Inquisitor (Witch & Wolf Book 1) (24 page)

“Bump her in as a priority.”

“Anything else?”

“Page me before she’s scheduled to go in. I want to oversee it myself.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

I heard them take several steps before the ringing in my ears drowned out their sounds. An MRI and a CT? Long life hadn’t granted me a doctorate, but at least I knew an MRI was used for head injuries.  Judging from the dual gongs banging in my eardrums, I was comfortable enough with my guess.

It didn’t explain why moving or opening my eyes was problematic. Was I paralyzed? Once again, fear welled up and choked off my breath.

No wonder my wolf was frightened. Until I got a hold of myself, we were helpless, and not even all of the witch powers in the world could save me if the Inquisition came calling.

Being a Jane Doe would only hide me for so long. They would find me if I didn’t keep moving. They could very well find me, as they had found Samantha, even if I did keep moving.

Once again, I was in a lot of trouble.

It was the never-ending story of my life.

~*~

I drifted in and out of consciousness, unable to fight the growing disconnect between my body and my mind. Every now and then, I heard snippets of conversations, though none had the same clarity of when I
’d first awoken. The sharp edge of my wolf’s fear had dulled to wariness, although she cringed each time I sank back into the darkness of sleep.

The wolfish part of me I so often denied couldn’t be ignored, not when she was the only thing anchoring me to the life. I was dimly aware of being poked and prodded, but the jabs of pain didn’t last long, smothered by the eternal creature hiding within me.

Each time the pain started, heralded by the infernal ringing in my skull, my wolf drove it away, her fear growing in strength.

Her worry gnawed at me, and our unfinished business kept us both tethered to life. If I could have shivered, I would have. Werewolves were dangerous, but a witch not yet done with the world could manifest into something far, far worse than a mere wolf trapped in human flesh.

I might not have been good at masking my appearances like normal witches, but I
was
the Caretaker of the Seasons. The power I too often closed away in the deepest parts of me would boil over and run rampant if I neared too close to death and stayed there.

Some witches immolated. While the Inquisition did burn some witches at the stakes, most of the tales were nothing more than frightened humans trying to justify away too many incidents of spontaneous combustion. Some witches melted, flesh and bone dissolving into pure water. Others dried away to dust.

What would I do? Would I turn to snow and ice, spreading in a wave of cold to smother those near me? Would I herald spring, shunting away the winter? Or, would things just continue on as they always did, with nothing to remind humans that the things that went bump in the night might actually be real?

I don’t know how long I chased those thoughts, but my wolf sheltered me as I considered the repercussions of my life and death. At the end, I was certain of one thing: If I lived, I could seek vengeance for Samantha, for the mother of the two children left alone in the world, and all the others touched by the Inquisition.

If I died, I could do nothing.

Death was the easy way out, which was unacceptable. My wolf agreed with me.

In a moment of lucidity, when I wasn’t drifting in a too-relaxed state somewhere between living and dying, approval wasn’t the only feeling I picked up from the wolf in me. The similarity would’ve made me smile, if I could have.

We were both tired and worn, though in different ways. She was tired of her cage, of her careful restraint, and of the illness keeping us both helpless. My allergies bothered her as much as me, and in those moments, I grew aware of her clamping down on her scent, borrowing my powers as a witch so I could breathe.

No, so
we
could breathe.

We were wolf, woman, and occasional witch, and the boundaries between the three shifted and blurred until I couldn’t tell where one element of myself started and the other ended. The wolf took from the witch, the witch hunted the wolf, and the woman watched, mediating the pair so neither was assimilated by the other.

All three of them, balanced in their struggles, became me.

I was too weary to fight them. It was easier to let them in, letting the wolf prowl through the parts of me I’d always denied her. The witch was content to follow, though she wanted to meddle with everything in her efforts to restore order and normality.

Maybe I really
was
dead. The ‘I think therefore I am’ stuff only went so far before the fear of insanity started creeping in. My thoughts amused me a little, but not enough to outweigh my fear of the lack of touch, smell, and sight.

The beeping of the life support machine faded in and out until I wondered if I was imagining it as a way to convince myself I was alive.

The prospect of life and death couldn’t hold my attention forever. When I exhausted every possibility I could think of without an independent debate partner, the wolf and witch in me didn’t bother adding to my self-driven conversation. Me, myself, and I weren’t getting anywhere fast.

Mind over matter wasn’t doing me any good, either. In rare bursts, as though my brain was figuring out it wasn’t a separate entity from my body, I was aware of little things. The prick of the catheter was my favorite. It jabbed through the numbness, awakening tingles from fingertips to shoulder.

The pain, slight as it was, helped me focus enough to twitch a finger or two. It took all of the concentration I had and then some, but I managed. With my small victory, I tried for a toe. My toes weren’t as eager to please me as my fingers, and I couldn’t tell if I was making any progress at all.

With nothing left to think about in the here and now, I retraced my steps, from what little I could remember about the funeral, to picking up Mrs. Peters’s kids, to Samantha’s death. Where had I gone wrong? Had my trust in Donnie been misplaced?

Donnie could’ve easily sent word ahead from Detroit to Atlanta. He knew Samantha’s real name. It would’ve been trivial for him to find a contact within the Inquisition, if he had wanted to. From Detroit, I retraced my way back to Slide Mountain and the coven of witches and their focal crystal.

Winter hadn’t come early, despite their efforts. But, I hadn’t earned myself any friends, either. Had one of them somehow tracked me down? Had they been part of the Inquisition all along? The grey wolf answering to the dog whistle didn’t ease my anxiety over the mistakes I’d made with Samantha in tow.

It would’ve been better for all of us—and for her—if she had let me run wild until the end of my days.

The first thing I remembered of New York was of Mark pleading for my help to thwart an engagement he didn’t want to a woman he had never met. My good intentions, to help someone I’d let get too close to me, had caused it all. If I hadn’t gone to New York, if I hadn’t helped Mark, Samantha would still be alive.

I wouldn’t have been left behind.

How much did Mark know about his step-mother, the Wicked Witch of the West? He had to have known about the Inquisition. I didn’t even know how much of his behavior at the party had been an act for my benefit or the real thing. While I couldn’t feel my body, the emotions boiling within me hurt.

I wanted to scream and blame Mark for everything, but I couldn’t. Even if Mark had been present when Samantha had died, someone might have forced his hand, as my hand had been forced to kill my own kind so many times in the past.

Freedom was mine, and the thought of those still caught in the organization’s insidious hold cooled my rage towards Mark.

Even if Mark had issued the killing blow, it wasn’t his fault Samantha was dead. If my guess was right, the blame for that belonged to the Inquisition alone.

To my surprise, my wolf roused. She soothed away the raw edge of my grief and anguish. I slipped back into the darkness.

The days following, when I was finally able to open my eyes, passed in a blur of tests, tests, and more tests. I was aware of people talking to me, and of me murmuring some form of incoherent reply.

I lamented the loss of the comfortable darkness of unconsciousness in exchange for dizziness, nausea, and pain. Time distorted as I adapted to having senses again. Focusing my attention on moving my fingers and toes distracted me from the incessant prodding of the medical staff.

As though afraid I would break if they forced me to speak, the nurses in their green scrubs and the doctors in their white coats spoke to me only when absolutely necessary. I didn’t mind it, as whispering was enough to make my head throb. Turning my head was an experiment I’d attempted once. I didn’t relish the idea of having what was left of my brain escaping out of my ears.

To my surprise, one of the nurses paused in her checking of the infernal beeping machine keeping me firmly tethered to life stared at me. “How are you feeling today, Jane?”

It didn’t cease to amuse me I was still a Jane Doe to them. I’d been read the riot act on the nature of my injury and the dangers of a cracked skull, but either they assumed my memory was faulty, or they didn’t want me to make a mess of their work by trying to remember the basics, my name included. “There’s a herd of horses trampling through my head,” I whispered. My eyes flicked towards the chart hanging from the wall at the foot of my bed.

“How would you rate the pain?” the nurse asked, her gaze following mine to the picture of cartoon faces hanging on the wall, ranging from smiling to tears.

I picked seven. Then I remembered the nurses
had
asked me that question before. Maybe they had asked my name, but I didn’t remember it?

Maybe the pain would let up in the next few years, at the rate I was going.

“Do you remember your name?” The nurse made a show of checking the machine again, but I could feel her stealing glances at me when she thought I wasn’t watching her.

“Victoria,” I replied.

She flinched as if a bee had stung her. “Very good, Victoria. Is there anything you need?”

Everything I wanted involved being unhooked from the infernal machines attached to me, but I settled on a whispered denial. I remembered not to shake my head in time to avoid from joining the ranks of the most miserable of the unhappy faces on the chart on the wall.

“If you need anything, please call for one of us,” the nurse said, gesturing to the remote placed near my right hand. “You can request another dose of pain medications in fifteen minutes. Do you remember how?”

I forced my hand to move so I could point at the appropriate dial. The nurse smiled, nodded, and left the room in a hurry.

Wasn’t she supposed to ask me more questions than that? I risked turning my head a little to watch the door. Pain stabbed down the length of my spine, but my vision didn’t blur. I tensed to grab the bed in anticipation of the room flipping and circling around me, but the nauseating vertigo didn’t come.

I wasn’t left alone to puzzle over her departure for long. A middle-aged man with dark hair touched with the first signs of grey swept into the room. His white coat flapped against his legs. He paused at the door, scooping up the clipboard from its holder. Flipping the pages, he approached the bed, his dark eyes focused on the text in front of him.

To my surprise and pleasure, my eyes didn’t betray me when I went to read his name tag. Dr. Shepard didn’t seem to notice me scrutinizing him. He left me waiting a few minutes before he lowered the board and favored me with a smile. I doubted it was for me. Behind his dark eyes, I imagined him mentally snapping his fingers at having thwarted death once more.

My life was his trophy. I didn’t mind. There were worse trophies a man could collect, and if he wanted to view my existence as a matter of pride, I wasn’t going to interfere with that.

“Nurse Carlton tells me you’ve made progress in remembering your name,” he said, his deep tones soothing in comparison to the high-pitched beep of the monitoring machines.

“Victoria,” I supplied, watching for his reaction. The perverse need to nettle the man surged up. “I think,” I added, smothering my smirk. I knew my name. I remembered my birthday, too, though I doubted he’d believe it if I told him. To my relief, I also remembered the name of my alias and
her
birthday.

“Victoria,” he repeated in the doubtful way that I expected made his other patients scramble to elaborate.

“So I think.”

“Victoria is a far better name than Jane Doe,” he said with enough good cheer to startle me. He hooked a stool with his foot, pulling it towards him before sitting. “Do you remember the rest of your name?”

“Allison Victoria Mayfield Hanover,” I said, dropping my facade for a factual tone. I didn’t use the British lilt or intonations to make it my true name. “But call me Vicky. Victoria, if you must.”

Dr. Shepard’s eyebrows rose. “I’m impressed, Ms. Hanover. You are far more lucid than yesterday. This is an excellent improvement. Do you remember why you are here?”