(author’s note….characters belong to LKH…just having fun with all the “what ifs”---BAT)
Another long day at the office. I tossed my suit jacket on the couch and headed to the kitchen for coffee. Washing the dried chicken and goat blood off of myself could wait. I hadn’t even gotten a mug out when the phone rang. And rang. Shit. I’d forgotten to turn the answering machine on again. No choice but to pick up. “Hello?”
“Anita. You’re home.” It was Edward. He sounded relieved. Edward never sounded like anything but a smug bastard at this time of day or night.
“What do you want, Edward?”
He was silent for a moment. “Can we get together and talk face to face?”
“About what?” I did not like the way this conversation was headed. “It’s after four in the morning. What the hell could be so important that you want to talk now?”
“I need your advice…as a friend.”
It was my turn to be silent. Edward needed me as a friend? What was the world coming to? “Can I at least take a shower first?”
If it weren’t Death I was talking to, I’d swear he gave a sigh of relief. “Yes. I’ll be there in an hour. Is that enough time?”
“Yeah.” I had a dark thought. “You always just show up, Edward. Why are you being so considerate? What the hell is going on?”
“I’ll
see you soon, Anita.” He hung up, leaving me frowning at the buzzing phone.
As promised there was a knock on my door just after 5am. I took the Browning with me to answer it. Paranoid? Me? “Who is it?”
“Edward.”
I opened the door and stepped back to let him in. His careful mask was in place, but there was a hint of tension around the eyes. “You want coffee?” I asked as he made himself at home on my couch. He shook his head. “So talk to me, Edward. What’s up?”
For what seemed like forever he just sat there and looked at me. Slowly those pale assassin eyes of his turned into normal eyes, scared eyes even. “Anita, I…” He stopped, glanced back toward my bedroom. “Is there anyone else here?”
“No.”
Silence. I was starting to feel nervous. Edward had two facial expressions: blank and kill mode. Anything else was not good. “What, Edward?” I asked a little more gently.
“I may be joining your pard at the next full moon.”
My jaw dropped; I couldn’t help it. “You’ve been infected with lycanthropy, you mean?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
Edward a were? Irony didn’t even come close. This was plain out wrong. “It can’t be that bad. Maybe you’ll be okay.”
He shook his head. “No. I will not be okay. Look.” Wincing ever so slightly he untucked his shirt and lifted it past his stomach. Claw marks curved from one side of his chest down to vanish into his pants. I leaned closer. There were stitches in all the wounds.
“Shit, Edward. When did this happen?”
“Two days after the last full moon, so about a week ago.”
“How bad were they?” A wound like that was nothing to a non-human. Hell, I could heal something like that in a couple of days. And I wouldn’t even turn furry. I had the vampire marks to thank for that.
He gave me a cold stare. “Not as bad as the ones on my back.” With careful movements he removed his shirt completely. I stood and walked behind him so he wouldn’t have to get up. My stomach lurched when I saw what the shifter had done to him. It was as if they had tried to sharpen their claws on his back. There was hardly an inch of flesh untouched.
It was all I could do to keep my voice steady. “Did they bite a chunk out of your shoulder?” There couldn’t be another explanation for the ragged indent.
“Yes. I was careless. I am never careless,” he said, more to himself than to me. “I had a hit on a shifter out of state. It was supposed to be an easy case. Guy got attacked a few years back and had been killing lycanthropes in his spare time. One of the victim’s relatives wanted him stopped.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“I didn’t realize that he had a partner in crime. The other guy shifted and jumped me after I shot my target. I managed to kill him and drag myself to a nearby house. An ambulance was called and I spend four days in the hospital. Or rather, Ted Forrester did.”
“So it looked like a legal hit,” I said, nodding. “You pleaded self-defense and got released.” I paused, not wanting to ask the big question. “Did they do a blood test, Edward?”
“You know better than anyone that this type of lycanthropy can take a week to show up.” He sighed. “I didn’t want the test. I still don’t. I just…”
We both sat there for a few minutes letting everything sink in. I took a deep breath. “Is there anything I can do to help? Whatever you need, Edward, I’m here. I’d say I know what you’re going through, but…” The thought hung in the air. But I don’t.
“Remember that one conversation we had,” Edward began, “when you said I’d be one of the only people you’d trust to…take care of things if you got killed?”
“Yeah. You’d be the only one smart enough to take my head.” He just stared at me without speaking again. I was pretty sure I knew what was coming next, but I had to ask anyway. “Jesus, Edward, are you asking me to kill you?”
“Maybe.”
Maybe? Maybe? Fuck. “Edward, talk to me. I’m not sure I could kill you just because you might be a lycanthrope. First of all, you don’t know if you even are contaminated. And being a wereleopard is not the end of the world. I didn’t call you to have you kill me if I’d have ended up being a furball.”
“I’m not you, Anita. I kill the monsters for a living. I sure as hell can’t be one. More than likely I’d end up as some hitter’s next target.” His shoulders drooped ever so slightly. “What kind of life would that be?” he asked softly.
There was too much going through my mind to stay sitting, so I got up and paced the living room. Shit, shit, shit. While it was rational that Edward might get killed anyway if he truly was a shapeshifter now, I couldn’t see myself killing him to put him out of his misery, so to speak. Hell, a few months back when Gregory had accidentally clawed me, I would never have thought of ending my life if I became one of the terminally furry. But then, Edward wasn’t as close to a pard or pack like I was.
“Edward, what do you think the pard would do to me if I did kill you for essentially being one of them? I’m their Nimir-Ra, for crying out loud.” I looked down at him. His face was a blank mask once again. For some reason it made me sad. “It really isn’t the end of the world. Shit happens. That doesn’t mean you have to give up.”
Wrong thing to say. Gone was the almost normal _expression. While I watched his face it slowly tensed, his anger and rage finally leaking through. “I thought you would understand, Anita,” he said carefully. “You of all people. I do not want to live life as an animal!” he shouted, getting to his feet, gun pointed at me.
I stood there motionless. I finally began to see the whole picture. “I’m not going to kill you, Edward.” Fighting the urge to scramble for the Browning, I continued. “Maybe if you just take some time, think things over with an open mind. What about Donna and the kids? I know you care about them. Would you really want them to suddenly find out that you were dead, no explanation? The least you could do would be to let them down gently.”
Not what he wanted to hear. Edward turned the gun toward himself. I watched in horror as he pressed the barrel to his temple. “Donna’s husband got killed by a shifter. I really doubt that she and the kids, especially Peter, would be able to accept me as one. It doesn’t work that way, Anita.” His eyes burned like blue fire. “Either you will help me the way I want to be helped or you’ll have one hell of a mess to clean up in a minute.”
“Edward, wait,” I started. “What if you give the whole lycanthrope thing a…trial run? See if it might just be livable. Look at how many other people have survived and adapted. This doesn’t have to be the end, Edward.” I tried to put hope into my eyes. “Everything could be okay.”
He seemed to consider my words. He nodded slowly. “You’re right. It doesn’t have to be the end. But I think it will be.” Edward held the gun steady to his head and took a deep breath. “Goodbye, Anita. It’s been fun.”
“Edward, NO!”