Page 53 of Spirit Dances

It was a jeans-and-sweater–clad woman with short-cropped hair and the most delicate slice of a scar marring her right cheek. I jerked my gaze to Morrison, but he was already gone.

In another moment, so was I.

Chapter 26

Morrison was standing over me when I opened my eyes. Looming, actually. Officer King’s estimation of Morrison’s wolfy self’s size had been off, but not much. He was a good three and a half feet at the shoulder, bigger than a Great Dane, and broader in the chest than any canine I’d ever laid eyes on. I hadn’t really had time to appreciate that when I’d been wrestling with him in the theater. I wasn’t strictly sure I wanted to be appreciating it now, since I had the very clear impression he could crush my skull in his jaws pretty much on a whim. All in all, I preferred the partially dressed man, not that I would ever, ever say that aloud.

Fortunately, he couldn’t read my mind, and since he hadn’t crushed my skull, I offered a tentative, “Hey, boss. This mean you’re in there?” which got me a steely-eyed glare I interpreted as an affirmative. My shoulders slumped and I rocked forward until my hair brushed his fur, which made both of us startle. “Sorry. All right, look, let’s get you out of here. There are a couple cops up above. Try not to scare them.” I got to my feet. Morrison’s head came up to the bottom of my ribs. I resisted theurge to curl my fingers in his ruff and tried very hard to act like I was just walking out of the marketplace with my boss at my side.

It worked all the way up to the point we were actually walkingout, when King and his partner both said “JesusChrist!” and other high-voiced panicked exclamations of that nature. Morrison, human brain in control or not, growled, and I raised my hands, getting between him and the officers. “It’s okay. It’s okay. He’s…” I was going to get in so much trouble for this. “He’s tame. He just got loose tonight and has been a little freaked out.”

“He should try being me!”

“I don’t think that would make either of you happy. Look, thanks for calling me in.” Never mind that they hadn’t. Maybe they wouldn’t notice. “I’ll let citywide Dispatch and Animal Control know that the wolf has been contained. No more high alert for tonight.”

King blew out a long breath. “Hope not. It’s been a crazy day. You heard about the murder just up the street this morning, right?”

I very much didn’t want his thoughts going that direction, not when Lynn Schumacher’s death had all the earmarks of a dog attack. “It’s the full moon coming on, is all. Everybody’s a little crazy around the full moon. C’mon, fella.” I clicked my tongue at Morrison, whose expression told me I would die soon and painfully, but he trotted along beside me as I hurried up the street, leaving the two young officers behind. As soon as we were out of earshot I muttered, “Sorry,” then called Dispatch as promised. Morrison watched the whole thing, then gave a great huff that I anthropomorphized as relief. Although maybe it wasn’t anthropomorphizing if he was actually a human. Dictionary definitions weren’t meant to encompass my life. Either way, I made the tactical error of reaching out to rub his head as if hewasa dog, and discovered that wolves could move very, very fast when they wanted to. My wrist lookedastonishingly small and delicate in his mouth. I swallowed and Morrison let me go, but with a dire look which indicated next time he’d probably chomp my arm off.

My vague intentions of bringing him into the Under ground evaporated. “Let’s get you someplace safe.”

He whuffed, and I picked up the pace, heading for the parking garage. I didn’t want to think about his big hoary claws scraping up Petite’s black leather seats, but he stepped into the car with unexpected delicacy, as if the same thought had occurred to him. For a man who considered my relationship with my car to be pathological, I thought that was very considerate. I leaned past him, locked the door, said, “Stay,” and hopped back out of the driver’s side to lock the door behind me. Shapechanged boss or not, there was an I-hated-to-say-it werewolf down below, and half a dozen totally ordinary people standing between it and another potential early-morning murder. Morrison was going to have to wait.

I’d made it forty feet when I heard the distinctive sound of Petite’s door slamming again. I turned to find Morrison with an absolutely filthy look which obviously said,You didn’t think I was smart enough to open a goddamned car door, Walker?A few long loping steps brought him to my side, his expression still infuriated, and I stared between him and the car. “Did you lock her?”

He bared his teeth at me. Of course he hadn’t. Petite required thumbs to lock from the outside. Chastised and grumpy, I skulked back to Petite to lock her up safely once more.

If I thoughtsections of the Underground smelled, my opinion held nothing on Morrison’s: he sneezed violently for a full sixty yards, and came through the worst bit looking like it was all somehow my fault. I said, “You could’ve stayed in Petite,” whichwas petty, true, and got me another dirty look. I’d had no idea dogs were so good at looking disgusted without also being threatening.

Most of Rita’s friends had evidently joined her. The remaining two or three were sacked out near the fire and didn’t notice me sneaking by with a giant white wolf on my heels. He and I crept through the tunnel leading to the wolf-woman chamber, and I waved Billy down. He swung up the ladder—one of those chain and metal jobbies they recommended for second-floor fire escapes in private homes—and came nose to nose with Morrison.

Neither, to their credit, yelped, but it looked like a near thing on both parts. Billy’s eyes bugged and I raised a defensive hand. “He wouldn’t stay in the car. I don’t know how I’m going to explain him to them.”

“…as a police tracking dog…?” Billy suggested weakly. “A police tracking dog the size of Godzilla? Jesus, Joanne, look at him!”

“I know. I guess mass doesn’t convert away to make normal-size fauna. Do you think they’d buy it?”

“I think it doesn’t matter anyway. How do you plan to get him down there?” Billy pointed to the twelve-foot drop to the chamber floor, a factor I hadn’t previously considered.

Morrison growled and edged forward, ears back, to peer over the tunnel’s edge. Then his massive shoulders rolled, ano problemshrug if I’d ever seen one, and he surged forward, clearing Billy’s head easily and landing three-quarters of the way across the chamber with little more than a grunt.

It was enough to garner attention, and nobody else was as manly as Billy had been: half a dozen homeless guysdidshriek, piercing squeals that echoed off the ceiling. Billy swore and jumped to the chamber floor, trying to break up their vocal panic with his own deep assurances: “Police dog, here to help us track.I know he’s huge, but he’s not aggressive. Just don’t get in his face.”

“Doesn’t look like a fuckin’dogto me,” somebody snarled. I saw tension ripple down Morrison’s spine before he looked over his shoulder and gave me anotherthis is your faultglare. I didn’t think that was quite fair, since I’d told him to stay in the car. On the other hand, if he had, I’d have never seen my shapeshifted boss heave a mighty sigh, lie down, and roll over on his back to loll about and invite belly scratches. Ginormous or not, with his tongue hanging out and his spine all a-wriggle against the floor, he didn’t look even slightly dangerous, and the wolf aspects seemed much less dramatic.

I slithered down the rope ladder, scraping my hands and stomach in my hurry, and scurried over to rub Morrison’s tummy to prove it was safe to do so. He was going to kill me. Oh, God, he was going to kill me, bring me back and kill me again, even if he had to spend a million years learning magic just so he could do it. And if he didn’t, I might do it myself, because I was pretty sure I deserved to be killed repeatedly for getting either of us into this situation.

The snarly guy muttered, “I’ll be damned,” and Rita snuck over to scratch Morrison’s chest tentatively. He tolerated it for a good ten seconds from both of us, then flipped over again and stayed down, chin on his paws in what I assumed was his best attempt at non-threatening behavior. Probably everybody else interpreted the furious glare he fixed on me as attentive-waiting-for-commands behavior.

“All right,” Billy said. “We’ve got our crew in place now. Thanks for helping me hold down the fort. It’s best if you head back to your fire now. Wolves won’t generally approach a group of humans or fire, not that we expect this one to get past us. Watch yourselves, though.”

A few of them started to protest. Morrison sat up. Suddenly none of them wanted to hang around anymore, and there was a rush for the ladder, which, after some debate, they left in place. Thoughtful of them. Within about two minutes, Rita, Billy, Morrison and I were the only ones left, and Rita was staring hard at my boss. “He’s the same size that woman is.”

“Bigger,” I said ill-advisedly. “Probably has forty pounds on her.”

She swung around to glare at me, though she pointed an accusing finger at Morrison simultaneously. “Is he like her? A werewolf?”

Morrison turned his head so slowly I hardly saw him move, but I certainly felt the incredulous weight of his expression. “This is why I didn’t want you to come along,” I said to him. “I didn’t want to explain everything right now. And no,” I said to Rita. “He’s just a victim of me screwing up. Werewolves don’t exist and even if they did, every piece of folklore I know says they’re bound by the phases of the moon.”

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