by Jamie Davis
Dean nodded in the affirmative and took over securing the snarling infant, avoiding the snapping teeth. Barry crouched down to draw up the medication in a syringe while his partner secured the patient. The new guy was coming along alright, Dean thought. He wasn’t a new paramedic, which helped. He was just new to the knowledge that some of his patients were creatures like werewolves, even werewolf babies.
Barry stood back up with his syringe and supplies and Dean turned the baby on her side so Barry could give the injection. Barry used an alcohol prep to swab the little hairy butt and then gave the intramuscular injection. It would take a few moments to begin to work so Barry took over holding the struggling and snarling infant from his partner after putting the needle and syringe in the sharps box in the side of their med bag.
“Now we just need to wait and see if the drug we just gave her does the trick,” Dean told the concerned parents. “In the meantime, while a febrile seizure is usually an isolated incident, given the startling change that occurred, we should probably take her in to the hospital to get checked out. Okay?”
“Are you sure she’ll be alright?” the mother asked.
“Look,” Barry said. He had let go of the child. The snarling had stopped and as Dean and parents leaned over the crib to look at the baby, they saw the tiny werewolf shift back into a normal baby girl. Her clothes were a little shredded from the previous struggles, but she was sleeping comfortably and looked none-the-worse for the experience.
“See,” Dean said. “She seems to be just fine. Like I said, it’s probably an isolated incident but I’d like to have you come with us while we take her into the hospital and get checked out. It may never happen again. Still, it’s better to be safe.”
“We can go to the hospital if that’s what you recommend,” the father said. “Thank you so much for helping us. I come from a long line of Lycans and I have never heard of that happening before.”
“It’s new to me, too,” Dean said. “Still, this job is all about new and exciting experiences.” He chuckled and started helping Barry pack up the gear. He would head out to the ambulance and get the car seat for the baby set up in the back of the ambulance while Barry got the baby ready to transport and brought her and the parents out to the ambulance behind him.
When they got there, mom climbed in the back with Barry and the baby while Dean pointed to the front passenger seat for the father. Dean got in behind the wheel and waited while the dad buckled his seat belt. He checked the rearview mirror to see the thumbs-up from Barry in the back that signaled him it was time to go and he pulled the ambulance out from the residential driveway, onto the street. Then they were on the way to Elk City Medical Center.
* * *
———
* * *
By the time they got back to their station after dropping the baby off at the ECMC ER with the nurses and doctors there, Dean was ready for the end of a long night’s work. It was nearly dawn, and he and Barry worked together back at the station to get the ambulance restocked and make sure everything was done for the end-of-shift checks. The next crew of paramedics came in at six in the morning to relieve them, and another emergency call could come in at any time so the ambulance and gear needed to be ready.
The restocking didn’t take long and the two paramedic partners walked into the squad room to the smell of a delicious breakfast in the air. A gravelly voice across the room in the small kitchenette area of the station called to them.
“I’ve got steak and eggs with home fries for you guys to round out your shift,” the shambling chef said. That was Freddy, their live-in chef. He was a zombie who had been a premier chef on the national restaurant scene until his voodoo priestess girlfriend had caught him cheating with one of his waitresses. One spell later and he was one of the undead, forcing him to leave the profession he loved. Dean and the other paramedics had adopted him after his house trailer was burned out in a hate crime. Now he lived in the station and made the paramedic teams five-star, restaurant quality meals in gratitude. The food was great as long as Freddy checked to make sure he hadn’t lost any body parts during the cooking process.
“Man, I’m starved,” Barry said. “Keep it warm for me, Freddy. I have to finish up my paperwork from the last call. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
“Will do,” Freddy croaked.
“Well, I’m not waiting,” Dean said. He took the plate offered by the zombie chef and grabbed himself a bottle of water from the fridge before sitting down to eat in the Station U squad room. The room served as an office between ambulance calls, as well as a lounge during their downtime. There were two recliner lounge chairs and a sofa, as well as a large flat screen TV mounted on one wall.
The best part of the station, in Dean’s estimation, was the extensive library on myths and legends in a bookshelf on the wall. The volumes were annotated with notes from various Station U paramedics over the years to help teach later crews the lessons learned about their special patients. Dean made a note in his smartphone to remind himself to make an annotation on one of the werewolf stories about his encounter with the werewolf baby, the first he had ever heard of.
Once he set up the reminder for later, he dug into the plate of delicious food. Savoring every bite, Dean took his time with his breakfast. That was unusual in itself. He knew that most paramedics ate their meals as fast as possible to make sure they finished before another ambulance call came in. Dean used to be that way, too. He had changed in the last few months, though. There had been a lot going on. Racist hate crime attacks on his Unusual patients, a take-over attempt of the whole city by a rogue vampire lord, and the kidnapping of his girlfriend by demons had all left him with a new perspective on life. He was determined to enjoy and savor these quiet, peaceful moments whenever he could. He knew all too well how quickly they could shift into chaos and loss.
His phone buzzed on the table next to his plate and he checked to see that a text message had come in. It was from Joanna, his recently revealed fifteen-year-old daughter. He was still getting used to that fact himself. He was too young at twenty-three to have daughter that age under normal circumstances, but she had traveled back in time via a powerful spell to come here and help rescue Ashley. She was from twenty years in his future and only knew him as her dad. He was still struggling with thinking of her as his daughter, let alone that he was somehow responsible for her while she was here in this time and place.
He checked the text message and saw that she was up early and wanted a ride over to her mother’s apartment. Jo was staying with him because he had a spare room in his place, though he knew nothing of raising a teenaged girl. Now she wanted to go over to her mother’s place. She probably wanted to help her mother continue the job of sorting through the few remaining items left after her own parents and much of the rest of the extended family had been killed in a suspicious gas explosion and fire just a few weeks before. Dean sighed. He supposed he could take her across town to Jaz’s apartment after he got off work. This was his final night shift in the rotation and he had a few days off, so he had plenty of time to give her a ride over before he got some sleep after working all night. He could use his tiredness as an excuse not to stick around too long.
Dean didn’t relish running into his parenting counterpart. She had been as surprised as he was by the revelation they had a child together at some time in the future. It was doubly awkward because the two of them had not hit it off well when they first encountered each other. Jaz was a strong-willed individual and took umbrage whenever anyone tried to tell her what to do, or worse - didn’t immediately listen to her commands when she was in charge. Dean was willing to stand up for himself when he or someone he knew was being wronged. This dichotomy led to the two of them arguing over who had the right to reprimand Dean’s probationary paramedic Barry when he was late to a class Jaz had been teaching.
It had not gotten much better when Dean and Jaz had evaded a demon attack aimed at him and had to leave town, picking up a stray witch
on the roadside who turned out to be their future daughter. The daughter who wasn’t to become a hunter like her mother, but was already committed by her father to becoming a member of a Wiccan coven. Dean saw nothing wrong with joining the coven at its most basic level. He had made a difficult decision that affected not only him, but two other people as well. He had been the one who made the deal with the coven for his firstborn daughter to someday join them in exchange for a spell they cast on his behalf. ‘Someday’ had seemed so far away at the time.
This was the root of the awkwardness that lay between he and Jaz Errington. Then there was the problem that existed because of their opposing careers. She was a member of a hunter clan, committed to hunting down demons as well as those Unusuals she perceived as evil. She drew that line at anyone taking advantage of humans or perpetrating crimes against humans with evil intentions. He, on the other hand, was a healer and a paramedic committed to saving many of those same individuals when they needed medical care. They said opposites attracted, but he thought this was not what the proverbial “they” meant when it was said.
Dean picked up his phone and texted his daughter. He told Jo that he was fine running her over to her mother’s place. He told her to be ready when he showed up after work. She texted back a thumbs-up emoji. He finished his excellent breakfast and prepared to welcome the next shift. Bill and Lynne, the next shift’s paramedics, both showed up soon after he was finished eating. Grabbing his gear as six o’clock rolled around, Dean said goodbye to Bill, Lynne, and Barry, and headed out to his pickup truck to drive home and pick up Joanna.
Chapter 2
Dean drove the few miles back to his apartment, located over a detached garage in a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Elk City. When he pulled up out front, Joanna was there waiting for him in the driveway. She was dressed in shorts and a tank top, carrying her purse on one shoulder. They had gone shopping for some new clothes when they returned from their rescue mission in the mountains to the west. Jo had been transported back in time pretty much with just the clothes on her back. Her outfit at the time was not what a normal teen in this day and age would wear. Apparently, twenty years from now, the fashions revisited what he would have called nineteen-sixties’ “hippie” style. Now, at least, she looked like any other teen he saw walking down the street.
“Hi, Dad,” she said as he climbed in the pickup with Dean. “I appreciate this. Mom will, too, I think. She’s having a problem adjusting to being the last living member of the Errington clan. She’s overwhelmed with all the responsibilities to run the security company, plus having to manage getting her parents’ estates in order.”
“Did she invite you or are you inviting yourself to go help?”
“She would never ask for help. You know that, Dad.”
Dean was still getting used to this whole family man thing. A week ago, he had been a normal single guy. Okay, maybe not normal, but certainly not the father of anyone - especially not a fifteen-year-old girl. Now he not only had a teenaged daughter, he also had a future - what would you call her? Wife? Girlfriend? Baby-momma? He still had trouble seeing him and Jaz Errington getting together, even with the apparent proof that they did sitting in the truck next to him.
“Have you given any more thought to how and when you’re going back to when you came from?” Dean asked.
“I can’t do it on my own. I have an idea of how it’s done, but the spell has to be cast on me by another Wiccan. It took a group casting to send me back here. It might take more than one of us to send me back.”
“We should contact the local coven then. They sent you back here in the first place, at least their future selves did.” Dean was getting a headache trying to wrap his brain around the whole time-travel thing.
“I want to stay a little longer and help Mom out. She is all alone now. She doesn’t even have you to lean on yet. She needs someone else to help her through this.”
That comment brought them to an awkward silence. They were mostly quiet the rest of the ride downtown. Jaz had taken an apartment about a block away from the location of her family’s bombed-out building. The fire marshal and the feds at the ATF had determined that it was not a mere gas explosion as had originally been reported in the news. Since they were federal security contractors, it was being treated as a potential terrorist incident, given the company’s federal security ties, especially since Jaz and her team had just returned from an unnamed mission in Syria. Dean knew from the news how dangerous that middle-eastern country was. It was a testament to how tough Jaz was, and to her skills as a demon hunter that she had been sent there and survived to come home again.
Dean found a spot on the street, thumbed a few quarters into the parking meter, and followed Joanna into the building. They caught the elevator up to the sixth floor where Jaz was staying and knocked on the apartment door.
Jaswinder Errington opened the door. She could have been Jo’s older sister, they looked so much alike. Dean saw right away she had been crying. He knew that she would be embarrassed by his noticing it, so he shot her a big grin when she looked his way and pointed to Jo.
“Look, I brought you a teenager to lend you her snarky comments while you work.”
“Oh, joy,” Jaz said stepping back and gesturing to them. “Come on in. I told you I didn’t need your help, Joanna. It’s busy work for the most part. It’s stuff that I just have to slog through and get it done.”
“No one should have to do this stuff alone, Mom. Besides, Dad is off for the next two days so he can stay and help, too. Together we can get it done faster than you could do it alone.”
“I told you, Joanna. Stop trying to force Dean and me together. I don’t doubt that we are your parents anymore. That is something I accept now. I do doubt that we are going to become more than friends just because you keep coming up with ways for us to stay in close proximity to each other.”
“Jaz is right, Jo.” Dean jumped in to help Jaz out. “If we end up as more than friends in the future, it will have to happen in its own time and can’t be forced. I mean, you didn’t want us to just start jumping on each other as soon as you snapped your fingers, did you?”
“Ew, Dad, don’t be gross. That is not an image any daughter wants to think about.”
“Well, then, leave us alone,” Jaz said. “Let things happen naturally. You aren’t even born for almost five years, right? Dean and I have plenty of time yet to get to know each other.”
Dean saw the teen’s shoulders sag a little. If he thought about it from her point of view, he could understand how she felt. She wanted to see the parents she had left behind in the future. They were a happily married couple, not the barely-friends she saw when they were together here in her past. He had very little memory of his own parents together before his father left him and his mother on their own. He had been three when his father left them. After that, his mother had avoided talking about him, at least in front of Dean. He knew almost nothing about the man who had fathered him.
Dean changed the subject. “On the bright side, we are here together now. Let’s see what we can do to get some work done. What do you think, Jaz? Do you have any work for the kid and me to help you with?”
“The fire marshal dropped off some boxes of personal items recovered from the fire. I have not wanted to, but maybe since you both are here with me, we can sort through them. I’ve got nothing else to do until a conference call coming up at noon with some of our satellite office managers. I need to make sure that all the Errington private and federal security contracts are being served.”
Jaz’s family had been one of the world’s great hunter clans, serving as the guardians of humans against demons and those Unusuals who saw fit to take advantage of them. Once they moved to the United States before the Civil War, the family set up a security and private detective firm to serve as a basis for them to investigate demon and Unusual attacks on humans. Since then, the Errington Security Firm had become one of the preeminent private security and personal
bodyguard companies in the nation. They provided protection to people like movie stars and corporate leaders around the country. They also took special jobs from a clandestine federal agency related to their core mission, hunting demons who broke through to the human world from the netherworld. It had been one such group of demons the three of them had battled to rescue the angel, Ashley Moore, just a week before.
“So where are these boxes?” Dean asked looking around the room. He saw a stack of six large cardboard boxes on the far side of the room along with some charred, hard plastic Pelican cases in various sizes.
Jaz pointed to the boxes and Dean and Jo walked over to them.
“Where do you want us to start, Mom? Do you want us to just pick a box or case and dig in?”
“Yeah, sure. Pick one. I don’t care.”
Jo picked up one of the cardboard boxes and moved over to the dinner table with it. She unfolded the flaps and looked inside. Dean noticed the smoky odor coming from the contents of the box. Jaz came over and the three of them started to pull some picture frames and other odds and ends from the box.
* * *
———
* * *
It took them about two hours to go through all the boxes, and it wasn’t until they got to the last box that Dean found something strange.
“Jaz, what’s this?” Dean asked. He pulled a small jade figurine from the bottom of the box. It had been hidden under a piece of charred linen.
Jo hissed in alarm and Jaz drew in a sharp breath.
“Dean, where did you get that?”
“What? It was in the box. Here,” he said trying to hand it to her.
“Don’t hand it to me. Just set it down on the table, quickly. You shouldn’t touch it at all.” Jaz looked at Jo. “Do you have any protection magic that will counter that?”
