by Tegan Maher
After my heart slowed down and reason returned, I debated what to do; I could go home, but there was no way I was going to be able to sleep now. If the wolf had been heading back from the park, there may be another victim. I had a gut feeling that was pulling me toward the park, so I decided to head that way just to make sure that everything was OK.
I could have followed the lake around to the park but didn't want to leave any wolf tracks that may trigger alarm. Instead, I cut through the woods. When I got within half a mile of the park, I lifted my snout to the sky and sniffed. Nothing caught my attention at first, then I smelled ... Zach? It was faint, but nonetheless it was there. I followed it until I realized it wasn't going to get any stronger. It must be a residual scent from all his time traipsing around out here hunting for the killer.
I sniffed further and finally, there it was; the faint hint of werewolf musk—the same one that had been behind the house. I followed his scent until I ended up near the garbage dump, where all the smells ran together. Picking out just one was pretty much impossible. I trotted a few yards away and breathed in as deeply as I could.
The wind blew, putting the dumpster downwind from me, and I picked up the scent again, stronger this time and my brain spun. I recognized scent—oh, how I recognized it—thanks to all the crime scenes. There was only one problem: it was a different wolf than the one I'd just chased into the lake. I shook, then sniffed the air again, trying to pick up both scents.
I didn't have time to puzzle it out right then. I exhaled and let it all go as I closed my eyes and concentrated on picking apart the smells assaulting me. True, I didn't know all the smells per se, but one in particular tickled my senses, almost taunting me to remember. Try as I might, I couldn't put my finger on it. I was concentrating so hard on picking up the scent that I nearly tripped over a pile of clothes crumpled and tucked behind a pile of garbage. Despite the stereotype that wolves are graceful creatures, I'm nearly as clumsy when I'm a wolf as I am when I'm in human form.
I sniffed around the clothing, trying to pick up a trail I could follow, but there was nothing solid—just the garbage and a hint of laundry detergent. I crossed the trail and put my nose to the ground, hoping to pick up something away from the garbage.
A twig snapped to my left. Adrenaline spiked through me as I twisted, but I saw only shadow. The breeze was blowing the wrong way to get a good smell, but all seemed clear. Shaking off the feeling of being watched, I kept on moving, searching for more clues, though I did step off of the main path.
I hadn't gone but a few steps when a shot rang out, accompanied almost immediately by a searing pain in my hip. Snapping my jaws shut to suppress a yelp, I managed to stay quiet as I veered into a large grouping of bushes. Fearing the shooter may have seen where I went, I trekked deeper into the undergrowth, keeping low to the ground.
Fortunately, the leaves were still wet enough from the rain that I didn't make much noise, and since I'm not much bigger than a regular wolf, I managed to maintain a good pace while keeping the undergrowth between me and the trail. I didn't know if I was bleeding enough to be tracked, though I didn't feel a trickle.
The brush was getting so thick that I was going to have to make a decision: risk crossing the path and making a run for it, or crawl deeper into the brush and wait for the sun to rise. I wasn't a fan of either, and cussed myself for changing at home. The last thing I wanted was to be seen in this form in broad daylight.
Just when the foliage became impassable, I literally fell into a depression at the base of a huge oak tree. Fortune was on my side; there was a hollowed area at the very base of the trunk just big enough for me to back into, and it was completely hidden by dense brush. Hiding with no escape route went against every instinct I had, but I didn't have much choice.
I tucked myself inside and used my teeth to pull a small sprig of leaves over the entrance. It covered the hole just well enough that I could still see but not be seen. I stayed still and waited, trying not to think about the bugs and spiders that were probably in the hole.
I was just about to think I was in the clear when I heard soft, careful footsteps; whoever it was had experience being stealthy. With human ears, I'd have never heard them. I slowed my breathing, though it was a wonder to me that they couldn't hear my heart pounding.
The footsteps stopped on the path directly in front of the hole and I held my breath; all I could see was a pair of dark hiking boots with army fatigues tucked into the top and my heart sank.
hat was the traditional uniform for the Trackers. I couldn't see high enough to tell whether or not he was wearing the traditional black t-shirt with the logo or not, but it didn't take a genius to figure it out.
You're probably asking yourself why we, as top predators, allow such an organization to exist. The easy answer is that most of them have families that would report them missing, and since they tend to hunt in concentrated areas, because werewolves lived in concentrated areas, we didn't want to draw national attention to our towns. You can see why that would be an issue.
They're also a small group; it's not exactly easy for them to recruit because it's not like they can put an ad on Craigslist. There are only fifty of them or so, and most of them have other jobs, so once we started keeping track of them a couple decade ago thanks to computer tech and the availability of data, it became easy to avoid them.
Unlike them, we weren't animals out to eradicate beings just because we didn't understand them. We chose to live our lives around them, and for the most part, it worked.
Unless, of course, you let a big fat mess such as mine get out of hand.
I wanted to howl my frustration that one single rogue wolf was bringing so much chaos to my territory, and I hadn't been able to do a damned thing about it.
I regulated my breathing and backed up, wincing as a searing pain shot through my hip. I took a deep, but silent sniff. Nothing but the faint scent of wet leather. I was baffled because he was standing right there. I shouldn't have had any trouble sniffing him out at all. Who doesn't have a scent?
My muscles stayed tense and ready for anything and my hip throbbed as I kept vigilant watch. The man backtracked, and the sound of scraping limbs and squishing footsteps told me he was pushing through the bushes several yards behind me. He poked around looking for tracks for at least ten minutes, and I must have left something because he was slowly making his way my direction.
Eventually, he was within a couple of feet of my hole and I prepared to push from the hole and come out fighting. I didn't want to have to do it, and I wouldn't kill him if I could avoid it, but if it came to him or me, well, I like me. I don't even know him.
He knelt down and just as I was sure he was going to reach out and pull away the brush from in front of the hole and expose me, a howl sounded from the north, the opposite direction of my house. He snapped to his feet and listened.
The howl sounded again, and he beat a hasty retreat in that direction. I released the lungful of air I'd been holding and waited several minutes before I pushed out of the hole and quickly covered it back up; that was a handy place to remember. Then I moved as quickly as I could on three legs back in the direction of my house.
My senses stayed on high alert in case he returned, or heaven forbid, there was more of them. Then, of course, there were also two other werewolves in these woods. Yeah, I didn't plan on letting my guard down until I was back in my bedroom and dressed.
Once I made it to the back side of the woods that twisted around the lake to my place, my hip was killing me. The bullet had gone through the front side of my right hip and out the back. Not life threatening, and it didn't feel like it had hit the bone, but it was a problem nonetheless. I'm a little surprised I didn't leave a blood trail, but that brush was thick, so maybe I just got lucky.
I waited behind a thicket for another ten minutes just to make sure I wasn't tracked, then hobbled the last mile to my house. I was careful not to leave any more signs of my passing than possible, avoiding mud or s
ticks that jutted out and could snag my fur just in case somebody decided to expand the search area. The trip was slow and painful, but I made it without incident.
With a relieved sigh, I shoved through the back gate and latched it behind me. The adrenaline drained from my body and my muscles relaxed. Instead of feeling better, though, I felt the aches and pains of holding so still for that long, and my hip was killing me. I made my way through the back door just as smudges of purple began to lighten the eastern sky.
I leaned back against the door, not sure if I had the strength to make it up stairs. Chaos butted her head against my legs, her emerald eyes sparkling up at me. "I'm in rough shape, girl," I said. "You're gonna have to cut me some slack." She stared at me for a minute, then disappeared.
I glanced at the clock on the microwave as I limped through the kitchen: almost five. I'd only been gone an hour and a half, yet it felt like a week. Kat wasn't home yet, but should be tripping in any minute. She didn't mess with sunrise.
I hobbled to the living room couch, grabbing a sheet from the hall closet on my way past so that I wouldn't stain the cream microfiber. I stopped to check my wound out in the full-length mirror on the bathroom door, but even with the light on, I couldn't twist around enough to get a good peek.
I gave up and resigned myself to my fate. If I was going to escape without gangrene, I was going to have to admit to my best friend, the graceful, beautiful vampire with perfect, well, everything, that I'd been shot in the ass. Perfect ending to a wonderful night.
Chaos hopped up on the couch and curled up against my chest, her little tongue swiping my cheek before she tucked her head under my chin. At least my fox still loved me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
WHILE I WAITED, I THOUGHT about my situation. First, I considered the werewolf that was creeping around practically in my back yard. It was weird to me that he ran this time, but wanted to fight last time.
Now I had to avoid the Trackers while I was trying to track down said murderous werewolf. Oh, and I was pretty sure there was going to be a pack response. I needed to call my parents and let them know that we had company; I no longer had a choice. And where did Billy Braxton fit into all of it?
And then there was Zach. He paid such close attention to the police scanners that he almost got to the last scene before I did. And he was no slouch at his job; I remembered clearly how well he could shoot. This was above his pay grade though, which meant that he was a liability. Ugh, why did life have to be so complicated?
The sound of a key sliding into the deadbolt dragged my thoughts back to the hear and now and I braced myself for the tide of humiliation I was about to ride. Kat pushed the door open, giggling as a guy tried to spin her around to face him. Crap. And here I was, buck naked with a gunshot wound in my butt.
"Kat," I hissed before they could make it all the way in and get a full moon.
Kat spun around to face me. "Shit!" Her nose crinkled as she smelled the blood; she says it's the worst smelling part of me, except for when I'd been running in the rain. She turned back to her companion and ushered him back out the door. "Sorry. I forgot my roommate was sick. Maybe another time."
She had the door shut and dead-bolted before he could even say goodbye. I heard a muffled, "Call me," through the door.
Kat didn't even bother to answer; she was too busy trying to figure out what was going on.
"It's about time you stumbled home." I grumbled. I tried to sit up, but the throbbing in my hip was a major deterrent. Unlike in the movies, we don't heal immediately. We heal faster and have killer immune systems, but it takes a few days to heal completely from something like a gunshot wound or broken bone.
"Says the girl with the bullet hole in her backside. What the hell happened?" She sat beside me and examined the wound, gently prodding around the edges of the entry wound.
"Werewolf Trackers and, lucky me, they caught me in wolf form. At this point, I hope they got the real killer, seeing as how I don't seem to be able to. But knowing those trigger happy morons, they shot me and figured they had it all wrapped up." I gasped as Kat turned my hip slightly to look at the exit.
"Well," she said, poking around, "the good news is I see a small entrance hole and a bit larger exit wound. The bad news is I'm going to have to clean it out. You think it hurts now, but you ain't seen nuttin' yet, girl." She got up and went to the bathroom, returning with a glass of water and a little blue pill. "Take this."
I frowned. "What is it?"
"Something to help take the edge off the pain and make you tired so you can sleep." She put the pill in my mouth as I lifted my head off the armrest, and then helped me take a drink to wash it down. With the way my metabolism runs, it wouldn't take more than just ten minutes or so for it to kick in.
"Drink the rest of the water; you've lost some blood and that'll help." Since my mouth felt like the Sahara desert, I had no problem draining the glass. Satisfied, she went back to the bathroom and emerged a few moments later with the first aid kit, along with a bottle of alcohol and some cotton swabs balanced.
I sighed and let my head fall down on my hands, my shoulders going numb from where I'd been propped up on my elbows for so long. She was taking this pretty much in stride, which surprised me, though it shouldn't. She's lived through a dozen wars; a simple through-and-through flesh wound was probably just a tick above a scraped knee for her. Still, I was curious because she had awesome stories. "How do you know what to do?"
Kat removed what she'd need from the first aid kid and spread everything across the coffee table. Instead of launching into a tale about the civil war or the French Revolution, she just shrugged.
"It's one of those things that I just know." Her eyes looked past me, like she was trying to remember. "Maybe I was a doctor or a nurse before I was turned. I wish I could remember." Her eyes returned to mine and she smiled. "Or maybe I learned by osmosis watching all those stupid medical dramas with you. All I know is that I know, so relax."
That happened to her on a fairly regular basis. Unlike most vampires, or turned werewolves for that matter, she had absolutely no memories of her life as a human. Sometimes she just knew things. One Christmas, just for kicks, we stopped at the instrument store in the mall, where she proceeded to play Vivaldi's Autumn on the piano. Perfectly.
I nodded. "I hope this is one of those times when you really know, and not because of a television show."
She grinned and came at me with an alcohol pad. "Me, too. Roll over on your stomach."
I did as she asked, then took a deep breath and squeezed my eyes shut; it's not like I had a choice. What was I going to do—go to the hospital and say, "Yeah, I was playing wolf in the woods over in the park and some hunter shot me because he thought I was the one that's been killing people?"
Not so much. Plus then there was always the possibility that the Tracker knew he'd hit me and would be watching the only hospital in town for gunshot wounds.
"Relax," she told me. "How bad can it be?"
"Says the one who doesn't have the bullet holes in her butt."
She offered her hand and I nodded and took it. She poured the alcohol over the wound. I hissed and tried not to tense my muscles, squeezing her hand for all I was worth. If she was human, I would have broken several if not all of the bones in her hand.
"Ow! I need my hand back now," she said, shaking it when I let loose. "I'm extremely durable, but not invincible."
"You ready for the rough part?" she asked without even meeting my gaze.
"Just do what you have to do," I managed through gritted teeth.
I'm pretty sure she used a post hole digger instead of tweezers as she cleaned it out.
"Got it." She said after she drilled into me one final time.
I released a breath I hadn't even realized I was holding. I smiled. "So we're done?"
Kat snorted. "Hardly. That was just the first half. Don't be a baby."
I swear she was paying me back for all the dirty dishes I'd left in th
e sink over the last six years.
"Did you have any luck finding out who poisoned you?" I talked to distract myself.
She hummed. "Sort of. It was definitely in the drink mix. Rocks kept the bottle, and Sean had it analyzed. Silver nitrate, just like Monica thought. I don't know where she learned that, but I'm glad she did."
"Me too. You scared the crap outta me. I don't know what I'd do if I lost you."
She laughed. "If you're saying that while I'm doing this, you either really love me, or the pain pill is kicking in."
"Both," I said. "But that's all you learned? No idea who it was?"
"Nope," she said, ripping open a gauze pad and placing it over the exit hole, then repeating the process for the entry wound. "But he's looking. And I wouldn't want to be the one on the other end of that search."
"Me either," I said, thinking back to what I'd told Alex. "But I'm cheerin' for him."
"Me too, and I hope we solve it soon. I hate to admit it, but now I worry every time I drink anything when I'm out. It's been a long time since I've felt vulnerable, and I don't like it."
She was silent for a minute while she finished taping down the pads.
"All done." She ran her finger around the edges of the pad, making sure the tape adhered everywhere, then examined her handiwork. "Good as new," she said, slapping me on the non-shot cheek.
Craning my neck around, I tried to see what she'd done, but all I could see was white gauze. Since she was finished torturing me, I was feeling floaty; I don't know what she gave me, but it was lovely right about then. "Thanks, Kat. You're a life saver. Or should I say you really saved my butt?"
Kat rolled her eyes. "Ohmugod. You did not just say that! And I was trying to be so nice about it. I'm gonna write that off to the pill. Now, get some sleep. You don't have to worry about your butt cheek falling off now that it's clean, but you'll heal faster if you rest."