The Legend of the Werewolf (11 page)

Finally, he sighed. "Someone go and get
Bill, I don't want my dad seeing Chris just yet."

Mike used the back of his hand to wipe
sweat from his face, only managing to spread the sheen. "Will he be
alright?"

Westley nodded, never taking his eyes
away from the dragon below him as he started adjusting the borrowed
shirts so the fresh areas of the cloth were soaking in the
blood.

He stroked the injured wings. "His
bleeding is already slowing down. It's a good thing he didn't try
turning back into a human right away. Might have made them fall
off."

Anne's stomach rolled. She stepped back to
get Bill and caught sight of Brock’s tail disappearing out the
door. Silent and sneaky as always, despite his size.

She opened her mouth to make her
apology to Westley. A faint croak came out instead. She felt like
she was going to puke.

Westley looked at her and turned to
Mike. "Can you take her out of here? She's squeamish."

Mike's large hands on her shoulders
pulled her away, his face soft and understanding as he added enough
strength to his touch to gently lead her out.

Anne wanted to tell Westley that it
wasn’t that she was being weak. She hated seeing her friends hurt
and she despised blood, but she knew she could handle it as long as
it meant she could help.

Anne turned her head to keep Chris in
her sights for as long as possible while she walked away from him.
The smell of hay and dirt soaked in blood made her gag. Her hand
flew to her mouth to keep the vomit in.

Maybe she did need a minute.

As soon as
the sunshine blasted her, Anne
inhaled a clean breath of air. Mike shut the barn doors, barring
the blood smell.

Anne sucked in her air and faced the blue
sky, her lips trembling. She couldn't hold it in any longer. She
put her hand over her face and cried.

This wasn't supposed to happen. No one
was supposed to get hurt. Chris did nothing wrong. How could anyone
in their right mind do something like that?

Mike's arms curled around her shoulders
and pulled her to his bare chest.

Despite the layer of sweat and old
grass stuck to him, she buried herself inside his arms and shed
tears all over him.

His bulging arms made her disappear within
them, and she gladly hugged him back, relishing the heat that he
gave her.

His big hands stroked her spine,
surprisingly delicate for someone of his size. "It's alright, don't
cry. Your friend's going to be fine. We'll get him, don't worry.
That little weasel is going to pay for doing this. I’ll make sure
of it."

She knew he would. She could feel
it.

SIX

Mike meant what he’d said. If her one
offer was not enough to make him want to help her, seeing one of
the men responsible for the fact that he was still walking around
alive, now laying injured in a barn, was.

That kid helped save his life and, because
of that, he was nearly blown out of the sky.

The thought that Hadrian would have done
the same thing to either Westley or Anne, still wanted to do it,
infuriated him more.

Mike swore that if he ever got his hands
on Hadrian and fought him, a man's fight with no hiding behind
magic powers, Mike would bash his face in until that long nose of
his pointed backwards.

Mike kept rubbing circles on Anne’s back,
stroking her curly, pale hair, wishing he had the ability to heal
injuries. Anything to make her tears stop.

Under his care, Anne’s loud sobbing
subsided into quiet sniffles. Still, she remained clinging to
him.

What were the right words to give when
a dear friend was so brutally attacked? He promised he would help
her get revenge, but those weren’t the comforting words a rational
woman wanted to hear.

Mike looked at the shut doors of the
barn. He concentrated with every cell in his brain, searching for
Westley. He tried to probe inside his mind.

Grey fuzz met him but he was able to push
through a little bit. What little he could see were distorted
memories of the two of them, usually alone, occasionally with Anne,
but nothing specific. Ending with the flash of the dragon crashing
into the dirt.

The memories were flashing too fast for
him to see what was happening in them. The emotions he felt were
anxious and filled with worry but he sensed no dread. Nothing that
suggested the dragon was dead.

"He's alive. He'll be alright," he
whispered. Anne still did not relinquish her grip on
him.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw
Bill, still in the same worn housecoat and slippers, running
towards them at a pace that should have been impossible for his
age. "I heard what happened. Is he alright?"

With a cry, Anne launched herself away
from Mike and into Bill's arms.

It shouldn't have irked him like it did.
The man was her grandfather and it was better for her to get her
comfort from him. However, the jealous pressure tightening in his
chest was not comforted by the thought.

Anne traded in her quiet sniffling for
anger and silent tears. "He just crashed right in front of us.
Hadrian did it, he had to of."

Bill gently pushed her away from him and
ran in to the barn to see the damage for himself.

Brock appeared after, coming from one of
the houses. He was wearing a pair of jeans now but nothing else,
not even shoes. He held a first aid kit in one hand and a package
of extra wrap bandages in the other. Without a word, he too entered
the barn.

Anne stayed where she was, digging her
fingers into her hair and rubbing her face. Mike held her in his
gaze until he remembered that, in the confusion of the crash,
Westley hadn't come to them with the stone, if he had it to begin
with.

It would have to wait until
later.

"This is my fault. All my
fault."

Mike snapped his head at her. "It's not
your fault. Don't say that."

It was
his
fault.

She shook her head, barely sparing him
a glance. "I got him involved. I could've gone back for you myself
but I made him and Westley come with me."

"And, if you hadn't and still
decided to go after a powerful warlock on your own, he would've
killed you too." Mike snapped. “
You
shouldn’t have even been there.”

Anne’s face twisted painfully but she
kept it pointed towards the dirt under her feet. The miniature
horses, forgotten in the chaos, played and raced together behind
the fence, unaware of the trouble around them.

Mike couldn't take that defeated look
in her eyes. He owed her more than this, more than the pain his
presence caused in her life. "Anne? Anne!" He yelled when she
refused to look at him.

Finally she allowed herself to bring
her eyes up to his.

"Your friend isn't dying, okay?
He'll be just fine so stop blaming anyone but the man who did
this.”
Me
.
“Come here." He captured her wrist and towed her to the door. With
her werewolf strength she could’ve stopped him, but she allowed him
to lead her back into the barn.

They were silent as they stood around
the beast. Westley cradled Chris’s head in his lap, dipping water
from a bottle into the mouth of the dragon.

Brock stood by, his face like stone, his
giant shoulders still as he held the kit open for Bill. The older
man’s body shot up towards the kit, taking what he needed before
kneeling again to examine the patient.

He gently pressed his palms against the
scaled sides, inspecting the damage to the joints of the wings.
Then he peeled away the blood-soaked shirts and sprayed the wounds
with a liquid that Mike assumed was disinfectant.

As Bill was preforming these
tasks, t
he
red scales began to melt into a soft, human colored peach. The long
neck became short and the pointed beak rounded down until it was
nearly flat, leaving only the normal human lumps of cheek bones,
chin, and nose.

Westley held his friend
tighter,
their hands coming together while it looked as though he
whispered encouragement into Chris’s ear as the dragon shifter
sweated, groaned, and struggled to change back.

Mike's mouth dropped. He'd never seen a
dragon, or any kind of changeling, for that matter, go from man to
beast and back again. It wasn’t something that was shown in
training videos. And, since most creatures needed to remove their
clothes to keep from destroying them during a change, it was
usually done in private.

He wanted to offer them any help he was
capable of giving, but it didn’t look like his CPR training would
do any good here. Plus, Anne needed him to keep her
calm.

Even if he did call out to them, he’d only
break the bubble of concentration that surrounded them. No, best he
stayed with Anne. If any of the men working needed something then
he and Anne would run and get it.

Anne must have thought the same because
she kept her mouth firmly shut as well.

Her shaking hand found Mike’s, slid
inside, and gripped it tight.

He was stunned that she would do that.
Holding her had been one thing, but this seemed so much more
intimate.

Whatever, Carter. Just hold her
hand
. He told
himself, gripping her small fingers.

Westley lowered Chris’s now human head
onto a pillow of hay with the care of a man who held a precious
relic in his hands. The dragon kid was lying on his stomach, his
wings pointed towards the air. Westley took the fanning wings and
held them upright in his arms while they melted down into Chris's
back.

He was now entirely human again. However,
where he'd been cut through the scales, deep wounds and scratches
remained. Brock and Bill tenderly saw to them by dabbing them with
cotton swabs, cleaning and bandaging them.

Though dragons were one of the few
creatures whose clothes transformed with their bodies, Chris’s
clothes were shredded from the attack and needed to be cut
away.

Bill took care of that by turning one
of his fingernails into a razor sharp claw. It cut through the
ruined threads like a sharp pair of scissors against fresh
paper.

Chris seemed half conscious by the way he
shifted and groaned. Westley continued to say things to him. When
the red-haired man tried to lift his arm towards his wolf friend,
Westley gently took it and lowered it back down.

Mike’s eyes honed in on how Westley
continued to hold the dragon’s hand, stroking the trembling limb
while whispering tender things.

A light clicked on in Mike’s head.
Well, this was certainly interesting.

He kept his thoughts to himself and
refocused on Anne’s shaking shoulders. The scent of blood was still
in the air, mixed with disinfectant.

“
See? He’s going to be fine,”
Mike said as more and more of Chris’ wounds were covered and hidden
from her eyes with the bandages.

She swallowed. “Yeah.”

An empty bottle of water and
their wet hands
, clued him in on what they used to scrub with before
tending to Chris's open cuts. Why they even bothered washing their
hands considering they were doing doctor's work in a barn was
beyond him.

Every little bit helps, he
supposed.

Would a real doctor even be called?
Some packs were rich enough to afford to get real doctors to
perform house calls, and then pay them enough to keep their mouths
shut after.

Though, getting a real doctor, even if the
money was available for one, still posed a risk. Which was why why
many pack members were trained in first aid, just as Bill and Brock
obviously were.

“Do you have a doctor?”

“What?” Anne asked, blinking and coming
out of her little world.

She was s
o worried over her friend. Mike hoped
that for her sake, and Westley’s, the dragon would recover
soon.

“Does your pack have any
doctors?”

Anne cleared her throat. “No. No, Gordon
doesn’t really trust humans. He’s pushing for some of the mothers
to put their cubs into med school though.”

Mike rolled his eyes.

“What?”

He shook his head. “Nothing.” He knew that
any pack without a doctor or, at the very least, a vet, needed one.
First aid couldn’t take care of everything. But, no matter how
loyal people could be to their packs, Mike new personally that,
nowadays, you didn’t tell a kid how to behave, spend their free
time, or what to do with their entire life without causing
problems.

Anne half glared at him. “I’m not stupid.
Gordon’s been doing that for years and it still hasn’t worked.
Hell, he even tried getting grandpa to send me hints of how great
being a doctor could be; how much respect I would get and what the
pay is like.” She shook her head. “I’m not smart enough for that
kind of thing. It’s why I work here.”