by Unknown
Which meant that only locals tended to hunt in the local forests, and most of them did so the old-fashioned way—on all fours with their fur flying. The few who went out with rifles from time to time tended to respect the state-outlined game seasons, and right now the only things a body could legally shoot at were coyotes, cougars, and waterfowl. No one in Stone Creek hunted cougars or coyotes, and the middle of a dry pine forest wasn’t exactly prime grounds for goose or duck.
So who had taken the shot that injured the Lupine currently stretched out on the vet’s operating table, and what exactly had he been aiming at? Eli didn’t imagine sleep would get any more appealing to him until he figured that out.
He rose from the doctor’s stool he’d perched on when the door to the operating room opened at the other end of the short hall. When Dr. Barrett emerged in her stained green scrubs, Eli was watching.
“How did it go?”
She braced one hand against the small of her back and stretched wearily. “About as well as it could, all things considered. The bullet wound was the easy part. We got that cleaned out and stitched, but the internal bleeding was what had us worried. Thankfully, we caught it before she lost enough to require a transfusion, because I’m not sure how to go about finding a donor match for a Lupine. The bleeding was in her spleen, which we had to take out, but theoretically, she should do fine without it.”
“Theoretically?”
“Canines and humans can both live fairly normal lives after splenectomy, and I’ve never heard differently about Lupines, but I’m far from an expert on their anatomy and physiology.”
Eli heard both the doctor’s words and the hesitation behind them. He could also see a certain shadow in her serious brown eyes that told him there was more to the story than she’d already revealed.
“But?” he prompted.
“But, I can’t be sure,” she admitted. “I’ll do some research tonight, but even so, it’s a little too late to worry about it. I can’t go and sew it back in, even if it hadn’t been irreparably damaged by something other than the bullet.”
“What do you mean?”
“You nailed the cause of the wound on her flank. A .50-caliber bullet grazed the left upper thigh, no question. But that was a comparatively minor wound. It certainly didn’t cause her internal injuries.”
Eli frowned. “Then what did?”
“Some kind of blunt-force trauma, but I can’t tell you what from. I’d have to shave her from her neck to her tail to check out the bruising before I could make a reasonable guess, and I’m not willing to do that. At this point, I don’t want to cause her any unnecessary stress. Not to mention it will be a lot easier to keep her temperature up and out of shock territory if she keeps her fur coat.”
“You really don’t know a lot about Lupines if you think it wouldn’t have grown back in a day or two,” he murmured, his mouth quirking at one corner. Then his gaze fixed on the doctor’s face, and all traces of humor fled. “What?”
Dr. Barrett hesitated. “I’m not so sure about that.”
Why did that one short sentence give Eli such a bad, bad feeling?
“I might be human,” she continued, frowning, “and this might be the first Lupine I’ve ever admitted to my clinic, Sheriff Pace, but I grew up in Stone Creek. The Unveiling was no big surprise to me. I’ve been around shifters all my life. But this Lupine you brought me isn’t healing like any shifter I’ve ever heard of.”
“Meaning?”
“Were you not listening? She needed stitches.”
That did sound odd. Most shifters had truly amazing healing powers. Wounds tended to knit almost while you watched, even faster during a shift. The fact that the Lupine had stayed in her wolf form had been one of the reasons Eli had known she needed medical attention.
“Serious wounds slow down the healing process,” he said. “And I’m assuming whatever sedative you used is going to slow her down for a while, too.”
“Probably, but I’ll feel a lot better if that wound looks to be on a faster healing track tomorrow.” A frown lingered on her face, creasing the smooth skin between her brows. “It worries me that the internal injuries didn’t appear to have even begun the healing process when I opened her up.”
“Like I said, the worse she was hurt, the longer it will take her to heal. She’ll make a big step forward once she wakes up long enough to shift.”
The doctor shot him a sardonic glance. “While I’m sure you meant that to reassure me, let me say that I hope it doesn’t happen before morning, because that will be the earliest I can set up a recovery space suitable for a human. Before that, she’s taking the risk of waking up in a cage. I don’t imagine that would go over well.”
Eli shrugged. “If she’s anything like me, she’s woken up in stranger places.”
Dr. Barrett looked up while she tugged at the ties on the back of her surgical gown. “Stranger than a vet’s office?”
“Try in the middle of a kennel full of sled dogs.”
A grin flashed across the doctor’s face and nearly knocked Eli back on his ass. If anyone had asked him to describe the local veterinarian before tonight, he’d have summed her up like any other subject—approximately five-foot-three, maybe 120, brown and brown, with an average build and an average face. But that smile was anything but average. The expression transformed her face from an ordinary if intelligent visage to the enticing, impish countenance of a sexy pixie.
Wasn’t that a hell of a thing?
“Hey, if you didn’t wake up harnessed to the sled, I’d say you were doing pretty well,” she observed, stripping off her gown and tossing the bundle of cloth into an open hamper against the wall. The scrubs she still wore beneath looked limp and wrinkled but noticeably less bloody.
They also covered a body that was noticeably less average than he had always assumed.
Eli coughed to cover his astonishment and shifted away from the counter with the built-in desk he’d waited at during the surgery. “Tell that to the frostbite I nearly got on my butt. It was February, and the dogs slept in the snow caves they dug for themselves. Well, they slept until they caught my scent. Then they mostly lunged around on the ends of their tie-outs and barked at me.”
He saw the flash of curiosity on the vet’s face and saw how she just as quickly pushed it aside. He’d heard that she’d grown up in Stone Creek, so it shouldn’t surprise him that she had her Others etiquette down pat.
“Feline,” he explained, since she was being too polite to ask. “Lion. The dogs weren’t wild about my natural cologne.”
Her next expression, he couldn’t read so clearly. Nor could he figure out why that should bother him.
“What’s a lion doing out here? We don’t have much savanna in western Oregon.”
“I noticed that. No pride, either.” He shrugged. His family hadn’t understood his choices, either, but he’d made them for himself, not for anyone else. “There are only four prides in the United States right now, and last I heard none of them was looking for a Felix. If shifters stayed exclusively in the habitat of their animal forms, we’d have overpopulated those areas and died out a long time ago. I’ve lived in a few interesting places over the years.”
“Well, our Lupine friend might not have lived as adventurous a life as you have,” she said, and she looked away from him to a desk full of office supplies. Pulling out an empty manila folder and a pre-printed form, she began to make notes in a new medical chart. “No doubt both of us would feel better if we at least knew who she is and if anyone out there is missing her.”
Eli stared at a pair of hands that looked too small and delicate to dig around inside a living body, then caught himself and forced his gaze back to her face.
Her ordinary face, he reminded himself.
“Right. I’ll contact Richard Cobb and see if he knows anything. Even if he doesn’t, he’ll make sure word gets out.”
The doctor nodded, acknowledging that the Alpha of the local Lupine pack was the proper pe
rson to consult on this. “I’d appreciate it if you could have someone from her family contact me as soon as possible. I really don’t think it’s appropriate for her to stay here for very long. Especially not once she loses the tail.”
“Once Cobb hears about this, he won’t let any grass grow under his feet. Trust me.”
Eli had to fight against the urge to look for an excuse to linger, which didn’t sit well with him, so he compensated by being perhaps a bit to brusque in making his farewells.
“Let me know how she does,” he grumbled, already striding for the back door. Clearly something in this room had begun to affect his sanity. Or maybe all those extra shifts were catching up with him. Either way, he figured the best thing for him to do was go. Quickly. “I’ll make sure Cobb finds out who she is by tomorrow, latest.”
“Thanks,” the doctor began, but she never finished.
Or if she did, Eli didn’t hear it. He was too busy executing one of the first strategic retreats of his life and wondering why it felt so much like running away.
Exp. 10-1017.03
Log 03-00119
Dosage administered to test subject (TS-0024) via intramuscular injection. Resistance made use of force necessary. Technician reported a struggle and injuries, both blunt force and penetrative.
Subject released post-administration and will remain under covert observation beginning after the twenty-four-hour estimated incubation period.
Remain hopeful that recent modifications will reduce incubation by 6–12 hours in secondary host. Must wait and see what contact test subject achieves with control population.
CHAPTER TWO
Josie slept poorly that night. Whether it was because she spent the time on a hastily inflated air mattress next to the Lupine’s cage, or because she couldn’t get her mind off her first real encounter with the local sheriff, she couldn’t quite decide.
Well, okay, she could decide, but that didn’t mean she was ready to admit to anything. Far from it, though what there was to admit to was another question. A slightly awkward encounter with a relative stranger? It wasn’t like that had never happened to her before.
A quick glance into the cage near her head assured her that the Lupine remained calm and furry, quite possibly because she was doped up on more pain meds than Josie had ever prescribed before—shifters metabolized drugs so fast that they required much larger doses than humans or animals in order to achieve the same levels of relief. Once Josie began to taper the dosages, hopefully her patient would regain the ability to answer some questions. Along with regaining her opposable thumbs.
With a groan, Josie rolled to her knees and then pushed herself reluctantly into a standing position. Somehow sleeping on an air mattress positioned on a linoleum-tile-covered concrete floor was a lot less comfortable at thirty-two than it had been at twenty-two. It hardly seemed fair. Nor did the amount of money she would have been willing to pay at this point for half an hour to herself with a cup of coffee and a very hot shower. Unfortunately, given that it was Sunday, the clinic was closed, and her staff had the day off, she’d be lucky to get her wish within the next four hours.
It was days like this when she began to seriously consider taking on an associate. Providing she could find an associate willing to work for beans and relocate to the most remote northwestern corner of Oregon.
Josie grimaced and forced herself to begin making the rounds of all of her currently hospitalized patients. In addition to the Lupine, she had George Carpenter’s Irish setter, Jenny, who had taken her pursuit of a grouse a little too seriously and broken her leg in a rabbit hole she hadn’t seen coming. The bone had been set on Saturday afternoon, but given Jenny’s age—eight on her last birthday—Josie had felt more comfortable keeping her overnight before sending her home.
Then there was Clovis, Mrs. Patterson’s cantankerous Siamese cat, who just couldn’t seem to keep his nose out of anything, including a spilled bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream liqueur. Clovis had been, to put it politely, three sheets to the wind when his owner had rushed him in yesterday convinced this his unsteady gate meant that he’d suffered a stroke and consequently would be permanently brain-damaged.
Josie had valiantly resisted the urge to observe that the brain damage might very well have preceded the alcohol poisoning.
Judging by the yowls currently emitting from Clovis’s cage, it sounded as if the activated charcoal and IV treatments had done their job overnight. Chalk up another victory for the good guys.
Still wishing violently for coffee, Josie grabbed a pen and began making notations in everyone’s charts until her brain woke up enough to begin her actual examinations. Without caffeine, that could take a few more minutes.
She was just reaching for the latch on Jenny’s cage when the door from the front office opened and a familiar figure bowled inside.
“Morning, Doc,” the young man said, looking much too cheerful for six thirty on a Sunday. “Andrea gave me the heads-up that we had a new patient as of last night, so I thought you might be able to use an extra hand this morning.”
“A blessing on your house, Benjamin Broder,” Josie said with feeling. “Remind me to pay you overtime for this.”
“You got it!” The youngest of her vet techs peered around her into the Lupine’s cage. “Is that her? Is she really a werewolf?”
“Yes, and don’t call her a werewolf. It’s considered insulting. She’s Lupine. Or a shifter.”
“Right. So right now, she looks like a wolf, but she’s actually human some of the time?”
“Yes.”
“So why’s she here and not over at Dr. Shad’s office? His practice sees humans and Others, doesn’t it?”
Josie didn’t mention how much she’d prefer to trade her patient with the local physician, but she thought about it. She’d actually been thinking about it for a good many hours now.
“Because it was an emergency, and the sheriff didn’t want to take the time to drive her all the way into Astoria to the hospital while she was bleeding pretty badly,” she explained, proud to hear that her work at sounding calm and reasonable seemed to be paying off. “Plus, it’s one of Dr. Shad’s ‘Gone Fishing’ weekends, so it wasn’t like he could have been called in on an emergency basis.”
“But are you even qualified to treat a huma—er, a humanish patient?”
Josie glared at her employee. “Does she look very human to you at the moment?”
“Okay, fair point.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Ben shrugged. “I didn’t mean to say you couldn’t treat a person, just that I wasn’t sure if you should, if you know what I mean. I mean, with liability and all that.”
“Please, do not mention that word in this clinic.” Josie shuddered. “Imagining the look in my insurance agent’s eye is enough to make me reconsider joining a convent.”
“Old Dr. Barrett would probably be all for that idea,” he teased.
Josie thought of her father, the one who had sold her his own veterinary practice when he’d decided it was time to retire, and of the way he still called her his baby girl and glared at her every time she mentioned a date. “Yeah, well, he’s already had to adjust to the idea that he doesn’t set my curfew anymore, so I’m sure he’ll be able to adjust to me shelving that idea again.”
Before Ben could start asking more questions, Josie piled the day’s patient charts into his arms and switched back to doctor mode. “Today we just have Jenny, Clovis, and the Lupine, knock wood,” she said briskly. “Jenny can go home if Mr. Carpenter comes by to pick her up. Just make sure he has the broken-bone aftercare sheet, and remind him to call if he has any concerns, or if she seems to be in pain. It was a simple closed fracture, and we got it aligned really well before we put the cast on, but I’ll give him a day or two worth of pain meds, even though she may not need them. Make sure you set him up with an appointment for four weeks from now, though, for follow-up.”
She went over Clovis’s situation briefly, then turned an
d frowned into the Lupine’s cage. “I’m going to call and leave a message for Dr. Shad in a minute, but until either she shifts or we hear from him, we’re just going to manage her condition instead of her species.” She outlined last night’s procedures for Ben and reviewed her chart notes. “You’ll need to check her incision and wound site and change the dressings, but other than that, at the moment we’re just monitoring her. The biggest worry, of course, is infection, but it’s also a little weird that she hadn’t fully regained consciousness or tried to shift yet.”
Ben hummed in agreement, his pen busy making notes of her instructions.
Josie pursed her lips. “Do me a favor and do a draw on her. I can run a CBC to check for any kind of underlying infection that might be compromising her system, and I’d like to double-check the concentration of her meds. I looked a dosage up online last night, but I’m a little paranoid about getting it right for her.”
“Got it.” Ben crossed a t, dotted an i, and looked up. “Anything else?”
“Nope, just the usual for the rest.”
“No problem. I’ve got it under control. And since that’s the case, why don’t you go upstairs and get a shower or some coffee or something? You look like you could use it.”
“Thanks, I will.” She turned toward the door, then paused. “I have to feed Bruce first, though. He slept in the file room last night. I think he was mad that he didn’t get the pizza I promised him.”
Ben waved her away. “I’ll take care of him. He’s still asleep at the moment. I heard him snoring when I came in.”
“Thanks, Ben. I really appreciate this. It’s been a crazy weekend so far, and I really—”
“Need a shower. You still smell like Betadine,” Ben finished for her, grinning.