AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The patient continues her limp around the unit.
A few steps before Elliot's doorway, her head turns, posture tenses.
A chair flies across the linoleum and crashes into the far wall.
Jorge changed the camera to one cornered against the wall, the better to observe the fleeing woman.
The audio garbles her screams. She swings inside the nearest door, but her IV rack catches the molding, sending her to the floor with a metallic crash.
Bursts of static yield to deep, off-tune laughter. Fangs sever the darkness of Elliot’s doorway. The wolf emerges, guard hairs crusted with sea salt, and turns toad-like eyes to the camera as if it knows I’m watching. My name rolls soft off a lover’s tongue, and with a gentle touch at my hip goosebumps sparked from my arms to my legs.
My fault: in a heightened state of awareness, I’d inadvertently backed into Caelan.
“Sorry,” I whispered, without moving away.
“It’s fine. You’re fine,” the man murmured against my hair. The low timbre of his voice crackled with such heavy warmth I knew without a doubt his control was a match burning down.
The wolf prowls on. Its ears curl, the breadth of its muzzle is narrow, the protruding teeth crammed and crooked needles. The paws, if they can be called such, resemble clawed fingers fused together, humanoid but noticeably webbed when the animal wrenches the rack off the fallen woman.
Alicia emerges. Her back is to the camera, but the certain terror on her face as the wolf leaps is better left unrecorded. Less than a minute later, both women lay dead in its wake.
The wolf noses closed doors and investigates opened ones, takes a whiff and passes by, a drowned harbinger of death. And there ahead, huddled in a ball on the empty floor, sat Rachel. Behind her, trying to pull her upright to the safety of the elevator, was Noah.
Jorge paused the feed.
Caelan immediately stepped back from me.
“Nurse gets mauled,” Jorge began. “Turns to the doctor when a sand flea jumps in its ear or something and it sits to scratch. As the doctor watches, the dead stumble upright and exit via the backstairs. Wolf follows. Doc follows wolf initially, but freaks out at whatever she sees and returns to the unit. Security arrives late due to an elevator malfunction. As they enter the ward, a man loads the wolf and walking dead into an unmarked van in the rear parking lot. The end.”
Caelan’s bright eyes met mine. “Thoughts, Miss Davins?”
“Elliot’s the werewolf.”
“Correct.”
“What kind was he?”
The sheriff gestured to the indistinct blotch around the wolf’s neck. “It’s more a question of what he was wearing.”
“Eau-de-Zombae.” Jorge folded his hands across his stomach, spinning in his chair. "Necros make minions how some of us build stuffed animals. Ingram’s been using cursed objects to corrupt a person’s final transformation into their wolfskin. He loves making these fugly, water-logged sons of bitches.”
“Moneymakers,” Caelan added.
“Yeah, Marcy, sick stuff. There’s people out there who’ll pay piles of cash to get their freak on with a werewoman sporting tentacle hair, among the lesser nightmare fuel I’ve seen on tape. Speaking of, what do you want to see next?”
The sheriff pointed at the second screen. “Check the—”
“I'm asking Marcy what she wants," Jorge corrected with a wink my way. “Sorry, boss. You're a piece of paradise and all, but she's prettier by a country mile. What would you like, Marcy? Lead us on our investigation.”
I glanced at Caelan.
The sheriff offered a one-shouldered shrug. “Ladies first.”
With no idea what to do, I defaulted to the obvious. “Have you reviewed the footage from the time Elliot arrives at the hospital until the attack?”
“We’ll want to see who comes, goes, and interacts with him. Great.” Jorge gave me a tiny clap of approval. “Could use another set of eyes on this, and Big Spoon here claims yours are pretty good with detail. Plus, it’s almost lunch. You wanna grab a bite and dive in?”
Caelan frowned—“I believe Miss Davins may already have lunch plans.”—but from the tilt of his head and raised eyebrows, it was clear the statement was a quiet invitation.
