Binding: Book Two of the Moon Wolf Saga (22 page)

“I’m sorry,” she said again, while I just stood there and breathed for awhile, enjoying the view over the orchard, and up the hills beyond the fence, and the pointy mountains beyond. And the fallen foe at my feet. An elation grew in me as I stared down at Finley's still form. He hadn’t beaten me. Not this time. And he wasn’t going to. Even if the vet hadn’t shot him, he wasn’t going to beat me. I was going to beat him. I took deep breaths. My arms felt like professionally tenderized meat. My shoulders hurt. I ached almost everywhere. But deep inside I felt a tide of joy. I felt like throwing back my head and howling out my triumph. Ha.

“I was going to beat him,” I told Elaine.

“He's awfully big,” was all she said.

I looked at her. “You knew he was coming.”

She held my gaze, the sunlight glinting on her glasses. Then she nodded. “There’ve been these cards. He sent them to vets all over the area. Maybe all over the city. You see them everywhere.” She took a dog-eared postcard out of her pocket. It had a picture of a gray wolf pictured on one side. It wasn’t me, but most people can’t tell wolves apart, unless the markings are really distinctive. The other side of the card was addressed to Elaine at her office. A printed message said, “Have you seen or heard of a wolf hybrid in your area behaving oddly?” It gave Finley's cell number. A wolf hybrid? That was funny, in a way.

I sat down. It seemed like a good idea. I pulled my legs up and leaned my back against a tree, behind Finley's head where he couldn’t see me at once if he came to. “So you called him?”

“I just thought he would get rid of you. Or know how to get rid of you.”

“Get rid of me?”

“Because, you know—I though you were some kind of monster! I didn’t understand you.”

I wouldn’t have thought I had anything left in me, but I felt my eyes change. “And why do you think it is for you to understand me?”

She stared down at Finley. I closed my eyes. After a moment I heard her say, “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t respond. After a moment she went on. “He said… he said he raised wolf hybrids. That he’d sold one up in the San Fernando Valley, but it had gotten away. I didn’t know—he didn’t say—that he was like you.”

I opened my eyes. “He didn’t say that he's my stepbrother?”

She shook her head.

“Well. He wouldn’t.”

“You ran away from home?” Her eyes behind her glasses were tear-stained. No one had ever wept for me. It was disconcerting.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I don’t blame you. I couldn’t… I saw my Aunt Sarah's husband beat her once. I was just a kid. He came into the house, roaring, and she just dropped into a ball on the floor and took it.” She shook her head, trying to dislodge the memory. “I hid under the table. I can still remember the sounds. It was terrifying. When he went after you…” she nodded at Finley. Her glasses glinted. “I was wrong about you. You really aren’t under a curse, are you?”

“Uh, no.”

“No. And you don’t change into a wolf because your demon granted you that wish.”

“No.”

“No. You’re a shape-changer.”

“I am one of the wolf kind,” I told her.

“And so is he.”

“Yes.”

“And—there are others?”

“Lots.”

“Oh.” After a moment she said, “What do you want to do with him?”

“He's not dead, is he?”

“No, but he will be soon, if I don’t do anything. The dart contains nicotine, which knocks animals out real fast…” She met my eyes and then hers wavered and looked away. I remembered how fast I’d been knocked out, not too long ago. She continued, “He's going to die if I don’t give him the antidote.” She took a small hypodermic out of the pocket of her sweater.

I looked down at Finley. He lay utterly relaxed, his legs splayed, his head back. His breathing had slowed. Blood still dripped from his slashed nose, and pooled under his shoulder. It was hypnotic to think we could just sit here, and do nothing, and he would die. And I hurt. I was tired. It would be easy.

“Is that what you shot me with?”

“That's right. But I gave you the antidote right away. We really didn’t want to hurt you.”

I thought about answering that. There was a snappy answer out there that would include my time in the cage, the time the wounds had taken to heal, the terror of being in two forms at once, at being helpless, and that stupid dog… I closed my eyes.

Elaine's voice jerked me back. “I’m sorry. I can’t just let him die.”

“When he wakes up,” I warned her, “he will come after me again. And he will come after you. He won’t stop. And he will mean to hurt you.”

The not-so-evil vet stared down at Finley. “Maybe I’ll try and call Curt. If he has some of those silver binders already charged we could try and—”

“Wait. Those little hooks?”

I got up, which was unexpectedly difficult, and made my way out of the orchard, which seemed like a long walk, and went back to my car. By the time I headed back, holding the bandana from my glove compartment, I’d gotten accustomed to the pain at every step, and my short-breathed exhaustion.

When I came back into the orchard, the vet was kneeling next to Finley, a discarded hypo beside her. She’d fixed the muzzle around his head, which almost didn’t fit. From her pocket she drew out a lighter and a wad of tinfoil which she picked open. I jerked as I recognized the scent. It held a small block of that stuff that made the smoke, and she lit it like a cone of incense.

I moved to avoid the smoke and the memories it brought back.

She wrapped the burning block loosely in the tinfoil and fixed it inside the muzzle, near the corner of Finley's jaw.

“That’ll hold him.”

“Here.” I opened the bandana and dropped it on her knee. “Will those still work?”

She recognized them all right. “Sure.”

“So, stick ‘em in, and let's put him on a plane to a country that doesn’t accept wild animal imports.” There was a story about a cousin who’d gotten stuck like that. Forever.

Elaine just sat there, staring at Finley. “I pinned your hind leg,” she said. “I was just about to pin your foreleg when you moved. Your eyes opened, and you… you started to change. Your eyes… they were human, but yellow. And the foreleg I was holding—it was human.”

“I was trying to change.” Even mostly unconscious. Good instincts.

“I pinned it so fast. I was scared. I’d never seen anything… I couldn’t stand you staring at me.” She looked up at me, her face crumpled, like a kid caught doing wrong. “We took you to Aunt Sarah so no one would see you. No one goes out there. You looked so…” She shook her head. “That's why we thought it must be a demon. Or a curse. It looked like one!” She got up. “We can’t just pin him. He’ll get out of it, just like you did.”

Well, I’d thought letting him die was the best idea yet.

“Watch him,” she told me. “Make sure that tinfoil doesn’t slip. I have to get my bag.” And off she went.

I watched closely. Finley went on bleeding, but he hadn’t stirred when Elaine came panting back carrying her big black vet case. She unlatched it and got out a set of wire cutters, picked up one of my silver hooks and started snipping it into little lengths.

“Hey!” Those were my trophies, and she was wrecking one.

“It's not the hook,” she told me, not stopping. “It's the silver. Curt charged the silver to hold the spell that keeps you from changing back. I mean, from changing, in your case.” She paused and looked up at me. “However did you… ?”

“I got them out first.”

“Oh.” She went back to snipping when she saw I wasn’t going to tell her any more. Why give away my methods?

“Well,” she said. “He's not going to do that.”

She rummaged around and brought out a black plastic case from the recesses of her bag and snapped it open. It just held another hypodermic, but it had a big needle. “This is what we use when we tag an animal with a subcutaneous transponder.” She set it aside and got out a bottle of alcohol. She dunked one of the little lengths of silver wire in a capful and loaded it into the syringe, and I began to smile. Finley was never going to change again. I leaned back against the tree and thought about that.

“I had another cousin,” Elaine said, bending to her work. “Curt's little brother, Pete. Back when we were kids, and what happened up at Aunt Sarah's was our huge secret, Pete was the one who loved it the most.” She shook her head. “I can still remember what it was like to fly, to see for miles…” She made a face. “Though coming back with mouse hair in my teeth wasn’t so fun. Pete was nuts about it. He used to hitchhike out to Sarah's ranch, help her with chores. He got her to experiment with him. She doesn’t do that anymore.

“He's the one who started working with metals, to find a way to hold the spell in place, make it last longer. He's the one who figured out that silver would work that way.” As she spoke, she inserted the short lengths of wire under the skin between Finley's shoulder blades, and at uneven intervals along his spine all the way to the base of his tail. I thought the use of alcohol to clean the needle and the little wires was excessive, but she did a thorough job.

“Pete loved to be a hawk. He didn’t get along with his folks. We thought it was just… After he figured out about silver, he charged up a piece, and instead of making wires out of it, he put it on the grinder and made a handful of dust. The next time he got Sarah to change him… we think he breathed in the dust as soon as she did it. She saw him fly away. He never came back.”

She finished inserting the last little snippet of wire in the skin of Finley's neck, under his thick ruff behind his head. “He’ll never get these out,” she said, and sat back.

Good.

“That should do it. Now all we have to do is…” Elaine got out her cell phone and opened it. After a moment she got to her feet, cursing under her breath about how the damn thing never worked out here. “I have to make a call. Then we’ll need to drag him to the garage. The cage is in there.”

The way she said it clued me in. “My cage?”

She nodded and headed off. I got up and dragged Finley out of the orchard. Slowly, but not very carefully. Sharing is a virtue, right? I had a lot of bruises just then. And I was looking forward to seeing Finley in my cage.

Elaine adjusted the tinfoil packet in Finley's muzzle when she got back, and then the two of us slotted him into the big live animal cage that Elaine hauled out of the garage. She’d cleaned it, but my scent was still on it. Finley was going to be really confused. Then we put it on a dolly and wheeled it out to the gate. Elaine checked Finley's heartbeat and respiration. He was going to live, it seemed.

“I’m sorry I called him.” Elaine poked the bars of Finley's cage with her shoe.

“Can I have my wallet now?”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I really don’t have it.”

“You’re kidding me!” The least I could have gotten out of that great battle was my wallet back. “Where is it?”

“Holly's got it.”

“And where is she?”

“Today? She's getting ready for Cecil's birthday party.”

Elaine's friend Simon arrived before too long, driving a truck with double doors in the back, and a lift. He parked across the driveway and got out, a lanky guy a bit older than her, in dark jeans and a worn jean jacket. His short brown hair spiked in different directions, but his gaze on Elaine was intense with anticipation. “What’ve you got?”

Elaine told him imaginatively that I was a friend who lived along the road, and that I’d seen a hybrid wolf a couple of times, and this morning I’d called to report it, and how we’d gone out together and bagged it, and there it was.

Simon's glance fell on me. “Is that how you got hurt? Are you all right?”

I licked a drop of blood off my lip. “I’m fine,” I told him. My arms were still throbbing, my bruises stung, but I’d won. I was walking away.

Elaine took back Simon's attention by showing him the wolf postcard.

“Seen ‘em,” he said. “So this was it?” He squatted down to examine him.

“I think so,” Elaine said. “I called the number and talked to the guy. Finley something. He doesn’t want it back, he just wanted to know what happened to it, make sure it's all right, and make sure no one was hurt.”

“Huh. He doesn’t look much like a hybrid. He looks like a full-blooded gray wolf.”

“Yeah, he does. But that's what the guy said he was.”

“Right. What happened to his nose?”

There was a silence. “Dogfight,” I said.

“Huh,” Simon leaned down to look closer. “He didn’t win? A big fellow like him?”

“Couple of bitches,” I said. It was all I could do to not start laughing.

“He's got a bite on his shoulder too,” Elaine told him. “I cleaned it, but you’ll need to keep an eye on it.”

“Sure thing,” Simon got up. “Poor guy.”

“Yeah.”

“He's a handsome fellow,” Simon observed. “Does he have a name?”

I looked down at Finley, thinking, but Elaine didn’t hesitate. “Butt Crack,” she said.

“Butt Crack?” Simon smiled, trying to understand the joke. “Okay. You sure you want to get rid of him?”

“Yes,” we both said.

“All right. I’ve got four stops. Any of them will be glad to have this specimen. I’m dropping a couple of rescues off at the rehab place near Big Bear, then I’m going down to the wolf center in Julian and picking up a pregnant bitch and a couple of yearlings for the new habitat near Phoenix. They’ve got a breeding pair they want delivered to the experimental station in Albequerque. So. Where do you want this guy dropped off?”

“Albuquerque,” we both said.

“Albuquerque it is.”

I grinned to myself. Albuquerque is deep in Lobo territory. Even if he got out of the station, he’d be in deep trouble, being so far off the Moon Wolf range. Escaping might even get him killed. What a happy thought.

We gave Simon a hand in dragging the cage to the lift, and then hauling it into the truck. One row of shelves held two wolf hybrids—and these were real wolf hybrids—wide awake and ready for fun. We shoved Finley's cage onto the empty shelf opposite and closed up the truck.

Simon studied Elaine for a long moment. “When I come back, maybe you’ll tell me the real story.”

She smiled at him. “Maybe. Someday.”

I was tired, and I was hurt. I wanted to complete my errand and go home to a hot bath and relive my triumph. And this is why I made the mistake that would bring my enemies down upon me. Something was niggling in the back of my mind, but I was too tired to work it out. I forgot about Finley's truck.