Love Bites (Crescent City Werewolves: The Short Stories)

Tides of Silver and Blood (Part 2 of 6)

Joan sat beside Etheridge in silence while the car jolted over a path scarred with potholes and gritty with lingering sand. He had quickly offered over a blanket to stop her shivers but hadn't looked at her since. None of them had. She was glad of it, letting their murmurs wash over her while she tried to stop feeling sick from the smells of petrol and hot metal that thickened the air inside the cab.

As the cypresses opened up into the saltmarsh, the wheels found firm road and the engine settled into the smooth roar of pistons working together. It seemed to put the enchanter and guard across from Joan at ease, with the fussy enchanter in particular brightening in the face while he listed every detail about the washed-up body that had been discovered through his spells. From the intricately tooled leather and gold stitching of his bandolier, he must have been a master enchanter.

He was also a downright bore, and Joan soon found herself glancing at Etheridge, trying to reconcile the healthy wolf beside her with the sick, silver-bitten one she had watched over.

She thought she was being sly about it until he looked back at her and winked. "Making sure I'm alive?"

Her face went hot but not from embarrassment. "I'd be pinching you, then."

The enchanter cleared his throat. "Inspector? This next part is very important."

After giving her a small smile, Etheridge's focus returned to the other wolf. "I'm listening."

Joan kept watching him even after his expression smoothed back into remoteness. It surprised her that he was so willing to be open about their shared past in front of others. But maybe it was for him just like it was for her—impossible not to slip back to those days, back into the memories that always drew close in spare moments between thoughts or long hours at night when the past so easily bled into the present...

"They're not aware. They may struggle or try to speak, but they're delirious. Watch them to make sure they don't claw at themselves. There are restraints if necessary."

The wolf who had spoken those words, Nurse Rowan, was the very definition of grimness in her starched white uniform, her posture as stiff and proper as the ticking of the pendant watch hanging over her heart. Her cold gaze intimidated the young she-wolves who waited in a line before her, many of whom had been pulled from servant positions.

But Joan had faced rough waters that could smash one lifeless against rock, had faced the poisonous barbs of stingrays and the mauling curiosity of sharks. A frown from a city wolf couldn't shake her up after trials like those, and she only pulled down the paper mask she'd been given to wear against patients who'd taken silver to the lungs, making sure her voice came out clearly as she asked, "Aren't they getting treated with the antidote?"

The head nurse's mouth pinched shut, but when Joan's attention didn't waver, the other she-wolf gave in. "It was the entire royal court that was attacked, you silly girl. There isn't enough to go around. The ones who have been given anti-silver are in their own corridor and are being watched closely."

"Then these ones are all dying," murmured a wolf close to Joan. She withered beneath the head nurse's glare.

"A few may pull through, according to the doctor. It's our job to watch and see. Now follow me to find out which ward and which patients you've been assigned to."

Out of Joan's four, the she-wolf who had been stabbed in the chest with a silver-edged knife died first, quiet except for the tortured rattling of her breath. An older wolf whose hair still smelled faintly of pomegranate oil went next, violent and howling while Joan tried to hold him down, gritting her teeth at the sound of his spine snapping as his back muscles spasmed from all the silver buckshot in them.