Sean was pacing back and forth in front of Dae’s cage, and he huffed softly, wishing that his assistant would stay still. Following Sean with his eyes was making Dae dizzy.
“I’ve tried calling Dr. Dae at least a dozen times since those kids brought you in, but he hasn’t answered his phone. I’ve paged him, but he hasn’t called me back, and his cell phone goes straight to voice mail too. Dammit. It’s not like him to disappear like this! I don’t know who I’m more worried about—him or you,” Sean said as he passed by Dae’s cage for the fifteenth or sixteenth time. Finally he came to a stop in front of the cage. “Well, I’ve placed calls to the local zoos to see if any of them might be missing a timber wolf, and I’ve spoken with an exotic animal specialist and got their advice on how to treat you. Apparently, food, water, and rest are what you need right now.” He sighed again then patted the top of the cage. “Don’t worry, big guy. If a zoo doesn’t claim you then I’ll take you back to the mountains myself. I’ll take good care of you. I’m going to try calling Dr. Dae again. I’ll be back later to check on you.”
Dae watched Sean walk out of the kennel toward the front office, leaving him alone. Tentatively Dae rolled onto his stomach and tried to stand. It took several attempts, and his head ached like a son of a bitch, but he finally made it to his feet.
The cage was big enough for him to turn around in, but only barely. He felt claustrophobic already and he’d only been awake for a few minutes. If he had to spend much more time caged up, Dae was afraid he’d go crazy. As it was, he was sorely tempted to shift back into his man-form so that he could open the cage and escape, even though the consequences of that would be life altering. If Sean came back into the kennels to find his boss standing there naked and the huge black timber wolf gone….
Dae had no wish to try to explain that little bit of sleight of hand. If word got out that Dae was an honest-to-Christ werewolf, he’d probably lose his practice, his friends, and quite possibly his freedom. No, thank you. He had no intention of sticking around long enough for any zoo to put in a claim for him, either. He’d just wait until Sean closed the office for the night when it would be easier to escape without being seen. Sean would undoubtedly be mystified over how the wolf could have disappeared from a locked cage, but that was the least of Dae’s worries at the moment.
Standing up, the first item of business was his overfilled bladder. Dae sniffed at the bottom grate of his cage, quickly lifting his head away and sneezing several times. It reeked of the urine of its former occupant. While sometimes it was good to be an animal and not have to worry about things like urinals or washing your hands, the flip side to being a wolf was that your sense of smell was roughly one hundred times more acute than that of a human being. The bottom of the cage smelled like a sewer to him, and Dae hesitated to add to the stench, but in his current situation, he found that he didn’t have much of a choice. A puppy yipped nervously at him from his left as the stream Dae let loose when he lifted his hind leg splashed perilously close to the retriever pup’s nose.
Sorry, little fella, but when you got to go, you got to go, Dae thought. He gave the pup a soft, reassuring huff before settling back down, resting his head on his front paws and waiting for Sean to return. After a short while, he dozed.
A sharp pain in his rump woke Dae from his slumber. His head reflexively whipped back toward whatever was biting him, his teeth bared, but he stopped himself short when he realized that the arm that had stuck his rear with a needle belonged to Sean.
“Sorry, big guy. I need to get more x-rays of your noggin, and the only way to do it is if you’re asleep. I need all my fingers to do my job and I’d likely lose a few if you were awake,” Sean said, apologetically. “As soon as you’re asleep, I’ll cart you over into the main building’s radiography room and take some pictures. Don’t worry, big guy, it won’t hurt a bit.”
He didn’t give his assistant enough credit, Dae thought as his mind began to fuzz pleasantly from the sedative. Sean was actually very caring and considerate of Dae as well as the animals. Sean would chide good-naturedly when Dae worked through lunch or dinner, and he had always offered Dae a sympathetic ear during those tumultuous times with Jack. As Dae’s assistant, he was quick to offer to stay after-hours to help when emergency patients arrived late in the day, or to come in on his days off if Dae needed him.
As a matter of fact, Dae thought as his jaws cracked with a mighty yawn and he settled his head back down between his front paws, it seemed to him that Sean had never once refused to come in to work when Dae had asked. Dae couldn’t remember a single day in the past four years when Sean had called in sick or had taken a personal day. Sean was so dedicated he’d even come in to visit at the clinic during his vacations. Dae wondered how Sean’s girlfriend felt about his assistant’s 24/7 dedication to the job, then tried to remember if Sean actually had a girlfriend. Dae couldn’t ever remember being introduced to one. He must, Dae decided, sleepily eyeing his handsome assistant. Sean was a pretty boy. He was smooth-skinned, with hair so black that it shone with blue highlights in the sun, and his cheeks dimpled deeply when he smiled. Had a really nice smile too, Dae thought drowsily. Warm. Straight, white teeth. Bedroom eyes. That’s what they used to call those big, brown peepers that were currently watching Dae intently from under Sean’s thick, black lashes. Yeah, Dae thought, Sean must have a girlfriend. He probably had more than one. He probably had a fucking harem.
Dae felt his limbs grow heavy and his eyelids flutter closed. He was more than pleasantly buzzed when Sean opened the door to the cage and felt so relaxed that he wouldn’t have been able to wag his tail if his life had depended on it. The drugs continued to take effect, and he was out completely before Sean manhandled him out of the cage and onto the gurney.
VOICES RAISED in anger reached Dae’s ears as he regained consciousness. He was lying on his side on a cold metal table, and as his vision swam back into focus, he realized he was sprawled out on a gurney. Sean must not have given Dae a large enough dose of the sedative. Blinking a few times, he kept perfectly still as only his eyes moved, searching for the source of the voices.
“Gimme the K, man!”
“I’m not giving you a goddamn thing!” Sean retorted, his voice steady and firm. Only someone who knew him well, like Dae, would have heard the thread of fear that laced through it. “Get out!”
“Where are the fucking keys?” the strange, grating voice demanded. It was accompanied by the sounds of metal clanging and the tinkling sound of glass breaking.
“I don’t have the keys!” Sean yelled back.
“That’s fucking bullshit! Maybe I should start shooting your fucking animals until you find the keys! I’m gonna kill you anyway, you know. You want your animals to die with you, Doc?”
“I’m not the doctor, I’m his assistant,” Sean retorted, as if that statement might change the stranger’s mind about shooting him or the animals.
“Yeah, sure you’re not. Open the fucking cabinet!”
Dae heard the click of a gun’s hammer. Ignoring the pain in his head, he raised himself to his feet on the table and in one smooth movement sprung off it, his claws clacking against the tiled floor. Making his way through the open door of the radiography room, Dae padded down the hallway, following the sound of the voices to the first examination room.
Sean had his back to Dae, squared off across the room from a man who towered over him. Dressed in jeans, a dirty T-shirt, and a rumpled and stained overcoat, the man had the hungry, desperate eyes of an addict looking for a fix. “K” was short for “Special K,” the street name for ketamine, an anesthetic used to sedate animals and often stolen for use on the streets. It was almost certainly the very sedative Sean had given Dae a short while ago. The clinic’s supply was always kept in a locked cabinet.
Gathering his legs beneath him, Dae leaped up and landed squarely between the two men, facing the stranger. His hackles were raised, his body low, tensed, and ready to attack. Snarling savagely, Dae bare
d his mouthful of wicked teeth at the addict.
A shot rang out, and Dae felt a sharp pain in his left shoulder. He paid absolutely no attention to it, because unless the stranger had loaded his gun with silver or it had hit a vital organ, a bullet would not stop him. Instead, he began to walk threateningly toward the stranger, keeping his body low to the ground and his eyes trained on the man. Dae flattened his ears to his head and snapped his jaws, feinting in and out as he backed the stranger out of the examination room and toward the front door.
Another shot staggered Dae as it bit deeply into his right shoulder, barely missing his head. Still he kept going, herding the man toward the door of the clinic and away from Sean.
Faced with a tremendous black wolf that hadn’t been slowed in the slightest by two bullets, even though his shoulders were splotched with red and dripping blood, the man turned on his heel and fled, dashing through the open front door of the veterinary hospital.
Dae let himself sink to the floor, exhausted. His head ached, and his shoulders burned from the gunshots. Resting his head on his front paws, he whined softly with more than the pain as he looked up at Sean. He watched Sean warily skirt around him, edging toward the front door while trying to keep the waiting room chairs between them. Sean closed and locked the front door, then stood with his back to the glass, watching Dae.
He’d really done it now, Dae thought. He couldn’t shift back into his human-form, not unless he was willing to share his secret with Sean. Bullet wounds would not disappear with the Change, and a doctor would need to report a gunshot victim to the authorities. Not to mention that any tests run at the hospital would reveal Dae to be something other than human. Unless he wanted to run the risk of infection, Dae was stuck in his wolf-form until the bullets were removed.
Sean looked petrified, and Dae realized that he was trying to figure out how he was supposed to get a wolf back into its cage without getting mauled in the process. He decided that his assistant had been through enough for one evening. Ignoring the pain, Dae heaved himself up to his feet and, moving fast enough so that Sean wouldn’t have time to pole-vault over the office furniture, closed the distance between himself and Sean. He tucked his tail between his legs submissively and whined, then butted his head gently against Sean’s leg.
Dae felt Sean freeze and press backward against the glass door as he rubbed his head against Sean’s thigh. But the apprehensive touch was gentle when, a moment or two later, Sean reached down and stroked him between his ears. “Wow, big guy,” Sean said softly, “you sure are something, aren’t you? Not so wild after all, are you? My hero, that’s what you are.”
Dae remained perfectly still as Sean knelt beside him and quickly looked over the bullet wounds in his shoulders. Blood seeped from both, but there was no arterial gushing, and they seemed to be no more than flesh wounds. Still, they were painful, and Dae couldn’t hold back a high-pitched yip when Sean’s fingers probed around the wounds.
“I wish I knew where the hell Dr. Dae went. I’ve never had to remove a bullet before. I guess I can handle it, providing that they haven’t gone in too deep. Let’s get another x-ray, okay?” Sean said. He seemed to be talking more to himself than to Dae, and his eyes drifted over toward the radiography room.
Dae insinuated his head under Sean’s hand, then gave his assistant’s fingers a lick with his warm, wet tongue. Sean’s touch had been gentle, and Dae found that he didn’t want his assistant to stop petting him. He looked up into Sean’s eyes, wishing he could communicate his trust in Sean’s abilities. You can do this, Sean, he thought. I know you can.
If Sean recognized the intense intelligence that sparkled in the wolf’s eyes as the creature looked up at him and licked his hand, he hid it well. But his jaw dropped when Dae rose to his feet and followed him into the x-ray room like a well-trained dog and jumped up onto the gurney.
Dae lay down on his belly on the gurney, knowing that he was exhibiting far more understanding than a wolf would be capable of possessing, for all the species’ intelligence, but was simply beyond caring. His head hurt, his shoulders hurt, he was hungry, he was thirsty, and more than anything else he was disgusted with himself for being so careless and wrapped up in self-pity that he had allowed himself to get into this situation in the first place. Compounding it all was the guilt he now felt. If he had remained in his human-form, Sean wouldn’t have been here at the clinic alone and wouldn’t have had his life endangered. Sighing heavily, he lay still and waited for Sean to take the x-rays.
Dae’s eyes followed Sean as he readied the x-ray film. For all that his assistant remained convinced that he was a full-blooded timber wolf, Dae knew that Sean must be puzzled by his obvious domestication. Injured, even a docile cocker spaniel would become defensive with a stranger, and yet Dae had not only sprung to Sean’s defense and had taken two bullets for him, but was also being perfectly cooperative. Dae could see Sean struggling to understand, although to Sean’s credit, he appeared to put his curiosity aside, concentrating on Dae’s injuries. Inwardly, Dae chuckled despite his pain, knowing that Sean must be burning with questions, not the least of which being how the wolf had known to jump up onto the gurney.
Sean laid a protective lead apron across Dae’s hindquarters, focusing on taking the x-rays of his shoulders. Dae lay perfectly still as the machine hummed and clicked, and allowed Sean to maneuver him into a different position to take a second picture. A few minutes later, he flicked the films onto the lighted viewing box that hung on the wall.
Two bullets, one in the wolf’s left shoulder and one in its right, showed on the film as small, white lumps in the fuzzy dark gray of its muscles. Both had missed major arteries and bone, but they had gone in deeper than Dae had hoped. The bullet on the left had lodged in the large trapezoid muscle of the wolf’s shoulder, while the one on the right had found a home in his deltoid muscle.
“It looks as though it would be a simple enough procedure to get them out,” Sean said, tracing the bullets’ paths, sliding his finger across the x-ray film. “But they’re in there deep, and I’m not sure I can do it. They look as though they’re going to have to be cut out. It means having to knock you out again, big guy, but we need to get you patched up. You’re losing blood, and we don’t want an infection to set in.”
More than before, Dae wanted to shift back into his human-form so that he could talk Sean through the procedure. Sean was an excellent assistant, but he was showing good judgment in wanting to call in another veterinarian. As simple as the procedure might be, it would still be invasive. However, the last thing Dae needed was another human brought into the mix.
Sean had never let him down before, Dae thought. He’d always been supportive, trusting, professional, and competent to a fault. With Dae’s help he could remove the bullets.
Dae made his decision. At best, Sean would accept the fact that his boss could shapeshift and excitedly ask Dae a million questions. At worst, Sean would faint dead away or try to beat Dae senseless with his own lead apron.
With any luck at all, Sean wouldn’t run screaming into the streets trying to convince anyone and everyone who would listen that his boss was a werewolf.
Taking a deep breath and mentally crossing his fingers, Dae shifted.
Chapter Three
SEAN SCREAMED. No, not screamed, Dae thought as he fought the urge to cover his ears. Sean shrieked like a fire siren. When Dae shifted shapes before his very eyes, Sean opened his mouth and emitted the most ear-piercing, spine-shattering screech Dae had ever heard produced by the human larynx, and it had only faded long enough for Sean to draw in another deep breath and begin all over again.
“Sean,” Dae said, his voice cracking and gravelly because of his dry throat and lips, “it’s me. Calm down.”
“Calm down?” Sean managed to sputter as he wedged himself up against the wall between the x-ray viewer and the counter, his eyes as wide as saucers. His hand fumbled blindly across the counter next to him, grabbing the first thing his hand came
in contact with, which happened to be a squirt bottle full of rubbing alcohol. He aimed it at Dae, holding it in both hands in front of him like a gun.
“Calm down? I can’t calm down. Don’t tell me to calm down. You calm down!” he added irrationally, blinking rapidly and breathing in great, ragged gulps of air. He gestured with the spray bottle in Dae’s general direction. “What the fuck is this? How did you do that? What are you? What did you do with the wolf?”
Dae smiled. At least Sean was asking questions, and as shocked and panicked as he was, he hadn’t run. Dae took that as a good sign.
“Is that thing loaded? Don’t shoot, Sean! I’ve been shot twice tonight already!” he chuckled, in spite of the situation and his pain.
“That’s not funny. Where’s the wolf, Dr. Dae? I’m not crazy. I know that there was a wolf here a second ago! He saved my life! Took two bullets for me… where is he? He’s hurt….”
“I never said that you were crazy, Sean. I know you didn’t imagine the wolf. Please calm down and listen to me—”
“Where is he?” Sean bellowed, tossing down the spray bottle and running around the table, looking underneath it. He peered around the corner of the partition that shielded the x-ray controls and picked up boxes of x-ray film, flinging them away in a frantic, impossible search for the wolf.
“Sean, please, calm down and stay still for a minute! C’mon, kid, I need you now.” Dae winced and groaned as he tried to sit up, pushing the lead apron to the ground.
Running With the Moon Page 2