CHAPTER 8

“Mr. Evans. Bill. I need you to take it easy, okay? No one here wants to hurt you. We’re all on your side. We just want to help you. Both you and Rosemary. I promise.”

Josie spoke in her calmest, most soothing, please-don’t-bite-me-while-I-give-you-your-shots tone of voice, but Bill Evans didn’t appear to be listening. At least, that was the impression she got from the bared fangs and pinned-back ears he had aimed in her direction. She could be wrong.

Behind her, Ben and Daisy stood perfectly still, their eyes fixed on the snarling wolf currently planted possessively in front of his mate’s cage. Inside the cage, Rosemary Evans continued to lie still and silent. Frankly, Josie thought that probably wasn’t helping to calm Bill down.

Ben’s hand still held the phone receiver poised halfway between his ear and the cradle, which was as far as he’d gotten after calling 911 and before the three of them had decided that anytime one of them moved so much as a muscle, the wolf who had been Bill only got angrier. They didn’t like him when he was angry.

“Cindy said she’d send Jim Cooper straight out. He’s the deputy on duty.”

Josie gave a barely perceptible nod. “Okay. Did she say how long it would take?”

“He’s out on patrol, so it depends on where he was when she made the call.”

“I see.” What Josie saw, though, was her own gruesome death flashing before her eyes. “I don’t suppose you asked her to have him hurry?”

“Oh, no,” Ben sniped, “I said to take her time.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“We could try tranquilizing him,” Daisy offered. The fifty-something veterinary assistant sounded almost as calm as Josie, but Josie put that down to having raised twin boys all the way through their hell-raising teenage years before turning them over to the military with a sigh of relief. The calm tone wasn’t fooling anyone, though. Out of the corner of her eye, Josie could see how pale Daisy was under the rosy sweep of her blusher.

“We could,” Ben agreed, “but that would require one of us to walk over to the drug cabinet, unlock it, choose the correct sedative, draw it into a syringe, walk up to the crazy werewolf, and stick a needle in his ass. Who’s going to volunteer?”

“I don’t think sarcasm is helpful at the moment, Benjamin,” Josie said. “Nor is insulting Bill.”

Daisy shifted. Very, very slightly. “We have a tranquilizer air gun, don’t we?”

“Again, someone has to go get it. It’s in the wildlife kit in the storage room.”

“Well, doesn’t the wildlife kit have sedatives for large animals in it? I thought we kept it equipped for bears? And why is the wildlife kit in the storage room when we’ve had a wolf as a patient for two days now?”

“Because our patient isn’t a wolf.” Josie spoke through gritted teeth and decided that if the deputy didn’t come soon to keep Bill from killing them all, she might just have to kill her staff all on her own. “Bill Evans is not a wolf. They are Lupine, and that means that at least part of the time, they’re just as much people as you and me.”

“They sure look like wolves at the moment,” Daisy sulked.

Josie made a mental note to look into muzzles designed for human faces. “They’re not.”

“Besides,” Ben broke in, “even if the kit has sedatives dosed for bear, I doubt that would be enough for the wer—er, the Lupine. Their metabolism is unreal. It would take a dose for an elephant to knock him unconscious. Especially since he seems to be pushing a decent amount of adrenaline at the moment.”

“Can we forget about dosages and wildlife for the time being?” Josie snapped. “We can’t get to the sedatives at the moment, so I think our first order of business is to come up with a plan about what we can do to get out of this situation.”

There was a brief moment of silence.

Josie cherished every second of it.

Well, except for the menacing snarl that continued to vibrate from Bill Evans’s throat.

“I got nothin’,” Ben finally admitted, blowing out a slow breath, “but I’m all ears to hear what you ladies came up with.”

“I’m assuming plans for murdering and/or firing veterinary technicians aren’t exactly what you were hoping for,” Josie muttered under her breath.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

Daisy sighed. “I’m still thinking.”

Josie took a deep breath. “Well, if we split up, he can’t go after more than one of us at a time, right?”

“Dr. J, don’t say anything you—or I—might regret.” Josie could practically feel Ben’s glare piercing a hole in the back of her skull. “None of us needs to make the noble, yet insanely suicidal gesture of throwing herself into the teeth of the wild beast to give the others a chance to escape. That’s just crazy talk.”

“I was thinking less about letting the others escape than letting the others haul ass to the drug cabinet. And I think we’d better use the succinylcholine. I don’t want to take chances.”

“Right. Why take chances that the werewolf won’t be completely tranquilized from the shot? I mean, it’s not like there’s any risk involved in, you know, administering it!”

“What did I tell you about sarcasm, Benjamin?”

“Damn it, Josie—!”

Before either of them could argue their point, the back door of the clinic flew open with such force that the bang of the metal hitting the brick wall outside made the teeth rattle in Josie’s skull. It also made Bill Evans howl in rage and throw himself toward the exit in a snarling blur of fangs and claws.

Josie spun around just in time to see a look on Eli Pace’s face that would have made the avenging angel Michael proud. Her glimpse lasted only a fraction of a second before the air around him seemed to bend and twist, and in the time it took her to blink, an enormous tawny, black-and-gold-maned lion stood in his place.

Or rather, leapt from the place where he had been standing.

The wolf and the lion met in midair, colliding like opposing storm fronts and sending a thunderous noise into the atmosphere. From Bill came a deafening roar of rage and hatred and from Eli an earsplitting scream of righteous fury. Each snapped forward with lethal white teeth and each dug razor claws into his adversary’s flesh, further escalating the heat of battle.

Josie wasted about two and a half seconds in openmouthed astonishment before the wolf shifted his massive head and sank his fangs deep into Eli’s shoulder. Fear and anger welled up in her chest and she realized that she’d kill that Lupine herself if he did anything to seriously harm Eli. Not before they’d had a real date, damn it!

She bolted for the drug cabinet like both the Others were after her instead of each other, shoving Ben and Daisy out of the way. They seemed happy to comply and ducked under the desk, huddling together as they watched the bloody battle play out in the center of the room.

Hands shaking, Josie thanked the powers that be that she trusted her staff enough to leave the drug cabinet unlocked during business hours when someone was in triage to monitor it. She threw open the doors and began pawing through the shelf where she knew the sux ought to be. She pushed aside the small vials of dilute injections and nearly screamed in frustration before she spotted the right label. She didn’t usually order the 100 mg/mL concentration because there were so few situations where it was required, but she had been meaning to change out the vial in the wildlife kit the last time she ordered it from the supplier. Thank God she’d been too busy for real efficiency.

It seemed to take hours to uncap the syringe and draw two mils out of the vial, but she knew it was only seconds. She didn’t care. Seconds counted. She just had to pray she’d picked the right dosage. Two hundred milligrams would kill a wolf of Bill’s size, and was probably enough to kill a similar-size human, but with a Lupine’s metabolism and drug resistance, she was hoping for a result of quick paralysis rather than death. She didn’t want to see anyone here die.

Especially not herself.

A resounding thud nearly shook the room. Josie looked up to see Eli and the wolf hit the hard tiled floor in a tangle of fur and limbs. Each had his ears pinned straight back against his skull and his lips pulled back to expose powerful jaws full of gleaming wet fangs. Neither looked very happy, and neither looked close to giving up. Eli had blood trickling from the bite wound in his right shoulder, but Bill sported a long gash along his ribs that looked like it Eli had put it there with a swipe of huge, lethally sharp claws.

The lion certainly outweighed the wolf, and he had the advantage of size, as well. Close to seven feet long in animal form, Eli made an impressive sight, and his angrily swishing tail probably added another three feet to his length. Unfortunately, the wolf didn’t look intimidated. He just focused his pale amber eyes on his enemy’s throat and lunged forward, teeth snapping.

Swearing, Josie began to edge carefully to the side, looking for her chance to administer the injection. She needed a clear shot at a large muscle mass, but the last thing she wanted to do was to incapacitate the wrong animal. No need to make a bad day worse. And at the moment the shifters were wrestling so closely and moving so fast, she couldn’t risk it.

Goddamn it!

With a great rumble of sound, the wolf wedged his shoulder and head and neck against the lion’s chest, high up beneath his throat, and strained to push the other animal backward. Josie could see muscles shifting even under his dense coat, and she could hear the painful scrabbling of his nails against the slick floor as he struggled for purchase. To her horror, she saw him find it and watched while he began to raise himself up on his hind legs in an attempt to overbalance Eli.

She stepped forward—she had to do something!—but froze when she realized that if she approached from her current position, she risked coming up on the space between the two combatants. Either one would be able to track her movements and adjust his position out of her way. She needed to get behind Bill in order to have a clean shot.

A scream rent the air, a horrible high-pitched sound of fury and desperation with the static undertone that made no one doubt it had come from a very angry lion. Josie echoed it with a cry of her own as she watched Eli tumble backward under the determined force of the wolf. She saw him attempt to twist out of the way, but Bill sprang even as he felt the change in resistance, and he was on the lion faster than a heartbeat. His back feet dug into the insides of the cat’s thighs, pinning them down, and he braced both front paws on the larger animal’s chest.

The Lupine leaned forward, baring his teeth in a snarl that now somehow took on a hint of triumph. He pressed his muzzle into the lion’s face and Josie could almost feel that hot, moist breath on her own skin, feel the drop of saliva that slowly descended from the tip of a razor-sharp canine. She wanted to scream again; she did shudder, but Eli just bared his own teeth and hissed at the adversary pinning him to the floor.

When Josie saw the wolf’s head snake backward, she sprang into motion. Darting to the right, she placed herself in line with the Lupine’s flank and threw herself forward, the hand holding the needle poised close to her side.

It struck home with a satisfying thwack, and Josie reflexively hit the plunger, sending the massive dose of paralytic coursing into the cells of the wolf’s muscular thigh. It might not be an IV infusion, but it would have to be enough.

The wolf yelped when he felt the needle pierce his skin, and he rounded on Josie with a howl of rage. His quick movement threw her off balance. She landed on her ass less than four feet away from the snarling animal and immediately began scooting backward as fast as she could across the polished floor.

He tried to leap after her, but already his movements had begun to grow clumsy, and his back feet slid out from under him, sending him tumbling onto the site of the injection. He growled in a way that make Josie think of vicious curses and struggled to right himself, but Eli was already on him. The lion twisted to his feet in a lithe motion and threw himself onto the wolf’s back. Weakened by the drug, the smaller animal collapsed, all four limbs splaying out to the side, his jaw shutting with a snap as it banged into the hard tile. He made a yelping sort of whimper, then his eyes rolled back in his head and his muscles went limp.

Josie nearly broke out in a hallelujah chorus.

She rushed forward and immediately began probing at Eli’s shoulder. “Ben, get me some saline in an irrigation bottle and some clean dressings. I want to flush this out right away. I’m not about to risk infection here.”

The muscles under her fingers shifted, and suddenly she was touching not fur but smooth, warm skin. Her gaze shot up and she found herself looking into a slightly bemused expression on the face of a very human Eli.

“Sorry about that,” he rumbled, his voice sounding lower than usual with an intimate note that made her stomach clench. “I was going to give you until the third date before I took my clothes off. I didn’t want you to think I was cheap.”

Reflexively, Josie looked down and saw that the sheriff wore that bemused expression along with precisely nothing else. His clothing had ripped to pieces in the haste of his transformation.

Her cheeks flamed, and she snatched her hand back from his now uninjured shoulder as if it, too, were on fire. Apparently, that “shifting heals” thing really worked.

“Uh, why don’t I see if I have a pair of sweats or something in the break room that I can lend you, Sheriff?” Ben offered, his lips suspiciously pursed below madly twinkling eyes. “You know, to protect your reputation.”

“I’d appreciate that.” Eli nodded to the vet tech then turned back to Josie, seemingly unconcerned with his nudity. Even though Daisy’s eyes were currently fixed on his ass like it was spread across the pages of Playgirl. “What did you give him?”

“Huh?”

“What did you give Bill?” he asked, clearly fighting back a grin. “To knock him out. I saw that needle you had.”

Josie’s blush deepened, and she cleared her throat. “Oh, um, succinylcholine. It’s a tranquilizer. Well, a paralytic, really. It’s mainly used for short-term muscle relaxation, like when we have to insert a breathing tube or get X-rays on a fractious patient. Some people have used it as an anesthesia induction agent, too.”

As always, talking about her work calmed her, and her hands were only mildly unsteady as she reached for her stethoscope.

“I had to totally guess on the dosage for a Lupine, though, and it has been used as a poison in the past.” She knelt down beside the unmoving Lupine and pressed the instrument against his side. “Thank God, he’s still got a heartbeat. Daisy, can you go get me a trach tube? Better safe than sorry. His breathing does seem a little shallow.”

When she heard nothing but silence, Josie looked up to see her assistant still frozen in place, her eyes glued to the sheriff’s admittedly fine and thoroughly naked ass.

“Daisy!”

The woman jumped about a foot in the air, turned beet red, and rushed over to a cabinet against the wall. “Trach tube,” she babbled. “Right. I’m on it.”

Josie shook her head and looked up at Eli, her eyes deliberately avoiding all the things he wasn’t trying to hide. Seriously, did the man have no shame?

“Sheriff, I appreciate the help here, but I have to say it: You’re bad for my business.”

“And I have to say, Dr. Barrett, that you’re about to become bad for my image.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Take a listen.”

Josie stood still and listened intently, but it was several more seconds before she heard the sound of a siren coming closer. She cocked an eyebrow. “When you were growing up, did any of the other kids ever call you Radar?”

His grin was a bold slash of teeth. “Never more than once.”

Josie humphed.

Ben trotted back into the room carrying a wad of folded cloth, which he tossed in Eli’s direction. “Here you go. They’re going to be tight, but at least you should be able to get them on. I thought about just handing you a pair of scrubs, but we don’t stock them in the ‘lion-slash-imposing-giant’ size.”

Eli just nodded and bent to step into the navy sweatpants. “No shirt?”

“Not unless you have a thing for looking like a cheap, gay hooker. Dude, you’re like three or four sizes bigger than me. At least. And I’ve never gone for the ghetto baggy look.”

“Right. Well, thanks for the bare minimum, then. It doesn’t do for the sheriff to be caught by his own deputies breaking the public indecency statutes.”

Josie accepted the handful of sealed packages of sterile equipment that Daisy handed her and stood. “Since you boys are firm friends now, would you mind lifting Bill here onto an exam table? Ben, I want to get him trached, put a few stitches in his side. And then we’re going to want to dose him with a milder—but hopefully long-acting—sedative. At least until we decide what to do with him.”

“I vote we neuter him while he’s under,” Ben grumbled as he bent down to grab the wolf’s front paws. “It’s supposed to help prevent aggression, right?”

Eli frowned, his eyes dropping to the sullenly bleeding wound on the Lupine’s side. He helped Ben deposit him on the surgical-steel exam table, then leaned in for a closer look.

“That looks like it just happened.”

“It did.” Josie shouldered him out of the way and began to flush the wound with a squirt bottle full of sterile saline. “Don’t you remember? You’re the one who did it.”

“I know, but that was during the fight, and he’s been out for almost five minutes. Resting. It should at least have stopped bleeding by now, if not started to scab over on the ends.”

She pressed a thick, absorbent pad against the wolf’s side to catch the dripping saline and continued to clean the gash. “Really? You guys can heal that fast?”

“You saw my shoulder.”

“Well, yeah, but you shifted. I thought it was the shifting that made you heal so fast.”

Eli shook his head. “Only part of it. Some of it’s metabolism. And the rate we heal at depends on other factors, just like a human. It goes faster when we’re relaxed and not doing anything to strain the injury.”

The subject fascinated Josie, but she didn’t have time to pump him for information on it right now. First, because the sirens had reached a crescendo directly outside the back door and then gone silent, signaling the arrival of the cavalry. Better late than never, after all. And second, because the real implication of what he’d just said had begun to sink in.

Josie looked from the Lupine on the table to the door of the kennel area, as if she’d be able to see Rosemary’s cage through the door and walls separating them. Her lips parted, and she ducked her chin in disbelief. “You don’t think... you can’t mean that this is related to Rosemary?”

“Why can’t I? Something is keeping Rosemary from recovering from her injuries, and keeping her from shifting. What if it’s some kind of infection? And what if it’s contagious? Have you seen Bill in human form since he got in the cage with her last night?”

“No, but—”

“And there’s something else you need to know,” he said. The grim tone in his voice made her breath catch in her throat. “When I spoke to Rick Cobb, the Stone Creek Alpha, last night, the reason he was too busy to come see Rosemary himself was that he was busy cremating another pack member who’d been found dead in the forest near where I found Rosemary. The kid they were burning had been found in his wolf form as well.”

A rush of dread rolled through Josie like sickness. “Why did you wait until now to tell me this?”

“Because until just now, there was no reason to think the Paulson case and Rosemary’s were related in any way. Rosemary’s injuries could all have been due to being shot—

“Theoretically,” he stressed, when she tried to interrupt.

She gave a reluctant nod.

“And there wasn’t so much as a mark on Paulson’s body, from what Rick told me. Until Bill started showing symptoms similar to Rosemary’s, there was no reason to think that whatever she had might be contagious, and those symptoms only showed up just now. But our patient count just jumped from one to two, and possibly three. That gives me a lot more faith in the contagious disease theory than I had yesterday.”

Josie shook her head, but her brain whirled as she struggled to process the possibilities. She probably looked like a moron to the deputy, who cautiously peered into the room through the back door.

“Sheriff’s department!” the man called. “Everybody okay in here?”

“We’re fine, Jim,” Eli replied, stepping forward and waving his co-worker inside. “Dr. Barrett had a little incident, but we’ve got it under control.”

“Well, what kind of incident?” Jim Cooper asked as he stepped over the threshold. He didn’t seem fazed by the sheriff’s shirtless state, but he looked confused as his gaze traveled around the rest of the room. “I don’t mind admitting I’m pretty curious. Did you hear that call on the radio? One of those codes was for loose livestock!”

“Yeah. We might need to update that, so there’s a separate code for wildlife.”

“Wildlife?” Jim caught sight of the injured animal on the exam table and his eyes went as wide as dinner plates. “Is that a wolf? Is that what this is all about? A wolf got into the vet clinic! How the hell did that happen?”

“It’s a long story, Deputy Cooper,” Josie said, setting aside the saline and ripping open the packaging around the endotracheal tube. “And frankly, we don’t have a lot of time at the moment to tell it.”

Eli put a hand on Jim’s shoulder and guided him diplomatically toward the exit. “I’ve got things under control here, and I witnessed the event, so why don’t I write up the report for you? You’re on call for another eight hours. You don’t need to waste any time here.”

“You sure, Sheriff? I know this was supposed to be your day off—?”

“It’s fine. This won’t take long, and then I’ll still have the rest of the day.”

“All right, then. I appreciate it. I’ve already responded to two reckless driving calls from folks who live out on Seven, so it looks like it’s going to be a pretty busy day.”

“Have fun with it.”

“Thanks, Sheriff.” He nodded to the others. “Dr. Barrett. Folks. You all have a good day.”

Ben placed a roll of tape in the wolf’s mouth to keep it from closing around the trach tube Josie had just positioned, and began wrapping his muzzle with tape to secure it.

“Right,” he muttered, just loud enough to be overheard. “Because it’s been a peach so far!”

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