Page 12 of The Dog in the Alley

As I got closer, I could make out his features—sharp, almost delicately so, with dark almond-shaped eyes and black hair that contrasted with almost porcelain-fine skin. I couldn’t see his mouth behind his surgical mask, but I didn’t need to see his teeth to know—I could tell from the energy that radiated from him—vampire.

In my arms, the dog whined, and the sound was clearly afraid.

“It’s okay, bud.” I was pretty sure that wasn’t a lie. I didn’t think a vampire who would become a late-night vet was likely to run around murdering people. Probably.

The vampire looked up—he was probably half-a foot or so shorter than me, although I’m six-four, so that descriptor applies to a lot of people—and met my eyes, and I could see in the dim light of the doorway that they were a dark shade of maroon—the color of dried blood. Weirdly, it worked for him.

“What is the problem?” he asked, his voice clipped and with the slight edge of an accent.

“Not sure,” I answered. “We found it in a dumpster.”

The dark slashes of his eyebrows rose, but he moved past me quickly after I’d made it through the doorway to lead the way down the hall and into an examination room.

“But you came here,” he said, pausing to open a door and gesture for me to carry the dog inside. “Why?”

“It’s covered in blood and won’t put weight on a hind leg,” I replied. “Although it was at a murder scene, so I’m not completely sure whose blood it is.”

“On the table, please.”

I deposited dog and coat on the metal exam table, then sat on the plastic chair in the corner.

The vet reached out and put both hands on the dog’s face, and it reacted by whining loudly. The vet looked up and raised his eyebrows at me. “You are aware, I assume, that this is not a dog.”

“I did notice that, yeah. But the damn thing won’t shift, so…”

The vet looked back down at the dog. “You wish for me to treat you in this form?” he asked, and I almost answered before I realized he wasn’t talking to me.

The dog looked from the vampire to me, then back. Then back at me, and whined.

I sighed, then stood and walked over to the table, where I ran a hand over the dog’s weird tufted head. “Better?”

Chuff.

“I don’t know why you’re so damn attached to me,” I muttered.

The dog then looked back at the vet and let out another chuff.

“I think it’s okay now,” I told the vampire.

He stared at me for a moment, then looked back down at the dog. “You consent to being examined?”

Chuff.

“My name is Dr. Zhou, by the way,” the vampire informed us—well, the dog. He was rather pointedly ignoring me. Then he looked up. “I don’t suppose you have a name?”

“I do. Detective Hart. Don’t know what its name is, though.”

Zhou let out a small, disdainful breath through his nose, the material of his mask puffing slightly, and held out his hand to the dog, who delicately sniffed his fingers. “Fortunately for you, my friend, I used to be a human surgeon.”

Chuff.

“May I?”

The dog stood awkwardly, the movement clearly painful, even to my untrained eyes.

Zhou ran his hands carefully over the dog’s body, humming slightly as he did. The dog kept perfectly still—which made sense, since it wasn’t actually a dog.

“Would you prefer that the detective here use more masculine pronouns?” Zhou asked, having finished his exam and, I assume anyway, discovered the dog’s anatomy.

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