“No!” I cried, terrified the krokotta’s shadow would fall across him as it had Beau, and he’d fall frozen to the ground.
But Spirit was a force of nature. He hit with everything he had, knocking the krokotta away from me and tearing into the beast’s neck. But it was bigger and more powerful. It gave a horrible cry, still half-sounding like Sarah, and bucked to tear itself loose of Spirit’s jaws. It twisted, as though its spine were elastic, side kicking Spirit with its hooves, like a horse or a mule, pummeling him hard enough to break bone to get him to release. I couldn’t stand by and watch him be brutalized.
I ran for the tranq gun and heard Spirit give a sudden sharp whimper as though it had caught him in the chest. In an instant, their positions shifted, and the krokotta was above him, free of Spirit’s jaws and going for its own bit of flesh. And then suddenly Frost was loose as well, a blur of white against the darkness, crashing into the krokotta’s side, sending them all rolling across the packed earth. She wasn’t as large as Spirit. Or as powerful. I had to hurry. Together they might stand a chance. But with Spirit down…
But Spirit didn’t stay down. He rose with a snarl, making sure the krokotta knew him for the bigger threat, making it face him. It leapt to its feet and backed away a pace to face the two wolf-hybrids, snarling and bristling and ready to defend their territory and the people they considered their pack.
I almost stumbled over Thompson and heard him groan. My heart gave a leap. He was alive. Oh, thank the god I wasn’t even certain I believed in, he was alive.
I fell to my knees, not to pray, but to feel for the gun in the scant night lighting of the rescue, and I found it.
I lifted it from my kneeling position and sighted in. The krokotta was between me and my wolves. I prayed to the maybe-deity that it wouldn’t move, and I pulled the trigger.
Nothing.
Dammit, I’d forgotten the safety. Even tranq guns had safeties. Wouldn’t do to shoot oneself full of bear tranq. I quickly scrabbled for it, toggled it off, raised the gun again.
But now the krokotta was engaged.
Both wolves were on the beast. Or it was on them, as they scrapped, recovered, rolled, tore. I ran toward the snarl. I had to save my wolves. They couldn’t die on my account. They couldn’t.
Tears were streaming down my face as I ran toward the fight. It wasn’t a long run, but it was long enough. When I reached them, Spirit and Frost stood, bloody but triumphant over the even more bloody and bizarre creature out of myth, panting and exhausted. Bleeding, but not dead. I shot it anyway, not wanting it to rise. It was just tranquilizer. It wouldn’t kill it. But it would make sure it wouldn’t kill us.
Then I dropped the gun and got down on one knee.
“Are you okay, my heroes?” I put out an arm for each of them for them to decide whether they wanted to be touched, scratched, loved on. They were wounded. They might feel vulnerable, might want to go off and lick their wounds. Frost gave my hand a lick and backed away, then went to check on Thompson. Spirit came in, face to face, and then rested his chin on my shoulder. I brought my hand up to scratch his ruff, and we stayed there a moment. It was Spirit’s version of a hug, and I drank it down. Then he limped away a little bit to lick at his wounds, and I, too, went to check on Thompson. He was completely unconscious but breathing as I patted him down for his phone to call 911 for an ambulance and then animal control for the beast. But as I looked over between one call and the next to make sure that the krokotta was still out and we were all safe, the creature began to fade away. There, and then going, going, gone until it was as though it had never been, returned to the annals of myth or off to plague some other place or time.
I blinked and then blinked again, as though that would change anything.
I wasn’t thinking about how it would simplify my night, only about how it would complicate my world. An accident on rescue grounds involving what was clearly an animal attack and the shooting of a tranq gun—the first conclusion anyone would reach was that things were out of our control. Our animals were out of our control. Investigation would be required. Spirit and Frost were clearly blooded. Even if I could clean the beast’s blood from them before authorities appeared—and I had other priorities—I couldn’t hide their wounds. How would we ever satisfy an investigation?
Quickly, quietly, with apologies to Thompson for leaving him, I brought Spirit and Frost back to their enclosure and begged them to stay, even though I could see where they’d bowed and torn the fencing enough to allow themselves to slip through. Then I phoned our on-call vet and asked her to pay them a visit on the QT, explaining as vaguely as possible and promising more tomorrow before collapsing beside Thompson to wait for the ambulance and the unanswerable questions to come.
“So, what was it that did this?” Sergeant Martinez asked.
I was pacing the waiting room while Thompson was in surgery. Not normal for animal bites, but the krokotta had done major damage. There was internal bleeding that had to be stopped, blood vessels that had to be stitched back together or cauterized or whatever they did. He was up-to-date on his shots, but…
“I’m sorry, what?” And the x-ray had shown that the collar-bone had been broken…
“I said—”
“Oh right, go through it all again.” Because I had babbled something to the paramedics when they’d asked, stunned at the damage, and now I had to remember what I’d said and stay consistent. Although really, I hadn’t said much, had I? They’d been happy to move me quickly along to his insurance and medical history.
I kept it simple—wolves acting oddly, asking Thompson to stay behind, having the tranq gun loaded up in case there was something stalking the preserve. We didn’t really get a look at what attacked. When Thompson dropped the gun, I picked it up, fired it off at the intruder. It stumbled off into the night. End of story.
It seemed as though there were going to be a lot more questions. Sergeant Martinez— or Cami, as I knew her from the monthly poker games that mostly took place around my kitchen table, since I didn’t like to leave my rescue—was onto my tells. But then two things happened at once. A tall woman all gowned up in surgical scrubs came out and called my name, and a man and a woman decidedly not in hospital garb walked through the outer doors into the waiting room of the surgical center, making a bee-line for the Sergeant. I hesitated for an instant before answering my call, because there was something about the duo that radiated power and presence, and I had a feeling I wanted to hear what they had to say.
“Tori Karacis, P.I. and Apollo Demas—” the woman said, flipping open a wallet with some kind of identification to show the Sergeant.
Cami’s eyes went wide. Even I recognized the second name and, now that I was paying attention, that face. Apollo Demas…the actor? What on earth? But I went on my way. I’d get the full story later. Right now, I had to know what was going on with Thompson.
“Miss Guerrera?” the surgeon asked. At least, I presumed she was the surgeon who’d been working on him.
“Yes,” I answered, breathless. Thompson had me listed as his medical proxy, as I found out when we got to the hospital. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been allowed to know anything at all.
“He’s going to be fine, as long as we keep the wound infection-free, and we’re doing all we can on that, of course. We have to leave it open for a few days to drain and clean it, and we’d prefer to do that here before we close up. And a collarbone break is more a matter of slinging than casting, so he’s going to need care once we send him home to make sure that he’s not doing too much for himself.”