Chapter Seven
Seven
The sofa was not as uncomfortable as he had feared. Or maybe, Luke thought, he was more exhausted than he had realized, because he fell into the wrong dream…
…The next curve comes up in the headlights.
He automatically reduces the speed of the SUV.
It’s late. The fog is getting heavier. The night feels endless.
So does the road. He can’t remember why he needs to keep driving.
He only knows he’s looking for something important. He can’t stop until he finds it.
He drives out of the curve, accelerating gently because he does not know what lies in wait on the other side. He is surprised to see a straight stretch of pavement ahead of him. Good. He can increase his speed.
But he can’t accelerate, because there is a dog in the middle of the road, wolflike eyes gleaming a hellish gold in the deep night. It’s a medium-sized animal, not a large one, but there is nothing fluffy about him—nothing to disguise the predator under the surface.
The creature does not move. Just stands there, waiting. Panting.
He brings the SUV to a halt a few yards away. Still the dog does not move off into the forest. In the glare of the headlights, it’s obvious there is something wrong with the animal’s shoulder. The fur is wet. Matted.
The dog is bleeding. In shock.
He climbs out of the SUV and walks cautiously forward. An injured animal is a dangerous creature. But the dog does not snarl a warning; he just stands there, waiting.
Luke stops and holds out a hand. The dog swipes his tongue across Luke’s fingers.
“Can you make it to the car?” Luke asks.
The dog starts toward the SUV as if he understands the words. But he doesn’t get far. He’s too weak. Luke lifts him and carries him to the rear of the SUV, loads the animal into the cargo bay, and wraps an emergency blanket around him.
That is when he realizes the creature is not wearing a collar.
“Maybe you’ve been chipped,” he says.
He closes the cargo bay door, gets behind the wheel, and does a tight three-point turn to reverse course.
He takes the dog to a twenty-four-hour emergency veterinary clinic.
“An interesting hybrid,” the vet says as she closes the wound on the dog’s shoulder. “But without a DNA test I couldn’t tell you what the breed mix is. He hasn’t been chipped and there’s no collar. I don’t know of anyone who is looking for a lost dog that fits this description.”
“What will happen to him?” he asks.
“I can’t keep him here,” the vet says. “You’ll have to take him to a shelter. They’ll make sure he gets follow-up care. By the way, this dog was not hit by a car. He was shot.”
She uses a medical instrument to hold up the smashed bullet she has just removed from the dog’s shoulder. It is surprisingly shiny, almost as if it was made of silver.
Just a trick of the light, he thinks. No one uses silver bullets, not in the real world.