Chapter 7

I ventured out to the gas station the next morning in my borrowed coat and bought a breakfast burrito. It was hot, if not tasty, and I was hungry enough to eat almost anything.

The young man working the till looked as though he'd have liked to ask questions, but I cowed him with my stare. People around here know better than to get into staring contests. I wasn't a were-anything, but he didn't know that because he wasn't either. It wasn't nice to intimidate him, but I wasn't feeling very nice.

I needed to do something, anything, and I was stuck waiting here all morning. Waiting meant worrying about what Jesse was suffering at the hands of her captors and thinking of Mac and wondering what I could have done to prevent his death. It meant reliving the old humiliation of having Bran tell me the man I loved was using me. I wanted to be out of Aspen Creek, where the memories of being sixteen and alone tried to cling no matter how hard I flinched away; but obedience to Bran was too ingrained- especially when his orders made sense. I didn't have to be nice about it, though.

I'd started back to the motel, my breath raising a fog and the snow crunching beneath my shoes, when someone called out my name.

"Mercy!"

I looked across the highway where a green truck had pulled over-evidently at the sight of me, but the driver didn't look familiar. The bright morning sun glittering on the snow made it hard to pick out details, so I shaded my eyes with my hand and veered toward him for a better look.

As soon as I changed directions, the driver turned off the truck, hopped out, and jogged across the highway.

"I just heard that you were here," he said, "but I thought you'd be long gone this morning or else I'd have stopped in earlier."

The voice was definitely familiar, but it didn't go with the curling red hair and unlined face. He looked puzzled for a moment, even hurt, when I didn't recognize him immediately. Then he laughed and shook his head. "I forgot, even though every time I look in a mirror it still feels like I'm looking at a stranger."

The eyes, pale blue and soft, went with the voice, but it was his laugh that finally clued me in. "Dr. Wallace?" I asked. "Is that really you?"

He tucked his hands in his pockets, tilted his head, and gave me a wicked grin. "Sure as moonlight, Mercedes Thompson, sure as moonlight."

Carter Wallace was the Aspen Creek veterinarian. No, he didn't usually treat the werewolves, but there were dogs, cats, and livestock enough to keep him busy. His house had been the nearest to the one I grew up in, and he'd helped me make it through those first few months after my foster parents died.

The Dr. Wallace I'd known growing up had been middle-aged and balding, with a belly that covered his belt buckle. His face and hands had had been weathered from years spent outside in the sun. This man was lean and hungry; his skin pale and perfect like that of a twenty-year-old-but the greatest difference was not in his appearance.

The Carter Wallace I'd known was slow-moving and gentle. I'd seen him coax a skunk out of a pile of tires without it spraying everything, and keep a frightened horse still with his voice while he clipped away the barbed wire it had become tangled in. There had been something peaceful about him, solid and true like an oak.

Not anymore. His eyes were still bright and kind, but there was also something predatory that peered out at me. The promise of violence clung to him until I could almost smell the blood.

"How long have you been wolf?" I asked.

"A year last month," he said. "I know, I know, I swore I'd never do it. I knew too much about the wolves and not enough. But I had to retire year before last because my hands quit working right." He looked down, a little anxiously, at his hands and relaxed a bit as he showed me he could move all his fingers easily. "I was all right with that. If there is anything a vet gets used to-especially around here-it is aging and death. Gerry started in on me again, but I'm stubborn. It took more than a little arthritis and Gerry to make me change my mind." Gerry was his son and a werewolf.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Bone cancer." Dr. Wallace shook his head. "It was too far gone, they said. Nothing but months in a bed hoping you die before the morphine quits working on the pain. Everyone has their price, and that was more than I could bear. So I asked Bran."

"Most people don't survive the Change if they're already too sick," I said.

"Bran says I'm too stubborn to die." He grinned at me again, and the expression was beginning to bother me because it had an edge that Dr. Wallace's, my Dr. Wallace's, had never had. I'd forgotten how odd it was to know someone from both sides of the Change, forgotten just how much the wolf alters the human personality. Especially when the human wasn't in control.

"I thought I'd be practicing again by now," Dr. Wallace said. "But Bran says not yet." He rocked a little on his heels and closed his eyes as if he could see something I didn't. "It's the smell of blood and meat. I'm all right as long as nothing is bleeding." He whispered the last sentence and I heard the desire in his voice.

He gathered himself together with a deep breath, then looked at me with eyes only a shade darker than the snow. "You know, for years I've said that werewolves aren't much different from other wild predators." Like the great white, he'd told me, or the grizzly bear.

"I remember," I said.

"Grizzly bears don't attack their families, Mercy. They don't crave violence and blood." He closed his eyes. "I almost killed my daughter a few days ago because she said something I disagreed with. If Bran hadn't stopped by..." He shook his head. "I've become a monster, not an animal. I'll never be able to be a vet again. My family never will be safe, not while I'm alive."