Carole Douglas - Dancing with Werewolves

"I'm glad you looked me up," I told Ric, eyeing his face as the city streetlights swept it rhythmically.

His normally warm complexion was still a cold gray color as the Corvette slowed to the speed limit and lurched onto Sunset Road under my iffy in-town shifting, although the knack was coming back fast. I knew if I pulled up to an emergency room Ric would never forgive me and I didn't know where any were in this town, anyway.

There was no place to go but home.

Wait! Shouldn't that mantra be: there's no place like home?

I finally punched in the security code to my private entry gate and drove into Nightwine's ultra-secure estate. Ric could barely walk into my enchanted cottage, and I could barely hold him up. Like head wounds, hand wounds bleed profusely, and the flesh on Ric's hands had to be hash.

Not one freaking grumpy helpful domestic dwarf was in sight. Things could be worse. I was alive when I wasn’t supposed to be, but the only person I deeply cared about was damaged beyond repair.

Ric swayed as he stood in the entry hall, dripping blood on the slate tiles. He was still shaky, more cream than coffee in his face color.

Before I could install him on the couch and call Nightwine to send a doctor, I heard a thump at one of the cottage's windows. Next came a scrabbling sound, and then Quicksilver bounded into the main room, limping and looking ragged.

Not another victim to tend simultaneously!

Before I could even acknowledge his presence, Quick made one great arching leap toward Ric, knocking him onto his back on the floor. Ric lifted his crossed arms just in time to keep Quicksilver from lunging onto his neck, taking the brunt of the dog's weight on his forearms.

Oh my God! Two wounded alpha males, still at each other's throats! Just what they, and I, didn't need!

"Get this monster off me, Del!" Ric yelled through gritted teeth. "This damn dog has never liked me and now that I'm down-I can't use my hands to fight him off!"

I was crawling on top of Quick, grabbing for the dog's massive shoulders, ordering him to leave Ric, to get off…! Bad dog!

Quicksilver ignored me. He was too busy sniffing at Ric's bloody hands, a true bloodhound, and whimpering at me in-between, licking my hands with soft wet swaths of tongue. One canine swipe managed to give Snow's bracelet such a thorough slobbery bath that it migrated to my upper arm and coiled there like a scared snake.

I grabbed Quick's collar; if I half-throttled him the dog would have to back off.

My fingers curled around the thick black leather, over the round silver medallions circling it like little moons. Before my eyes, those medallions, as liquid as quicksilver, changed shape, going slightly off circle. Like they were…waning. With the moon! Of course! Quick probably did have wolf in him. Which made him…what? Lethal?

Before I could get clear on what this might mean, the silver snake on my upper arm split into dozens of hair-fine chains and slithered back down to my wrist, binding my hands. Why? I didn't know, but I sensed intent and urgency. Was this familiar mine, or Snow's? For me or against me? It had never hurt me, although it had taunted me. Okay, so who am I to argue with a silver-tongued Devil?

"Ric! Give Quicksilver your hands." I can't believe I'm urging this.

"Are you crazy?"

"No. Maybe. Moon madness. Give Quicksilver your hands. That's what he wants, what he needs."

"Del, he wants to eat me!"

"He's not that kind of wolf. He's a wolfhound. Unless you're a closet werewolf, let him at you."

Ric, shocked, stared into my eyes. In that strange, mesmerizing moment, Quicksilver slipped my grip on his transformed collar and strained forward to lick a swath up Ric's raised right hand.

Somehow moonlight had entered the room, maybe when Quicksilver had busted through his usual window. A silver aura blossomed in the air. The unearthly light made Ric's bloodied white shirt fabric gleam again like chain mail. It made my bracelet of many chains lightning-bolt bright. It made the off-round metal moons on Quicksilver's collar glow in the semi-dark.

I heard a ghastly searing sound of flesh melting. No! What have I done? What have I permitted to be done?

Ric's hands burned white-hot under the passage of Quicksilver's fire-red tongue…He screamed, despite himself and probably a lot of training.

My tears must have looked silver as they sizzled down my face. I screamed too.

The only one who didn't scream was Quicksilver. He was busy licking Ric's hand, as dogs will.

Even shouts of pain and dismay were not enough to express our human anguish at this ignorant assault. The gruesome dog-lapping sound stopped as the silver effusion of moonlight faded. I gazed at Ric's mutilated hands, cringing. One palm gleamed with saliva where Quicksilver had licked. The skin was…fresh, unbloodied. Whole.

Ric saw where I was looking, at what I had seen.

He eyed Quicksilver's muzzle, as big as a young bear's, all white fangs and overheated red tongue, all grin that can be either canine friendliness or canine threat.

Ric bit down hard on his lower lip and nodded.

The moments of uncertainty were over. Time was moving again. The minute frozen in a net of quicksilver slipped into a new minute.

I sat back on my heels, exhausted by fear and wonder, to watch Quicksilver lick Ric's wounds clean, stroke by stroke, banishing bloody silk and shredded flesh, leaving healed skin behind.

"Dogs lick their wounds," I told Ric, I told me, told the damn dog who knew better than both of us combined what had happened here. Maybe it wasn’t any of us, but the enchanted cottage. Then there was the rational explanation, and I'm sticking to it. "There's a bacteria-banishing element in dog saliva. It works in the wild."

"On dogs and wolves," Ric pointed out.

The skepticism told me his hands were feeling better.

"Maybe you've got some canine DNA."

"No." Ric sat up, pushing Quicksilver back on his haunches. Dogs always overdo it. Ric wiped his hands on his shirttails. They came away clean, whole, perfect.

"Ick! Poison dog lips!" I said, quoting Lucy from the Charlie Brown strip for comic relief. Charles Schulz was with us again. The Kennedy Center Awards now reanimated a "national cultural treasure" each year as well as honoring those in their first lives.

"Right." Ric was watching Quicksilver wash his own hairy body with an amazingly large, supple tongue, especially the private area.

I moved to help Ric up. Instead, he pulled me down against him on the floor for a long, penetrating kiss. He wasn’t too shabby in the tongue department either.

I heard a faint, muffled growl.

"Ric. The dog might be…um, you know. Jealous."

Ric's hands on me were strong and certain. "He doesn’t like this, I don't like his public grooming habits. He'll just have to get used to it."

"Maybe you'll have to get used to each other."

"Yeah. Maybe." Ric's voice had become a soft, possessive growl.

I heard the click of Quicksilver's nails fade and then thump as he leaped out of his doggie door. This scene was obviously way too mushy for a wolfhound to witness.

Ric ran his hands down my arms, relishing their flexibility and strength as much as the feel of me. That had to stop. Right here, right now. I took hold of his wrists.

"You need to rest those hands. Recover."

"They're fine now. I'm fine."

I didn't answer, just pushed his wrists to the floor above his head and held them there.

He stilled beneath me, his eyes questioning.

"Rest," I said. It was an order. I must have developed this irresistibly firm bedside manner since my brief stint as a nurse.

"I'm fine, Del. No one laid a finger on me when I showed up with the reinforcements. My hands only caught it from holding onto a whirligig of barbed wire for so long."