The Night Beat

from an era so far removed from mine that sometimes it was like we weren’t even talking the same language. “Don’t worry. I’ll be stronger this way.”
    “Hell hath no fury like a weregirl scorned,” Maurice suggested.
    “Canines don’t lie much and we don’t like those who do. We really hate it when someone close to us has lied, particularly when it’s us they’ve lied to.”
    “As I said.” Maurice rolled his eyes. “So, Amanda and I are off to the races. What are the rest of you going to be doing?”
    “Hunting moles,” Monty said. “Ken, I’d like your help.”
    “He was suspect number two.”
    They both gave me a dirty look. “Anyone else called out as the potential betrayer of the ages?” Monty asked rather more snidely than I felt necessary.
    “Ralph, the Count, and Clyde, for starters. By the time we were done, pretty much any being could have been the main suspect. It’s easy to get paranoid, especially when there’s proof that paranoia is the right way to go. Jack even insinuated that the Gods and Monsters could be in on it.”
    “The Prince’s side would like us to think so, yes.” Monty gently removed Rover from my waist and draped him over his shoulders. “We’ll be in touch. Give Ralph our best…you know, when he wakes up.”
    The four of them gave me the hugs and the standard atta girls, and then I was alone. Well, as alone as it was possible to be in a hospital teeming with personnel I knew. But, I wasn’t with any of them. I was a lone wolf. I wondered how Ralph had stood it all these years.
    It was easier to maneuver through the hospital this way, though. No one really paid me much notice, and I was able to find Ralph’s room in a few minutes. I hated hospitals, but I shoved that aside. I wasn’t here for me, I was here for him.
    He looked pretty pathetic. His fur was matted with blood and he had an inordinate amount of tubes and wires going into his body. Beeping and blinking machines filled up half the room. He was twitching, which I hoped meant he was dreaming and that there was brain activity. I didn’t bother to look at the machines -- I had no clue what any of them did or were trying to tell me, and now wasn’t the time to learn.
    I grabbed his chart as I pulled the one chair in the room over and sat down. My last hospital visit I’d been in a similar position, only sitting on Jack’s lap. How long ago that felt.
    Ralph was as bad as everyone had said. The doctor’s weren’t giving him a rosy recovery outlook. My throat felt tight as the words “all my fault” went across my mind like a repeating electronic banner. I took his paw in my hand.
    “I’m so sorry I didn’t listen to you. You were right, all along -- about Jack, about what we werewolves should be doing, maybe about everything. I’m sorry I never paid any attention until it was almost too late.”
    He didn’t respond. I’d known he wouldn’t, but the disappointment rolled over me anyway. I thought about what Sexy Cindy had said, that she’d love it if a guy like Ralph wanted her. He should want her -- she’d seen him for what he was, a hero.
    But, hero or not, Ralph was a werewolf fanatic, and fanatics didn’t mate outside their species. Meaning he’d spent all this time hoping I’d wake up and smell the kibble.
    Whether he’d wake up, or wake up still even remotely interested in me, was a mystery. I had to ask myself if I could be interested in him. It was hard to say yes or no. I’d called him when I was frightened and he’d come to save me -- had saved me. Just like Black Wolf and his pack had come and saved me.
    I gave up and let the tears come. I’d closed the door tightly behind me, so hopefully no one was going to hear me bawling my head off. I just hoped I could keep the howling to a minimum.
    Not to enough of a minimum, apparently, if the arrival of a nurse I’d seen around but really didn’t know was any indication. She was older, plump and sort of motherly, complete with her hair in a bun and her nurse’s cap on just so. Just looking at her was calming, which is why I figured she looked and dressed this way.
    “Ah,” she said as she came in and shut the door behind her. “You must be our poor brave boy’s next of kin.”
    “Sort of.” I already knew Ralph had no kin, and with no official pack, he was alone. But I was his superior officer, and that had to count for something. “Is he going to make it?”
    She took the chart from me and glanced through it.