“I have no idea,” Sam said.
“He’s shaking,” Darlene stepped closer.
“Do you have a blanket in your truck?”
Her words seemed to snap Darlene back to her usual practical self. “Blanket. Yes. Good idea,” she muttered before turning and stomping away. Sam kneeled next to me.
“Okay, Liam, now breathe. In and out. Focus on Keen, think happy dog thoughts.”
Yeah, right. I breathed and concentrated, wincing when the fangs finally regressed into my gums. The claws receded from my fingers and the bones creaked as they shifted, sliding into place.
Darlene returned, squelching her way across the sodden ground, with Burt following her. A moment later a thick blanket dropped around my shoulders, disguising the last twitches of my shoulder blades.
“Can you stand?” Darlene asked, her voice unusually hoarse.
I nodded, not looking at her as they helped me to my feet. Beneath the blanket, the changes continued, and a few stray tufts of blond hair drifted out from under my shirt. I stiffened when Darlene glanced at them, but I realized that they looked a lot like the last vestiges of Sherman’s winter coat.
Keeping my gaze averted, I waited for the colors to change around me, knowing I would retain my wulf eyes to the very end. I could barely walk, the ground seemed to sway and tilt as we moved.
“Take him to the house,” Burt said. “His mouth is bleeding. I can call Selkirk emergency.”
“NO!” Sam and I said simultaneously.
“I’m fine,” I spoke into the shocked silence that followed. “Just bit my tongue. I need to go home to a hot shower.”
“You need a doctor,” Darlene said.
“I am a doctor. Sort of. I’ll be fine.”
“If he needs to go in, I’ll take him,” Sam promised, steering us toward Peter’s truck. Darlene helped fold me into the passenger seat and tucked the blanket in around me. I blinked at Sam as she slipped behind the wheel. The colors had returned to human by the time I smiled up at Darlene. “I’m fine. No biggie.”
“No biggie . . . Liam, you saved my skin. I don’t know how you did it. But, thank you.” And she hugged me.
Never in all our years of working together had I ever seen Darlene so raw. “Hey,” I said. “Really, not a big deal. Sam helped too. Luck was on our side.”
“I almost got you both killed.”
“No, that was Sherman.” I smiled. The truth was, you never knew with animals. The law of averages was created by long sequences of extremes in both directions and witnessing them could put you in serious trouble. It was impossible to foresee every contingency.
Darlene gave me a final pat on the hand before shutting the truck door. I sank back in the seat, arms wrapped in the blanket and locked around my abdomen. My entire body shook like I had the plague.
Sam drove sedately until we pulled onto the highway and out of sight of Burt and Darlene, then she floored it. Her face still hadn’t regained its color. She began to grope in the door’s side pocket.
“Check the glove compartment for anything edible,” she ordered.
Lifting my arms to open the damned thing seemed almost beyond me, but I managed to get it open. Nothing but a tire gauge, a pen, and an old greasy rag. It appeared Peter traveled light.
“Nothing. I’m not hungry, anyway.”
Sam shot me a look—her eyes were wild, glimmering silver. Wulf eyes.
I shifted beneath the blanket. “I’m okay. I’m in control.” Thoughts of mutant virus skittered through my brain, and I shivered. But I pushed it back. It was a battle, but I won.
“You tossed that bull like he weighed nothing,” Sam said, staring straight ahead.
“I bulldogged it. When you startled him, the momentum worked against him, and he lost his footing in the mud.”
“You bulldogged him. Three thousand pounds of charging bull.”
“Yeah. I always wanted to be a cowboy. Who guessed I’d be so good at it?”
“You did a partial. A goddamned partial, Liam. Even that doesn’t explain what I saw. No wulf I’ve ever seen could do what you just did.”
She sounded so freaked out. I didn’t think Sam ever sounded like that. Mischievous, high-spirited, feisty, angry, frustrated, spitting fire, all those things I had seen. But freaked out? She was an enforcer to the core. They didn’t do freaked out. Then I remembered Chris’s haunted expression. This virus has everyone pushed beyond their normal boundaries.
I sighed. All I wanted to do was sleep.
“Don’t you fall asleep on me!” Now she sounded frantic, and I squinted at her. If I weren’t so damned lethargic, I would’ve come up with something good to say. But my mind was filled with molasses.
I yawned. “I’m so tired.”
She leaned over, making the truck weave, and shook my arm. When my chin continued to drift toward my chest, her hand darted between the folds of blanket to squeeze a rather personal spot.
“Hey!” My body shot upright, hands reflexively grabbing hers, but her effort chased away the fog.
“Stay awake!”
“What’s your problem?” I said, my voice taking on the tones of a cranky child as she pulled her hand back. “If I tried that with you, you’d remove something permanently.”
“You bet. But I don’t go around throwing bulls over my shoulder.” She shot me a look, and her worry finally got through to me.
“Okay, I’m awake. Explain why I have to be?”
“Partials can be lethal, and not just if you can’t find your way to either form. Few wulfan are capable of them—I’ve never heard of a wulfleng doing them at all—and many wulfan have died when their bodies run out of the supplies they need, sometimes even if they manage to change back. When you drain yourself, your body takes resources from your vital organs and muscles. Unless those resources are replenished, you’ll slip into a coma.”
“I get it.”
“Do you? Do you realize how close to the edge you’re skating?”
“I had no problem this morning.”
“This morning?
