Changing Times

by Marilu Mann

  “Pain?”

  “No. You tickled.” His eyes had that eerie glow again. It had to be the lighting in the room. No one’s eyes did that unless it was a special effect on a sci-fi show.

  “Sorry, I’ll try not to do that. Although…” She cocked her head at him. “Some of my patients tell me that’s the best part.”

  She let his chuckle smooth against her skin as she checked for signs of infection or fever. She noted that no sign of his earlier trauma was evident other than a slight pinkish puckering at the entrance wound. She backed up slightly, shaking her head.

  “I am honestly amazed.” She stared at him for a minute, then shook her head again. “I’d really like to talk to you sometime about your healing powers.”

  “Any time, Doc.” Tony stretched. She watched his shoulders move up to meet his head as he rolled his neck. That lovely black hair fell forward. He reached up to move it out of his face, wincing slightly.

  “What’s wrong?” Her immediate reaction carried her forward to his side.

  “Can you take this dressing off my back? It itches.” He sat up and Carly moved around beside him. Tony pulled his shirt up in the back and Carly bent over to check the dressing.

  “I’ll be …” The imprecation fell off her lips. “There is no possible…”

  “Doctor? Didn’t they teach you to at least finish your sentences?”

  She didn’t respond to his teasing as she smoothed her hand over the dressing. It almost felt as though there were nothing below the cotton pad. Being careful not to pull too quickly, she removed the tape holding it in place.

  She gasped, which had him jerking his head around to stare at her. When she touched him, the immediate pooling of lust surging through her system startled her. What on earth is going on? She forced herself into a more clinical mode.

  “It’s completely healed. Completely. There’s just a white line where I made the incision. This is amazing. It’s incredible.”

  She raised her head and found her face just inches from his. Carly suddenly took a deep breath and stepped back. Her stomach felt warm, almost hot. She fought the urge to trace her fingers along his jaw. His slightly more rapid breathing clued her in on his own reaction to their closeness. She unconsciously ran her tongue around her lips.

  His eyes tracked the movement, though he never moved his head. Tony’s eyes changed from green-gold to a more golden color. His gaze seemed too intimate. In that moment, she knew he could burn her to ashes. Her feet carried her two steps back.

  “Definitely almonds.” His voice was low, almost purring, but the smile that accompanied it made her think of a predator stalking prey.

  Carly took a deep breath at the feral smile. She cleared her throat. “Well. Um, as I said, I would like to discuss your healing and recuperative powers with you.” Get a grip, Carly. He’s not going to eat you.

  She didn’t know what was wrong with her to be reacting to a patient like this. Granted, this man was one sexy package, but doctor-patient relationships had to be maintained, not to mention how fast he healed. She had to find out about that. She had never had such a strong sexual attraction to a patient, but now that she thought about it, she realized that was exactly what she was feeling.

  “And as I said, any time. You should feel free to come by my shop and we’ll talk all you want.” He turned his head away from her, but she noticed that his eyes still tracked her movement.

  “What shop?” Carly focused on the most mundane part of his statement.

  “Changing Times. It’s just outside the Quarter.” His voice now lacked any emotion. She realized that she must have misunderstood his tone earlier. Tony reached into the bedside table and pulled out a wallet. He held a business card out to her.

  Carly knew he watched as she took it carefully. She resisted touching his skin and another of those slightly feral grins flashed across his dark features. On the other hand, maybe she had understood him quite well. Schooling her face into a warm, but dispassionate doctor, she glanced at the card.

  “Oh. I see. ‘Changing Times—An Antique Emporium.’” She glanced at the card again. “‘Antonio Pantera, Proprietor.’ Is that what you do for a living, Mr. Pantera? You own an antiques shop.”

  “It’s Tony. Mostly.”

  “Mostly? What do they call you if not Tony?”

  His answering smirk told her he knew she chose to deliberately redirect.

  “I own the shop and I do a few other things.” He gave a particularly European shrug.

  Immediately, Carly’s curiosity was piqued. What might those “other things” be? She frowned. She did not need to be curious about this man. Still, what would it hurt to learn a few things about someone with such an amazing healing rate?

  “How did you get hurt?” She could hear her forensics professor reminding them to always start as far back as possible.

  “Someone shot me.”

  Okay. So he wasn’t going to be an easy interview.“I got that when I pulled the bullet out of your back. Who shot you and why? And why would they use silver?”

  “I was helping a friend with his business.” He clipped his words off one by one as though there were a deficit in his vocabulary budget.

  “Would that friend be Nolan or Micah?”

  His lips stretched in the semblance of a smile. She could tell her questions were irritating him. “Yes, I was helping Micah.”

  All his terseness did was to intrigue her more. “And what does Micah do?”

  “Among other things, he’s a bounty hunter.”

  “Bounty hunter?” Micah had seemed so gentle in spite of his actions that evening that she couldn’t see him in the role Tony described. Maybe she had judged them as sane too quickly. Poisoned by silver? A bounty hunter? None of this added up to normal.

  Tony nodded with a smile. “It’s not such an uncommon job and it isn’t like that reality show. They just pick the really high-profile cases to show. Usually it’s a safe job. Bondsman calls Micah, Micah picks up the bad boy or girl, Micah gets paid. This particular one just happened to get a little rough. We knew going in that it might be, so Micah asked me to join him.”

  “A little rough…? You were shot and poisoned.” Carly pressed her line of questioning. Something lurked on the edges of his voice as though he left deliberate holes in his answers. They sounded complete, but her scientific mind couldn’t find the natural sequence. Cause and effect had to be in there somewhere.

  “Yeah, but you should see the other guy.” Tony’s grin this time was definitely feral.

  She sucked in a breath and tried one more time. “But why silver?”

  “You don’t want to know the answer to that.” The flash of his teeth sent a distinct chill through her system, immediately stopping any sensual interest that had flared between them earlier. She decided the better part of valor would be retreat.

  “Well.” Carly cleared her throat again. “I was just on my way to look for the kitchen. Can I get you anything?” At his negative shake of the head, Carly turned to leave the room.

  “Doc?” Tony’s voice stopped her and she turned to face him again. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Doc?” She got as far as the door this time before his voice stopped her again. “If you want to come by the shop sometime, call me first so I can set aside some time to meet with you.”

  “Thank you, I may do that.”

  “Say, Doc?” Again, he stopped her before she got out of the door. This time she turned with a slightly exasperated smile. “What’s your name?”

  “Carly Chambers. Good night, Mr. Pantera.”

  “Tony.”

  “Goodnight, Tony.” Carly smiled as she left the room. She wandered down the hallway toward a flight of stairs. Fortunately, this one ended in the kitchen. Obviously those were the “servants’ stairs” from when this house had been built.

  Carly got a drink of water and wandered around the spacious house for a few minutes. There was a low murmur comin
g from another bedroom and she recognized the patter as being a local radio station. There was no sign of the other two men and Carly wondered where they were. She shrugged and found her way back to the bedroom Micah had shown her to earlier. Carly lay down on her side and within moments was asleep.

  When Carly woke this time, she knew it was late in the morning. She sat up and stretched. There was a knock on the door and it opened to admit Nolan who carried an aromatic cup of steaming coffee.

  “Hello, Carly. I brought you some coffee and breakfast will be ready in about fifteen. I can bring you some clean clothes if you’d like?”

  “That would be great.” Carly couldn’t help but like this particular kidnapper. He wasn’t that much taller than she was and seemed to be a nice guy in spite of his profession and the growling thing. Nolan was true to his word and reappeared in her room a few minutes later with a pair of jeans and a clean shirt.

  “These might fit you. I’ve brought you a belt because I know my waist is bigger than yours is. Sorry, I can’t help you with clean underwear.”

  “That’s okay, really. I appreciate the change of clothing.” Carly followed him down the hall to a bathroom and she noticed that the door to the room that Tony had been in was open and the bed was empty.

  She shrugged and stepped into the bathroom. She showered, then dried off and got dressed in the clothes Nolan had brought her. She simply wadded her dirty clothes up and put them in her backpack. That was the nice thing about scrubs, no one seemed to care if they were wrinkled and they laundered so nicely. Carly quickly combed through her hair and pulled it back into another French braid.

  Carly walked down the stairs to the kitchen and found all three men sitting at the counter. They all rose in a display of old-fashioned courtesy that surprised her. Carly waved them back to their seats and joined them at the counter. Nolan poured her another cup of coffee, then put a plate full of waffles on the table. A plate of bacon and sausages and a bowl of fresh fruit quickly joined the waffles.

  The four of them ate a very hearty breakfast. Carly was used to keeping strange hours, but this was the first time in a long time she had been with people who weren’t medical professionals who kept stranger hours than she did. Carly studied the three men sitting with her.

  Micah with his almost noble bearing, unsmiling face and strong features, Nolan with his quick wit and obvious charm and Tony with his languid movements, dark sensual features and strange green-gold eyes. They seemed so different, but there was an almost indefinable something about all three of them that made them different from other men she’d met.

  Well, aside from the fact that they had kidnapped her to treat a gunshot wound. Remembering that, Carly sat up straight as she stared at Tony. There was no way he should be sitting up and eating as heartily as he was doing.

  “You.” Carly pinned Tony with a glare. He looked at her in amazement, then his glance turned to amusement. “You should still be flat on your back in bed. Okay, come on, I want to see those stitches.”

  Carly got to her feet and stomped toward the stairs with a bemused Tony behind her. The looks on the other two’s faces told her that Tony didn’t often obey others so easily. When he walked into the bedroom he’d used the night before, Carly was standing in the middle of the room with her arms crossed.

  She glared at him as he slowly unbuttoned his shirt, then removed it and threw it across the foot of the bed. He took his time walking past her before he settled himself on the bed on his back. She locked down the decidedly naughty thoughts about him sliding out of his pants too.

  His movements had been slow, but she had the impression that they were also very deliberate. It almost seemed as though Tony didn’t move until he was ready and then he only moved enough to get where he needed to be. He moved with a liquid grace she had only seen in dancers and other performers.

  Tony put his hands behind his head so that his chest and abdomen were fully exposed to her. His eyes were wary and he seemed to be watching her closely. Carly shoved all thoughts about the man aside and concentrated solely on his injury. Still, she couldn’t help but notice how gorgeous he was.

  The attraction she thought she had buried came crashing back to the front of her mind. It was all she could do not to lean over and run her hand down his chest. Tony was definitely all male and, what was worse, he knew it! She saw the way his eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared slightly as she stepped closer to him.

  Carly concentrated on the wound in his abdomen so she could avoid looking at his eyes. She knew he continued to watch her as she shook her head at his wound. Carly expelled her breath and looked at him.

  “How is this possible? You’re almost completely healed. This wound should still be tender and there’s no way the skin should be at this advanced stage of healing. What’s going on?” Carly put her hands on her hips again and glared at him.

  A look stole across his face in answer to her ferocious face and aggressive stance. She felt her blood pressure rise as a slight smile curved across his face. She drew in a deep breath, but he only murmured, “Are you sure you want to know?”

  She deflated quickly and stared at him for a long moment before she nodded. Tony sat up and picked up his shirt slowly. Carly wondered if he was delaying to give himself a moment. He raised his head to pin her with another unblinking stare. Sudden wariness filled her features. Suddenly, she knew she wasn’t going to believe him nor was she going to like what he told her.

  She watched him closely as he put his shirt back on. Tony patted the bed beside him in invitation and she sat, but angled her body away from his.

  “What I am going to tell you has to go under the heading of doctor-patient confidentiality. Are you agreeable to that?” At her somewhat hesitant nod, Tony seemed to debate internally briefly, then continued. “How much do you know about lycanthropy?”

  Carly blinked at him a few times, then spoke hesitantly. “Lycanthropy? As in people who suffer from hypertrichosis, porphyria, schizophrenia?”

  Tony chuckled softly. “Hypertrichosis?”

  “It’s a rare genetic condition that causes hair to grow over the surface of the body. Are you familiar with porphyria?”

  At his negative shake of the head, Carly continued in what her nurses identified as a “lecture” mode. “The major symptom is a severe photosensitivity which makes venturing out into daylight extremely painful. As the condition advances, the victim’s appearance changes with discoloration of the skin and an unusually thick growth of facial or body hair.”

  Carly paused for a breath and met Tony’s amused glance. “This isn’t what you’re talking about at all, is it?”

  “No. I’m talking about shapeshifting. Actually changing one’s body into animal form.”

  “Okay, like Boris Karloff or whoever it was in those old wolfman movies?”

  “Something like that, yes.” Tony couldn’t hide his amusement now.

  “I don’t see how that fits under the heading of doctor-patient confidentiality.” She shook her head, then stared at him. “Oh, oh no, no, no. You don’t seriously believe you’re a werewolf?”

  “Of course not.” Tony drew back slightly as his eyebrows went up. His tone carried a bit of ice. “I am a lycanthrope, but I am not a wolf.”

  “Okay.” Carly drew the single word out as she shifted her weight on the bed. She wondered if she could make the door. She stood slowly, keeping her eyes on his the entire time. “Okay, so you believe you can change into a wolf. I can see how you wouldn’t want that to get around. You know, I think I’d like another cup of coffee, how about you?”

  When she made her break, she did so decisively. But Tony was across the room with his hand on the door before she could even blink or open the door.

  “Carly, I’m not insane. I’m not schizophrenic and I’m not suffering from any diseases. I am a lycanthrope. Specifically, I’m a were-cat. My metabolism operates on a completely different plane from yours. I am not immortal, but I am immune to most physical disease. I
can be shot, stabbed, have broken bones, whatever and they will heal much faster than humans because of the constant regeneration of my physical tissue.

  “If I change immediately after I am wounded, the wound will heal almost instantaneously. Silver poisons the blood of a shapeshifter, which makes it nearly impossible for us to change. It won’t kill us unless it remains in our systems for a long period of time. If you shoot me in the head or heart or in some other way stop my flow of oxygen, I’ll die just like any human.”

  Tony put his hands on her shoulders. She shuddered and he tightened his hands on her shoulders slightly. “I am calm and completely serious. Can you accept something that is outside the realm of anything you’ve heard before? Can you trust that what I am telling you is true?”

  Carly met his eyes for a long moment as she gathered her courage. “I believe you believe everything you’ve told me.”

  “Well, that’s a start.” Tony released her. She released the breath she’d been holding. He reached around her to open the door. “No one here will intentionally hurt you, Carly. Let’s go get that cup of coffee.”

  They rejoined the others in the kitchen. Carly wondered if they knew how ill Tony was, but before she could ask, Micah told her he would take her back to the hospital.

  “I’ll get your stuff, Doc. You go on with Micah.” Nolan shooed her out of the kitchen.

  Once she and her backpack were together, Micah drove her back to the hospital parking lot. She thought of things to say, but never said them.

  Micah turned to look at her before she got out of the car and Carly met his eyes. “Thank you for your help, Dr. Chambers.”

  She had to say something. “Micah, you’ll see that Tony gets help, won’t you?”

  “For what?” Micah’s reply was calm.

  Carly sighed. “Not for the wound. That’s fine. For his delusions.”

  “Delusions?”

  “Yes, delusions. He thinks he’s some kind of shapeshifter.”

  “Are you so sure it is a delusion, Dr. Chambers? What if he was telling you the truth? ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”