Fever (3 page)

He didn’t
receive an answer, but pained breaths were enough to let him know that Vincent heard him. Through a haze of resentment perhaps, but he heard him.

Logan honked the horn as he pulled up to the emergency room doors. It was
a shabby, run-down hospital and only two stories. But for a town this small, they were lucky to have one. Desolation required self-sufficiency, after all. The nearest city hospital was two hours away.

“Come on,” he
said impatiently, stepping out of the car. A nurse ambled through the doors, pushing a squeaky wheelchair that leaned to one side. It had seen better days. Heck, they both had seen better days. Her no-nonsense demeanor was nevertheless refreshing as she approached.

“Can I help you?” Judging
by her accent, she hailed from the south.

“Not me. H
im.” Logan nodded to the backseat. “I found him in the woods about an hour ago. He must have been camping or hiking. I’m not sure.”

The nurse peered into the backseat with a
frown. The furrowed wrinkles on her brow disappeared as recognition flickered in her eyes. She cracked a wry smile. “Vincent, is that you? Hard to recognize you under all that blood, boy. What kind of mess did you get yourself into?”

Without waiting for an answer, she st
rolled to a console just outside the hospital doors. She pushed a button and spoke into the speaker. “This is Nurse Biel in receiving. Requesting Dr. Allen immediately. We will need a gurney. Code two.”

When
Logan looked into the backseat, Vincent was curled up on his side. An arm was thrown over his face. His injuries appeared even worse under the fluorescent lights of the receiving bay. Blood trickled from his abdomen in rivulets, pooling onto the seat. The muscles of his jaw contracted with pain.

Nurse Biel return
ed to the car. She opened the back door and casually leaned on it. With a hand planted on her hip, she studied Vincent. “You filled out nice, real nice. Doc is on his way. Don’t you worry.”

Turning her attention to Logan, she asked, “You just passing through?”
The question was followed by a flirtatious wink.

H
er eyes lingered on his chest like she was eying a rare steak. It wasn’t the most comforting feeling after his brush with the local wildlife. Werewolf encounter aside, she was old enough to be his mother.

“
Yes ma’am. Just passing through.” He stole another glance at Vincent. “Can you give him anything for the pain?”

“Like I said
–” She jerked her head in the direction of the doors. “Dr. Allen will be here any minute. And don’t call me ma’am. It makes me feel matronly.”

Logan fe
lt like he was chatting it up at the gas station. Where were the white coats, the orderlies, the damn sense of urgency? There didn’t appear to be any people beyond the hospital windows.

“Hey,” he heard. Nurse
Biel was nudging Vincent’s foot with her knee. “You still awake in there?”

No answer. A look
inside the car revealed Vincent’s arm to have fallen from his face. Though his body jostled at the attempt to wake him, he didn’t open his eyes. Logan felt a pang of concern.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head,” she consoled him. “Vincent’s been thr
ough worse than this.” Her tone adopted a dangerous edge. “He has a knack for sticking his nose where it don’t belong and getting the tar beat out of him for it.”

Before Logan
could fully process the implication behind her words, the emergency room doors slid open. An obese doctor emerged with a gurney at his side.

“What do we have here
?” he breathlessly asked. He raised an enormous arm to wipe the sweat from his face. By his flushed appearance, he’d been shuffling to receiving since Nurse Biel called for him.

“An old friend,” she informed him. But the way she said
friend
made Logan wonder if she meant the opposite. Something wasn’t right.

“Let me take a look.”

Logan moved aside so the doctor could see Vincent for himself. He was forced to ignore his worsening instinct to protect him from these people.

“Ah, yes
, so I see.” Dr. Allen chuckled. There was a gleam of delight in his expression before it disappeared behind a mask of professionalism. “Let’s get him onto the gurney, then. Quickly now.”

Logan
helped maneuver the gurney into place. As he did so, one of the rusted bars snapped. He yanked his hand back with a hiss of pain. There was a cut across his fingers.

“Oh, dear.
” Nurse Biel rounded the gurney. She snatched his hand and pulled it toward her to examine it. “I do hope your tetanus shots are up to date. Come inside, and we’ll top you off to make sure. Wouldn’t want to take a chance. Not with some of this equipment dating back to the fifties.”

He
cradled his throbbing hand and nodded. “I’ll do that. Just help him first.”

With the gurney broken, he expect
ed Dr. Allen to hurry inside to grab another, or perhaps for them to use the wheelchair. What he didn’t expect was for the doctor to drag Vincent from the car and hoist him into his arms like he was a child. Vincent wasn’t small by any means, but he looked downright vulnerable against the doctor’s broad chest.

Blood
blossomed over an edge of the lab coat in a matter of seconds. Vincent’s head lolled to the side, hair falling over his forehead.

As Dr. Allen
began marching for the hospital doors, Logan hurried to catch up.

“Wait up
, boy,” Nurse Biel called after him. “You’ll need to move your car around back.”

He stopped and shot
her a glare he reserved for emergencies. By all accounts, she should have flinched, or at least backed down. But she merely smiled, revealing a row of perfectly white teeth. They looked out of place on someone with oily skin and hair in disarray.

“I know
your hand is bleeding, but there’s plenty of blood in the backseat already. A little more on the steering wheel won’t hurt.”

Th
at logic was twisted, but money was tight these days. He couldn’t afford a parking ticket. Without another word, he returned to the car and climbed into the driver’s seat.

He
watched Nurse Biel disappear into the hospital. She was humming an off-key tune that faded with her presence. The horrible feeling that he’d just delivered the man who saved his life into danger had him reaching for another cigarette.

It was going to
be a long night.

Blood. There was blood everywhere.

Vincent sharply turned once, then twice.

No, damn it, no.

The trees surrounding
him blurred as tears filled his eyes.

“Maria!” he yelled.

When his wife didn’t answer, Vincent sank to his knees. She wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be. The blood belonged to someone else.

Even as denial flooded his mind, tears beg
an to stream down his face. Thunder rumbled over his sobs.

A single raindrop hit his jacket. Then another
. Before long, rain poured down in sheets, chilling him to the bone. It mixed with the blood on the soil around him. He watched it happen, entranced by how he could no longer separate water from crimson streaks.

Mar
ia’s essence slowly faded. From the soil, to the roots, to the leaves that drifted on the wind. It carried across the wilderness of Maine, spreading far and wide, to where Vincent couldn’t follow. She was gone.

Too
engulfed by his grief to hear the footsteps behind him, he wasn’t prepared for the teeth that sank into the nape of his neck.

“No!”

His eyes snapped open. Blinded by the lights overhead, his head whipped to the side.

There was a
sting in the crook of his elbow.

H
e barely registered the words, “Easy, boy. This is just a dose of antidote for the silver fragments in your wounds. Nasty stuff, silver. Makes you feverish enough to relive the last few moments you were human.”

His clothes were gone. Hard restraints
encircled his wrists and ankles, the leather cold against his skin. The air was hot, too hot. His skin was on fire. He struggled against the heat, twisting left, then right. The muscles in his arms burned with effort, but the restraints held firm.

“No,” he grunted. Rage boiled
inside him. “Let me go!”

Meaty h
ands pressed his shoulders to the exam table. The odor of antiseptic burned in his nose, alerting him to his surroundings. The hospital. But that meant–

He squint
ed up into the eyes of the werewolf who turned him. His sire. The man’s scent was unforgettable, but Vincent had hoped it was a remnant of his nightmare.

“Haven’t seen you in a lunar cycle,” Doc greeted him. “
Not even in passing. By your injuries, I’d warrant a guess that you haven’t been taking proper care of yourself. No matter. We’ll have you patched up in no time.”

“Don’t touch me,” Vincent growled.

This only earned him a smirk and a condescending pat on his forehead. When he jerked away with a snarl, the hand moved to prod at his injuries. He pressed his lips together to avoid crying out. The tears pricking behind his eyes must have been proof enough of his pain. In the next moment, Doc’s touch softened.

“
Poisoned wounds span the left thigh and buttock. Judging by the splinters of tree bark, they’re the result of silver bullet fragments.” His eyes flashed before he continued. “There’s substantial bruising over the ribs, the most severe of which is surrounding multiple lacerations. Torn sutures over the abdomen. Possible internal injuries…”

As Doc listed his wounds
, Nurse Biel’s ballpoint pen scrawled over a chart. The sound grew louder as the seconds ticked by. It roared like a plane overhead, drowning out everything but the blood rushing in his ears.

The moon was calling.

But if his wounds were indeed poisoned with silver fragments – and they were certainly painful enough to be so – he would need silver antidote injections throughout the night. And Logan would need him to be strong, to protect him.

His body spasmed on the bed,
tearing a yell of pain from him. Pulling breaths through his teeth, Vincent squeezed his eyes shut. He could control the change if he focused.

Focus.

Oh God, it hurt.

Doc
was speaking to him. He heard his voice as if it was calling to him from the end of a tunnel. Despite their resonating echo, he was able to understand the words.

“Vincent, fight it.
You’ve obviously changed once during this full moon already, so you can defy it. You can’t undergo the change in your condition. The silver will kill you.”

If he could have, he might have smiled sadly. Was death so terrible? These last few years of
struggle had been for nothing. Maria was still dead. He was still an animal. He just wanted the pain to stop. Just wanted it to–

H
ands locked onto either side of his head, and he opened his eyes. By the way the light had changed, he knew the wolf’s eyes had overtaken his own. He saw everything as they darted around, from the rotting overhead tile to the dust drifting through the air.

“Look at me,” Doc growled.

The moment he obeyed, Vincent knew the wolf would never fully emerge. The eyes staring back at him were just as golden and twice as commanding. They were the eyes of his sire. They held the power to force him into submission.

“Back down
,” Doc ordered in a steady voice. His fingernails dug into Vincent’s scalp, anchoring his human form. “Now.”

The
energy drained from his muscles in seconds. His limbs sagged limply against the restraints. Then he began to tremble. But it wasn’t from fear. Being at the mercy of his sire didn’t frighten him.

Though he hated himself fo
r it, Vincent felt tears burn behind his eyes. The feeling of helplessness that overcame him whenever he crossed a dominant wolf was part of the reason he’d separated himself from the pack. The laws of the animal kingdom were for animals. He was half human. He was a person.

The
eyes of the wolf finally retreated. As they faded, he was blinded by a halo of light around Doc’s head. But he couldn’t break his stare into those golden eyes. The eyes of the wolf that changed his life forever. It wasn’t long before they too retreated, leaving a pair of eyes all too human in their wake.

He might have imagined the flicker of sympathy there. Perhaps it was only understanding. Either way, there was little time to process
it before Doc released his head and reached for a syringe.

“T
his will be easier on both of us if you sleep for a while.”

The needle s
lid into his arm, a sting followed by a wave of dizziness. His limbs grew even heavier.

“Coward,”
he mumbled, eyes closing of their own accord.

There was a heartbeat of silence.

He heard Doc’s next words as if from a distance. “Check his vitals and grab a gown. Let’s do an ultrasound and flush these wounds…”

As he drifted into
unconsciousness, Vincent suddenly realized how futile his hopes of escape had been.

There was no escape from the pack
.