A Feral Darkness (31 page)

      
"It's all right," she said, hearing Masera's voice over the intercom system in the background, knowing it would get someone's attention—who was on today, an assistant manager?—if they'd somehow managed to miss the excitement on their own. "It's all right," she said again as Elizabeth stifled a sob, thinking to herself
how the hell can it be all right
and wondering if Elizabeth would even have full use of her hands again as she turned the tub faucet to cold and propped the sprayer at an angle to waterfall across the tub. "Here you go," she said, but a glance at Elizabeth's white face told her the woman was in no shape to offer even that much initiative, and Brenna eased her hands under the water.

      
She didn't know what a doctor would have had her do. All she could think of was dirty cat teeth—dirtier than a dog mouth, inclined to inflict easily infected puncture wounds. And of getting a look at the damage, though as she carefully removed Elizabeth's smock and returned her hands to the tub, she realized she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

      
Outside the tub room, DaNise's voice rose in shrill anger, mixing with the owner's in argument. Masera came in, the cat carrier in tow; he flipped off all the dryers and came up behind them, his hand landing on Brenna's shoulder. "How's it look?"

      
"It's hard to tell," Brenna muttered, as though Elizabeth weren't there—and in truth, Brenna doubted that she actually heard them. "Still bleeding too much."

      
"Best that it does," Masera said. He glanced out toward the counter. "Gary just came on shift. I don't know where the hell he is—he's got to know what happened by now. Half the store is gawking in through the glass."

      
"Probably soothing the customers," Brenna said, anger spurting its way out of her voice as she moved Elizabeth's hands within the shower of cold water, rinsing, rinsing, never seeming to get to the end of it. "Priorities, you know."

      
"I'll call the police and animal control," Masera said, not responding directly to her comment with anything but an anger that matched hers.

      
Brenna shook her head. "Gary won't like that."

      
"Then he should be here to take care of it himself. This cat's not going anywhere but into custody for the next ten days." Masera left, creating a cold place at her back. With the dryers off and the grooming room door open, Brenna could hear the background conversation well enough. The woman, upset and teary, fearful for her cat, demanding its return. DaNise, standing her ground. And Masera, almost offhand, breaking in to say shortly, "The cat is fine. She's in the crate in a quiet room, and that's what's best for her. You won't get her back until she's been through a holding period with animal control. And for your sake, I damn well hope you don't have children at home. Not if you plan to take that cat back."

      
The woman's high-pitched protests were incomprehensible, but there was no mistaking her distress. Damned pity she loved the beast.

      
Maybe it's not a beast
. What would that dark, cold fear do to a cat?
Maybe it's as much a victim as Elizabeth
.

      
And maybe it was supposed to have been Brenna. The one the woman had asked for in the first place.

      
"It doesn't hurt," Elizabeth said in a wondering voice. "Shouldn't it hurt?"

      
It will
, Brenna thought, but kept it to herself, feeling the relief of having Masera out there as her voice, saying things she could never say and keep her job. "It's all right," she told Elizabeth. The blood was thinning, and Brenna turned off the water, taking the clean towel from her shoulder to enfold Elizabeth's hands gently in it—the only field dressing she could produce on short notice. There were no chairs in the tub room; she led Elizabeth to the useless ramp the store had bought them—as if the average large dog would get any closer to a strange ramp than it would to a tub—and sat her on it, steadying her.

      
"I don't even want to look," Elizabeth whispered, regaining some of her self to look directly at Brenna again.

      
"It'll be okay," Brenna said firmly, and thought if she never had to say those words again it would be too soon.

      
Gary stuck his upper body through the door. Younger than Roger, not as authoritative if easier to talk to, he was the first assistant manager, and he rarely interacted with Brenna on shift. "Everything under control in here?" he asked. "Because I've got a customer—"

      
"No," Brenna interrupted, sharper than she was wise to be. "You know what? The customer's going to have to wait this time. Elizabeth needs to go to emergency; she needs someone to call her boyfriend to meet her there. Don't you dare walk out of here without making sure she's taken care of."

      
DaNise had been coming for the door behind him; she stopped short, her already spooked eyes widening further; Brenna had never seen her dark lips look so pale, or that pasty color half-mooning under her eyes. Gary, too, jerked to a halt, stopping his planned withdrawal from the room. Instead he straightened, bringing the rest of his body into the doorway. He eyed her a moment, probably wondering whether he should call her on her tone or simply appease her as necessary. Finally he gave the slightest of shrugs and said, "What would you like me to do?"

      
"You're our
manager
," she said, still pushing it and having been pushed too hard herself to care. "Get someone on the phone to cancel the appointments for the rest of the day, for starters."

      
"Why can't you do—"

      
But he stopped short, for she'd turned on him the way she'd take on a snarling dog, and he'd never seen it in her before. The moment hung between them like something waiting to explode, and then Brenna said, very clearly, very carefully, "This would not have happened if you and Roger and Celine didn't ignore every plea we ever made for safety and scheduling limits. Now that it
has
, you'll have to deal with it. I'm supposed to be offshift. Please sign me out as of right now. I'll take Elizabeth to the hospital. Before I go, I'll mark which dogs from the next few days of scheduling need to be canceled. You'll have to find someone to call them, to clean up the grooming areas, and to clean up Elizabeth's blood."

      
"We don't have anyone to spare," Gary protested.

      
"You know what? I don't care." And she didn't. "If I come in here tomorrow and have to deal with any of it, I'm gone."

      
"Don't say things you don't mean," he said. "Watch yourself, Brenna."

      
"That's exactly what I'm finally doing." Brenna felt Elizabeth tremble beside her and said, "Are you even listening to yourself? How long has this woman worked for you? How many times has she stayed over hours, or skipped lunch, or faced dogs you wouldn't even get
near
? Have you even asked how she
is
?"

      
No, of course he hadn't. But Gary wasn't Roger; Roger would have bluffed it out. Gary simply hadn't thought it through past the inconvenience to the store. Once her words hit him, once he looked, truly
looked
, at Elizabeth hunched over her wrapped hands, his face changed. "Okay," he said, quietly enough so she could barely hear him. "I'll clock you out. Mark the schedule for me and we'll call the customers."

      
Brenna nodded and looked to DaNise behind him; she still hadn't moved—afraid of attracting notice, no doubt, whether she stayed or fled. "DaNise," she said, blowing the young woman's cover as Gary glanced behind himself, "would you come sit with Elizabeth a moment?"

      
DaNise looked at Gary and seemed to gather herself. "Got to wait for the police to get here anyway," she said. "They want to talk to anyone, they'll want me."

      
True enough. Brenna exchanged a wan smile with her and put a hand on Elizabeth's shoulder. "I'll be right back," she said, letting her fingers trail down her friend's arm as she made way for DaNise. She would have slipped past Gary but he turned and led the way.

      
"If the cops are on their way, I've got my own calls to make," he said as the seriousness of the situation seemed to settle on him.

      
Finally.

      
Cat attacks were nasty, nastier than most people ever suspected or even wanted to believe. And this cat...this cat had been astonishingly vicious. At the best, Elizabeth had weeks of recovery before her. At the worst, she'd lose enough dexterity to affect her life and career.
We are not interchangeable and replaceable commodities
, Brenna thought at his back.
We're
not
.

      
Which made her wonder why she had to convince even herself.

      
Gary left the grooming room for the back office, and Brenna slid in behind the counter where Masera was still on the phone—animal control, maybe. Someone he knew, but he was using a reasonably formal voice, short and to the point as ever.

      
The counter itself was a mess, both levels of it covered with the remains of DaNise's soda and plenty of blood. They'd need a new schedule book, that was for sure, and replacements for the day's customer cards. Brenna made a quick assessment of the next several days of bookings, marked them, and scrawled a note instructing the caller to tell today's half-finished customers that a rescheduled grooming would be on the house. She pulled her wallet from her purse—a minimalist affair she could easily shove in her sweatshirt pocket—and stuffed the purse itself in behind her locked toolbox in the grooming room.

      
When she returned to the counter to hunt up Elizabeth's bulky monster of a purse—one of those cargo carry-everything bags—she found not only the cat's owner, but Mickey from the stock room, standing behind her and looking oddly protective. Masera, still on the phone, gave Brenna a wary look, a strange kind of warning look, as Brenna shrugged her sweatshirt on and bent to yank Elizabeth's things from the lower shelf.

      
"I want to use the phone," the woman said. "I want to call my boyfriend. You can't take that cat from me. I've got rights."

      
Brenna couldn't decide if they were an unrelated string of statements or were somehow supposed to fit together. She reminded herself again that the cat was a beloved pet, taking a deep breath as she straightened with the cargo bag. "I'm sorry for your inconvenience. We all wish this hadn't happened. But it did, and now we have to deal with it. You'll have to wait for the police and animal control. Meanwhile, I'm sure Mickey can take you to a phone."

      
"
You're
Brenna Fallon," she said accusingly, while Brenna looked at Mickey.
Mickey
. He who argued with Masera, who sold him dogs. The woman was oblivious. "You were right
there
. Why didn't
you
clip her nails? This wouldn't have happened."

      
"I expect it would have," Brenna said, and suddenly she
knew
it. "It just would have happened to
me
."

      
"You were right
there
," the woman repeated, not willing to let it go, not even though Brenna was already turning away.