Natural Evil (Elder Races #4.5)(5)

“I figure,” she said. She stretched her neck again, first one way then the other.

“Thought you might,” said Jackson. “You know, it could just mean he’s one hell of a stubborn dog. I’ve seen animals with a kind of will to live you wouldn’t believe.”

“It could.” She waited. She thought she knew what might come next.

Jackson did not disappoint. “Or it could mean something else,” he said. He pushed his hat back with the tip of his bottle. “Which is why you watched me so damn close the whole time I was working on him, wasn’t it? Why you wanted to help. And why you wanted to make sure about the drugs I was giving him. He could just be a stubborn dog that won’t die. Or he could be Wyr. In which case, what happened to him wasn’t just animal cruelty but attempted murder.”

“I figure,” Claudia said again.

Chapter Two

Hearth

“But the healing capabilities of the Wyr are famous,” she continued. “Wouldn’t we have seen some of his injuries heal by now?”

“Maybe we did, which is why he didn’t die. You don’t have the magic sense to tell whether he’s Wyr or not,” Jackson said. He didn’t phrase it as a question.

She answered him anyway. “Nope.”

“I don’t either. Nor John, or he would have said something.”

“Would he?”

“The hell you mean by that?” He aimed a fierce frown in her direction.

Earlier, the vast space she had been driving through had been so empty there hadn’t even been a bird visible in the sky. Rodriguez had to have been moving fast just to catch sight of her, let alone catch her on his radar. She knew why she’d been speeding, but she didn’t know why he had been. She wondered what had been so urgent it had caused him to drive at such speed. Yet whatever it was, he had abandoned it in order to pull her over.

It could have been coincidence that Rodriguez pulled her over just after she found the dog. The sheriff had only put his hand on his gun, he hadn’t drawn it. The dog was so badly injured that anyone might have suggested putting him out of his misery. She’d thought of it herself.

Rodriguez had brought it up twice.

Coincidence and niggles. They were such small things. They almost certainly meant nothing. She kept her tone mild. “Nothing. I don’t know the sheriff. I don’t know you. That’s all.”

The vet heaved a sigh. It sounded disgusted. “Well, obviously something happened for you to wonder if the dog might be Wyr.”

“Rodriguez brought up a good point,” she said. “It wasn’t easy getting such a large animal into the back of my car.”

“Yeah, but you managed it somehow. So?”

She squinted up at the early evening, storm-swept sky. What was that color? It was not quite orange, not quite red. Maybe that was what brimstone looked like.

“He was awake when I found him,” she said. “He was already hurting bad. I hurt him a lot more when I got him in the car.” She thought of the look the dog had given her, the sense she had gotten of a sharp intelligence behind the suffering, and searched for more words. They came harder when a body had stopped talking for a time. Jackson was staring at her. Finally she said, “He didn’t bite me.”

Jackson sighed again. He opened the back screen door and gestured for her to precede him. She moved to the table and he joined her. They both regarded the unconscious dog. Jackson said, “You know, he’s probably mundane. He’s facing a long, hard recovery, and that’s just the physical component of his injuries. After the kind of abuse he’s suffered, it might take him months before he trusts anyone again. He’s gonna wake up in a few hours. I can keep him medicated for the pain, but I’m still gonna have to crate him.”

She pursed her lips. She hated the idea of putting the dog behind bars, especially if he might be Wyr. If he was Wyr, and whoever had tortured him knew it, why had they tried to kill him? What would they do if they found out he wasn’t dead? Jackson was sharp but he was also an elderly man, and at the moment the dog couldn’t defend himself.

“I should take him instead,” she said.

Jackson squinted an eye at her. “And do what? Go where? He’s too badly injured to travel, and the storm’s blowing in. You said you were from New York. Where are you headed, anyway? You were on I-80 going somewhere, and it won’t be good highway driving tonight.”

“I’m on vacation,” she said. She had walked away from the army four years before she had earned a twenty-year pension, but with what her parents had left her, she got by. She’d been on vacation for the last couple of years, unable to concentrate for long periods of time. Unable to settle into a new job, unable to sleep, unable to stop the nightmares when she did. “I was headed south to do some early camping. But I have no agenda I need to follow. I’ve got time to look after him.”

Like the nearby mountain range, Jackson’s profile was worn, the edges softened by age. After a moment he said, “Back trailer’s empty.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I keep it for my daughter when she comes to visit from Fresno. She’s not too comfortable with the layout of my kitchen.” She managed to avoid grinning. Jackson continued, “You can stay there to look after the dog, if you like.”