Chapter
Thirty-one
“I’m moving to the country, I’m getting married,
and I’m having a baby,” Jillian told her reflection in the mirror.
She saw a young woman with short but unruly blond hair, green eyes,
and fine features. The same woman she saw in the mirror every day,
but somehow she was different now. “Wow, that’s a lot of changes.
And not necessarily in that order either.”
Connor had called James for help in
dehorning a pen of cattle. She’d napped while he was gone, not
because he wanted her to but because she couldn’t help it. She did
tire easily. She’d chalked it up to the concussion until this week
when yet another period failed to appear. That was when she got
Caroline to drive her downtown to one of the pharmacies. She’d
loaded up a shopping basket with tons of things she didn’t need,
just so she could bury two pregnancy test kits in the bottom of it.
She thanked her lucky stars—if she had any—that she got a young
cashier who didn’t know who she was, and that Caroline didn’t come
back before everything was paid for and bagged.
She’d tested the minute she got back to
her apartment. The strip turned blue. She’d heard that sometimes
the strip was hard to read, but no, this was definitely blue.
Jillian spent the rest of the day and half the night trying to
think of non-pregnant reasons why she was testing positive. She
waited until James left for the farm early that morning and tested
again. Blue.
She certainly hadn’t planned on
blurting the news to James at lunchtime, but it had worked out just
fine. He was just fine, which was the
amazing part. Or maybe not so amazing, considering the kind of man
he was. Like Birkie had said, James was a complicated man with a
tender and loving heart. Just last week, Jillian found him cuddling
a couple of orphan puppies in the back room. He tried to claim they
were cold and he was just warming them up, but she didn’t buy it.
So it wasn’t too hard to picture his big powerful hands holding a
tiny baby. It wasn’t hard to imagine him with a child either, not
after he’d spent twenty minutes in the clinic’s waiting room
letting an 8-year-old girl show him her pet iguana. James would be
a great dad.
But what about her? She’d never thought
much about the whole parenting thing. Her entire focus had been on
getting through all the years of study and classes and practicums
to become a vet. I would have thought about kids
eventually. I like kids almost as much as animals. It was
dealing with adults that could be difficult. She’d often wished the
patients she treated didn’t have owners attached. Unless it was a
child. She got along just fine with the kids who brought their pets
to the clinic. She’d probably be okay with this whole baby thing
too, if she ever got used to the idea.
Jillian puttered around the apartment,
discovered the kitchen garbage can was overflowing, and decided to
take it out before it walked away on its own. James was probably
still helping Connor. She glanced around for him, but as she passed
the livestock wing, she noticed that the cattle pen was empty and
the floor had already been hosed down. She checked her watch and
noted that the clinic had closed several minutes ago. Maybe James
had gone back to the farm for something. No matter, he’d turn up
eventually.
She squinted as she approached the back
door and tried to shade her eyes. The late afternoon sun was
glaring through the window, reflecting off the white tile floor and
the pale walls of the hallway. It was a relief to step outside. It
was bright out here too, but at least the light was coming from
only one direction. Blinking, Jillian headed for the trees at the
back of the parking lot where the bin was set up. It was a hot day
and the shade was welcome by the time she tossed in her bag, but
with the aroma of eau de dumpster hanging
heavy in the air, she didn’t want to linger.
Resigning herself to re-crossing the wide expanse of sunlit
pavement, Jillian turned. And stopped dead.
Roderick Harrison was pointing a rifle
at her.
“What the hell are you doing? Put that
down!” Jillian demanded, sounding a lot braver than she felt. She
was deliberately assertive, sensing it would be a mistake to act
like a victim. The man wasn’t wild-eyed and raving like the last
time she’d seen him, but there was an intensity to him that would
have been scary even without the weapon. She clenched her fists,
automatically looking for some way to engage him, but he was well
out of her reach. Besides, her martial arts training covered only
attackers with hand weapons. A rifle could kill from a
distance.
“I told you to run while you could.
Told you to get away, but you wouldn’t listen. I can see the blue,
you know.”
“The blue what?” It was good that he
was talking. Maybe she could keep him talking. Please God, let someone see me out here. She thought
about screaming for help, but that didn’t seem like a good idea,
not with the gun aimed at her midsection. She could be dead long
before anyone heard her.
“The aura. You all have it. The whole
damn nest of you.” He spat on the pavement without taking his eyes
off her. “Corena would never have left if it wasn’t for you. She’d
still be alive. She’d still be with me.”
“Who’s Corena?”
“You know damn well who she is. You all
know each other. And no one’s allowed to leave the pack, are they?
Goddamn fucking werewolves. You’re just like the goddamn mafia, you
gotta have control, gotta have order. She tried to leave, and you
killed her.”
She should have guessed this was about
werewolves. She tried to play along, sound calm and reasonable.
“I’m sorry to hear you lost someone. But I’m sure nobody here had
anything to do with it.”
“I’ve seen that big white devil here,
seen his whole pack here. This is goddamn werewolf
headquarters.”
He had seen the white wolf. That was
the reason behind this. But what was the right thing to say? He’d
expect her to deny it. Acceptance. Validate what
he’s witnessed. “It’s true that the wolf has been here. The
white wolf is a frequent visitor to our clinic.”
It surprised him. He seemed to consider
for a few seconds, studied her through narrowed eyes. “And the
others?”
She drew a blank then. “What others?
I’ve only seen one wolf.”
“Kept you for himself then. Kept you
away from the others. I should have known when I saw his aura all
over you. He’s going to change you, and keep you. Breed up a whole
new pack.” He pointed at her belly with the gun. “Already
started.”
A shiver ran through her. This was too
weird, much too weird. How the hell did this guy know she was
pregnant? She hadn’t known herself until—Forget that, she ordered
herself. Focus on what to say now. How do I talk my
way out of this? How do you reason with a crazy person? “But
I’m not a werewolf myself.”
“That’s only a matter of time.” He
raised the rifle, aiming at her head.
Oh Jesus. Think
“Corena wouldn’t want you to do this.”
“I let her talk me out of it once. I
should never have listened.” His finger was on the trigger. “Liars
and deceivers. That’s what you are, all of you. Pretending to be
human, but underneath you’re all teeth and claws, just waiting for
a chance to use them.”
Jillian jolted at the sound of glass
breaking from the direction of the clinic. Harrison glanced behind
him, and she used the distraction to dive to one side. She landed
hard, scrambled up ready to run, when an unearthly howl, a
blood-freezing battle cry, held her in place. An enormous white
wolf, her wolf, was racing toward them,
glittering shards of broken glass still flying from its coat. The
sun glinted off its bared teeth as it leapt for her assailant. And
Harrison swung to meet the attack. “No, don’t!” she
screamed.
The explosion hurt her ears, deafened
her. Wolf and man hit the ground together, rolled. The rifle
skittered to the pavement. Then the white wolf lay still. Blood
soaked its snowy white fur and pooled in the sun.
Her ears still ringing, Jillian
couldn’t think, could only react. She ran to the wolf, scrambled to
find a pulse. “Stay with me, stay with me,” she chanted, over and
over, as she put pressure on the terrible wound in an effort to
stop the bleeding. Only when Roderick sat up and started looking
around for his weapon did she remember him. “You bastard! You
goddamn bastard!” He was between her and the
gun. If he reached it, she was dead and so was the wolf. She had no
choice but to let go.
Jillian launched herself on top of her
assailant, punching and kicking, screaming for someone to help her
at the top of her lungs. It was more like wrestling than the kind
of fighting she practiced, but she knew how to put power behind her
punches. She managed to drill him solidly with a quick succession
of blows, although a vulnerable spot was hard to come by from this
position and she hadn’t quite regained all of her strength after
the accident. Harrison reeled, then rallied, surprising her with a
powerful backhand. With his greater weight behind it, the blow
knocked her flying. She landed on the pavement next to the wolf,
rolled nimbly to her hands and knees. Dizziness had her pausing for
a second, only a scant second, but it was long enough to hear the
bolt of a rifle being slid back.
She looked up fast, fully expecting to
be shot, but nothing was pointed at her. Douglas Harrison had a
rifle trained on his father.
“Put it down, Dad.”
Roderick had just closed his fingers
around the stock of his own weapon. He spun around on his knees at
his son’s voice, his rifle in his hands. Beyond him, Jillian could
see Connor emerge from the clinic at a dead run, then stop still
when he saw the situation. She could hear sirens in the distance.
Someone had called the RCMP. Could she make a break for it now—or
would running set Roderick off? The man was still armed. Still
crazy, unpredictable. And seemed more irritated than worried that
his son was trying to stop him. Meanwhile, the wolf lay beside her,
bleeding. If she left now, he would die.
Quickly Jillian kicked off her shoe and
peeled off a sock with one hand, folded it into a makeshift
compress and mashed it into the gaping exit wound. She pressed the
heel of her palm against it tight and held it, searched through the
bloody fur with her other fingers for a pressure point, an artery.
Something, anything, she could press to stem the supply of blood.
She glanced up, saw that Connor had edged closer to the scene. Bill
Watson was with him. She also saw that Roderick was on his feet
now, rifle at the ready.
“They’re werewolves! Every damn one of
them!” Roderick was saying. “Thanks to you, we didn’t finish this
white bastard off that night, and now look. There’s a whole fucking
nest of them. Someone’s got to make a stand. Someone’s got to stop
them.”
“No, Dad,” said Douglas, never relaxing
his grip on the rifle. “Someone has to stop you. I was too young and too scared to stand up and stop
you before, but not this time. Put the gun down.”
“Want me to believe you’ll actually
use that? You couldn’t pull the trigger that
night when there was a werewolf right in front of your face. I told
you to shoot. I told you, and you just stood there sniveling.”
Roderick spat on the pavement. “Think I don’t know you haven’t
picked up a gun since? All you can pick up now is a glass. You
couldn’t shoot me if you tried.” He pointed his rifle then, not at
Douglas, but at Jillian.
“I mean it, Dad.”
“It’s still the best strategy. You know
that killing these two creatures will draw the rest out. There’s a
couple over there already.” Roderick nodded his head toward the
clinic. “More will come. We could get rid of the whole bunch at
once if you helped me.”
“I won’t let you do this again. Put it
down, Dad.”
Roderick ignored him, sighted on his
target. There was a twin explosion of sound. And the old man was on
the ground, his hands wrapped around his leg and a look of
incredulity on his face. His own shot had gone wild, and his rifle
had tumbled to the pavement. He made a wild reach for it, and
Douglas fired again, placing the shot between his father’s fingers
and the fallen gun. Roderick snatched his hand back as if it was
burned and glared at his son. “You don’t understand. They won’t let
you walk away. You’ll pay for letting these creatures go. They’ll
make you pay.”
Douglas simply walked over and kicked
the rifle across the parking lot, threw his own after it. “Pay
what? I’ve already paid for the ones you killed. Paid and paid, my
whole life. I’m telling the story to the authorities as soon as
they get here.”
“You called the damn cops on me?”
Roderick’s face turned purple with rage. “I raised you like a son.
Even after your mother ran off, I raised you like my own
son.”
“She didn’t run off,” Douglas said
quietly. “And the werewolves didn’t kill her, either, did they? I
talked to Rosa and we figured it out. Maybe you didn’t mean it,
maybe it was an accident. But afterward you had to make up a story
you could live with. It’s too bad more people had to die just to
feed your fantasy.”
“It’s not a fucking fantasy. They’re
werewolves, every last one of them. I’d never have hurt her if they
hadn’t kept luring her away. It’s their fault.” Roderick pointed a
shaking finger at Douglas. “Their fault that I . . . that I. . . .”
He was silent then, holding his leg and rocking back and forth. He
didn’t look at Douglas again.
Bill had already knelt by Jillian’s
side. He threw a beefy tattooed arm around her shoulders and gave
her a surprisingly gentle squeeze. “Are you okay,
lovey?”
Connor was feeling the wolf’s head as
if searching for a fever, and closed his eyes for a long moment.
“He’s there, but barely,” he pronounced. “We’ve got to take him
inside.” He didn’t even glance at Jillian, just gave instructions.
“Bill and I will carry him, and you keep your hand right where it
is.” He didn’t wait for an answer. She had to move fast to stay in
position as the men slid their hands under the wolf’s body and
lifted.
Sergeant Fitzpatrick and two of his
officers ran by them as the trio made their way slowly toward the
clinic with the injured wolf. Jillian glanced back only once.
Roderick was still on the ground, hunched over and clutching his
leg. He seemed shrunken. Defeated. One officer was kneeling in
front of him, talking into a radio, requesting an ambulance.
Another was gathering up the rifles from the pavement. Douglas
stood with his arms folded, talking with Fitz. Everything seemed
under control.
Jillian wished she had things under
control. They were moving slowly and carefully, yet the crumpled
sock she was using to put pressure on the wound was soaked through.
She called for them to stop so she could kick off her other shoe
and utilize that sock too. She folded it, packed it on top of the
first sock and held it down tight. “Okay, I’m ready.”
“No you’re not,” said Bill. “You’ve got
bare feet now.” He looked at Jillian and jerked his head toward the
back entrance to the clinic, the one she had used only a short time
ago. There was a sea of glass glittering on the pavement. The door
itself was not only missing its window but was leaning outward and
hanging askew, one of its hinges broken. It looked as if something
had exploded through it . . . “And we’re not bloody likely to fit
through that door all together-like.”
Connor considered. “We’ll go in the
truck bay and through the livestock wing. But we’ve got to move
faster.”
In the truck bay they were met by
Culley and Devlin, who took over carrying the wolf while Connor ran
ahead to the Small Animal Surgery. Bill offered to take Jillian’s
place but she shook her head. She was using both hands and dared
not move either of them, not yet.
They laid the wolf on the biggest table
in the surgery. It would have been on the small side for Cujo, Ruby
Ferguson’s ill-tempered dog. The wolf’s body covered the stainless
steel surface completely, his broad head hung over one end, and his
long legs draped limply over the side.
Connor had a wheeled tray of sterile
instruments laid out. He came around and stood by Jillian. “Okay,
let’s see what we’ve got.”
Gingerly, she removed the socks,
unrecognizable now. They were just wet red wads, little
distinguishable from the damaged tissue itself, surrounded by
blood-soaked fur. She sucked in her breath as she took a good
clinical look at the wound. It was huge.
Jillian didn’t know what kind of gun Roderick had used, only that
while the entrance wound was relatively small, the exit wound was a
gaping hole. As far as she could tell, parts of the shoulder had
been blasted clean away, bone, hide and all. Connor darted straight
into the gory mess with fine instruments, seeking to clamp the
blood vessels. Jillian blotted the welling blood with gauze pads,
then started an IV.
They worked together, taking turns
stitching the terrible mess as best they could. Connor’s sister,
Kenzie, had slipped into the room somewhere along the line and
proved herself a capable nurse, keeping both vets supplied with
whatever they needed. Jillian checked the vital signs frequently.
The wolf was still alive, but barely. Finally she took Connor’s
arm.
“This isn’t going to work. The damage
is just too great. There’s no way to fix it.”
He didn’t look at her, just continued
to work. “We’re fixing it.”
“But there’s so much missing. The
socket’s gone, the attachments for the muscles. This animal is
going to be permanently crippled and in pain, even if it survives.
It’ll have to live in captivity for the rest of its
life.”
Connor appeared to ignore her. She
became aware then that not just Kenzie was in the room, but Culley
and Devlin. Bill and Jessie were in the hallway, looking in. They
weren’t paying attention to her. In fact, no one appeared to have
heard her. All eyes were on the wolf.
What was going on here? She’d never
seen them all together in the same room, and none of them had been
in this room. Had they all been here visiting at the clinic when
the situation erupted? Everyone seemed so intense, as if it was a
family member in a hospital emergency room. Was she not the only
one the wolf had visited? Maybe all of them knew about the wolf,
had a relationship with it just like she did. After all, James
seemed to be familiar with it . . . And just where was James? She hadn’t had a moment to notice before, but
his absence now seemed very odd. If all his family and friends were
here, if it was important to them, it would be important to him as
well. And surely someone had called him to mention that a lunatic
had held her at gunpoint. If he couldn’t get here, he would have
phoned, wouldn’t he? Of course he would. Likely had, several times,
but she’d been a little busy. And who knew if anyone was answering
the phones? It was long after hours and Birkie was safely home.
He’s probably on his way right now, she thought. He’d be mad as
hell that he hadn’t been there to protect her and even madder that
he couldn’t get through to her.
“I need you, here.” She knew Connor was
talking to her. “Right here, your hands are smaller.” She turned
her attention back to the wolf, took another turn putting fine
stitches in a seemingly futile effort to reassemble what wasn’t
there.
Connor lifted the lips of the wolf. The
gums were pale, almost white. Connor swore, ripped open a drawer
and rummaged through it. Pulled the wrapper off some transfusion
tubing. There was an IV insert at both ends and a squeeze pump in
the center. It was used to take blood directly from donor to
recipient. It made perfect sense to Jillian. What Connor said next
did not. “Devlin, you’re up first.”
What the hell?
She stopped what she was doing and watched incredulously as Devlin
pulled off his shirt, as Connor swabbed the inside of his elbow.
“Wait! What are you doing?”
“We need blood. He’s fading
fast.”
“Connor, have you lost your mind? You
can’t give human blood to a wolf. Are you that tired? You’ll kill him.”
All eyes were on her then, and it was
uncomfortable. Their expressions seemed a bizarre mix of patience
and pity, as if she were a small child who had just said something
embarrassing. She automatically dismissed the odd impression as
ridiculous. “There’re no bags of canine blood left in the fridge
until the supply truck gets here tomorrow—that amputation on the
Great Dane took all we had. We could check with Sergeant Fitz if
he’s still here, ask if we could use his big Shepherd. Or Dalin
Boyd has a Rottie and he lives just down the road. Maybe
both.”
Connor rubbed a hand over his face.
“There are things here you don’t understand and there’s no time to
explain them.”
“I understand that donor and recipient
have to be genetically close.”
“Trust me, Devlin’s close. In fact,
he’s a perfect match. We’ve done this before.” He stopped talking
to her, and instead, instructed Devlin to hop up and sit on the
counter by the sink. “We need some height here or it won’t flow
properly. Hold your arm like this. That’s right.”
What? What?
Jillian stood open-mouthed, her bloodied hands arrested in
mid-stitch. “You can’t do this! I care about this wolf very much. I
don’t think we can save it, but I’m damn well not going to let you
experiment on it.”
Connor inserted the IV into Devlin’s
arm, taped it down. “I care about this wolf more than you know. I
need you to either trust me or leave.”
Bill came up behind her and put a huge
hand on her shoulder, and Jillian was immensely relieved. “Tell
him, Bill, something’s wrong with him. Stop him. Make him
understand.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about
this creature, lovey. And a lot you do know. It’s not really a
wolf, you see.
“It’s James.”