Moonshifted(95)

I wanted to call ahead and warn Y4 we were coming—and also text Lucas and ask him what the fuck was going on. I didn’t want to believe that he could be in on it. And with the cuts on my leg, it was impossible to get comfortable.

Gideon saw me fidgeting, reached into his coat, pulled out a new-looking phone, and offered it to me.

“Thanks.” Maybe people looking for cigarettes and people wishing they had their phones fidgeted the same. “I don’t know his number, though.”

Gideon kept holding it out. I took it, turned it on, went for the call icon, and hopped onto the contact list. “When did you get this?”

Gideon grunted. Jake’s name, my parents’ names, old nursing school friends—“You backed up my phone for me?”

Gideon shrugged. To think I’d been only worried about my brother making long-distance calls before now. I pulled up Lucas’s information and sent him a text message. Jorgen attacked me. What the fuck? He would be a wolf until dawn, but maybe I’d hear from him in the morning.

* * *

We drove along, in from the countryside until we hit the freeway, and then the freeway to the less good part of town. Two exits away from County, the driver looked up.

“So where’s your house?” He peered at us through his rearview mirror.

“What?”

“Your house. It’s around here somewhere, right?”

I tensed in the backseat, and then hissed in pain. “I thought you were taking me to the hospital.”

“Oh, I can’t. The weather’s just awful.” The limo began to slow.

I looked out the window. It was snowing, but no more than it’d been an hour ago, and the road ahead of us was empty. In other circumstances, it would have been pretty in the moonlight. The driver braked the limo to a stop.

“I can’t drive in this ice, lady.” His reflection frowned at me. “I don’t want to get trapped down here in this weather. You need to make up your mind.”

“What are you talking about?” I leaned forward, gritting my teeth, and Gideon grabbed my hand. The driver reached to put the limo in reverse.

“Never mind. We’re here.” I opened my door, hopped out, and Gideon followed. The limo driver did a U-turn in the middle of the intersection and drove away.

* * *

“Maybe I can change into a were, heal up, and then get shots,” I muttered to myself as we hobbled on our way in. Gideon offered me his arm, and I took it. “This is bullshit.”

It was eerie in the moonlight, walking in the middle of the road. A crunching sound began ahead of us, and I kept waiting for headlights to shine and force us to dive away. The crunching sound continued until we crested a small hill, and then its source was revealed.

People were hobbling toward us. Some of them had walkers that they were using in the ice. Others had crutches, wheelchairs, knee braces, walking alone or in pairs, pushing strollers, clutching one another for support.

They weren’t on the way to some fabulous New Year’s Eve party—they were leaving County, in nothing more than hospital gowns. It was a mass exodus, and we were in their way.

Gideon put his arm out and buffeted most of them aside. I tried to get some of them to talk, but they were as silent as the weres had been the night before—no, just this afternoon.

“Something’s wrong, Gideon,” I said. Gideon turned and looked at me with his eyeless-camera-lensed face. From somewhere near his chest, Grandfather said, “Du hast jetzt sehen?”

I was pretty sure he was agreeing.

* * *

County loomed on the horizon as we I neared. Hundreds of people passed us—I saw employees in their number. Lab techs with coats on, nurses and doctors in scrubs. I hoped none of them had left anyone behind in surgery.

In the moonlight County’s squat cement exterior made it look like a factory. I remembered a simpler time at another hospital, when I’d worked aboveground, and I’d check for lights in certain rooms as I walked in to work my shifts—a light on meant my prior night’s patient was still alive. I wasn’t sure what the lights inside County stood for now.

Gideon and I hobbled to the emergency entrance doors together. The doors slid open, and boy did the heat feel good. Gideon pulled his hat lower as the security officer arrived. It made sense—if I saw me wandering in from the street, looking like this, I’d wonder who got shot.

“Miss, I’m afraid we can’t see you tonight.” The officer blocked my path.

“I’m in need of emergency medical treatment.” The magic words that should get me through the door.

He stared over my shoulder, as if I weren’t even there. “We’re full—”