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 voice 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.”
“Will she recover from her injuries without shifting form?”
He looked past me to the other room where Sophia and Kat were. “If we can speed up her metabolism . . . maybe. I doubt it, though.”
“So she has to change form to kick-start the healing process?”
“That is the main trigger for lycanthropes. The change might make her abort, though.”
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. My mind wondered if the Were-lion who had beaten her knew she was with child. Or pup. Whichever. I looked at Larson. “So it’s wait and see, then.”
He stopped looking me in the eye, turning away and looking down at his hands in his lap. “There is one thing we can try.”
Not looking at me is bad. I had a feeling I was not going to like his suggestion. He did, too, that’s why he was suddenly obsessed with looking at his own thumbnail. I waited for him to speak.
“Remember last year when you had the Spear of Destiny and you used your power to heal Longinus and Charlotte?”
My mind tripped back almost six months. After killing Appollonia and taking the Spear of Destiny from her, my ability to sense magick was boosted. Holding the Spear allowed me to reach in and heal Longinus, the immortal owner of the Spear. I had been able to do the same for Charlotte, a Were-spider who had been Appollonia’s familiar. She had been forced to serve that hell-bitch until I set her free. They had both been wounded, Longinus mortally so, and I had been able to call out their supernatural abilities to heal them.
I looked down at Larson’s legs strapped into the chair he sat in. He had been there, bleeding from the wound that took his legs, while I healed them. Because he was only human there was nothing to call out of him. Nothing paranormal inside him to bring healing. So he got the hospital and the wheelchair. It would have made me feel guilty if I had a conscience about that sort of thing. I don’t. War is war and he signed up. His situation might suck, but it did no good to wring my hands over it. Push it aside, keep moving.
I seem to do that a lot.
“I don’t have the Spear, it went back to Longinus.”
His hand clamped on to my arm. It was full of wiry strength he did not have last year. “I don’t think you need it. From what I’ve heard, your power has changed and grown.” I nodded that it had. “I think you still have the ability to manipulate the supernatural like you did that night.”
I didn’t say anything.
His eyes went back to the lab. I turned to look. Kat had finished feeding Sophia and now sat on the table with the Were-dog’s head in her lap. Larson pointed past me. “It’s worth a try, I think. For her and her baby.”