Chasing Her Tail (5 page)

Title

doctor’s cool, clinical gaze that set off her creep-o-meter and sent her self-protective instincts into overdrive.

“We should run some tests,” Dr. Aspling finally said. He ran his eyes, flat as a lizard’s, over her again and Bridget’s skin chilled with panic. “See if we can get to the bottom of this.” With another false smile he moved away, the nurse following. They conferred as they walked, their heads tilted close together.

“This is wrong,” Bridget muttered. It might just be fever paranoia—if there was such a thing—but she couldn’t ignore the way all her instincts were clamoring for her to get out, to get away.

Shooting a glance at the doctor and nurse, Bridget saw that they still had their backs to her. Closing her fingers around her purse, Bridget slid out of her chair. As she walked swiftly to the exit, she had to force herself not to look over her shoulder or, even worse, run. Drawing attention to herself was probably a bad idea while creeping away from an emergency room.

Bridget had no idea why she was sneaking out. It was crazy to leave. The doctor was there to help her. Everything else—all his creepiness, her panic, even her mutating hand—must have been creations of her fevered brain. It was all just too
weird
.

Even as she told herself she was stupid not to stay, Bridget shoved open the door and escaped into the parking lot. Relief coursed through her when the chill of the autumn air hit her exposed skin. As she made her way between the rows of cars, heading toward her sedan, a commotion at the exit door brought her head around.

Instinctively, Bridget dropped down, crouching between a pickup truck and a station wagon.

“You’re being stupid,” she told herself under her breath. It was probably just another patient leaving or a couple of doctors taking a smoke break.

“Find her!” a voice ordered. Although the command was low, the sound carried easily through the early morning quiet to Bridget’s hiding spot. “She just left—she has to be close.”

Bridget’s heart accelerated, sending blood to pound in her ears. She was pretty sure it was creepy Dr. Aspling’s voice. Again the thought occurred to her that everything might just be a fever-induced hallucination. What if this wasn’t real and she was home in bed or still sitting in the emergency room chair or even in a hospital bed somewhere?

Maybe it
was
just a crazy dream but Bridget figured she’d better assume the worst and move her ass before the possibly imaginary but definitely shifty doctor discovered her huddled between the vehicles.

Staying low, she moved to the front of the car, peering around it to check if anyone was there, waiting to pounce when she emerged into the open. She couldn’t see another soul. Hunched over and breathing short, hard breaths, Bridget ran across to the next row of cars, feeling exposed and vulnerable.

Her skin burned hot with fever and her entire body ached, but she shoved that to the back of her mind. There was time enough to deal with her illness when she wasn’t 25

Katie Allen

being hunted in a parking lot. Something else was bubbling up inside her, feeding on the adrenaline pumped through her by her racing heart.

It was exhilaration. A part of her was loving this—the danger, the excitement. A wild creature inside her was howling with pleasure at this hide-and-seek game. Bridget tried to block that part of her out, pretending it was just the fever creating more illusions—but she knew deep down this feral beast was a part of her.

She reached the shadowed safety of the next row of cars, tucking herself between a minivan and a car. As she gasped for breath, trying to regain the air she had lost more through nervousness than the short sprint between rows, Bridget felt her muscles twist and her stomach cramp, tight and painful. Falling onto her side, she snapped into a ball, her pursuers forgotten in a burning roar of pain. She breathed in hard through her nose, barely preventing a scream from escaping. The agony spread, shooting through her chest and down into her legs, muscles contracting into cramps, shivering with such tightly drawn tension that Bridget was afraid, in the tiny part of her brain not totally overwhelmed with pain, that something would snap.

She wanted to fight it, to resist the twisting and contorting happening beneath her skin, but it hurt too much and Bridget was too exhausted to struggle against her body anymore. Exhaling a hiss of air through her clenched teeth, she stopped fighting.

Once she let go, it happened fast—a rush of intense pain and then release.

Everything fell back into place, the muscles and bones and tendons all realigning to their proper places. With a shuddering sigh of relief, Bridget stood on wobbly legs…

All four of them.

Her breath started coming fast and shallow, hollow pants as she stared down at her feet—round, furred
dog
feet, half buried in a pile of fabric, which she realized were the clothes she’d been wearing just moments ago. Her shirt was still draped over her head and for some reason that freaked her out even more. She scrabbled at the piece of clothing with what had once been her hands but were now paws, knocking the shirt over her head into the pile of abandoned clothing.

“What the
fuck
?” she tried to say, but all that came out was a rusty whine.

“Did you hear something?” a voice asked, much too close for comfort. The person searching for her sounded as if he was just a few cars down the row.

“Like what?” This was Dr. Aspling’s impatient voice, coming from her other side.

Bridget realized that she could actually
smell
the two men, their colognes and clothes detergent, the cigarette smoke on the one to her right and the antiseptic soap from the doctor on her left. Underneath everything, she could smell
them
, an underlying scent that she somehow knew was different for every person.

Never mind smells
, she ordered her brain frantically.
Get out of here!

She slipped back toward the rear of the car, refusing to think about how she was walking on four paws because if she really let herself think about it, she would lose it completely.
Freak out later
, she ordered her barely repressed hysterics.
First get away from
the scary men
.

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She slunk behind the cars, checking behind each one with her eyes, nose and ears before moving silently to the next car’s shadow. Bridget mentally cursed the well-lit lot as she headed, car by car, toward the edge where pavement met grass. The edges were mown, but if she could get across fifty feet of lawn without being spotted, she could escape to the dark refuge of the brush and trees beyond.

Eight cars to go, seven, six… Bridget was moving through the shadow of a pastel Volkswagen when she heard a shout. Without even checking to see if she had been spotted, Bridget bolted toward the trees, hearing the sounds of pursuit close behind.

She increased her speed, feeling the bunch and stretch of muscles as she ran faster than she’d ever run in her life. The trees were closer—she could smell decaying leaves carpeting the grass and hints of small, furry things scurrying in the underbrush.

Just a few more strides and she’d be there. As she shot between two trees, triumphant, a sharp sting radiated from the top of her right hind leg. With a yelp, she lost her footing, her hindquarters twisting to the side as she scrambled forward, the need to escape from whatever danger was behind her overwhelming her brain and forcing her on.

Bridget regained her stride but a wave of dizziness flooded her and she slowed. The ground appeared to tilt under her paws and the outline of the trees blurred and shifted.

The urgent need to move, to get away from the men, pushed her to keep running, but whatever drug had been darted into her was making her waver and stumble. Her shoulder slammed into a tree and she staggered, almost going down. Bridget shook her head, trying to throw off the threatening darkness, to keep moving, to escape.

The men were getting closer—she could smell them, hear their low-voiced, back-and-forth muttering. Their nearing scents and sounds sent a flash of panic through Bridget, clearing her head enough to take another few off-kilter strides. The ground ended in front of her, falling off into a ravine, and she stumbled to a swaying halt at the edge.

Just before unconsciousness caught her, she felt herself tipping over into nothingness and then all was dark.

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Katie Allen

The inside of her eyelids glowed red. Bridget could hear birds twittering and cheeping, could smell the mouthwatering scent of small furry things, going about their business in the underbrush…

Mouthwatering?

Her eyes snapped open and she scrambled to her feet. Glancing down, she shuddered as she corrected herself—to her
paws
. Either she was still in the middle of her fever-induced delusion or she had somehow turned into a dog.

The memory of the chasing men and the tranquilizer dart came rushing back, and she twisted around to see her right back leg. The dart was gone, having fallen out at some point. From this angle, Bridget could see the majority of her body and noticed that she was a mottled brown and gold, with a medium-length coat. She definitely didn’t look like a wolf.

Not a werewolf then,
she decided.
So what—a were-mutt?

She sighed, which came out as a whine. How inelegant—instead of a majestic wolf, she’d turned into the lead character in
The Shaggy Dog
. Questions began to cram into her head. What
was
she? Could she turn back into a person? What had happened the night before? Why was the doctor chasing her? Where did they go? Was she safe? Were they watching her right now?

As her brain raced, her pulse accelerated until her heart thundered in her chest and she was quivering with the need to run. But where should she go?

Bridget looked around. She was at the bottom of a ravine and had been sleeping wedged against a decaying log, forest debris piled around her. Glancing up the incline, she guessed that she’d fallen, pulling after her a mini-avalanche of dirt, fallen leaves and whatever else made up the ravine she’d tumbled down. This natural blanket was probably what had hidden her from the two men.

Giving herself a shake, she heard the shower of dirt hit the ground as it flew from her coat. Bridget did an inventory, testing each group of muscles with care. Nothing seemed to have been damaged in the fall. In fact, she felt good—really good. After being so sick, she was almost giddy with the lack of pain and illness.

Bridget spun in a circle, unable to hold back an excited bark. The noise echoed in the trees, quieting the birds and making all the small creatures go still, bringing Bridget back to reality. She had to figure this out. First of all, she needed to get home.

Her car was probably still in the lot outside the emergency room, but what if someone was watching it, waiting for her to return? If she did manage to get to her car without anyone seeing her, she wouldn’t be able to drive home in her current state. She 28

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wasn’t sure if she could change back into her normal, five-foot-two, less-hairy form and she was a little scared to try—what if this was it? No more opposable thumbs or speech-enabled vocal cords. Instead, she’d fight urges to drink from toilets and chase squirrels.

At the thought, her stomach rumbled.

No
, she told her hungry dog part firmly.
There will be no eating anything in the rodent
family—including uncooked squirrel.

Her hunger and the thought of the sandwich meat in her refrigerator nudged her into action. Bridget trotted along the base of the ravine, heading toward a section that rose less steeply than the slope she had tumbled down the night before. A part of her was amazed at her calm acceptance of her new canine shape but Bridget figured so much had happened, so much shock and fear and overwhelming panic had flooded through her, that her brain had just short-circuited. Besides, she was still half-convinced this was all a dream.

She scrambled up the slope, her paws slipping a few times on leaves and loose dirt that pattered down to the forest floor below. Bridget was actually grateful for her four legs, since maneuvering seemed much easier than if she’d been human-shaped. As she climbed for what seemed like a long time, she marveled that she hadn’t been injured in her lengthy fall the night before. She wasn’t sure whether the two men had been put off their search because of the steep slope or whether they hadn’t been able to find her.

When she finally reached level ground, she slunk toward the edge of the woods, peering out at the emergency room parking lot while keeping her body in the shadows.

The hospital was busier than it had been the night before, with people walking in and out of the main doors and others standing around the entrance, possibly waiting for their rides or just enjoying the fragile warmth of the autumn sun.

Bridget eyed everyone with suspicion, not trusting even the elderly man using the walker, making his shuffling way toward a taxi. Any of the people could be watching for her, waiting for her to emerge from the woods and head to her car.

Retreating back into the trees, she turned and headed west, parallel to the parking lot. Although the route through the woods wasn’t the most direct way to Bridget’s house, it was probably the safest. Any chance of driving home was quashed when she remembered that her clothes were in a heap somewhere in the parking lot. She was pretty sure that even if she
was
able to change back into her normal shape, it would definitely be a naked shape, and that would attract way too much unwanted attention, as well as being extremely embarrassing. She might give the elderly taxi patron a heart attack.

The trees were thin enough for her to trot along at a good pace and Bridget enjoyed the easy stretch and flex of her muscles. When she’d tried to jog in the past, she’d been wheezing and gasping before she’d gone half a block. As a dog, she felt as if she could maintain this pace for hours. She wondered if any muscle she gained would stay with her when she shifted back to her human form—
if
she could shift back.