Revenant (11 page)

Sage stirs beside me as the sign for San Antonio flashes in my headlights. He grins at me, lop sided, but for the first time I notice how red his face is. I’ve missed it in my distraction, so many details I’ve let slip. His paleness has gone, replaced by fever, his skin tight and shining red. And the scent of him has changed. I was so wrapped up in my thoughts I missed the shift completely.

He suddenly smells ill.

I reach out, touch his face, wince at how hot he feels. He’s burning up, the wolf in him super heating his insides as it battles the infection—which means, it’s either fighting itself, or he’s contracted some other bacteria or virus that’s interfering. When I glance at his shoulder, I see his T-shirt is soaked, the infection seeping through.

“Sage,” I say, accusation in my voice, though it’s not his fault. “Why didn’t you say something?”

He shakes his head, wobbly, smile child-like. “Charlie.” He slurs my name. “Hiya, Charlie.”

I take the next exit too fast, the tires squealing under the car, but I’m not thinking about my driving. I have to get him medicine, find a way to reduce his fever. Were he a full werewolf, I wouldn’t worry. His lupine nature would take care of things. Then again, were he a werewolf, he wouldn’t be this sick in the first place.

His wolf is rising, but it’s not enough. Yes, the sickness might yet burn off. The wolf is strong in him and, though he’s sick, I can’t sense the taint I’ve associated with revenants in the past. But it’s possible the infection he’s fighting—both of them—could trigger something else entirely. I have so little knowledge of what is actually happening to him, I can’t make a judgment either way. But the realization a trauma like this could trigger a shift in him decides for me.

I can’t allow the revenant to win before I can find a cure.

We’re in downtown San Antonio, surrounded by cars, stopped at a streetlight. I barely remember driving this far. I have to focus. My gaze sweeps both sides of the street, rewarded at last. I spot a little pharmacy on a corner and park across the street, ignoring the angry beeping of the cars trying to get around me. I should leave him here, but I can’t risk it. What if he were to change right here in traffic? I’d never get to him in time, before someone took a photo or video. And with today’s social media sites, he’d be all over the world before even the witch councils could stop it.

I spin on him, unbuckling his belt, leaning over to open his door. A firm shove gets him moving, wobbly but functional. I climb out after him, partly to avoid the traffic swerving around the car, and partly to keep him from falling down. Sage sways on the sidewalk, leaning to the left, still with that goofy grin on his face.

The traffic thins a moment, a woman giving me the finger before gunning past. I take advantage of the gap, dragging Sage across the street and to the glass door of the pharmacy. He wavers next to me, head down, barely registering the chime of the bell overhead as we enter with a soft whimper.

I keep him close to me as I hurry down the aisles, hands grabbing for pain killers. But what I really need are antibiotics, and I don’t have access. What will they do to his wolf physiology? I have no idea. But his human side needs them, that much is obvious. My gaze whips to the back of the store and the prescription counter. An older man stands there in a crisp white coat, balding head gray in a ring around his temples. He hasn’t noticed us, absorbed in whatever he’s working on, a pen in his hand. I know he won’t give me what I need, not without a prescription. He’s not allowed, it’s human law.

Which means I might have to hurt him to help Sage.

As I turn to tell my love to stay put, he pulls away from me, lunging forward, strength renewed as the fever rages. His eyes have gone wolf, hands grasping at random items. He sniffs them with aggressive interest, casting things aside almost as quickly as he seizes them. I can’t risk controlling him with magic, and am forced to chase him as he leaps forward and into the path of a young woman. She screams at the sight of him, her high heels slipping on the tile, short skirt hitching upward as she totters. I grab for her, pull her upright by her bare arm. She runs with clacking feet, hands scrambling over the keypad of her phone.

I look up and realize we’re no longer anonymous. We’ve caught the frowning attention of the pharmacist whose hand hovers over a phone of his own.

Damn it, I have to control Sage before this devolves further. But he lunges out of my reach as I dive for him, skidding into the empty space in front of the pharmacy counter. He grins, panting, at the older man, licking his lips as though the pharmacist is dinner. And then, Sage spins in place, eyes rolling up into his head, before collapsing to the floor like a broken rag doll.

His heart skips. Stops. Stutters. Stops again.

No, please no. He can’t be dead—

I’m frozen in place, even as the world erupts around me. A slim black woman with finely braided hair tied at the nape of her neck falls to her knees next to Sage before looking up at the pharmacist.

“Call an ambulance,” she snaps with authority.

This can’t be happening. I rush forward, try to pull her off Sage as his heartbeat returns, but she shoves me back, dark eyes snapping with anger. “Are you with him?”

I can only nod, mute and shaking.

“He needs to go to the hospital.” She talks to me as though I’m a child, or unable to understand simple concepts. And, at the moment, I’m both. He can’t go to a normal hospital. They will run tests, on his blood, his makeup—

I have to get him out of here.

But a siren is already loudly approaching, an ambulance pulling up to the door, people whispering and staring as a pair of paramedics with a stretcher run into the store, and the young black woman is directing them what to tell the emergency room. Her words are garbled, unintelligible as time slows and flexes and speeds again. I reach for her as they start to wheel Sage away.

“Go with him,” she says. “I’ll meet you there.”

“Why?” I’m shaking all over. This can’t be happening, not now.

“I’m Dr. Lauren Mitchell,” she says. “Just trust me.”

She pushes me toward the door and I run on autopilot, gaze settling on our stolen car across the street one last time before I climb stiffly into the back of the ambulance, eyes locking on Sage’s silent face.

***

I pace the waiting room, body vibrating with nerves as the bustling hospital sounds and scents add to the overload. The pungent smell of cleaners does little to mask the heavy weight of sickness hanging over the building, and though I push my wolf back as far as I can, my sensitive nose is assaulted over and over again, driving me mad.

It makes focus almost impossible, the air hard to breathe. I need to figure out a new plan, something I find increasingly frustrating as the weight of other people’s illness settles on me like a solid presence. Our rapid drive to this place ended before I could work out how to liberate Sage from the hands of the paramedics. And the doctor from the pharmacy was already waiting for us when we arrived, her car screeching to a halt, her small body catapulting toward us as Sage was lowered to the ground. She practically leaped on Sage, escorting him into the hospital while I was held back, forced to deal with paperwork and questions about insurance and other things I barely understood let alone had answers to.

Insurance? Werewolves are never sick. And even if we did somehow contract an illness, magic is our first healing impulse, not this primitive use of foreign substances and crowding together the weak and weary behind four walls of growing pathogens. If the sickness that brings them here doesn’t kill them, the insidious horrors mutating and lurking in the scent of cleansers not nearly strong enough for the job surely will.

I still have most of the two thousand dollars I’d stolen in Miami, enough to satisfy the busybody woman behind the desk. I have to use Syd’s address when the receptionist asks, and hope doing so won’t trigger some manhunt by accident. But no, Enforcers ignore normals, remember? Our biggest worry here is one of them finding out Sage isn’t entirely human any longer.

I hate it here, but I can’t leave him. And every time I try to seek him out beyond the cramped, crowded waiting area with its industrial tile floors and flickering florescent lights, I’m stopped at the double doors leading to emergency by a stern-faced nurse.

“The doctor will let you know when he can have visitors.” I want to slap her aside with her bitter expression and her flat eyes, but she is just a product of this unnatural environment, trained to care only to a point.

When the slim black woman from the pharmacy finally appears, I rush to her, interrupting her whispered conversation with the same flat-eyed nurse. But her smile is at least genuine.

Dr. Mitchell pulls me aside, crisp, white lab coat hanging past her knees, the top of her head barely reaching my chin. She seems frail, delicate, but her aura is strong and, when we’ve reached a quiet corner, her personal power radiates from her face.

“We’ve had to put him on a heavy dose of antibiotics,” she says. “He’s also very dehydrated, so a saline drip and painkillers.” She frowns for the first time, leaning closer, voice dropping to a whisper. “It’s a serious infection. I’ve never seen anything like it. What the hell bit him?”

I can’t tell her anything, and my churning mind won’t manufacture a lie, so I don’t say anything. Dr. Mitchell finally shrugs and leans back, a flicker of anger in her eyes.

“Fine,” she says. “It’s none of my business. And it’s not a gun shot, so I don’t have to report it. As long as no police requests for bite victim identification comes through while he’s here, there’s nothing I can do.” Her gaze intensifies, as though waiting for me to confess some terrible crime. I continue to hold my tongue. She can’t help us, not as a normal. But if her medicine can stabilize Sage, I’ll allow him to remain.

For now.

“Listen to me.” Her hand grips my elbow, fingers strong despite their slim, delicateness. “I have no idea what you two are into, but I figure it can’t be good.” She licks her lips before going on. “If you’re running from something, and you’ve done nothing wrong, the police might be able to help.” She shakes her head, braids rattling, the tiny beads on the ends clinking together. “I don’t care about that,” she says. “But I do care about my patient.” Her hand tightens further. “If you try to take him out of here before the infection is gone, he’ll die.” She lets that sink in a moment. “Do you understand?”

I nod. There’s nothing I can say. We need to go. Sage can’t stay here. The last thing we need is for him to have a shift while in a normal hospital. That would bring Enforcers for certain, and cause a massive incident. But what if the doctor is right?

She lets me go. “You can see him now,” she says. “He’s sleeping. Please see to it he stays that way.” Dr. Mitchell turns and walks away in quick, even strides, carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders with the authority of a queen. I hurry after her, through the doors into the treatment area.

The stench of sickness is stronger back here, but I catch Sage’s scent no matter the torment to my nose. He’s a few beds down, screened off by a washed-out green curtain for a little privacy. I slip through, pulling the sheet tightly over the opening and go to his side.

He’s pale, quiet, lips parched, eyes sunken. How did I not notice his decline? At least the fever seems to be gone. I grasp his cold, damp hand in mine and wrack my aching mind for a plan. My magic seeps out, just a tiny thread, to touch him. His heartbeat is strong, at least, no more stuttering. And the medicine seems to be pushing back the infection. But the wolf remains inside him, pacing and growling, wanting to emerge. No amount of antibiotics will keep it from its task.

Sage sighs, some color returning to his face as the wolf offers support. Werewolves are resilient, we can recover from almost any wound, given time. I wonder if this infection would have run its course without the medicine. Was I a fool to put us in this position? Would he have healed on his own? Too late to find out, now.

But one thing is certain. I have to get him out of here, no matter what Dr. Mitchell said. He’s surfacing, and the wolf is coming with him.

Sage’s eyes open, pupils huge, irises taking up most of the white, the wolf in him blinking slowly at me. But he smiles, squeezes my hand with strength, so I smile back and soothe his wolf with my own. It retreats, leaving my darling Sage behind.

“Charlie.” His voice is hoarse, but his eyes are clear, untouched by fever or confusion. “Sorry about this.”

I shake my head. “It’s not your fault.” I glance over my shoulder, to make sure we’re still alone, though I know we are, before bending to kiss his cheek. And whisper in his ear. “We have to leave.”

He nods, tries to rise, but I push him down again.

“Not yet.” He’s weak after all, his muscles shivering with the attempt to sit up. “Get some sleep first.” I lean back. “A few hours, all right?”

Sage squirms, frowning. “We’re running out of time.”

“I know.” I release his hand. “But if this medicine can keep you stable, we’ll give it a chance to work.”

He sinks into the pillow, eyes sad. “Are we going to make it?”

A nurse bustles in, brushing past me, fiddling with Sage’s IV. She smiles at him, pats his arm. “You’re looking better already.”

“Thank you,” he says with one of his dazzling smiles. The nurse turns to me with eyebrows raised.

“We just need a moment.”

I nod, step back and out of the tent of curtains, letting her do her work. Pacing the hall will only get me kicked out, I’m sure. But the sight of a vending machine at the far end pulls me on. I’m suddenly thirsty and starving, the adrenaline of the last hour or so burning off.

I’m of no use to Sage if I’m collapsing, too.

A chicken sandwich and a cup of coffee later and I’m feeling more myself. Surely, the nurse is through with Sage by now. I return, observing the ward as I do. It’s very busy back here, multiple doctors and nurses and orderlies in and out of the curtained areas. It won’t be easy to sneak Sage out without someone seeing us. I’ll have to find him some clothes, since they’ve taken his. Maybe some scrubs would disguise him well enough to get us past the staff.