Moon Dance (23 page)

Then, wet and shivering, she
went back to dress herself in the jumpsuit.

She looked at Cole again.
She touched him. He was warm, but… was he
too
warm? She felt his
forehead.

She couldn’t tell. She was
cold. Maybe she was misjudging his body temperature by her
own.

She peeked underneath the
bandage.

The wound told the story. The skin
around it was red and swollen. Pus was oozing out of the hole
itself.

She let out a little cry.

The gunshot was infected.

She ran to the door of the
holding cell and banged on it. “Hey!” she yelled.

Nothing happened.

She banged harder. “Someone
help! He needs a doctor!”

Still nothing.

Dana kept at it, screaming and pounding
on the door until she was growing hoarse.

Finally, there was an
answering bang on the other side. “Quiet down in there,” said a
woman’s voice. She had a heavy accent.

Dana breathed a sigh of
relief. “The man with me. His wound’s infected. He needs medical
attention.”

“
Sure he does.” The woman’s
voice was heavy with sarcasm. “Look, lady, you’re a werewolf, and
you’re not getting out of there until at least the next full moon.
You gotta get your change under control. Now, trust me, I heard
everything you can think of to try to get out of there, but none of
it’s going to work on me. So, just hush up.”

“
I’m not…” Dana was stunned
by this. “Look, I’m not a rogue wolf. I work for the SF back east.
My name is Dana Gray.”

The woman chuckled. “You
work for the SF. Yeah, right, lady. Got to say that’s the first
time I’ve heard that.”

“
It wasn’t a full moon, was
it? If I was a rogue, I would have shifted on the full moon,
and—”

“
That
is
weird, but so it goes.
Look, we found you eating people.
Eating
people
.”

Dana sagged against the
door. “That was… self-defense. They were going to shoot me. They
already shot Cole. I thought he was dead. And he might
still
die if he doesn’t
get antibiotics, so can you
please
get a doctor?”

“
You were eating people,
lady. You think we’re going to treat you like a queen, you got
another thing coming.”

This was not the way rogues
were treated in the eastern regional SF. Rogues were treated like
people with a sickness. They weren’t treated like—

And okay, sure, Dana wasn’t
a rogue. Maybe she’d lost it for a second back there with those
assholes, but god damn it, they’d deserved it, and she—

“
Just keep quiet. Someone’ll
be around to bring you food in a couple of hours.” Footsteps moved
away from the door, out of earshot.

Dana sank down to the floor.

“
Dana?” Cole
mumbled.

She ran back over to him.
“Cole. Jesus, hang on.”

His eyes fluttered open.
“Told you to leave me. I’m no good for you, Dana.”

“
Shut up,” she said. “Let’s
not think about that. Here, we should dress you.” She picked up the
other jumpsuit. Clothing Cole would give him dignity, even if they
didn’t care that he was lying here, dying.

God, she didn’t want Cole to
die.

He let her dress him. He
even tried to help, but he wasn’t very good at that. He seemed out
of it. Whenever he moved, it caused him a lot of pain. But she
zipped him into his jumpsuit, and she sat down on the bench. She
had him rest his head in her lap, and she stroked his hair,
murmuring soft reassurances to him.

He struggled to sit up. “We
should get out of here.”

She stopped him. “No, you
need to rest, Cole. Rest, and try to heal.” She didn’t think that
sleep was going to help an infection, but it couldn’t hurt. He
needed antibiotics. It was maddening knowing that there was
something out there that would help him and that no one had given
it to him. Hadn’t they noticed something was wrong when they
bandaged him?

“
Where are we?” he
mumbled.

“
I don’t really know,” she
said. “I think we’re in the southwest SF.”

His eyes popped open. “SF?
No. No, I won’t let them lock me up again.” He tried to move again,
then cried out at the pain.

“
Rest, Cole,” she told
him.

“
But—”

“
You’re in no position to go
anywhere.”

He groaned. But he closed his eyes
again.

Eventually, he fell asleep, and she
stayed there with him, trying to monitor him, to see if he was
getting worse.

A long time passed.

The woman at the door had
claimed that someone would come to feed them, but no one did. There
wasn’t any natural light inside the cell, but Dana thought it might
have been longer than a day. It seemed like an interminable period,
at any rate.

She couldn’t be sure, but
she thought Cole’s temperature was rising. Maybe that was good.
Maybe it meant that the fever would cook the infection right out of
him, and that he’d end up fine. Or maybe it would cook him and kill
him. She knew it was dangerous if fevers got too high, but she had
no way of knowing how high Cole’s was.

When he started to get delirious, she
figured it was pretty high.

His eyes would snap open,
and he would talk to her, but he didn’t know who she
was.

“
Tasha?” he would say. “I
didn’t mean it. Please, I didn’t mean it.”

Dana thought she remembered
who Tasha was. Cole had told her all about that episode of his
adolescence. Tasha was the girl that Cole had killed. His father
had forced him to do it, because he wouldn’t allow anyone to have
the girls on the farm. Cole had been forced to kill her as a
lesson.

Dana would peer down at him,
whisper lies to him to make him feel better. “You didn’t do
anything, Cole. We got away.”

“
What? No, Tasha, I hurt
you.”

“
You didn’t hurt me. We ran,
Cole. We ran, and we got away. You never hurt anyone.”

“
I didn’t?”

“
No.”

And then he would seem relieved. He
would go back to sleep for a while.

Once he sat straight up, his
eyes wild. He pointed at Dana. “The catwomen are going to take over
the castle.”

That was just silly enough to make her
giggle.

“
It’s not funny,” he said.
“We’re all in terrible danger.”

She made him lie back down.
“No, the catwomen aren’t coming, Cole. Calm down.”

Eventually, she fell asleep
slumped against the wall, Cole’s head in her lap. His body was
blazing hot.

She woke in the middle of
the night to Cole’s mumbling her name. “Dana. Dana?
Dana!”

“
What, Cole?” she said. “I’m
here.”

“
Good,” he sighed. “I
thought Enoch killed you. If he did, I was going to kill him and
kill myself.”

“
Cole, I’m fine.”

He groaned. “I love
you.”

She stiffened. He’d never
said those words. He was raving and delirious, and he’d also talked
about catwomen, so she wasn’t sure how much weight the words
carried. But it shocked her, even so.

He opened his eyes. “You
make me better, you know? I know I don’t make
you
better, but you make me… you make
me real.”

She bit her lip. “You’re
already real, Cole.”

“
I’m bad,” he said. “I’m a
bad man.”

“
Just go back to sleep.” She
was choking up.

He did, although fitfully.
He would toss and turn. Then moan when it hurt to move, because of
the gunshot in his side.

And eventually… she fell
asleep again too.

* * *

They didn
’t bring food until long after Dana had woken up. Cole seemed
the same as he had been—no better, no worse. He wasn’t mumbling
much in his sleep anymore, but he was still very feverish. His
wound had started bleeding again, and she wondered if that would
help with the infection or not. Whatever the case, his bandage was
hardly doing any good now.

She hunted around for
something else to use, but there was nothing in the cell. No toilet
paper, no paper towels.

Then the food came.

They slid it in through a slot in the
door, and when Dana saw it, she got up and ran over.

“
Hello?”

“
Eat up,” said a voice from
outside. “I’ll be back to interview you soon, okay?”

“
I need help,” she
said.

“
We’re going to help you,”
said the voice. “I’m sorry no one’s been by, but we’re pretty short
staffed and—”

“
The man with me. He’s sick.
His wound is infected. He’s got a fever. Please, he needs medical
help.”

Silence from outside the
door.

Dana squeezed her eyes shut.
This person wasn’t going to believe her either, was he?

But then there was a jingle
of keys. “Step away from the door, all right?”

She moved back and the door
opened.

A man walked in. He was
young—probably in his early twenties. He was wearing slacks and a
tie, but no jacket. He had his tranq gun out.

Dana held up her arms. “Just
help him. Please.”

The man shut the door of the
cell and went over to Cole. He put his hand to Cole’s head. Then he
looked back at Dana, furrowing his brow. “You know, I gotta say,
this whole case has been crazy. And we generally don’t have anyone
working in here besides at a full moon, so you really caught us off
guard. How did he get shot?”

“
The men. They shot him in
wolf form.” She shook her head. “But is that important right now?
He needs antibiotics.”

“
No, you’re right.” The man
dragged a hand over his face. “Look, I’ll see what I can do,
okay?”

“
What you can do? Call a
fucking doctor. Call a fucking ambulance. He needs to go to the
hospital.”

The man sighed. “They let
dying werewolves into hospitals where you’re from?”

“
Well…” Dana bit her lip.
She guessed usually it wasn’t something that wolves generally
mentioned when they needed a hospital stay. She certainly hadn’t
made a big deal out of it when she was delivering Piper. And most
wolves stayed relatively healthy. They fought off colds and minor
wounds fairly easily. “You’re saying that if you tell the ambulance
to come to the SF, they won’t come.”

“
Most likely
not.”

She dragged a hand over her
face. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”

“
Like I said, I’ll see what
I can do.” And then he was gone.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

Finally, the man returned,
and he brought with him a portly, elderly man who huffed and puffed
into the cell, carrying a black bag.

The older man made his way
over to Cole. Businesslike, he unzipped Cole’s jumpsuit. He made a
face and turned back to the other man. “Christ on a cracker, Lenny,
did they even clean this out?”

“
I wasn’t here,” said Lenny,
folding his arms over his chest. “Jim and I picked these two up,
and then the minute we dropped them off, I had to go straight back
to work, so I didn’t see any of it.”

Dana’s jaw dropped. “You
don’t work here?”

Lenny eyed her. “Oh, I work
here, lady, but I don’t get
paid
for working here.”

“
But… this is the SF.” Dana
was shocked.

“
You,” said the elderly man,
pointing at Dana, “put a sock in it.” He turned back to Lenny.
“Well, I’ll do what I can. He doesn’t look good. He should go to a
hospital.”

“
That’s what I said,” said
Dana.

The elderly man glared at
her.

“
You’re a doctor, Mitch,”
said Lenny. “Do something.”

Mitch shook his head. He
went back to Cole. “Aw, hell, Lenny, they didn’t even take the
bullet out. I can’t do this here. He’s got to at least come to the
office.”

“
Can you do that?” said
Lenny.

“
If you get Jim to help me
move him,” said Mitch.

Lenny sighed. “Right, well,
I’ll try. I don’t even know where he is.”

“
I’ll help you move him,”
said Dana.

“
Nice try,” said Lenny.
“You’re not getting out of here that easy. No, you’re with me. I
got paperwork to fill out on you.”

“
I won’t try to get out,”
said Dana. “I promise. I just want him to be… okay.” She thought
she might start crying again.

Lenny surveyed her. “Yeah,
okay. I believe you. So, you stay put, right?”