Changes (28 page)

Rachel heard the popping sound crack the air. It sounded like someone not that far away just cracked a sharp whip that made her jump. She kept her eyes fixed on the wolf’s head as it fell away to her left and disappeared from the roof towards the backside of the building. She knew what she heard and the idea made her gasp. It had to be gunshot. A splashing sound followed the pop, and it came from the back of the building. It sounded like someone had just taken a huge boulder and dropped it into a pond.

She ran to the back of the building, but stopped by the long chain link fence, which ran just ahead of the creek. Not being able to move further, she searched for the sound, and saw ripples flowing out from the center of the water and seeing them, she sighed. She saw nothing there. She knew what it meant. She knew that Jimmy was gone.

“Jimmy?” She placed both hands to her face, and cried. She felt winded. She felt downright defeated. She looked back to the creek. She stayed there until the fire trucks came. She had nothing left.

The fire department came first, responding to the alarm that Rachel set off when she ran out of the building to find Jimmy. When everyone learned what happened at Ravenswood that night, the police soon followed. The questions came next. They asked hundreds of them. They couldn’t believe what they learned.

 Ross informed the police that an animal escaped from the labs. They killed it when it tried to get away. For the police, it answered all of their questions about the deaths that happened over the past few days. They also found three additional bodies at the labs. The animal mauled three of them before it ran outside. In the attempt, four others were injured. One had a broken arm and three others had a steal door slammed into them, two in a stairwell, and the other one in a conference room. They treated all of them at the scene, except for the man with the broken arm who they took to the hospital. One other man went missing, and thought presumed dead. The night security guard, James Walls, who worked at the front counter, wasn’t found. With everything, the place seemed like a complete mess.

Rachel did her best to answer everything. Of course, she left a lot out. She didn’t mention the small fact that the security guard, Jimmy Walls was a werewolf. They would never believe her if she told them the truth anyway, so she kept everything simple. Begrudgingly, she kept to what Ross told them. Yet again, she could do nothing else.

When she finished, the police let her go home. It was a little after five in the morning when she left the labs.

She made her way home with the sun just beginning to peek its head up over the horizon. She pulled into her driveway tired beyond her years. It had been such a long night that she felt numb all over. She felt winded.

Getting out of her car, she made her way to the front porch with a strong heavy weight in her legs. Her only thoughts were for Jimmy. Where did he go? What happened when he hit the water? Was he still alive? She seemed to know nothing. This was her mind when she looked to the floor of her porch and saw what looked like drops of blood leading to her front door. Seeing them in the faintness of the early morning dawn, her mind flashed to him instantly. “Jimmy?” She looked to her front door, tried the knob and found it locked. On the window, at the center of the wooden door, she could see a handprint on the glass. It had to be him. It just had to be.

“Over here,” a soft voice said to her right.

She turned to the corner of her porch and looked down to the floor. She could see that someone was there, kneeling down in the corner by the wall.

Jimmy lifted his head up and looked to her as he held his knees up to his chest.

She could see blood covering his left shoulder, and it streaked down his bare chest. She could see that he looked hurt. Even so, she still felt excited that he was even there. “Jimmy, my God?” She stepped to him and knelt down in front of him, and took his right hand into hers. “What happened?”

“I didn’t know where else to go.” He bowed his head, feeling the pain stiffen in his back. The burning in his shoulder started to feel worse. It hurt a lot, making it seem to be burning from within him. It made him wince. The pain in his chest made it difficult for him to breathe.

She sighed, thinking. “We have to get you to a hospital?” She looked at his wound, and could see that it looked beyond bad. It looked far worse than she herself could probably help him with it.

He laughed some, listening to her. It sounded subtle and subdued. “And tell them what?” he scoffed.

She nodded, understanding him completely. If he wasn’t going to go to the hospital, then she had to at least get him inside. First, she had to get something to cover him up. “Hold on.” She stood up and moved back to her front door, and looked around her quiet little neighborhood for any signs that anybody was watching them. If they saw him naked, or saw him at all for that matter, there would be too many questions to answer. Answers that she didn’t have, she knew that, so she had to make sure before she moved him. Seeing no one there, she unlocked the door. She stepped inside her living room and went for a blanket that covered the back of the sofa to her right. With it, she returned and went back out onto the porch. She wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, being careful not to touch his left arm any more than she had to. “Can you stand?”

He nodded.

She took his right arm and helped him up to his feet. She led him into the living room and closed the door behind them. “How did you get here?”

He stopped in the center of the room. “I found your address in the computer at work. I didn’t mean to spy on you, but—well—at least I knew how to find you.” He smiled and turned back around towards her, but kept his head down some. “I’m not sure how I got here. I just remember all of a sudden being on your porch.” He laughed. It hurt some, so it was only brief.

She nodded as she locked the front door. She turned, took his right arm again, and led him to the kitchen at the back of her house. She led him to a table just to the right of the doorway, pulled out the closest chair to them, led him to it, and helped him sit.

He pulled the blanket tighter around him as he sat down in the chair. The wound on his left shoulder screamed in agony as he did it, making him grimace some. He sighed when it started to subside.

She turned back to the doorway and turned the light switch on. The lights in the room flared on over their heads. She turned back and knelt down in front of him. “Let me see this?”

He grimaced as he turned his head to his right shoulder and let the blanket fall from his left.

Seeing the wound, she blinked. It looked small and round. It also looked somehow burned. The edges of the small hole, which was just above his left nipple, looked otherwise neat. Seeing it, she sighed. “It doesn’t look all that bad in the light.” She smiled. “Can you breathe?” The wound didn’t look deep, but she still needed to know if it punctured his lung. If it did, they wouldn’t have the choice but to get him to a hospital. He would suffocate in his own blood if they didn’t.

He grimaced again and nodded. “I can breathe fine. It just hurts like hell.” He smiled. “Feels like someone stuck a hot poker in my chest.”

She looked back to the wound, took both index fingers, and touched the skin around it.

It made him wince just by the touch.

“Sorry.” She blinked. The burn around the hole looked badly scorched, but not by a lot. In the hole, something caught her eye. It looked bright and even twinkled some. It looked like the bullet. “I see the shell. Let me clean it up some?” She stood back up, and smiled to him before she turned and left the room.

She passed the hallway to her bedroom and headed straight for the bathroom and then to the sink. She took a fresh washcloth out from the counter beneath it, and walked back to him in the kitchen. She placed it next to him on the table and then went to the rack just above the stove. She took a cooking pot from it, and went to the sink behind him. She turned the faucet on and let the hot water come to life. When it steamed, she put the pot beneath the stream and filled it with hot water. Done, she returned the pot to the table next to him and kneeled back down in front of him. “This might hurt some?” She smiled.

He laughed some. “Can’t be as bad as what it feels like now?”

Her smile became wider. She took the cloth and dunked it into the pot. She rang it out with one hand, and brought it down to the wound. “Ready?” She nodded with a smile.

He returned it.

She brought the hot cloth to his chest and began to wipe around the wound. The blood looked dried some and it made it rather easy to clean it.

He grimaced some with the heat of the cloth only adding to the heat in his arm.

Seeing the grimace, she slowed down her rubbing action, and decided to talk to him some, just to give him the diversion. “I want to thank you.” She smiled.

“For what?” He looked into her beautiful eyes.

“For coming to rescue me last night.”

“Rescue you?” He looked at his arm and watched her clean around the wound. The stained blood started to go away and it brought the wound out clearer under the cloth.

“You, or—the wolf—came to get me from the basement last night.”

He snapped his head back to her and looked her directly in the eyes.

She could see surprise written all over his face. “You don’t remember anything about last night, do you?” Her question answered the look.

He shook his head.

“What do you remember?”

He looked down to the floor by her, and noticed that his bare feet looked covered with dried mud. Some of it looked peeled and spread out on the floor around his toes. “Not much, really. It’s more like images—feelings.”

She looked at the top of his head. Everything from last night came rushing into her thoughts. She could see the wolf again, standing before her in the doorway of the conference room. Her memory flashed to seeing it in the hallway. The memory of it grabbing her into its arms and running with her down the hallway flashed next. She saw it all so clearly. It felt like it just happened, minutes ago. “What was it like?” She felt curious. It felt too great not to ask.

He looked up from staring at his bare feet. He had to think about it for a moment. Everything felt like nothing but a haze. Everything looked like a fog. What he did remember wasn’t much. “I remember being hit to the ground. I remember feeling the pain. I can remember feeling the eyes looking at me from behind my mind. For a brief second, I could almost feel it come into me. In that moment, everything I felt, the pain, the cold tiled floor, everything vanished. I felt like I was no longer feeling anything but just standing there and just witnessing all of it. It was such a strange feeling, but it was something that felt so right.”

She sighed and nodded. Everything she heard sounded beyond fascinating. It felt like listening to someone describing magic to her from some type of a fairy tale. She looked from his eyes and back to the wound. With it clean, she could now see the hole clearly. Inside it, she could see the sparkle. It looked bright. “What the hell?” she asked, more to herself than to him, and pulled herself closer. It looked like silver. It looked like a perfect fit in the hole. It even looked like the bullet was moving. It looked like it was coming towards her. She couldn’t believe what she saw.

“What is it?” He heard her clear as day. “What’s wrong?” His mind felt too tired to have anything else happen to him. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take.

She didn’t know how to explain what she saw. “Well—I see the bullet.” It looked completely neat with no skin or blood anywhere on it. “Hold on a second.” She stood up and left him again in the kitchen.

He watched her leave, looked to the wound and couldn’t see anything really other than the hole. The heat from it still felt there and that’s all he knew.

She came back in only a few seconds. She had a pair of tweezers in her right hand. “This is going to hurt?” She knelt back down in front of him, and brought the tweezers up to the hole. Just before she was about to stick it in, something came up into her thoughts quickly. “You’re not going to change are you?” she had to ask. She knew that this was going to hurt, and if pain would cause him to change, she didn’t want to be the one that was causing it when he did it.

He laughed at that one. “I don’t think it works that way.”

She wasn’t so sure. “You changed when Gary was hurting you. I don’t want to be the one hurting you this time. Maybe I should strap you down first?” She stood back up.

He stopped her, and took her left hand with his right. “If you do that, it might cause it more than the pain.” He couldn’t be tied. He hated that. He knew the wolf would as well.

She looked down at him and nodded. She didn’t like the answer, but she figured he would know more than she did, so she had to trust him. Doing so wasn’t a problem so she bent back down and once again brought the two ends of the tweezers to the hole. She took a deep breath before she began. “Ready?”

“Why not?” He smiled, and took a deep breath.

The tweezers went in.

The pain screamed through him quickly. It felt so great that he almost bit his own tongue. He fought it by clenching his teeth, and squeezed his hands into fists.

She pushed the tweezers in deeper until she felt it touch the bullet. With them firmly around it, she pulled. The bullet came out almost as if someone was pushing it to her from inside his chest.

The pain screamed as he grimaced. The heat of the wound raced through his arm. It flared down his back. It felt beyond agony, but then it stopped. Everything went away. The heat vanished like it wasn’t even there.

When she finished, she held the bullet out in between them. She sighed and smiled. “Done.”

He looked at it and couldn’t believe what he saw. “Silver?” He blinked. “I guess there’s more to myths than we’ll ever know?” He chuckled.

Her eyes widened with amazement filling her soul. Seeing it, thinking, it gave her some ideas. “You must be allergic to it or something?” She looked back to the bullet, and couldn’t believe that there wasn’t any blood on it. “It’s almost like your body was trying to run from it? There’s not a drop of blood on it.”