Moonshifted(5)

His shallow breathing continued. Just as his nails were about to break skin, the Domitor hit him, and his body went slack.

Charles turned to another person with their cell phone out, flicking blood in their direction. “What part of don’t take pictures do you not understand?”

The offender sprang back away from the flow, into the slow-moving traffic, and got honked at. Just what we needed, someone else getting hit—

“Put your phone down, sir,” said a cop, and the sullen bystander put his cell phone away.

The ambulance arrived. Paramedics scrambled out—the first one gestured me away. “Ma’am, you should step—”

“We’re nurses. We tried to stop the bleeding,” Charles said, pointing at his knee, still wedged into the werewolf’s thigh.

“What happened?”

“Hit by a truck,” I said. “Head and leg injury, I think.” Diagnosis of the century there, Nurse Spence.

The paramedic reached back into the ambulance cab to grab the safety mover and a neck brace. The injured man was breathing even more shallowly now. Domitor, or impending death?

“Doesn’t look good,” the paramedic said, taking a spot by the man’s neck, setting the brace against it.

I couldn’t disagree.





CHAPTER THREE





There was no way to escape the feel of blood drying against my hands. I could take my gloves off, but then my hands would be cold—colder—and the gloves were biohazards, so where would I put them? I couldn’t just litter them here, although that’s what the EMS crew was doing, shedding paper and plastic all over the ground, small pieces getting caught up by the wind of passing cars like candy wrappers. The paramedics worked over the werewolf, efficiently doing what they could, straightening, rolling, scraping him up like he was a huge piece of dough. I stood stiffly, holding my gory hands out away from myself, watching them.

A second cop car pulled up just as the crew shut their doors. I had half a second to whisper to Charles, “We aren’t infected, are we?”

“Tonight’s not a full moon,” he whispered back. The weres we treated waxed and waned with the moon—trapped in their animal form under its sway, and completely mortal when it was dark.

“You two saw this?” the cop said. Charles nodded, and he started asking more questions.

I doubted our statements would be helpful. The truck was black; that was all I knew. I hadn’t thought to look at its plates, I’d been too busy watching the man fall and bounce. Same with Charles—and by then most of the other bystanders had disappeared.

“Did the truck slow down at all?”

I shook my head. “It happened so fast.” There was a chance the truck hadn’t seen him. A slim but possible chance. But there was no way that he hadn’t known he’d hit someone. “He just kept driving,” I said, with another mystified shake.

“Lucky guy,” the officer said after writing down both our names. “Hit-and-runs aren’t usually in front of hospitals.” He put his notepad away. “My wife’s a respiratory therapist. What floor do you guys work on?”

“Nursing office,” Charles said.

“Pediatrics,” I said at the same time, my usual lie.

“Well—if he lives, maybe we’ll be able to figure things out.”

Both Charles and I nodded as the officer got into his car and drove off.

“That was close, with that guy and the phone,” I said, shivering. Now that I wasn’t running, I was freezing in place.

“Yeah.” Charles said. We’d watched the traffic unsnarl after the body was taken away. I wondered how long the traffic jam would have lasted after a werewolf sighting.

“What would have happened if we hadn’t been here?”

“I don’t know. The Shadows might have fixed things—they’d fix things eventually.”

“Cops and all?”

“Cops, respiratory therapists, and all.”

“Heh.” The Shadows were dark amoeba-like creatures that lived beneath County Hospital, feeding on all the pain and sorrow the hospital provided. In trade for this, they “protected” our floor, so only people who worked on Y4 knew about Y4—the Shadows messed with everyone else’s minds. Chances were we’d seen that cop’s wife before, and chances were she couldn’t remember who we were, even if her life depended on it. “You sure we’re not infected?” I asked him. I knew the rules, but I wanted to hear him say it.

“Positive. Were blood’s only contagious on the full moon. You can still get the shots if you want, though.”

“Are you?”