“I don’t know. Tyler—he actually listened to me. He was almost lucid. But the other two . . .” I shook my head. I wouldn’t know until I saw them as people. I wanted to hear their side of it.
Shumacher and Stafford oversaw the next part of the proceedings. This involved Stafford’s soldiers bringing out their nets and ropes, laced with strands of silver, to “secure” the wolves. That was the term they used. This basically involved bundling them up until they couldn’t move. I didn’t want to watch.
Instead, Ben and I joined Cormac, who remained on the fringes of the proceedings.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to have any guns,” I said, nodding at the rifle in his hands.
“It’s technically not a gun,” Cormac said.
“Why do I even argue with you?” I said.
“Somebody has to, I suppose,” Cormac said, calm as ever. I couldn’t tell if he was joking.
Ben held out his hand. “Why don’t you give that to me, just in case your parole officer happens to wander by.” Cormac handed him the gun without arguing.
“Were you really going to shoot me?” I said.
“What makes you think that?”
“You looked like you were going to shoot me.”
His frown was long suffering. “I didn’t shoot you. Why are we even talking about this?”
I didn’t know, so I turned away, still in a huff, still on edge. Ben was watching us, looking amused.
“We need to find Becky,” I said to him.
“Don’t you think you should clean up first?” He looked me over.
I was still drenched in blood. The wounds had clotted and itched now rather than hurt; they were already healing. But yeah, I should probably change clothes.
“Kitty, are you all right?” Shumacher marched toward us, away from where Stafford and his men were checking over the knots securing the wolves.
“Do they have enough room to shift back?” I said, looking past her to the captured wolves. “Now that they’re asleep they’re going to start shifting back.”
“We’ll have them out of the nets before then,” Shumacher assured me. “What about you?”
Yeah, the covered-in-blood thing, right. “I’m fine,” I muttered.
She seemed doubtful, wincing in sympathy but also curious. She wasn’t looking at me, but was studying the wounds, the rows of claw marks streaking my arm. If she watched long enough she’d see the skin close over as the wounds healed. I self-consciously tucked my arm in and held it protectively.
Shumacher said, “Kitty, what happened here? What’s your assessment of them?”
I didn’t want to say. I was worried. I’d dealt with some pretty messed-up werewolves before, but never ones this strong and this far gone. I wasn’t sure they’d be much more likely to talk once they were human. I wasn’t sure they wanted to be human. If they didn’t want to be human, but they couldn’t control their wolf sides, where did they belong?
Finally I said, “I want to talk to them as people. See how much they really want help.”
“Would you do that? Would you come to talk to them?”
I couldn’t say no.
A rhythmic thumping sounded in the distance. Ben and I heard it first and looked up and around.
“Is that a helicopter?” Ben said.
“Colonel Stafford called it in to carry the squad back to Fort Carson.”
They really had this worked out, didn’t they?