Page 2 of Wolf Bane
Eustace Robards, probably older than God, was one of those old dears who knew everyone, even if you didn’t realize you were on his radar, and he knew everything.
And I meaneverything.
“Oh, I’m not so doddering as to believe that.”He chuckled, waiting patiently while I readied the suture kit.“Not when you’ve got that hunk of man waitin’ on you.”
My face warmed—I could feel it all the way up to my earlobes—and I shook my head.“Oh, I don’t know about that.Maybe I like my men older.”
He laughed again, wincing when I started dabbing the blood away from his shin.“It’s been ages since I got a good scar,” he mused.“Think this one’s gonna be a beaut.”
“Reba said you fell off your porch.Did you experience any dizziness beforehand?Lightheadedness?A loss of vision or something?”
Robards snapped his teeth together, his jovial expression fading rapidly.“Something like that, yeah.I did indeed fall.”He held up one hand so I could see the barked skin on his palms.“Right on my rump, too.Got a bruise comin’ in and everything.”
With the blood gone, the wound was easier to see.Jagged, torn and deep, it had weird scalloping along one edge, the skin ripped back rather than simply cut.
“Mr.Robards,” I said carefully, holding his leg in my hands even as he tensed, like he was about to bolt.“Did someone bite you?Who was it?Did you get their name?Human mouths are filthy, Mr.Robards.”
“Oh, now, it was just the neighbor’s dog!She didn’t mean harm!”His chuckle sounded forced.His leg jerked in my grasp as I started irrigating the wound itself.“This is hardly a scratch.I told my daughter, Eliza, it weren’t any use going to the ER about it.I’d just sit there till the damn thing was nearly healed anyway and end up with a staph infection for my troubles.But she’s moved back home after that split with the jackass she married, and she and the Clemenses next door get on like a house afire.”He shook his head with a small, pleased smile.“Old Celestine, she was on my side, said it weren’t nothin’ to worry about.”
I hummed noncommittally, grabbing another syringe of saline solution.Celestine Clemens and her son Vinnie had been some of the most vocal about me and Ethan.Well.Mostly about me.Ethan was just catching strays, I think.They didn’t even try to keep it in the confines of clan meetings, at least not Celestine.She’d made a point, both before and after the clinic opened, to loudly refer to me as a mutt and to try and filibuster meetings when Ethan was leading them, demanding votes on whether or not he should stay in charge of the clan.Ethan half suspected she wanted Vinnie to be clan leader, but at the heart of it all was that she wanted the clan to bepure.She’d be thrilled if every human in the vicinity just vanished one day and took shifters and part-weres with them.Fuck… I’m gonna have to call animal control on them, aren’t I?
“What kind of dog is it?I’ll need to report this to the county, Mr.Robards.Any animal bite is dangerous but unprovoked ones could indicate something like rabies.”Unless the dog that bit you was a wolf and that wolf had a virus that made it hyper aggressive.Fuck.
“I have no idea.”He sniffed, good humor gone.He stopped trying to pull away and let me continue treating the wound, though not without a grunt of annoyance at my ministrations..His anxiety was ratcheting up—I could smell the sour funk of it making its way through the clean lavender of his laundry soap and leathery wood of his aftershave.Something else was there, too.Something earthy but not pleasantly so.Like the mud from the edge of a swamp, where it slimed up with rotting vegetation, like blood gone bad with the fishy sharp tang of rot.It was just the very faintest whiff though, barely noticeable even with my slightly better than human senses.I wondered if I could get Tyler to stick his head in here and take a whiff.Sorry, Mr.Robards, I need to call my boyfriend’s brother real quick.Sit tight for about an hour and, oh, hey, do you mind if he takes a whiff of your leg?
That would lose me my new license real quick.
“Well, I can just get your address from your file, and I’ll let the county know a dog in that area bit you unprovoked.Unless you want to clarify things for me, Mr.Robards?”Was it a goddamn wolf, Mr.Robards, or just your neighbor’s mutt?The wound would require two layers of stitching, something I was not terribly fond of but had plenty of experience doing.Though my patients were usually a little less active and vascular than Mr.Robards.
“Oh, good lord, Doctor Babin, it’s just a bite!I scared the poor thing when I went out to the car this morning—it was sniffin’ ‘round under my porch, probably scentin’ a mole or something.I stepped down, it yelped andchomp.”He forced a laugh, eyeing me warily as I put in the first stitch.When I didn’t say anything, just placed the next stitch, he huffed.“The dog’s not rabid!It’s a perfectly healthy little thing.They’ve had it for a year or so now; I’ve seen the youngest one playing with it many times.It just got scared is all.The Clemens—Ow!Watch it!””
He stared a moment or two longer, long enough for me to place two more stitches.Finally, he unbent a little and nodded.“They got it around, oh, late August?Maybe early September.Must’ve been September—we had that freak cold snap, remember?It never gets that cold here in September, but there we were, frost on the ground and everything.I wish this climate change stuff could decide which way to go.When I was a boy, we had snow regularly each winter up here, then it stopped, now it’s back again!I don’t know if I need to get snow tires or invest in sunblock!”
It was my turn to fake a laugh, adding another stitch as I went.“Did you speak with Vinnie after the bite, Mr.Robards?I’m sure he’d like to know if his, ah, dog is acting up.”
“Oh, you know he’s working at that new grocery store site they’re makin’ down at Lemmington, across the creek.I’m worried they’ll turn the damn thing into a strip mall with one of those huge HEBs right in the middle!Like we need a pawn shop and, oh, I don’t know, a chain bar, and?—”
I nodded along, my thoughts buzzing with a million different things.I need to call Ethan.Shit, no, I need to call Cullen, maybe.No, get it together, Landry.Talk to the Clemenses first.Press them about this dog bite thing because I’ll bet folding money little Melly’s going through some changes they’re not talking about.Fuck.
Mr.Robards rambled for the next twenty or so minutes while I finished up his stitches then took a blood sample, ostensibly to check for infection but… Well, if I sent it to the ICW labs, would they even deign to look at a human sample?
I stepped out to hand the sample box off to Reba.“Just a moment, Mr.Robards.We’re almost done here.”
He grunted, eyeing his bandaged wound.“I don’t want no trouble for those nice people, Doctor Babin.If you call the county about their dog, I’ll deny everything.I’ll tell ‘em you bit me if I have to!”
That startled a laugh out of me.“I won’t call the county, Mr.Robards.I promise.”
He grunted in satisfaction.“Good.Now I’m meetin’ my daughter in an hour for lunch, so…”
I nodded.“Of course.”
The rest of the morning moved in fits and starts.Two human patients, one there for a follow up on an earache that just wasn’t clearing up, the other needing a referral for an endocrinologist.Right before lunch, there was a young woman who was nervous about a pregnancy scare.To give her some peace of mind, I drew blood after reassuring her false negatives were rare, even on the cheapest home test.Reba signed her out and gave her the info for Planned Parenthood over in Dumfree,
“What about these?”Reba asked, pointing to the bright green sample box marked ICW—Specialty Testing.“I haven’t had to work with them before.They the same procedure as Lab Corp and Quest?”
Reba’s gaze was a little too sharp, a little too assessing.Or maybe I was imagining it out of my own uneasiness and a shred of guilt about lying to her.“Same procedure.If you have questions, the contact guy is Cullen.His number’s in the list.”
She made a thoughtful, humming sort of sound as she started prepping the paperwork for the other boxes, eyeing the ICW one.“It’s weird, them just suddenly being a thing.I mean, I know we didn’t send out a lot of labs at the ME’s office, but as far as I knew there were just the big three or four companies we worked with.”
