by Holly Rutan
"Not your fault, lad," Emma said. "That is why were partners have specialized training. But you see"—she turned back to the guard—"you may lose your job. Very well, I'll give you another one if necessary. Is your job worth Miss Davis's life?"
The guard looked at his feet, catching his lip in his teeth, and finally sighed. "No, ma'am. Hell, the pay was crap, anyway. Come on, might as well show you the way."
Caught up in the charismatic pull that surrounded Emma like an aura, the six of us pushed through the sliding glass doors and into the hospital lobby. The doors closed behind us with a tired whir.
The guard paused and muttered something into his radio. He took off his belt and placed it along with the radio behind the customer service counter, startling the elderly volunteer stationed there.
"I'm going off-duty, Dorothy. Someone's coming down to take over," he said.
"A-all right, Bob. But these people..." The old woman's voice quivered as she looked us over. Her watery blue eyes met mine and flinched away.
"Friends and family of some of the folk who got hurt last night," the guard explained. "I'm giving them an escort so they don't get lost on the way."
Dorothy brightened, relieved to have an explanation to latch on to. "Be sure to sign in at the nurses' station. Doctor Chen is the supervisor on duty."
"Thank you, Dorothy," Bob answered with a smile.
"Have a nice day," she said.
I could feel the elderly volunteer watching us as we left, but couldn't bring myself to care. This hospital, with its exclusionary policies and cold, white halls, was not where I would have picked to send our agents, and I doubted the DMA would use it again if there was any choice. It had just been the closest available medical facility that had enough beds to fit all our wounded.
Bob led the way through the corridors to intensive care. We passed through a set of double doors and then stopped at the next. Bob had to swipe his key card—which he hadn't relinquished with his weapon—at the second set.
I could feel Charles up ahead. His pain was like a nagging itch, and my mouth abruptly flooded with saliva. With an uncomfortable swallow, I curled my lips away from suddenly sharp teeth. Emma paused, placing one hand on my elbow. I felt her presence as my alpha like a palpable weight as she imposed her will over mine, and the shift slid back under my skin without a ripple. I stopped walking.
"Hold yourself together, love," Emma said in a soft tone. In contrast, her fingers felt like they were made of iron; her grip was like a vise, hard enough to bruise and provoke healing in a tingling rush.
"I am in control, Emma," I answered, letting a soft undercurrent of growl whisper through my voice. "Don't put me on a leash. I'll bite, and this is not the place or time."
"Seconded," Moira rasped, clearly worried.
The humans were all afraid. The nervous tang of their sweat tainted the air with acrid undertones. Emma and I stared at each other, neither of us quite meeting the others' eyes. With a faint frown, Emma nodded and released my arm.
"It was only my intent to help, Samantha. You appeared to be losing control," Emma said.
"I don't lose control," I answered.
"No?" Emma asked.
"Never," I growled, not letting fact get in the way of a dominance display. "And we're wasting time."
"You are right, of course. Let us proceed," Emma answered.
Obediently, Bob swiped his key card and held the door open, allowing us into the intensive care unit.
My nose flooded with the antiseptic stink that hospitals always seem to smell like, but magnified, the direct result of so many grievously wounded patients all in the same place. Under the chemical stench was the reek of pain and fear and blood and piss, and a hint of sulfur.
I coughed, eyes watering, and took in a second, more careful breath.
Emma said, "Ugh," and it was my turn to rest a hand on her elbow while she caught her bearings.
Nurses in blue scrubs moved in and out of rooms, steps hurried. A couple of black-clad DMA medmages sat in chairs out of the way. One of them was playing softly on an ocarina, the sweet, high-pitched melody heavy with magic. The other sat, head sprawled back and limbs limp, fast asleep. Charles was somewhere ahead and to the left. Not bothering to wait for the rest of my compatriots, I dropped Emma's arm and strode toward his room.
"Hey," a masculine voice called. "You don't have clearance to be here. Bob! Who are these people? What are you doing here?"
I tuned him out and brushed away someone's grasping hand impatiently.
"I need to find Charles," I said to the room in general.
"One fifty-six," one of the nurses answered. "I can't stop you. Just...don't hurt anyone."
"Silly human, weres don't hurt people, it's always the other way around," I said with an absent sigh, and counted the numbers on the doors. Charles’s door was propped open.
Irwin was inside, sitting on a chair with Charles's toes held in one hand, humming. His eyes were red rimmed. The gangly mage nodded to me without ceasing his song. Pyggie perched on his knee, stock-still; it was as though his entire snack-sized little body was focused on the task at hand: keeping Charles alive. The pulse monitor beeped unsteadily.
My nostrils flared, and I rushed to my mate's side. I bent over his head and brushed my lips against his, then drew my jaw over his mouth, filling his breath with my scent. I ignored the tubes and cradled his face in my hands, touching his skin to mine.
"Charles," I whispered. "I'm here. Stay with me, love. Breathe with me."
"Ma'am, you need to leave," a man said from the doorway. "I've already called security."
The faltering rhythm of the heart monitor changed. It sped up, matching my own heart's steady beat. Charles's breath steadied and deepened, matching mine.
"...what the hell...?" the man whispered.
"Foolish, ignorant human," Emma said, her voice cool. "You don't keep a were from her mate. It harms both of them. Much longer and he would have been gone."
"He still might be," I said, feeling the weight of Charles's weakness. The room dimmed and swayed. I took a deep breath to steady myself. "I'm feeding him my strength. He's still dying. I'll need to heal him, and I need food."
"Heal him?" Emma asked, confused.
"I'll get you something to eat, Miss Davis," Terrence said from the hall.
"Need to heal him. Lick his hurts, make it better," I repeated, and hovered my mouth over the bandaged wound in his belly. I sucked air through my teeth, curling my upper lip to better taste his scent. "It's infected. Tainted. Can't you smell the stink of sulfur?"
Emma took an uncertain breath, and I tore Charles's bandages away with my fangs. I didn't bother with a full shift, just sharp teeth and a little bit of muzzle. The wound was red and swollen, and angry red lines snaked out from the circular opening where the bullet had penetrated his flesh. Thick saliva dripped from my mouth to damaged skin, and sizzled.
Irwin's tired singing faltered.
The doctor gasped, and there was motion near the doorway. I ignored them, leaning even closer, and breathed in the scent of the infection.
"Yeah," I muttered. "Sulfur and rot. Think I can fix it. The wound's deep. I...sorry, love," I winced and then drew a claw over the wound, shoulders tensed against the pain. Blood and yellowish pus gushed from the gash, staining my fingers.
"What are you doing?" Emma howled.
The doctor moved. I could see the motion in my peripheral vision and ignored it. With an unhappy grunt, I opened my mouth and let the thick, gooey spit dribble into the freshly bleeding injury. My claw had turned the bullet hole from a puncture to a tear, and I held the two sides apart, whining with his pain, and licked the bleeding flesh with my long tongue until the stink of sulfur disappeared.
I gagged and spat the taint out on the floor, then pressed the sides of the injury together and licked until the pain went away. Some of the burden of Charles's weakness lifted as muscle knitted together.
I looked up from the angry red sca
r that was all that was left of what had been a deadly gut shot. Emma hadn't moved. She stood, trembling and alone, in the doorway. Her eyes were wide, and she fixed her gaze on me in a mix of fascination and horror.
"Doc gone?"
She nodded.
I grunted, turning my attention toward the injury on Charles's hip. "That'll be trouble. Keep 'em out when they come, would you? Thanks."
Not waiting for her affirmative, I tore the bandages away from the gunshot wound on his hip and got to work. By the time I'd finished with that one, I was swaying with weariness and the room was fading in and out of focus. There was commotion and lots of shouting in the direction of the doorway, but I ignored it.
I moved on to the next bullet hole.
"Lick it, make it better," I muttered to myself, and did so.
The room spun like a carousel.
Emma was grabbing me by the shoulder and shaking me. I looked up, confused and half-dazed.
"Samantha, stop. Stop! He's healed enough. Stop," she growled, and slapped me across the face.
"You hit me," I said in a small voice. "Why do you always hurt me, Momma?"
And then the spinning world tilted sideways and dimmed.
I found myself on the floor. It was nicely cool and comfortable, and inside my head it was so quiet and peaceful. It would have been nice to sleep, but someone was shaking my shoulder and I couldn't.
"She's suffering from Stop Shock," Irwin was saying. He sounded wholly lucid, for once. "She's drained her reserves completely. If we keep her warm and make her rest and don't let her work the current, she has a decent chance of recovery."
"Get her up."
"My God, she weighs nothing."
"Jesus, look at her ribs. Her clothes are falling off."
A bunch of voices I didn't recognize babbled. I could hear the doctor ordering an IV inserted. Hands lifted me from the floor and started to carry me away, and then Emma countermanded their efforts and I found myself cradled against the body of my mate.
He was sleeping.
I felt the poke of a needle in my arm, but I didn't care.
Charles was sleeping. He would live. Nothing else mattered.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The soft sound of whispers woke me. I found myself nestled against Charles's warm side and lay still, savoring the sound of his heart beating its steady rhythm. A sudden surge of joy indicated my mate had sensed my return to consciousness. He smoothed my hair, his fingers warm against my skin, and I sighed and shifted position. The leaden soreness of my muscles suggested that I'd been immobile for quite a while.
"If one of you ladies could bear to wrest yourselves from your gossip," Charles began, his voice resonating in his chest, "I do believe my mate is waking up. I suspect she'll be hungry."
"I got it," I heard Penny acknowledge, and footsteps retreated.
"Hungry," I mumbled without opening my eyes, "doesn't even begin to describe what I'm feeling right now. I want about five pounds of warm, raw ground rabbit, bone in. That'll do for a start."
"Well, you're getting hospital food," Charles said, his voice light and teasing. "Instant mashed potatoes, limp green beans, and overcooked steak."
"That is very disappointing," I answered, smothering a yawn.
"Considering you've been getting your calories from an IV for three days now, it's an improvement," Moira's voice commented.
"As soon as they let you go, I will take you home and give you and your mate some food worth eating," Maria's voice said with a disdainful sniff. "What these people try to pass off as food is a travesty."
"Yeah, it ain't great," Ricardo said.
"It's sure better than starving!" Pyggie squeaked.
"True," Moira answered. "We nearly lost you there, girl. That was too close."
"Much too close for comfort," someone else said.
"The queen was very upset," a second voice continued.
"So we have orders that if you do that again, we're to bite you," a third voice finished.
I sniffed, drawing in the welter of personal scents hanging in the little hospital room. Antiseptic stung my nose, but I ignored it. Finally, I gave up and opened my eyes, puzzled.
"Just how many people are in here, anyway?" I asked.
Charles laughed, and I squeaked in protest as my head bounced off his stomach. With a perturbed grumble, I rolled over, peering at the crowded room. Somehow I'd ended up in a hospital gown, and I had to cling to the flimsy fabric tightly to avoid flashing everybody.
My friends and pack mates were jammed together as close as space would allow, sitting in the provided seats and invading the space of the patient in the other half of the room. Three identical, very pretty black-haired girls sat along the edge of the other bed, a situation that the male occupant didn't seem to mind in the slightest. One of the girls was drawing on one of his casts with a black marker, so focused on her task that she didn't appear to notice anything else. Irwin was fast asleep in a chair in the corner, while Moira sat cross-legged at his feet, feeding Pyggie what looked like a baby carrot.
Ricardo, who was leaning insolently against the back wall, gave me a grin that was full of teeth. "Good to see you awake, sis. When we gonna take our turf back?"
"Not for at least a week," Charles said, a soft growl winding through his voice. "Stop Shock isn't anything to fuck with, and I want my mate alive and sane."
"Stop Shock?" I asked, puzzled. "I wasn't working any melodies. I just got real tired and passed out."
"If Irwin says you went into Stop Shock, you went into Stop Shock," Charles said. He pulled me close with one arm, and his body felt tight with tension. "That healing thing you do uses the current, even if we don't know how it works. You tapped yourself completely dry."
"Oh," I said, horrified by my brush with death. "I should thank your mother for stopping me."
Charles grimaced. "She left for San Diego as soon as it became clear you'd survive."
Moira, who'd moved from feeding Pyggie to tickling his belly, looked up from the giggling chipmunk and grinned. "Five bucks says if she'd stayed you'd be at each other's throats an hour from now and she wasn't sure who'd win."
"That woman might be filled with a too-good opinion of herself, but she is not a fool," Maria agreed. She continued in a warmer voice, "I am glad you are awake, Sammy. The boys have all been terribly worried about you. Mark has been snapping at Simon, and Jorge has gotten very quiet. Won't you stop by the house and reassure them that you are all right?"
I looked up at Charles, and he nodded.
"As soon as they let me go, I'll come straight over," I answered. "I'll call first. Tell the boys I'll be fine."
"We have to come, too," one of the ratgirls said.
"The queen says we're to stay with you at all times," the second said.
"We like our tails, and we'd really rather keep them," the third remarked, without looking up from her heart-shaped doodles. "No choice about it."
"Bro's given me the same orders," Ricardo commented, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking at the ceiling as though the matter was of little importance.
"If I let you out of my sight again, there's no telling what you'll do," Moira said in a dreadful voice.
Charles started laughing again, and I stuck my tongue out at him. That made him laugh even harder, tears in his sparkling green eyes. My belly quivered with his amusement and relief, and I grinned, unable to keep up my annoyance in the face of his glee.
"I had better go now, if I am to make enough food," Maria said, sweeping her chocolate eyes over the crowd of people, counting heads. "And even so, it may be stews and casseroles, but I will make do. I will not have enough chairs, however."
Hooves clattered against linoleum, accompanied by the heavy musk of male goat. Puzzled, I looked over at the doorway in time to see Bruce Simon stride through, Penny and his cameraman trailing in his wake. Penny had her hands full with several still-warm trays of what looked like microwave meals. She handed them to Cha
rles, and I began eating the first one without even tasting it, my stunned gaze fixed on the reporter.
Bruce Simon's legs had become long, muscular goat legs, complete with a shaggy pelt of shiny black fur. Since he wore no clothes except for an obviously jury-rigged loincloth, I was treated to the sight of fur that trailed up his muscular abdomen to his belly button. His shoulders and neck had broadened to support the pair of heavy black horns that sprouted from just above his temples and pointed back along his skull. Even the hair on his head had changed, gaining some curl and growing thick and glossy down the nape of his neck.
"Mr. Simon," I mumbled between mouthfuls, "you're a satyr. When did this happen?"
"Hello," Moira exclaimed, apparently getting an eyeful from her position on the floor. Pyggie squeaked, and she returned her attention to the familiar, pink cheeked.
"I found him wandering around in the cafeteria," Penny explained. "Then he followed me here."
"I should have heeded your warning, young lady," Bruce Simon said, pushing up his black-rimmed glasses in gesture that screamed of long habit. "Now Fitz and I find ourselves unemployed. Even the most liberal of news networks is uninterested in a creature that cannot at least pass for human, no matter how fine the qualities of his stories."
The poor reporter's square jaw was tight with dismay, and I gave him a sympathetic nod. His minion set his heavy bag of filming equipment down with a relieved sigh, and Ricardo made room for the two of them with a philosophical shrug.
"Could always be worse, man. Your turf could be a war zone filled with demons and undead homies instead," Ricardo said. "Gonna have to put some napalm on that shit."
"I suppose that puts things in perspective," Bruce Simon commented, raising well-sculpted eyebrows.
"And the ladies will love you," Ricardo continued, smirking. "I hear there's some good bills in that."
"I have absolutely no intention of embarking upon a new career as a gigolo," the satyr answered drily, while his cameraman suppressed a snicker.
"Three more for dinner," Maria said. "And of course, it would not do to leave Rendall here all alone if he wishes to come."
"Really?" My fellow patient, who had been looking downcast, brightened. "It's been ages since I had a real home-cooked meal. The Department transferred me in from out of state, and I don't have any family around here."