Free Feast by Merrie Destefano

to need stitches,” he said.
    I nodded.
    “I can give her a topical anesthetic, but I don’t think I should take a chance on anything stronger. I don’t know enough about your anatomy. I can’t have her jump while I’m sewing her up—”
    “I can keep her under until you’re done.”
    Then I sang a soft enchantment and the room sparkled with dots of light.
    Ross bent over her again, then began the slow, delicate process of stitching her flesh together. “Do you know if the dog has its shots?” he asked.
    “Shots?” I gave him a blank stare.
    “Rabies shots. Where did this happen?”
    “In one of the cottages Driscoll rents.”
    “Then the dog’s owners must have filled out some paperwork when they registered. Ask Driscoll. I need to know if that dog has its current rabies vaccination.”
    “I’ll go get the dog.”
    Ross sighed as he stood up. The stitches were finished and Elspeth’s arm was now wrapped in layers of white gauze. “You don’t think that might look a bit suspicious?”
    “I can make it look like the dog ran away.”
    “Check the paperwork first, would you? If you show up here in the morning with a dog—”
    Just then Elspeth moaned and her eyes fluttered open. She tried to sit up, grabbed for her injured arm, then saw that it was wrapped in a bandage.
    “Lie still for a few minutes,” Ross said. “I’ll go see if I can find some more topical anesthetic for the pain.” He walked out the door and I could hear him rummaging through drawers in the next room.
    “What did he do to me?” she asked me when we were alone. “My arm burns.”
    “Who taught you to hunt?”
    She grimaced, then lay back down and closed her eyes. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
    “You didn’t mask your scent. You walked into that house smelling like a human. If I hadn’t gotten there when I did, that dog might have killed you—”
    “I don’t need a babysitter.”
    “No. You need a father.”
    “Really? Well, I wonder where I might find one of those. Maybe Aunt Sage will take me shopping in the morning, I hear humans buy and sell almost everything—”
    “It’s my fault.”
    “What?” She sat halfway up again and stared at me. I never apologized, never said I was wrong. It caught me by surprise too.
    “I should have taught you to hunt, myself,” I said, wishing I could take back the years I had ignored her. But I never thought she would get hurt, thought that the Elders back home would have done a better job than I could. Apparently I had been wrong about that. “I didn’t realize that you would be so—so—”
    “Human?”
    “No. Stubborn, like me.”
    She grinned and threw both arms around me, then let out a little yelp when she accidentally pulled her stitches. She laid her head against my chest and I ran my hand over her hair. For the first time, I realized that this whole father-daughter thing was going to be a lot more difficult than I expected.

Part 2
    Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
—Henry David Thoreau

Chapter 21
Back in the Wood
    Thane:
    The evening slipped away. One moonbeam after another slid through black branches, teasing and calling, until finally, the Mistress of the Night disappeared. I slumped against the wall, one curved claw absently drawing patterns in the dust on a side table. The time for hunting was over. The shelter of sweet black night gone. Still the moon continued to call to me, even after her sister, the ever-brilliant sun, crested the nearby hills.
    A breeze circled through the woods, a moan and a sigh of wind, then it swept back toward the Driscoll mansion, carrying with it the stench of death. It seeped through windows and doors, curled down corridors until it found me. Standing alone in the front parlor.
    I closed my eyes.
    It was the dead human in the woods. Already his body was beginning to decompose, to cast the foul odor of rotting meat into passing air currents.
    I heard a soft footstep approach, cautious, hesitant. A familiar