, hoping that maybe the stream of blood would act as a bridge, a connection, but it didn't. It was still just a falcon, and an unconscious one, at that.
I stared at the clock. The minute hand swept like a scythe, cutting down the seconds. Time itself could not stand against Death.
My mind drifted back over the last several weeks. Each morning I had gone out into the back yard to where Marek's memorial stood. I'd stare up at the big perch on top and scan the sky for the Wolfram. His shrill whistles would slice right through me, his wing beats making me wince. Even while he circled overhead, each moment seemed to take him farther from me.
I'd ventured down into the woods in search of a sturdy branch, rigging a makeshift perch in the back of the estate's SUV. He'd watched me, every step of the way. And when I had sat in the open hatch this morning, and called his name, his right and true name, the Wolfram swooped out of the sky. First, to land on the memorial perch. Then, into the hatch. He leaned and picked at the hood I'd bought, letting it dangle from his beak, before hopping up onto the perch like it was something he did every day. I closed the hatchback like I'd closed a book.
And then there was Dierk.
Dierk was home in Mannheim. I'd received a few e-mails from him, just superficial check-ins. You can't put the right words in an email; you can't plumb the depths of an unspeakable emotion. There was only one way for him to know how I felt, and that could only happen if he held me and I thinned my shields and I sought the wind with the moon on our backs. He'd taste it, run through it, glean it from me if I'd still been the half of his whole.
But I wasn't.
I never told Dierk what I planned to do today. I only thanked him for the CD and told him how interesting it really was, told him I could picture his high top sneakers and jean jacket while he sang. I made no mention of "Ocean's Daughter" or my plans for the Wolfram.
I never told him how much he'd come to mean to me, either. So many little things. So many big things. I never told Dierk any of them.
Maybe I wouldn't, either. It's not like we really had a future together, destiny or not. I never could have been able to live as Were, Dierk or not. The letter I wrote to Rodrian before the full moon was still in my office. My contingency plan. Maybe I didn't turn. Maybe I couldn't, after all. But just in case… Rodrian needed to know what to do, just like I knew what I had to do with Marek.
"One minute," Kevin said. The telemetry unit beat, then staccato tones. "His temp is rising. Heart rate jumped."
"Good sign?"
He peered at a strip of thermal paper that spewed a stream of data from the telemetry unit. "Don't know yet. Could just be a reaction to the infusion."
I drummed my fingers. Come on, come on, come on, Marek. You'd have to still be in there somewhere.
"Thirty seconds."
Please, you couldn't have run out of second chances.
Suddenly, the telemetry went nuts, the beeps coming so close and so fast that it sounded like a shriek.
"I have to pull the line," he said, voice taut. With a snap of his wrist, he rolled the valve shut.
"What's going on?" Panic rose in me like mercury in a hot thermometer. He was in my way and I couldn't see the falcon.
"I don't know." He braced the bird and pulled the line free as I clamped off my catheter.
The shrieking continued. I felt like I'd soon start. "What can you do?"
"Nothing. It was time. We had to stop anyway. Grab some cold packs from over there in the drawer. We gotta get his temperature down."
I ran to the drawer, pulling out the packs, cracking them and feeling the chemical chill spread. Feeling the dread spread through me.
Suddenly, the beeping melted into a long, unbroken wail. It was the sound I didn't want to hear.
"Shit," I whimpered. The machine displayed flat lines and zeros. "His heart—it stopped."
We killed him. I stared in horror at the Wolfram. I killed him, I killed—
Kevin snapped off the sound control. "I can try and resuscitate."
I shook my head and scratched it with both hands. "No. I really didn't have any hope it would work. It's just that…it made sense, for one moment…"
My lungs squeezed, my breaths reduced to gulps. I wouldn't bring him back just to be a falcon for the rest of his life.
"Are you all right?" Kevin peered at me, and I could feel the pity on his power. Why did I always end up piteous?
I shrugged, wiping tears. "Yeah. I just thought—"
"Yeah. For a second, so did I."
"Right." I hiccupped. "I didn't think that it would kill him. I just—"
"Look," he said. "How about you go down to the lounge on the first floor. I'll just clean things up a little and then bring him down to the car for you."
"Okay." I nodded emphatically "That's nice. Okay. I'll just… bathroom?"
"Down the hall on the right."
I ran out.
I shouldered the restroom door open, pushing it with all the rage and the desperation and the unrequited hope I'd carried around with me for the last two years. I slammed it hard against the wall, wanting to feel the force of impact under my hands, wanting to shatter this ridiculous veneer I wore, the one that told everyone that everything would be okay. I kicked open a stall door, slammed it shut, and fumbled at the lock, trying to put up another layer between me and my damnable decision.
And when I realized I'd never be able to hide from it—from any of the things that caused me pain—I howled. I released a jagged scream that echoed off every shiny surface and I screamed, dredging up every ounce of agony that had made itself a home in me. I screamed it up and out in a terrible flood.
And when I was empty, the tears rose. I just sat down on the edge of the toilet seat and cri
ed. What an appropriate place to lose the last drop of hope I had in me.
I couldn't hide in there forever. Somehow, I had to walk out, drive home, go on. Cold-water rinses did little to restore my complexion. I did the best I could and went back outside. I noticed the door didn't have a single mark on it, despite the sound and fury with which I'd battered it. Nothing I did ever mattered.
I heard Kevin's voice as I came out. He was in his office at the far end of the hall and stuck his head out the doorway. He held a phone to his ear but covered the receiver with his hand. "I'll meet you downstairs, Sophie."
Weary, I headed for the staircase. I had to pass the lab where we had been and I paused. Should I look in one last time? Would he still be lying there, a lump under a plastic sheet?
A gentle DV vibe reached me and I sighed. I guessed one of the staff had wandered upstairs. Hopefully Kevin would keep everything confidential. I ignored the vibe, not wanting to deal with anyone else right now.
Not when I had to arrange a burial for hope.
I meant to continue on and head downstairs, but at the last minute something made me change my mind. The vibe was stronger, almost familiar, and I was curious to know who it was. I needed someone familiar right then. I thought about the drive home with the fallen Wolfram in the back of the SUV, and I didn't want to drive home alone. Maybe it was someone I could talk into going with me because I didn't want to feel like I was driving a hearse, because he was dead. Dead.
I had difficulty forming the words in my mind, because disbelief wouldn't allow them. Marek was dead.
"Hello?" I called. "Did someone come up here?"
There was a clatter in the lab as if something had been knocked over and I stopped at the door. Someone was in there with the Wolfram.
Something red and liquid filled me. What if they did something to him? What if they were carving him up and dissecting him?
Oh, hell no. No one would touch him as long as I lived. I rushed into the room at a charge. "Stop! Who said you could be in here?"
He turned around shirtless, pulling the plastic sheet hastily around his waist. His hair hung wet and heavy, dark and damp, bangs long, back short, yet almost familiar--
A flash of emerald through the thick strands. Deep voice that sounded confused, a rasp as if he were afraid to speak out loud, as if he'd forgotten how. "Sophie?"