Red (16 page)

“
Hey!” I croaked. “That
nose is
cold
.”

The dog chuffed and licked my face.

“
Yeah, yeah, okay. Not
dead. Get off. You weigh a ton.” I shoved at his shoulder—Hey look
at that, my arm worked—and the dog backed up a couple
feet.

Pain radiated out from my back. But pain
meant the nerves were still intact. I took inventory of my other
limbs, carefully testing to make sure they still moved. Nothing
broken. I wasn’t paralyzed. I guess since I wasn’t dead, that was a
good thing.

But how was this possible? That truck had to
be going at least sixty. I shouldn’t be in one piece. Speaking of
which . . . yeah . . . I needed to get vertical in case the lunatic
who’d tried to run me over decided to come back and finish the job.
Not like I could run or fight if he did but it was the principle of
the thing. Since it seemed safe to do so, I curled my legs up and
tried to roll to my knees. Crap, that hurt.

The dog crouched, shoving his head under my
arm. He chuffed again until my fingers twined in his fur. It was a
strange combination of soft and rough and a part of me just wanted
to collapse around him. When he lifted his head, it helped me
straighten. Then I tipped back, sprawling with total lack of grace,
to fall against the offending tree. If I was flat on my ass again,
at least I was upright this time.

“
Thanks,” I muttered,
closing my eyes again to try and catch my breath since that single
effort had wiped out whatever energy I had left.

Okay, so I could add being hit by a motor
vehicle as yet another ineffective means of killing a werewolf.
Check. Not an option that had been on my list to try.

I struggled to remember clearly what had
happened. I’d been in the pass. The truck had started gunning for
me. I started running. Obviously I had somehow made it out of the
pass, or I’d be smeared against one of those rock walls instead of
leaning against this tree. I felt gingerly along my ribs.
Definitely bruised at the very least. I’d really expected to be hit
straight on from behind, which would have tossed me forward.
Instead, the impact had come from the side, sort of diagonal and
under my right arm. That didn’t make any sense. The driver was
headed right for me. Had he fishtailed at the last second?

I didn’t think so. I couldn’t remember any
squealing of tires.

So the only other option was that something
else
had knocked me out of the way.

I peeled my eyes open again and got a good
look at the dog, standing only a few feet away, studying me. He was
tall and kind of grayish white, broad in the chest. Enormous, but
not built like a malamute. Definitely big enough to have hit me
like a freight train.

As my eyes adjusted to the dark and focused,
I went cold. It was no dog that had rescued me. It was a wolf. No
hypothetical, small-boned red wolf like we were wanting to
reintroduce. This was a fully-grown, two hundred pound timber wolf,
as out of place in Tennessee as a bespectacled librarian in a mosh
pit.

Maybe I should have been afraid. I mean, it
was a
wolf
only three feet away. But if he’d gone to the
trouble to knock me out of the way of an oncoming vehicle, it
didn’t seem like he had plans to eat me. Not that wolves usually
did that to humans. Mostly they avoid us altogether. Except, I
wasn’t human anymore. Not fully. So maybe that explained why he
didn’t appear to be wary of me. Or maybe he was someone’s pet? I
knew there were some people who kept wolf-hybrids or even full
blooded, domesticated wolves as pets sometimes. But I didn’t see
evidence of a collar. And nothing about him seemed tame. His long
body was tense, quivering, his ears turning this way and that,
taking in the sounds of the night, alert and ready for action.

“
I’m okay,” I told him. “I
don’t think he’s coming back.” It was probably stupid talking to a
wolf. It’s not like they spoke our language. But I was hoping my
tone would help calm him. I thought about Sawyer’s voice and how he
spoke to soothe whenever I was upset. How he always knew when I
was, I had no idea. God, how I wished he were here. He’d probably
make some joke to try and lighten the mood. Elodie Rose, Wolf
Whisperer.

“
Are you the wolf I’ve been
hearing all these years? Do you have a mate somewhere? A pack? The
people I work with thought I was crazy for saying there were wolves
in the park. But I know what I heard.”

Of course he didn’t actually respond to
that. But as I talked some of the tension seemed to leak out of
him, so I kept going. “You could have been hurt, you know. Knocking
me out of the way like that. I don’t know why you did it, but thank
you for saving me.”

The wolf inclined his head, as if in
acknowledgement.

Tentatively, I held out my hand. Without
hesitation, he took a stumbling step forward, dipping his head to
nuzzle my palm.

“
Oh! You
were
hurt!”

I scrambled stiffly to my knees, reaching
toward him before my brain could telegraph that this was a bad
idea. But the wolf held still, letting me examine him. Nothing
seemed to be broken, but he whined a little when I felt my way down
his right flank. My hand came away bloody.

“
Looks like the truck
clipped you,” I said. I don’t know why I kept talking, except that
it seemed to keep him calm and make me feel less panicked. “You
could use stitches.”

He looked at me steadily, intelligently.
Surely he wasn’t understanding what I was saying? His gaze stayed
on me as I made it to my feet. Would he follow me?

“
I could clean you up at
least. Disinfect the wound. Which is stupid because you’ll never
follow me all the way home.”

And how was I going to get home anyway?
Obviously the roads weren’t safe. Whoever was driving that truck
had
tried to hit me
. Deliberately. I still needed to think
about what that meant. But first I had to get home where it was
safe. I guessed it was time to test out my nighttime navigation
skills.

Feeling like an idiot, I patted my leg.
“C’mon. Come with me.”

I retrieved my pack and took a few steps.
The wolf followed. It went on that way for a couple of long miles.
I’d go a few feet, then check to make sure he was following. He had
to be someone’s pet, I decided. No way would an actual wild animal
freaking
follow me home.
I kept up a steady stream of inane
chatter the whole way. The wolf patiently limped after me. Maybe I
could get in and grab the first aid supplies and slip back out
before Dad noticed. Sure. And maybe pigs would fly. I was so
dead.

But the house was dark when we broke the
tree line. I slumped with relief. I didn’t know where he was, but
I’d worry about it later. For now, I owed my rescuer some first
aid. My brain was too addled to think about how that was going to
work just yet, so I kept moving forward, doing the next thing, as
if he were a person.

I opened the back door. “Wait here,” I
called.

The first aid kit was in the bathroom. There
was no way to know how much time I had, so I needed to be fast. I
raced through the house, slapping on lights as I went. When I ran
back into the kitchen I found the wolf slumped on the floor next to
the kitchen table, blood dripping out on the tile. He didn’t even
lift his head when I came in.

“
Oh, God, no.” Was he dead?
Passed out? I started to lunge forward, then checked myself.
Possible wild animal. Wounded. Don’t be an idiot.

I approached him slowly. He was still
breathing. When I laid a hand on his shoulder, he peeled open one
eye and looked at me as if to say,
Do what you have to.

I flipped open the first aid kit on the
kitchen table. Because it was Dad’s it covered practically every
eventuality other than field surgery. Which meant that there were
actually sutures. I didn’t really think we’d get that far, but
maybe I could at least disinfect the wound and get some antibiotic
ointment in it before the wolf ran off again. Not that he seemed
like he’d be running anywhere any time soon.

“
Okay, easy now.” I knelt
to examine the flank. It was steadily leaking blood, staining his
fur, the floor. “Easy.” With one eye on his head and those teeth, I
dabbed carefully with a clean cloth, trying to see how bad it was.
The three inch gash
did
need stitches, but it didn’t look
like any major arteries had been cut.

“
I’m going to disinfect
this now. It’s going to sting.” I crouched, armed with the bottle
of hydrogen peroxide, prepared to spring back if he lunged. I
tipped the bottle, splashing peroxide into the wound.

The wolf didn’t make a sound and didn’t make
any effort to attack. I eased forward and flushed the wound some
more. There was an awful mess on the floor as the blood and
peroxide poured down. Thank God for tile. When the disinfectant no
longer bubbled, I pressed a towel against the wound to staunch the
flow of blood. The wolf turned his head to look at me.

“
I know it hurts, I’m
sorry. But I have to get it to stop bleeding.”

I held his eyes and thought of Sawyer, of
the first time we’d met when he’d used his t-shirt to stop the
bleeding of my wrist. The bit of t-shirt was still in my
pocket.

“
I think it’s starting to
clot,” I said.

Beneath my hands the wolf began to
tremble.

“
Shhh,” I murmured. “I’ll
be done in just a bit.”

The bleeding had slowed to a trickle, but as
soon as he moved, it was going to start bleeding freely again. I
was not so insane as to push my luck by trying to stitch up the
gash. Even domesticated animals were put under for that kind of
procedure. But I had to do
something.
Maybe I could get him
to hold still long enough that I could put on some butterfly
strips? They wouldn’t hold long but maybe long enough.

“
Okay, look. I’ve got to do
something to close up this wound,” I told the wolf.

Before I could present his options—as if he
was going to answer me one way or the other—headlights swept over
the wall in the living room.

“
Oh shit! Oh shit, my dad’s
home!”

There was no possible way I could explain
why I had a
wolf
bleeding in the kitchen.

I whirled around, intending to find
somewhere to hide him, but the wolf was nowhere in sight. I raced
around the island, peeked into the laundry room. No wolf. Then I
spotted the open back door. I ran across to shut it, peering into
the yard. The wolf was simply gone, the only signs of his ever
having been here the pile of bloody rags on the floor.

Chapter 8

Elodie

Outside
the truck door slammed shut
and I turned to face the mess in the kitchen. Panicked, I dumped a
towel on the floor to sop up the mess in a hurry and gathered up
the other bloody cloths, racing to toss them into the washer. I
came back for the towel, hurriedly swiping the floor and turning
off the big overhead light, leaving only the light over the kitchen
table where the First Aid kit was spread out. Maybe he wouldn’t
notice the floor in the shadows.

No time, no time.
I got the towel and
chucked it after the others in the washer and managed to collapse
in a chair as the front door opened. In a spurt of inspiration, I
doused a cotton ball with peroxide and was dabbing my own injuries
with a shaking hand by the time Dad came into the kitchen.

“
Where the hell have you—”
He broke off and took one jerking step toward me before his EMT
training kicked in and he stopped to assess me. “Are you okay?”
Beneath the level, professional voice, I could hear the effort it
took him to control himself.

“
Bruises and scrapes
mostly,” I said. Like him I tried to keep my voice matter of fact,
but it trembled.

Dad dragged out the next chair and took the
peroxide from me, grabbing some fresh cotton. “What happened?” I
winced as he gently daubed my upper arm. Evidently I’d lost a good
section of skin there, probably on my landing. I hadn’t even
noticed it until now.

“
My car broke down on the
way home from work.”

“
Broke down or wrecked?” he
asked skeptically, looking over the rest of me.

I glared at him. “If I’d wrecked it, I would
have said so. No, it broke down. Just kaput. Since I didn’t have
any means of calling anybody, I left it locked with the emergency
flashers on and started walking home. Then someone nearly ran me
over.”

“
What?” Dad’s voice
chilled, and I recognized the Scary Quiet tone.

“
Someone in a truck or SUV
nearly ran me over.”

“
On purpose?” he
demanded.

If I told him this now, he would jump to
conclusions and I’d be put on house arrest at the very least. I
needed time to figure out what it meant for myself.

“
The driver was probably
drunk. I dove off the side of the road and got banged up. The truck
kept going. It might not even have seen me.” Total, bald-faced lie.
The driver had to have seen me.

“
Did you get a license
plate? Make and model of the vehicle?”

“
I hit a tree, so I didn’t
get anything.”

“
We’ll make a report
anyway. Where did you hit the tree? Does anything feel
broken?”

“
My back. No, I don’t think
anything’s broken.”

“
Let me see.”

I swiveled around so he could lift my shirt
and check out the damage. Dad swore viciously, and I knew then it
must look pretty bad.