Blood and Silver - 04

by James R. Tuck

The bear tossed its head back, lifting me off my feet. Killer jaws opened at the top of its swing, flinging me away. My stomach flipped as I sailed over, landing on the stovetop. I banged to a stop, hanging off the counter and stove.

  I couldn’t see. I was blinded by pain. My arm was a throbbing, sticky mess, the fingers completely useless. I shook my head to clear it. My sight came back in a tunnel of dark gray. The polar bear was gathering itself, readying to charge.

  My guns were gone, both of them knocked out of my hands. I was lying in a pile of broken ceramic shards with cookie crumbles scattered in the pieces. My useless arm was under me, hand on an overturned knife block.

  My left hand snatched a handle from the block, drawing out a thirteen-inch butcher knife like Excalibur from the stone. The bear charged. It thundered up, jaws snapping toward my face.

  My hand flashed out holding the knife. I slashed down with all the strength I had.

  And stabbed it in the mouth.

  The blade slid through the bear’s tongue with no resistance, the pink tip of it flew past my ear to smack the wall behind me. A thin arc of blood from it whipped hot across my cheek. The blade punched through the bottom of the jaw, between the bones. Blood and saliva washed over my hand as I shoved it to the hilt and let go.

  The bear jerked back, paws swinging toward its face. Swatting, trying to grab without fingers. Blood streamed down the blade where it jutted out of the bottom of the jaw. The gore blared out, day-glow bright against the white fur of the bear’s chest. It kept trying to close its mouth, ramming the handle against the roof of its palate. This drove the knife even deeper, which made the bear try harder in a cycle of pain and frustration.

  The Were-bear fell over, rolling on the floor. Its throat convulsed to try and dislodge the knife. Blood smeared across the linoleum in weird abstract patterns.

  I sat up and slid off the counter. Heat from the open oven baked against my leg. I looked down to find the shotgun still lodged in the oven rack. My left hand closed on it. The skin of my palm burned, the barrel hot from being inside the oven.

  I didn’t care.

  I managed to rack the slide, juggling the shotgun with one hand as the bear finally shook the knife free. It skittered across the floor, slinging blood droplets in its trail. The bear looked up at me. Natural polar bears don’t have expressions besides calm indifference and kill. This polar bear had murder in its eyes and blood on its fur. It roared as I pointed the shotgun in its face. I squeezed the trigger as it turned away. The silver-shot blast tore across its snout, ripping away the bottom jaw, leaving it to hang askew on one thin, bloody tendon. The stump of its tongue splatted on the ceiling, sticking there like some gigantic, gory, obscene spitwad.

  The bear fell into a puddle of its own blood. Seizure convulsed it, jerking the bear’s body into knots. It began to shrink, its body re-formed, writhing back into the form of a man. Pushing off the stove, I walked unsteadily to the bloody, naked man twitching on the linoleum. As the last dregs of bear washed away from McMahon, he sprawled out, arms and legs akimbo, muscles still bunched into charley horses.

  I racked the shotgun again as I stepped over him. The lower half of his face was a red ruin. Gnarled hands batted at my legs weakly. His eyes rolled around, looking wildly from side to side as he made ghuk, ghuk noises from what was left of his throat. Silver poisoning ran black from the edges of the wound. I swung the shotgun over his face, putting the barrel against his eye socket.

  “This is for Kaylee Ann Dobbs.”

  I pulled the trigger.

  Exhausted, battered, and injured, I fell into the Comet’s seat. The armload of guns I had carried from the house clattered into the passenger side, some of them spilling into the floorboard. Weary from blood loss, I felt like a piece of beef jerky. Pulled tight and dried out. The bicep on my right arm was tourniqueted with my T-shirt. It wasn’t pretty, but it should keep me alive until I got to medical attention. I had torn the shirt and tied the knot with my teeth. Each heartbeat throbbed through the arm, sending a cutting pain all the way down to my fingertips. I couldn’t see out of my left eye. It had swollen shut, and the skin was sore and mushy to the touch. The eyelid had sealed shut with clotted blood from the split on my eyebrow. I would take care of it when I got back to the club. My head was fuzzy, full of ache and cotton. That would be the combo pack of abuse and blood loss. My left hand fished in my pocket, looking for the keys. They weren’t there.

  Dammit.

  “You okay, mister?”

  I jumped, one open eye jerking to the rearview mirror. I was too spent to react more than that. In the small rectangle of glass I saw little Mary sitting in the backseat. Her eyes were wide as she stared at me.

  I relaxed, tension washing away. “Yeah, kid. Why do you ask?”

  She slid forward, putting her thin arms on the back of the front seat. “You don’t look so good.”

  “You should see the other guy.” I laughed at my own joke. Laughing made my stomach spasm and turned into a wet, hacking cough. I caught it in my hand. When I looked there were tiny droplets of blood on my palm. I wiped them away on my pants. Mary didn’t seem to think it was funny. “Do you still have my keys, sweetie?”

  Her arm came forward over the seat. My keys dangled from the end of her thin brown fingers. I reached over to get them with my left hand and that sent a jolt of pain across my arm that made my head spin. When it passed, I leaned up and tried to put the key in the ignition with my left hand. I dropped them to the floorboard with a curse.

  “Let me help.” Mary scrambled over the seat and ducked down to snatch up the keys. Unmindful of the guns, she scooped up the keys. They jangled as she shoved the right key into the ignition and turned it. The Comet roared to life, happy to see me. I nodded a thank you to Mary. She pushed guns in the floor and pulled the seat belt around her thin frame. I shifted the car to Drive. Before I could go, Mary spoke up, “Where’s the little white girl, mister?”

  The thought of Kaylee punched me in the gut. I was going to have to tell her father what had happened to her. I didn’t want to tell her father what had happened to her. I would. That’s part of the job. The shitty part, but still a part I had to do. I looked over. “She didn’t make it, kid. I was too late to save her.”

  Mary sat for a second. Absorbing. One tiny tear trickled down her cheek. “I’m sorry.” She said it simply, not realizing how much it really meant.

  I stepped on the gas, pulling away from the hell of that neighborhood and the hell of that house.

  “Where are you taking me, mister?” No fear in her voice, just trust mixed with curiosity. Anywhere I was taking her had to be better than where she was.

  “Call me Deacon. I’m taking you to see a friend of mine named Father Mulcahy. He will find you a new home. A good home.”

  “Mister Deacon, did you kill McMahon?”

  I kept looking forward as I drove.

  “Dead as hell, kid. You never have to worry about him again.”

  She settled into her seat belt, relaxing.

  “Good.” Her hands clasped together in her lap, she leaned back into the seat and closed her eyes. There was a smile on her face.

  “That’s it there.”

  Kat’s voice pulled me out of my reverie. I spun the wheel and turned into the driveway for a low cinderblock building. There was a handicap access ramp from the front door, and all the windows were painted black.

  My fingers reached up to rub the wide, flat scars on my right bicep. The skin was slick and hard to the touch even more than four years later. That was the first time I had run up against a lycanthrope.

  My mind flashed to the Were-dog in the backseat, the lions, and the gang of other lycanthropes I had run into today. I had learned a helluva lot since that first time, and it looked like I was going to wind up using every bit of it before all of this was over.

  Yippee-ki-yay.

  5

  Larson looked completely different than the last time I saw him. His ginger hair and
beard had grown until it hung around almost delicate features. He had lost enough weight to give him the hollow-eyed look of a Russian Orthodox icon. His skin was pale from being inside too much. Cheekbones that could have opened envelopes sat above his tangled beard.

  And he was in a wheelchair.

  Larson had been mixed up in the fight with Appollonia last year. She had set him up without his knowledge to be bait for me in a trap of her devising. It failed. Things got really weird and she apparently changed her plans. Then she tried to use his family as hostages to force me to do what she wanted.

  What she had wanted me to do was her.

  I said it got really weird.

  It all came down to a big fight that left Larson without the use of his legs. I realized, now that he was in front of me, I had not seen him since he had been in the hospital.

  Come to think of it, that was pretty shitty of me.

  What can I say? I had been busy.

  He wheeled back from the doorway to let me and Kat inside. I was carrying Sophia wrapped in one of the blankets from the backseat. I stepped in. Kat shut the door behind me, locking it.

  “Larson.” I did the guy nod.

  “Deacon.” He nodded back. Arms corded with wiry muscle, he spun his chair around. He began rolling down a hallway. “Let’s go see to the patient. Follow me to the lab,” he called over his shoulder. I motioned Kat to go ahead of me.

  The hall was short and dim, completely bare of any decoration. It ended in a ramp that led down into a mad scientist-style laboratory. The room had tile floors and white walls. A desk stood in one corner surrounded by bookshelves that had no books on them. The books were piled on and around the desk instead, haphazardly slid and stacked. The rest of the room had countertops lining each wall. On these were a lot of equipment I did not recognize, but it all looked medical or scientific of some type. The lab smelled like a cross between a laundry mat and an herb shop. A flat table stood in the center of the room with telescoping lights arranged above it. Larson pulled a sheet of thick white butcher paper over it and motioned me to lay the Were on it.

  It was a relief to set her down again. My back was burning from being thrown into the cinderblocks, and my arm throbbed and ached with every heartbeat where Cash had opened it up with his teeth. I slid Sophia off my arms and onto the table as gently as I could. She didn’t whimper like she had when I picked her up from the backseat of the Comet, but I felt her tense, holding her breath tight.

  Once I got out of the way, Larson went to work. Tenderly, he moved the blanket and began examining her. Her eyes opened for the first time, one liquid brown, the other a crystal white-blue. She looked at him warily; then her brown eye rolled around to me, fixing me with a stare. A dog’s eyes can look remarkably human. A Were-dog’s eyes are eerily human. Even the difference in their color didn’t ruin the effect.

  “Tell me what happened to her.”

  I held the Were’s gaze as I answered. “I don’t know any details or anything that happened to her before I found her. But she has been choked and beaten with a heavy chain by a big sonuvabitch of a Were-lion. He looked like he was trying to kill her.”

  “That sounds brutal.”

  “It was.”

  “I assume she’s a shape-shifter of some kind. If not, she would never have survived that kind of beating.”

  I nodded. “She feels like a lycanthrope. Some form of dog Were, even though I don’t recognize the breed.” Larson knew about my ability to sense the supernatural.

  “Her name is Sophia.” Kat leaned over the back of Larson’s chair, her blond hair and left breast brushing across his cheek. He didn’t pull away. Neither did she. Her hand lightly touched Sophia’s stomach, fingers fluttering like a butterfly against the skin. “This area is swollen and fevered. It’s different from her other wounds.”

  Larson leaned forward as Kat pulled back. I arched an eyebrow at her when she looked up. A blush popped into her cheeks, but she didn’t turn away. Larson’s voice was soft and comforting. “Sophia, I am going to push in on your abdomen, let me know if it hurts in any way.”

  Before his hands could touch her, she turned and snapped, lips pulled back, sharp teeth biting the air. Her body curled around into a ball, covering her belly. The snarl stayed on her mouth. A low growl rumbled, vibrating off the table she was on.

  Larson leaned back, his hand up and moving with him away from the teeth. A low “hmmmmmmmmm” came from him as he sat looking at Sophia with a tilted head. Kat had to quickstep out of the way as he wheeled backward, spun, and rolled to a counter across the room. He slid open a drawer, rummaging around it and throwing stuff on the counter. His voice was a low mutter to himself that I couldn’t make out. Something told me that if I could, I still wouldn’t understand it. He gave an “Aha!” and held up an empty syringe. He left the drawer open as he wheeled back over to the table. Sophia eyed him warily but wasn’t growling and her teeth were behind her lips.

  Larson looked her in the eyes, voice still calm. “Is it okay if I take a small blood sample? I will be as gentle as possible. There is no harm that can come from this to you.”

  There was a drawn-out pause as she looked at him. He kept his eyes down and his hands open where she could see them. Finally, her tail thumped the table twice. Slowly, her paw stretched out toward him. With a murmured thank you, he slipped the slender needle into her skin. A quick hand motion had thin red liquid streaming into the syringe. He withdrew the needle and rolled over to another counter where he began doing things while muttering to himself again.

  Sophia licked where the needle had gone in, then lay her head down and closed her eyes. I wanted to reach out and pet her, to comfort her. In my mind, I knew there was a human inside and she was not truly a dog, but I wanted to pet her.

  Ah, to hell with it.

  I reached out and put my hand on her head, fingers curling through the ruff of fur behind her ear. She leaned into my palm, rubbing her cheek and jaw against it. It was a little strange. Very gently I stroked her face and head. Her fur was dirty, but soft. Long and thick, it felt like spun cotton. She made that small purring sound that dogs make when you scratch them behind the ears. Her brown eye opened again and I could see the intelligence inside. Quickly, her tongue licked out across my hand. I kept petting her until Larson rolled over.

  “Sophia, do you know that you are pregnant?”

  Pregnant?

  Two thumps on the table from her thick tail said, yes, she did know.

  Larson’s arm went around Kat’s waist and squeezed. He looked up at her. “Will you go in the kitchen and bring back some food? High protein, I think there is some tuna in the pantry and I know there are some protein bars.” He kissed the back of her hand. “And bring some water.”

  Kat nodded and moved off through another door. Larson looked up at me. His blue eyes were red-rimmed, bloodshot, and deep sunk in bruise-colored hollows. He looked like he had been burning the candle at both ends. With a blowtorch.

  “The pregnancy may explain the slow healing she is experiencing.” He looked down sadly at Sophia. “We’ll get some food in her for fuel and hopefully speed up her metabolism.”

  “Okay.” I went back to petting her head while we waited. She didn’t seem to mind and it wasn’t weird once I got used to it.

  It wasn’t long before Kat returned with a plate heaping with meat. I smelled the tinny fish smell of tuna along with a bloody meat smell. A large piece of what looked like liver covered one side of the plate too. She showed it to Larson and he nodded that it was fine. Looking back at me, he jerked his head to the side, indicating I should follow him to the other side of the room. I patted Sophia and moved. Kat slid into my place and began spoon-feeding the tuna into the Were’s muzzle.

  Out the door on the other side of the lab was another short hallway. I followed Larson through. He stopped in the middle and spun his chair around. The footrest banged into the wall, stopping the chair from turning with a jerk.

  Larson’s v
oice was a snarl as he yanked on the wheels of the chair. “Fucking piece of shit chair!” The footrest gouged a chunk out of the drywall as it broke free. It was the newest one of many in the narrow hallway. Looking around, I noticed that there were a lot of black skid marks on the doorframes at the beginning and end of the hallway too.

  Straightened out, he sat for a second, head down. He took a deep breath, held it, and let it go in a long stream of exhale. He looked up at me. “Sorry about that.”

  I waved it away. “It’s cool.”

  His hand hit the armrest of the chair. “I’m still not used to this damn chair.”

  “It has to suck in a major way.”

  “More than you can imagine.”

  I shrugged. There was nothing left to say. He was in the wheelchair. Nothing could be done and there was no use in going on about it. He nodded and the moment passed. I knelt down so Larson and I were eye level. I kept my voice low, assuming he had wanted to move away for privacy. “All right, what’s the real situation?”

  “She should have healed her injuries by now. Lycanthrope metabolism works at a hugely accelerated rate repairing damage almost as soon as it occurs.”

  I knew this. I’d had to inflict damage on lycanthropes in my line of work before. I had actually done it just a few hours ago. “You think the pregnancy is taking her ability to heal?”

  He looked into the other room. Kat was sitting on the table, cradling the Were’s head in her lap and hand-feeding her. He turned back to me. “I think it’s the most likely scenario. If we can’t get her healing to kick in . . .” his voice trailed off with a shrug.

  “What could happen?”

  Larson sighed. “Anything. Nothing good. I won’t bother you with the medical stuff, but suffice to say, her blood is extremely abnormal, even for a lycanthrope. Its alkalines are all off the charts, and the proteins are extremely low. The fevered skin over the fetus is worrisome. It could be an injury from the beating or it could be something unknown. Either way, it probably means trouble.” He rubbed thin fingers across his eyes. “Lycanthropy is hard on pregnancy in any case. The high metabolism of the mother mixed with the high metabolism of the fetus usually results in early miscarriage. Weres have a tough time carrying a pregnancy to term in the best of situations. Add injury to a need to change and the probability goes to hell. She could kick-start her healing if she shifted, but I bet she won’t because that might terminate the pregnancy in her condition.”