Part 32 (1/2)

As Syd could not move, could not speak, could only watch in paralyzed terror as the two creatures hurtled forward on a killing collision course. They were inverse manifestations of the same primal power: one grotesque, the other divine. It was the very same power that raged inside him.

He watched, sickly wondering which side was the stronger.

In the very last moments before Nora was upon them . . .

. . . and she would pay, yes she would pay, the b.i.t.c.h who'd snuck in and torpedoed her plans, laid waste to her hopes and left her with nothing but bloodthirsty Vic on her tail. She would pay, and then he would pay, for abandoning her when she needed him most. These meat-visions burned in her hindbrain, already telegraphing the taste to her tongue and her teeth . . .

. . . and then there was only the blood and momentum, the moment of collision, the tangle of limbs. Then there was only that deathrush sensation of wading in, face-first, muzzle lunging for flesh. Nora used the sharp claws of her malformed paws to tear holes in the wolf-b.i.t.c.h's back as they snarled and snapped and rolled. She smelled blood, felt soft pelt and dermis tear.

The next blood she smelled was her own.

NO! A gus.h.i.+ng divot, torn raw from her breast. Nora yowled, lashed out, took flesh in kind. They rolled again, locked on each other: jaws snapping as they slashed b.l.o.o.d.y ribbons from each other's flailing limbs.

And there was no thought, no time for thought, no percentage in thought at all. Just the purity of instinct and unmitigated rage. The deafening bloodthunder and the roaring in her ears. The enormous satisfaction of inflicting mortal damage. The excruciating payback of her own flesh, giving way. They rolled, and Nora felt herself under, then over. She lashed out at Jane's throat, missed, went under again.

And the b.i.t.c.h was strong, there was no doubt about it, the b.i.t.c.h was much stronger than Nora 'd believed. But the truth of that didn't entirely come home until she felt those jaws lock on the flesh of her cheek. She howled, tissue shredding, the meat peeling back, muscles slicing like cheese as fangs raked over bone, sending hot grinding sparks of anguish to brightly ignite in her horrified brain.

NO! screamed the dim voice of her human side, NOT MY FACE! NOT MY FACE! But before she could stop it, her left eye was gone: impaled and then squeezed till it squirted vitreous fluid and gore.

And then Nora went utterly, terminally mad; hind legs coming up beneath Jane's unprotected belly, razored claws tearing at the vulnerable flesh. She felt the abdominal walls give way, felt the agonizing tremors wrack the core of her rival. She didn't stop until the b.i.t.c.h was. .h.i.tting the high notes and the stink of open bowels was everywhere.

Then she rolled again, over ignoring the pain, wanting only to feast on the vitals she'd bared. Her adversary writhed in the red mud beneath her, thras.h.i.+ng and flailing.

Nora's half-face showed teeth all the way to the roots, the ragged lips pulled back in a sneer. She lunged for Jane's windpipe and almost nailed it, opening a bone-deep gash that ran the length of the jaw.

It was, in retrospect, a very stupid move.

But by the time she understood, it was already too late.

The pain didn't come for a full second, clearly separating itself from the rest of all creation. It came with a blast of hot breath on the hole where a very large piece of her throat used to be. Nora let out an agonized shriek, full of odd harmonics that whistled and sprayed. She screamed again, and the full pressure of the wolf's jaws came to bear on her trachea, punching down hard.

And then the world was shaking, shaking, a blur of motion and growling sound that burbled and roared and overwhelmed her battered to silence the thoughts in her head as the killing jaws clamped down on her neckbone: sawing it back and forth, snapping the nerves running up through its core, bursting the arteries and veins that supplied the brain with blood and drainage.

And she knew she could have won, but then the thought just went away; gone, along with all the pretty pictures she'd been saving for just this occasion. There was no cosmic film projector, replaying her personal highlights and lowlights. No award ceremony. No burning h.e.l.l. No G.o.dly affirmation of glory or shame. No Syd, no Michael, no Vic, no Nora. No pups of her own, and no childhood memories.

She'd always believed that, at the end of your life, G.o.d owed you a chance at understanding.

That chance disappeared, with her last dying brain cell.

And then, just like that, she was gone. . . .

36.

The Trauma Ward at Huntington Memorial Hospital was a state-of-the-art high-octane offshoot of Emergency Services, where pandemonium was the rule rather than the exception, and battle lines between life and death were drawn in deepest red.

Weeknights were slow, the vast bulk of public mayhem saving itself for the weekends, when a Friday or Sat.u.r.day night would routinely see the carnage from upward of a half-dozen shootings, stabbings, drug overdoses, and D.U.I. traffic victims side by side with asthma attacks, burn victims, and the periodic full cardiac arrest as some hapless senior's b.u.m ticker gave out.

Still, experience had taught that even on the deadest nights things could go from zero to one hundred in the time it took for the big gla.s.s doors to hiss open, the next gurney full of mangled humanity to roll in. And the men and women who staffed the ward-from the techs to the nurses, the interns and resident surgeons to the battery of on-call specialists-were battle-hardened adrenaline junkies, accustomed to fighting 'round the clock for their patients' lives.

They had seen a thousand forms of damage, faced death head-on hundreds of times.

But they had never seen anything like this.

She's not dead yet, was the thought that kept echoing through Tanya Martin's head, quickly changing to I can't believe she's not dead yet.

It was two thirty-seven when they brought the Jane Doe in. Tanya was the head ER nurse on the night s.h.i.+ft, an attractive and intelligent five-year veteran of the Trauma team. She was twenty-nine, with a ready, easy smile and strong youthful features offset by a cascade of copper-colored hair and the clearest gray eyes. Only her eyes belied her age, bore witness to how much suffering she'd seen.

Tanya was by the front desk when the panicked, staggering man came stumbling through the door. He was soaking wet, semi-coherent and frantic, bearing a muddy, blood-soaked bundle in his arms. Tanya raced to him and grabbed a hold of the bundle, eased it down. She peeled back the folds of cloth, bit back a gasp.

It was a woman, or used to be. She was nude, semiconscious, and she looked like she'd been through a thres.h.i.+ng machine. Tanya reacted instantly, calling a code yellow full alert and scrambling the team, then tried to keep her cool as she sussed out her condition.

It was beyond severe: a half-dozen lacerations of the face and torso, any one of which should have killed her outright. A deep cut along her chin, that hooked down and missed the carotid artery by millimeters. The jawbone gleamed, visible through a frothing sheen of b.l.o.o.d.y saliva. An eight-inch gash across her lower abdomen had eviscerated the bowel. Pink intestine looped and bulged from the hole. The blood loss could only be described as ma.s.sive.

Strangest of all were the deep puncture wounds that spanned her arms and legs and back. They were huge, ugly, brutal. Tanya recognized them instantly, though she had never seen anything this bad before. Bite marks. All over her body. Animal bite marks. Like a dog, but bigger.

Much bigger.

There was no time to waste. Diaph.o.r.etic shock had already set in: sweating tremors, heartbeat racing, body temperature and blood pressure perilously low. They got her onto a gurney and barreled down the hall, got her triaged before they even got her name, tagged her Jane Doe 114. They took X-rays and abdomen film and started IVs running even as they drew blood and sent it to the lab for blood-gas a.n.a.lysis, typing, and tox screens. The team worked frantically, creating a blood-spattered hornet's nest of activity around the dying woman. Heart monitors were set up, beeping out the ragged tempo of life; catheters and nasal-gastric tubes were run, draining off blood and waste fluid.

Trauma transformed into a hive-mind, a single cacophonous interlocking organism in blue scrubs and surgical gowns. Their mission was to get her stable: stop the bleeding, keep her breathing, suture the smaller lacerations, and pack the bigger stuff until they got her into surgery. There was blood in her mouth, fluid in her lungs. They suctioned and intubated her, running tubes down her throat to clear the pa.s.sage.

And that was when she went altered.

And started to fight.

Jane rolled her eyes, slipping in and out of oblivion.

Fear raced through her, tearing her mind in two. There was light and noise and yelling voices. There were hands all over her, doing things. Her human side dimly sensed that they were friendly, that they were only trying to help. But the other side of her was animal, and it was wounded. It wanted them to stop.

It would hurt them if they didn't.

Jane gasped, tried to warn them. Her mouth wouldn't work right. Something was in her mouth. The room fragmented, went black, came back again, bringing with it pain. So much pain. Molten agony blossomed in her belly, spread through her limbs and reverberated back, telegraphing torment. There were tubes in her mouth, tubes in her arms, tubes in her groin.

The smell of her blood was everywhere. It made her animal side crazy. Voices filled her head, strange frantic buzzings tortured her ears. Blood glued her skin to the sheet, dripped from the tips of her fingers and the corners of her mouth. Blood was leaking out of her at an alarming rate. She took another ragged gasp, tasted Nora on her breath.

”Look out!”

Tanya ducked as Jane's right arm came up, a wild roundhouse slash at the tubes anch.o.r.ed to her left elbow. It missed her head by inches, caught the rigging leading to the IV stand instead. The needle ripped out; the resulting tangle sent saline bags and stainless steel cras.h.i.+ng to the floor. Her arm continued on its arc, as her hand grabbed the intubation tube and pulled it out. Brinks, the intern surgeon, looked up from packing the abdominal laceration.

”G.o.ddammit, keep her down!”

Simmons, the surgical resident, gestured to Tanya. ”Hit her up! Secs-and-Pav, two hundred ceecees!”

Tanya nodded. Seconal choline and Pavulon, enough to paralyze a p.i.s.sed-off rhino for a good thirty minutes. She ran to the cabinet, pulled out a hypo, tore the bag open.

Back on the table, all h.e.l.l broke loose as Jane stiffened, back arching off the table and slamming down hard, her legs kicking and spasming. Four more orderlies came barreling in, grabbed on to her limbs, tried to pin her down.