by L. E. Horn
Perplexed, I went to fetch my thermometer—the human implement, not the one that got shoved up animals’ butts—and after a few moments of digging in a drawer, found it. The temperature it revealed had my eyebrows climbing into my hairline. Maybe it’s the flu. Other possibilities passed through my mind, but I dismissed each one. It was too soon after the encounter for something like rabies. Besides, with the deadly disease so prevalent in the area, the local vets were vaccinated for it as often as our furry clients. I should have had that flu shot. My entire body ached like the muscles were being pulled from my bones. I staggered back out to the SUV, grabbed more pills from my vet kit, returned to pop them with the last of my juice, and stripped to the skin, checking for something I may have missed. I was covered with dark bruises from the collision with the deer, but I couldn’t find anything to explain my fever, so I dragged my sorry ass to bed. Keen took her customary spot beside me, lying closer than usual.
I dreamed of wolves.
Black, silver, gray, red, and brown, their multicolored forms leaped and snarled their way around my brain as I slept in fits and spurts. I don’t know how long I tossed and turned. When I awoke, the sun had dropped low enough in the sky to send its rays through the basement windows.
Voices. In all my years living here, I had never heard voices in Peter’s house. He had friends he often met in town, but no visitors.
He had them now, and they didn’t sound happy. Although I couldn’t make out the words, I could decipher that one was male and hostile, and it concerned me enough to get me heading for the door. Keen trotted at my heels, eager to go out as it seemed I’d joined the land of the living.
Peter never used his front door, and the deck that took you the three steps to that entrance had long ago rotted away. “The only ones who ever use it are those I don’t want to talk to anyway,” Peter had said when I offered to replace it. Instead, he directed my efforts to the back door, which now opened onto an extensive deck, perfect for enjoying a beer while we watched the sunset.
The steps seemed steeper than usual today. My head spun and I clutched the rail as I ascended. The voices had stopped. Had they been a product of my fever? Already on the deck, Keen paused outside the door she’d passed through many times and lifted her nose before growing still. The hair on her back stood on end.
Unsettled, I pushed her away with my knee and poked my head inside.
“Peter?” I shouted into the house. “You here?” I glanced into the familiar kitchen, painted a cheerful yellow, with a few of my wildlife sketches hung on the walls.
The kitchen was empty. A shuffling noise came from the living room, and I debated the wisdom of walking into what could be a home invasion in progress. Dammit. I should at least have brought my phone.
Peter’s voice rang out. “Liam? That you?”
“Yeah. Is everything all right?” I stepped through the door, blocking Keen with my leg. She was usually a wiggling mess, eager to see the older man, but today she remained stiff as a board, her hackles bristling.
To my relief, Peter emerged from the living area, looking as robust as Humphrey, only with silver hair sticking up instead of curly horns. My elderly friend would have struck quite the figure in his youth, and even now, in his seventies, the gray hair around his square-jawed face remained thick and long enough to be pulled back into a ponytail. His pale-blue eyes sparkled above broad shoulders and a big frame.
Behind him came a young woman with long hair the color of milk chocolate. On her heels followed a huge guy who had inches on me. He must have stood at least six and a half feet, with shoulders like a barn door. His hostile body posture made me straighten in response, inadvertently releasing the leg hold on my furry friend. To my shock, instead of barreling into the room with a wagging tail, Keen took one look at the Sasquatch and began to growl so seriously that her teeth showed.
“Keen, that’s enough,” I snapped at her, and she quit the growl but not the attitude, rolling a frustrated and disbelieving eye at me.
“Liam, meet my niece Chloe and her boyfriend, Dillon.”
I caught a slight hesitation at the word boyfriend as I nodded to Chloe. Dillon did not extend his hand, nor did I. Instead, I found myself smiling at Chloe. Peter’s niece—that he even had one was a shock because he’d never mentioned his family—checked every box in the attractive-female category. And beyond. After a moment, although something within me straightened and saluted, my brain put on the brakes. The last time I traveled this road, it hadn’t ended well. I’d lost not only the woman I loved but a man I considered a friend. So not going there again.
Before I finished that thought, Dillon pulled a pure caveman move and slid between Chloe and me, blocking my view.
“Dillon, don’t be an idiot.” Chloe put a hand on his arm as she stepped around the dark-featured Sasquatch. Oh, man. I’d always been a sucker for a beautiful smile. As I shook her hand, Dillon rumbled, a sound almost more animal than human, and my crazy dog echoed it, even as she leaned into my leg.
“Keen!” Again, she rolled an eye at me and subsided with reluctance.
“It’s okay,” Chloe said, crouching in front of Keen. “She doesn’t know us.” She extended a hand, keeping it below the level of Keen’s nose. My suspicious friend stretched out to sniff it, and her tail gave a cautious wag.
When Dillon reached to pull Chloe to her feet, however, the brief truce ended. Keen barked at him, and I’d had enough. I grabbed her by the collar and put her out the door.
Keen whined and scrabbled, but I ignored her. “Sorry about that,” I said to Peter. “I don’t know what’s got into her.” I didn’t look at Dillon.
Peter’s brows lowered. Keen had known him since she was a puppy. “I know what’ll help.” He opened a cupboard and emerged with not one, but two giant cookies.
I hadn’t meant to add to his troubles. “I should go,” I said, but he slipped by me and through the door, pushing Keen efficiently back with his knee and closing it behind them.
“Do you want tea?” Chloe asked while Dillon retreated to the table, where he sat, glowering at me.
Now that I knew Peter was okay, my symptoms reappeared with a vengeance. “No, thanks. I should get back to bed.”
Chloe’s gaze dropped to my bandaged arm and I noticed a muscle jump in her jaw. “Peter said you’re a vet. Did a dog bite you?”
“I was bitten all right, but not by a dog.” I rubbed my arm, wondering what to tell her, and deciding on the truth. “A wolf tried to eat Keen last night, and I got between them.”
“Wolf?” Dillon said, frowning. “A wolf bit you? No wolves around here. Probably a big dog.”
“I’m a vet. I know the difference.” But even as I said the words, I wondered. Something about what I’d seen didn’t fit the wolf profile. Like, maybe that it attacked your dog while you stood a few feet away? I’d never heard of the big canids being that brazen. There was also the little matter of dismembered bison . . . could it be dogs? At the time, I’d been blown away by the power of the predator—or predators—but maybe my imagination had been running on overtime. What had come at me last night had seemed huge, much bigger than a wolf or dog, but it had been dark.
My head spun with the effort of connecting the dots on this particular mystery. I emerged from my thoughts to see them staring at me like I’d sprouted horns. Chloe licked her lips and glanced at Dillon, whose gaze remained fixed on me. Hostility radiated from him.
Man, if he’s worried about me around her, how does he function in public? How is he not rotting in prison for killing some tourist who asks her for directions?
My head pounded and my warm bed beckoned. I groped for the threads of the conversation—wolves, right. “That’s what I get for being out in the middle of the night. Wolves are back in the area, just didn’t expect to run into any.”
“How badly were you hurt?” Chloe asked.
“Not bad. More of a deep scratch than anything.”
“Sure it was a bite?” Dillo
n spaced each word deliberately, as though he were speaking to a child.
Okay, this conversation is getting weirder by the minute. I gave the question a moment’s thought, remembering the snapping jaws coming at me. The front paws had been right there, too. “I think it was a glancing bite, but it could have been claws. I stitched myself up, though, and it’s healing well. No biggie.”
Chloe leaned back on the kitchen table, her face pale. I took a step toward her, but Dillon rose to intercept, pushing into my space—his dark eyes inches from my own. I pushed right back into him. I don’t know what got into me; I was so not the confrontational type. At least, not for years. I didn’t want to go back there now.
As though from down a long tunnel, Peter growled, “Dillon. Liam’s a friend. You’ll treat him with respect.”
I hadn’t heard him return. He stepped past me to push the hulk away, breaking our gridlock.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
Peter’s eyes were locked on Dillon, and the big man retreated another step, his jaw clenching.
When Dillon’s glare returned to me, I again sensed something within me respond. I decided I had better get myself out of Peter’s house and back to bed before my inner Neanderthal got me into more trouble.
When I turned to go, Chloe escorted me to the door. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Dillon move to follow but Peter put an arm out to stop him.
What is with that guy?
“I think this is yours,” Chloe said, reaching behind the door.
I knew Peter kept a baseball bat there—he claimed it would fend off burglars, although I had my doubts—so it surprised me when she held out my walking stick, made of solid polished maple, with animals I’d carved into the surface. I balanced it in one hand, my gaze tracing the familiar contours. “I dropped this last night. Where did you find it?”
Chloe transfixed me with another smile. “On the path, this morning.”
A threatening rumble came from the mountain looming behind her, and her smile faltered. “It was nice to meet you,” she said.
Her eyes had darkened, and she avoided mine. Why did me getting bitten by a wolf seem to cause them so much angst? I’m okay, so is Keen, so what’s the big deal? Maybe it’s all my imagination. I have one hell of a fever.
“Just be careful walking in the woods,” I said. “They were big suckers and not afraid of people.”
Peter shot her a questioning glance, but she nodded and bit her lip as I stepped out the door. Keen, stuffed full of cookies, barked at me, her voice sharp with near hysteria as she cleared the steps in a bound, eager to leave. When I glanced back, the door had already closed. As I walked to my suite, I tossed the stick in my hand to find the natural balance point. Something rough caught my skin, and I stopped to get a closer look, running fingers along the polished wood. There. Right near the center, a series of holes bored through the varnish, tearing out the tiny splinters that had poked me.
They looked like tooth marks, big ones. As though a huge dog had carried my walking stick home.
* * *
I stayed in bed for three days and listened to the sound of muffled voices above my head. Dillon’s rumbled while Chloe’s was barely audible. They fought daily, and I could hear Peter wade in each time. He must have provided the voice of reason, as silence would follow.
On the second day, I stood in my kitchen heating soup when I noticed Peter had got the Chevy out of storage. It now sat between my SUV and the old truck. I guessed Dillon and Chloe were staying for a while.
The fever broke on the third evening, and I slept. Even their arguing didn’t keep me up.
On day four, I dragged myself to work. I’d been in the building five minutes when Darlene showed me the bruise where Fang bit her. Apparently, I owed her dinner, and by default, that meant her and her husband. I considered it fair compensation for a date with Walter’s donkey.
I wandered through the clinic in a daze. The three other vets that worked there gave me an easy shift with small-animal cases rather than the farm calls. So I prepared for a routine stint of vaccinations and checkups.
But my day turned out to be far from routine.
Our senior vet assistant, Mandy, and our elderly clerk, Ardyth, received visitors as I moved into the back where the clinic had four examination rooms. The first patient, a twelve-year-old cat, took one look at me and retreated with a hiss into her crate. I had become accustomed to cats being reluctant patients, so I didn’t think this was unusual.
As it turned out, my first five customers were felines. Every single one behaved as though I wanted to eat them.
Cats were predators, but being small, they could fall prey to larger animals. In the country, foxes and coyotes often killed them. But why were they reacting so severely to me?
I wrestled cat number five onto the table, one hand on its scruff, the other waving a vaccine, when Mandy came to help. She was no doubt curious about the noise emitting from each room I entered. Much like the previous four, this cat screamed as though it was being skinned alive. A sound that cut off the moment Mandy took over the pin maneuver and spoke quietly to the animal. She glanced at me through her heavy bangs, which I noticed sported a new fluorescent orange streak.
The now traumatized owner peeled herself off the wall and advanced toward the table. “Whiskers doesn’t like you.”
“I’m sorry,” I panted, flustered as I administered the vaccine. “I don’t usually have a problem with cats.” Mandy released the animal and in a blur of gray fur, it darted into its crate . She placed a reassuring hand on the owner’s arm as she escorted woman and caged cat to the front counter.
My next patient was a young dog admitted for a pre-exam prior to a routine neuter. I entered the room with unusual caution, relieved to see a dog instead of a cat waiting for me. My relief turned to dismay when the animal took one look at me, cowered, and released its bladder on the floor.
Mandy appeared to mop up the mess. And I spent the next ten minutes ingratiating myself with the quivering hound in an effort to entice him out of the corner. When Mandy returned from dumping the bucket, she shot me a look, and I handed her the leash.
“You can put him in a kennel.”
She peered at me through strands of bright orange as the dog practically towed her out the door.
The owner looked at me curiously. “Never seen ’im like that,” the old farmer said with his heavy accent.
“Must be something I’m wearing,” I said with a shrug. “They hate me today.”
It wasn’t unusual for animals to fear vets, but I’d never experienced this kind of reaction. I chalked it up to a bad day, until I entered the kennel area to sedate the first surgery patients. Mandy was waiting for me with the necessary equipment, and everything was normal.
Until I arrived.
The moment I stepped into the room, the cats flattened themselves against the back walls of their cages, hissing and yowling, and the dogs cowered on the floor, whimpering. What the hell was going on?
Mandy looked from them to me. “What the fornication?” As usual, it wasn’t just our tech’s hair that possessed color. After extensive efforts on Darlene’s part, Mandy had been trained to substitute her profanity with less offensive substitutions. Unfortunately, they didn’t always make sense. “Are you using new cologne? Like . . . Eau de Leo?”
Needless to say, sedation took a while. It was a relief to go into surgery and complete the two spays and three castrations on my plate for the day. Being treated as death personified wasn’t doing much for my morale. At least when they were unconscious, they didn’t shrink from me.
I’d just tied the last knot when Ardyth popped in to say a show horse had arrived to have a minor injury stitched. By this time, Darlene had returned from her round of farm calls and was in the parking lot when I emerged from the building, kit in hand.
The horse took one sniff and bolted to the end of its lead rope, eyes bulging in terror. I tried sp
eaking softly, moving slowly, and not making eye contact—the tricks every vet uses to soothe a nervous animal. Nothing worked.
With a toss of her curly head, Darlene strode up and grabbed the lead rope from Tammy. Over the years, I’d come to admire Darlene’s no-nonsense demeanor, which seemed to calm most animals. A few quiet words and the horse stopped snorting and lowered its head. The moment I moved to hand Darlene the kit, the head shot up. With a sinking heart, I backed away again.
I left them to it and went back into the clinic. I passed straight down the hall to the door leading to the outdoor kennels. Keen saw me coming and bounced over, but about five feet from me, she slid to a stop and sniffed the air, her hackles rising.
My heart froze. “Keen, come on, not you too.”
At the sound of my voice, she cocked her head. When I crouched and extended a hand, she stretched out her neck and sniffed for what seemed like ages. My legs began to cramp, but I kept talking to her until, finally, her tail wagged, and she licked my fingers. A wave of relief left me trembling.
When Darlene found me thirty minutes later, her brows were drawn into a frown. “What the hell is up? Mandy says the animals are nuts around you.”
“She’s right. Every single patient hated me today. Even Keen acted like she didn’t know me.”
Darlene’s eyes slid to my furry friend and returned to me. “New cologne? Laundry detergent?”
“No.” I frowned. “I have no idea what’s going on.” I rose, shut Keen back in the kennel, and followed my partner’s sturdy form back into the clinic and down the hall.
When we reached the front counter, Darlene fixed me with a hard stare. “Well, you’d better figure it out. You may look good in coveralls, but if the animals take one glance and bolt—”
“I know.” I shook my head.
“Try taking a shower,” she suggested, not unkindly.
“Believe it or not, I shower daily.”
We were interrupted when the clinic door opened. Our sometime client Frank Bordechuk came in with his huge dog on a leash.
