Free Blood and Silver - 04 by James R. Tuck Page B

around, I noticed that there were a lot of black skid marks on the doorframes at the beginning and end of the hallway too.
    Straightened out, he sat for a second, head down. He took a deep breath, held it, and let it go in a long stream of exhale. He looked up at me. “Sorry about that.”
    I waved it away. “It’s cool.”
    His hand hit the armrest of the chair. “I’m still not used to this damn chair.”
    “It has to suck in a major way.”
    “More than you can imagine.”
    I shrugged. There was nothing left to say. He was in the wheelchair. Nothing could be done and there was no use in going on about it. He nodded and the moment passed. I knelt down so Larson and I were eye level. I kept my voice low, assuming he had wanted to move away for privacy. “All right, what’s the real situation?”
    “She should have healed her injuries by now. Lycanthrope metabolism works at a hugely accelerated rate repairing damage almost as soon as it occurs.”
    I knew this. I’d had to inflict damage on lycanthropes in my line of work before. I had actually done it just a few hours ago. “You think the pregnancy is taking her ability to heal?”
    He looked into the other room. Kat was sitting on the table, cradling the Were’s head in her lap and hand-feeding her. He turned back to me. “I think it’s the most likely scenario. If we can’t get her healing to kick in . . .” his voice trailed off with a shrug.
    “What could happen?”
    Larson sighed. “Anything. Nothing good. I won’t bother you with the medical stuff, but suffice to say, her blood is extremely abnormal, even for a lycanthrope. Its alkalines are all off the charts, and the proteins are extremely low. The fevered skin over the fetus is worrisome. It could be an injury from the beating or it could be something unknown. Either way, it probably means trouble.” He rubbed thin fingers across his eyes. “Lycanthropy is hard on pregnancy in any case. The high metabolism of the mother mixed with the high metabolism of the fetus usually results in early miscarriage. Weres have a tough time carrying a pregnancy to term in the best of situations. Add injury to a need to change and the probability goes to hell. She could kick-start her healing if she shifted, but I bet she won’t because that might terminate the pregnancy in her condition.”
    “Will she recover from her injuries without shifting form?”
    He looked past me to the other room where Sophia and Kat were. “If we can speed up her metabolism . . . maybe. I doubt it, though.”
    “So she has to change form to kick-start the healing process?”
    “That is the main trigger for lycanthropes. The change might make her abort, though.”
    Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. My mind wondered if the Were-lion who had beaten her knew she was with child. Or pup. Whichever. I looked at Larson. “So it’s wait and see, then.”
    He stopped looking me in the eye, turning away and looking down at his hands in his lap. “There is one thing we can try.”
    Not looking at me is bad. I had a feeling I was not going to like his suggestion. He did, too, that’s why he was suddenly obsessed with looking at his own thumbnail. I waited for him to speak.
    “Remember last year when you had the Spear of Destiny and you used your power to heal Longinus and Charlotte?”
    My mind tripped back almost six months. After killing Appollonia and taking the Spear of Destiny from her, my ability to sense magick was boosted. Holding the Spear allowed me to reach in and heal Longinus, the immortal owner of the Spear. I had been able to do the same for Charlotte, a Were-spider who had been Appollonia’s familiar. She had been forced to serve that hell-bitch until I set her free. They had both been wounded, Longinus mortally so, and I had been able to call out their supernatural abilities to heal them.
    I looked down at Larson’s legs strapped into the chair he sat in. He had been there, bleeding from the wound that took his