Emily Kimelman - Sydney Rye 04 - Strings of Glass

STRINGS OF GLASS

A Sydney Rye Novel, #4

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By Emily Kimelman

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Copyright © 2013 Emily
Kimelman Gilvey

All rights reserved.

Cover Illustration by
Autumn Whitehurst

Books by Emily Kimelman

UNLEASHED
(A Sydney Rye Novel, #1)

DEATH IN
THE DARK (A Sydney Rye Novel, #2)

INSATIABLE (A Sydney Rye Novel, #3)

STRINGS
OF GLASS (A Sydney Rye Novel, #4)

To learn more about Emily and her Sydney Rye series
visit
www.emilykimelman.com
or get in touch on twitter
@ejkimelman
and
Facebook

For my
wonderful husband, Sean, who helps me be brave.

Acknowledgements

This book would
not exist without the help of a lot of people.

I’d like to start
with the Lakhias. They were the most gracious and warm hosts while I was in
India. They Opened their homes to me and made me feel very welcome. Thank you
from the bottom of my heart.

My best friend,
Mette, is the most patient, eloquent, and encouraging of coaches, helping me
find the story amongst my jumbles of words. Without her insights this book
would not be the same.

Families that
support you in the wildest of your dreams are not easy to find but I was lucky
enough to grow up in one. Thank you Nana, Ma, Da, David and Sam.

At
his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he
is the worst.

-Aristotle

The
world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but
because of the people who don’t do anything about it.

-Albert
Einstein

T
he road
crumbled under my feet as I ran up it. There is no road surface strong enough
to resist the pull back to dirt in this climate. In Goa, Mother Nature rules.

Blue
touched my thigh with his nose, a gentle tap to remind me he was there. Thick
jungle lined our path. This hill had the fewest homes on our route. No
neighbors to wave a hello to or children to smile at as they raced by on bikes
either too large or too small for them. There was just me, Blue, the burst of
vegetation, and this road of rocks. I reached the top of the hill, my thighs
and calves burned. Panting, I struggled to keep my
pace.

A low
growl narrowed my attention onto a black and white street dog in the brush.
Ears flat to her head she curled her lips and showed us her teeth. Noting the
swollen teats hanging low and exposed, I kept
moving.  “I’m not going to bother you, mama,” I said in a steady
voice. “We are just passing by.”

Blue
slowed and when I patted my thigh for him to catch up he stopped. I turned to
look back at him, my senses on high alert. Blue
was a mutt the height of a Great Dane
with the coat of a wolf and the long snout of a Collie, with one blue eye and
one brown. Blue has saved my life more than
once so when he stopped, so did I.

I
recognized a twitch on his lip and saw the  hackles raise off his shoulders and
back making him appear even larger. A deep and rumbling growl left his chest.
It was answered behind me. There were suddenly three dogs in our path. None as
big or strong as Blue but together they looked dangerous.

I’d been
warned about this pack. Growing larger by the day, it was
led by an aggressive alpha male the color of dirty water. This must be him, I
thought, as the largest of the three, his head wide, fur the muddy brown of an
engorged river, growled at Blue. The compactness of his body spoke of strength
and survival. When he barked the saliva that shot from his mouth caught a ray of
sunlight streaming through the thick foliage around us.

Muddy
Water stepped forward, revving his growl like a teenager on a motorbike. The
bitch in the brush flanked our left side and when I turned right,
two young dogs, their ears still soft from puppyhood, glowered at me.

The
owner of the guest house where I
lived warned me to take a stick if I planned on running. “Just in
case,” she’d said with a dip of her head and a flip of her hand. Because
of her advice I carried a light but solid piece of bamboo about twice the
thickness of my thumb. I tapped it on the ground in front of me as I backed
toward Blue, keeping my eyes forward, focused on the alpha but paying close
attention to my peripheral vision,
watching the dogs to my sides.

When I
reached Blue he moved backwards with me, slowly and deliberately. But the dogs
started to follow with us. We stopped, and
raising the stick over my head, I brought it down hard
onto a rock. The loud sound and sudden movement spooked the pups to my right
but the alpha male just growled louder.

The two
dogs flanking Muddy Waters went crazy barking, the force of their calls lifting
their front paws off the ground. The mother and the young ones joined in
raising a ruckus that certainly beat mine. Blue, his front paws planted on the
road, exposed his teeth and growled, his pitch wavering up and down. He wanted
me to tell him it was OK to attack. I could feel his energy bundling up inside
him, roiling around, soon I’d have no control.

The
alpha charged us, the other two with him following close behind. They weren’t
coming for me I saw quickly, all they wanted was Blue. It took only an instant
for them to cross the space between us. I dropped my stick hard onto the
alpha’s neck but he ignored my blow,
launching himself onto Blue.

Heart
pounding I beat at the dogs as they swarmed. The dogs were going for his neck,
for the kill. The Mother started to come out of the woods to join in the attack
but a quick whack with my stick and she retreated into the trees. It only took
a glare at the young ones to cow them into keeping their distance.

Blue was
holding his own, but bloody streaks marked all the canines. I kicked one of the
street dogs hard in the stomach. It fell on its side and then turned on me,
ready to fight. I kept it at the end of my stick. It was missing part of one of
its ears. A scar across its muzzle looked fresh and pink. Puncture holes in its
neck showed where Blue managed a bite. I didn’t want to hurt this dog.

I heard
a cry and glancing over saw Blue had the alpha on his back. The other dog
backed off. The noises they made were not like anything I’d heard before,
almost like a speaker that’s been turned
on its side, spewing squeaks and squeals of interference. The alpha struggled,
kicking his legs in the air, trying to push Blue. But he shook his head hard,
knocking the dog under him into submission.

The dog
at the end of my stick barked at Blue but didn’t move toward him. Blue shook
his head again and the alpha male yelped. Blood pooled around Blue’s lips.
“OK,” I said, clapping my hands and getting the rest of the pack’s
attention. I shooed at them. “Get!” I yelled.

They
shuffled away from me.

I
stepped forward aggressively, my chest out. “Go!” I commanded. The
dog missing part of his ear jumped out of the road and into the jungle,
avoiding putting weight onto his left hindquarter. I stepped to the other who
growled at me. I pushed him with my stick and he turned on it,
biting through the wood. “Hey!” I yelled,
pushing it into his mouth hard. He yelped and stepped back. I came at him and
he quickly followed the other dog into the trees.

They
watched from a safe distance. Blue wasn’t letting go of the alpha and I feared
that he would kill him. “Blue,” I said. He didn’t move, just
continued to snarl with his mouth full of Muddy Water’s soft neck. “Let’s
go.” He flicked his eyes up to my face. A gash on his neck pumped blood
onto his white coat. “Come on,” I said, making eye contact. I saw a
feral animal looking back at me. There was fear in those eyes, instinct and
triumph. The road, I realized, wasn’t the only thing that Mother Nature turned
to dust here in Goa.

B
lue
wasn’t limping but he looked terrible. Covered in puncture wounds and a  couple
of nasty gashes, but he appeared to feel no
pain. Walking next to me he stood tall, head high, hackles still a little
puffed. Monica screamed when she saw us. “Dilip!” she yelled.
“Dilip!” Her driver came rushing around the side of the old
Portuguese-style Goan home.

“What
happened?” Monica asked, opening the gate for us.

“We
got into it with that pack.”

Monica
gasped. “Are you OK?”

“We
need to get him to the vet,” I said.

“Of
course. Dilip!”

“Yes
Madame,” he said, standing right beside her. She turned and seeing him
there said, “Good, good. Quickly, you must
take to them to the vet.”

She
turned to the house and passed Dan, my boyfriend, as she hurried inside. Dan
squinted against the bright sunshine. His dirty blond hair was sticking out in
the back and his bangs flopped into his pale green eyes. “What’s going
on?” he asked, his voice still scratchy from
sleep. As his eyes focused first on me
and then Blue, they widened. “Oh my God, are you
OK?” His brow furrowed with concern.

“I’m
fine,
but Blue…”

“Jesus,”
he said, taking in the extent of Blue’s wounds. “Doesn’t look like he went
down though.”

“No,”
I said. “How’d you know?”

“The
dust, it’s only on his legs.” Dan was referring to the golden-orange
dust that clung to everything in Goa. It was Monica’s constant struggle to keep
white’s white.  “How’s the other guy look?”

“Not
good,” I said. “I’m afraid he might die.”

“Was
it the alpha with that large pack?”

“Yeah.”
I shook my head trying to free it of the memory of the dog laying on the ground
as we walked away, its paws twitching slightly.

Tires
crunched and Dilip pulled around front in the guest house’s
SUV. Monica came out of the house and opening the back door motioned for me to
get in, a frantic look on her face.

Blue sat
next to me in the backseat, his head grazing the roof of the car. He tried to lie
down but cried softly, looking to me as he sat back up. “OK, boy,” I
said,
reaching out a hand to cup his face. He leaned into my palm,
resting his good shoulder against the back of the seat. He maintained eye
contact. His blue eye, the color of the sky at dusk, and his brown, the color
of light passing through a muddy pond, held my grey-eyed
gaze.

We drove
over a speed bump, bouncing all of us hard. Blue whined and raised a paw
scratching at my forearm. I rubbed his face and leaned toward him. “That’s
OK, you’re a good boy. Yes, a very good boy,” I whispered.

“Here,”
Dilip said, passing me a packet of disinfectant wipes. Then he quickly brought
his hand back to the gear shift as a moped stopped short in front of us. Dilip
swerved into the oncoming traffic lane to pass, narrowly missing a rickshaw.

I took
out one of the alcohol soaked tissues and started on Blue’s leg. There were
some minor scratches crusted in blood and dust on his paw. Holding it gently I
placed the tissue against his wounds. Blue licked my hand and whimpered.
“Shhh, I have to, shhh,” I said.

I moved
to a scratch on his nose, holding under his chin gently. He closed his eyes and
let me wipe away the crumbs of dirt. A shiver ran through me as I passed from
puncture to puncture on his neck, many
of them still gooey with drying blood. Three rags in,
Dilip announced we were there.

He
swerved onto a sidewalk. “This isn’t legal parking,” he said as
pedestrians poured around us. “So you get out, I’ll park and meet you.
That’s the office right there.” Dilip pointed to the dusty building we
were stopped in front of.

Dan,
Blue and I walked into a small room that the three of us quickly filled. An
unoccupied plastic table and chair took up a quarter of the space. On it,
paperwork splayed next to a mess of pens, one of which had leaked ink smearing
some of the pages. There were two more doors that lead further into the
building.

The
whining of a dog floated from another room. Blue sat, scooting close to me, his
body tense, his nostrils opening and closing taking in the variety of smells.
Dan wrinkled his nose. The strong scent of antiseptic
overwhelmed any other odors.

An
Indian woman wearing a lab coat over a bright green Kurta came through one of
the doors and stopped short when she saw us. “Hello,” I said.
“We need some help.”

Recovering
from her initial shock the woman walked over to the table, casting a cursory
glance at Blue. “Fighting?” she asked,
shuffling the mess of papers.

“He
was attacked,” I said.

She
nodded absently. “OK, come through.” She
pointed to the door next to me and then disappeared back through another behind
her. Dan opened the door and we stepped into a long, narrow room completely
tiled.

A low
bench ran along all the walls, animals in different phases of illness lay on
it. A florescent tube on one wall bathed the scene in sterile white light. As
we entered, a boxer-looking dog, his hips exposed
from malnutrition, lifted his thick head. An IV bag hung above him, a tube
snaking down into his leg. A small bitch lay opposite him, fast asleep, the
stitches from her recent hysterectomy red, pink, and hideous in the stark
light.

Blue
reached his neck out to sniff at a puppy who lay curled in a ball, snoring
softly. “Blue,” I said, pulling his attention to me.

The
woman in the lab coat entered through another door pushing a tray with suture
instruments clanking on it. “Sit,” she said,
pointing to an opening on the bench next to the boxer. None of us moved.

I held
my hand out. “I’m Sydney,” I said. “This is Blue.”

The
woman nodded. “Lakshmi,” she said and then handed me a muzzle.
“Put it on him.”

Blue
looked up at me with trusting eyes as I pushed the cloth onto his snout and
clasped it in the back. When I looked up Lakshmi was holding a syringe;
she depressed the lever and a small spurt of liquid escaped out.

With
gloved hands she inspected Blue’s body, occasionally turning to her table and
making notes, pushing the needle in at intervals to numb the pain around the
worst of his cuts. “The puncture wounds we will leave so that they may
drain,” she said. “But these lacerations, we have to stitch. And I
will need to shave around all the wounds.” Lakshmi paused as she came upon
the scar on Blue’s shoulder.

“From
a bullet,” I told her. “He saved my life.”

She
looked up at me from where she crouched next to Blue. “You both like to
fight,” she gestured toward the scars on my face.

“We
seem to bring it out in people.”

She
clucked her tongue and turned back to Blue’s wounds. He whimpered when she
touched one. “This is very deep,” she said. “You must watch it
closely, he must not have too much activities for
some time.”

Reaching
over to her trolley she picked up an electric
shaver. Lakshmi plugged it into the wall and when the whirling sound started
Blue leaned away from her. “It’s OK, boy,” I said crouching down next
to him. He held my gaze as she reached out and began to cut his coat.

I looked
up and saw a smile cross Dan’s face. “What’s funny?” I asked.

“Nothing,”
he shook his head.

“No,
what?”

“It’s
just,” Dan sighed. “Sorry, but he’s going to look ridiculous with
patches all over him.”

“And
that’s funny?” I asked. “It’s funny that Blue’s been hurt?”

Dan’s
face paled. “Of course not, are you crazy?” Blue whimpered and I
placed my hand on the top of his head trying to calm him. “It’s just he’s
such a great- looking guy. He’s going to look
silly.”

I shot a
glare up at Dan.

“I’m
going to stop talking now,” he said.

It took forty-five
minutes for Lakshmi to finish cleaning up Blue. When done,
she peeled off the rubber gloves and dropped them on the tray next to her
bloody tools. “He will need antibiotics.”

“OK,”
I said.

Lakshmi
pushed the trolley back toward the entrance she’d
used. “Meet me in the front.”

We
walked back out the door into the small entry room. Dan opened the door to let
in some fresh air, with it came the heat of midday.

We stood
in silence waiting for the doctor. Blue sat at my feet and let his tongue roll
out of his head. I looked down at him, his beautiful coat was interrupted by
shaved patches that left his pink skin exposed. The puncture wounds looked tiny
and insignificant. One large slash on his neck, now held together by fifteen
tiny, black stitches made my skin crawl.

“I’m
sorry about earlier,” Dan said.

But as I
looked down at Blue, his tongue pulsing with each pant, one back leg kicked
out, the shaved spots dotting his once majestic coat I realized he did look
kind of silly. I smiled softly and Blue grinned back at me, scooting closer so
that he could rest on my foot. “It’s OK,” I said. “He does look
funny. Poor guy.”

Lakshmi
came back through her door holding a clipboard. She pulled a piece of paper off
of it. “Here are the antibiotics that you need and a cream that will help
the wounds heal faster. I assume he is up to date on rabies?”

“Yes,
he had everything before we came.”

“When
did you arrive in India?”

“Three
months ago.”

“Ah,
so just at the end of Monsoon,” she smiled for the first time since we’d
met.

I
nodded. “Yes, it was beautiful.”

“But
very wet,” Lakshmi said and then laughed. The sound filled the small space
and Dan joined her.

I smiled
remembering the moisture that soaked into all of our clothes making it
impossible to ever feel dry. “Yes, very damp,” I said.

“The
most beautiful time though, so green.”

“Yes,
I love it,” Dan said.

“You’ve
come to India before?”

Dan
nodded. “This is my fourth visit.”

Lakshmi
clucked her tongue approvingly. “Very good,” she said.

Looking
at the clipboard in Lakshmi’s hand I asked, “How
much do we owe you?” As the question crossed my lips I realized I didn’t
have my wallet with me.

After
making a few notations on the paperwork in front of her Lakshmi handed over the
bill. It wasn’t much but more than nothing. Dan took it out of my hand.
“I’ve got it,” he said.

“Thanks,
I forgot my wallet.”

Dan
smiled. “I know. Where would you keep it in that outfit?”

I looked
down at my jogging clothes. I wore light-weight shorts, a sports bra, and a
loose tank top. “Yeah, maybe in my shoe,” I
said with a smile.

Dan
handed Lakshmi a pile of rupees. “Remember,” she said. “Not so
much activity for at least two weeks. Then you bring him back and I check. If
you see any infection, come back.”

“Thank
you,” I said.

She
shook her head and without another word disappeared through her doorway.