Grayslake: Furrever Yours(3)

“You know, he did that that sniffing the air thing,” Amelia said in a lowered voice. “I was watching, because you told me how he did that when he first met you. It’s subtle, and I pretended I wasn’t watching him while I was sitting at the desk watching the security cameras. But he definitely did sniff at each area of the E.R. while he was here.”

“Very strange.”

A horrifying scream made them both jump.

“Damn Phil,” Amelia cursed under her breath. “He made me spill my coffee.” She began mopping up the counter with a napkin.

Crazy Phil was there again, with the D.T.’s, screaming and thrashing and yelling about werewolves. Poor guy’s brain was pickled. When they’d brought him in that night, he’d kept pulling out his I.V. and trying to punch people, so he’d had to be restrained with soft padded wrist cuffs known as Poseys, which were tied to his hospital bed.

A half hour passed by with no new admissions, and then one of the cleaning staff by the ambulance bay gave a shout. “Heads up!”

The latest arrival, it seemed, had not come by ambulance. One of the hospital nurses was cradling her in his arms as he raced through the door. “Saw her lying in the parking lot on the way back from the Koffee Klatsch,” he called out. “There was a car pulling out of the parking lot real fast.”

She was a skinny girl with long, dark-brown hair that was matted with blood. There was blood everywhere, bruises all over her arms. Handprint bruises where someone had gripped her with brutal force. She’d been beaten to within an inch of her life. Her lip was split, both her eyes were swollen and blackened.

They quickly laid her down on an empty bed.

Heather felt a wave of red-hot anger washing over her. She wanted to find whoever had done this to the young woman and give them the same treatment. Several times in a row. Until they died.

Then the emergency room radio crackled to life as the fire department called in a rollover with two critical injuries, ETA of five minutes.

The next half hour was a haze of mopping up spilled blood, running to restock supplies for the doctors, and more.

Finally Heather had time to go back and check on the girl. The doctor had already seen her, and ordered X-rays and a CAT scan, but the orderlies hadn’t had time to come get her yet because they were dealing with the car accident victims first.

The girl lay curled up on her side, semi-conscious and mumbling incoherently. Her face was still horribly swollen, but oddly enough, the swelling had gone down noticeably even in the short time she’d been there.

As Heather started to walk up to her, the girl’s body…changed. Her arms and legs rippled and darkened… No, the skin wasn’t getting darker – it was growing fur.

Heather strangled a scream and staggered back a step.

The girl kicked her blanket off and it fell on the floor. Her face appeared to melt and flow into something new – a wolf’s snout. Her ears lengthened and sharpened to points. Her legs bent and crooked and reformed themselves. A tail unfurled from her spine. Her clothing split as she shifted and changed, falling off her body.

Within a minute, the girl had turned into a wolf with blood-matted fur.

At Heather’s gasp, the girl jerked and the process reversed itself. The fur sank back under her skin, her ears shrank and rounded, limbs straightened, tail vanished…

The girl sat up, stark naked, covering herself with her hands.

Heather, her mind still whirling from shock, quickly grabbed a fresh pair of scrubs out of the bottom drawer of the room’s supply cabinet and helped the girl get dressed.

“Where am I?” the girl mumbled through her split lip, and blood began flowing again. Heather peered at her lip. Hadn’t there been four splits before? Now there were two, and they were not as deep as they had been twenty minutes ago.

“You’re at Grayslake Memorial Hospital.”

Suddenly the girl went rigid with terror. At the same time, Heather heard Sheriff’s Knox’s deep voice from around the corner. “What room is she in?” he asked.

The girl’s face went white, and her bruises stood out in stark, horrible relief, like black roses on a field of snow.

“Don’t let him get me,” she pleaded, as blood dribbled down her chin.





Chapter Two




Her fear was so obvious that Heather didn’t hesitate for a moment. She opened the door to the room and the girl bolted out, and Heather followed her.

“This way,” she said in a low voice, gesturing urgently.

She led her down a hallway to the supply room, punched in the code to open that door, and then out the door on the other side, and finally out behind the building. They were standing by the dumpsters. One of the street lights was out, and it was dark and creepy.