One of the doors ahead of us opened up; Cormac held it, clearing the path for us, urging us inside. He was right where he needed to be, to come to the rescue. The warm air of the hotel lobby had a corporate, carpeted scent that stabbed through the turmoil. I steered Luis toward that smell, our escape route.
“Thanks,” I gasped.
“This way,” Cormac said, pointing to a room—a bellhop station or maybe just an office or small meeting room, I couldn’t tell. I pulled Luis’s arm and pointed to the shelter.
Cormac shouted, a path cleared, and we moved forward.
Another familiar face emerged from the crowd of onlookers—Dr. Shumacher. “Can I help?”
I couldn’t think of very many people I’d want helping in a situation like this, but she was one of them. She’d seen out-of-control lycanthropes before. The four of us lunged into the room, and Cormac slammed the door.
After the mob on the street, the room was very quiet. It was small, no more than ten feet across, carpeted, empty, lit by fluorescents. It could have held a small conference table and a few chairs, or served as luggage storage.
Luis set Esperanza on the floor. She was still batting at him, and he was doing a good job ducking, but she’d gotten a swipe across his cheek, three rows of cuts dripping blood. The wound was hard to differentiate from the smears of cow blood that covered us all.
Her whole body was rigid, braced against itself, and she was gasping for breath. Traces of fur gave her brown skin a sheen. She was trying to keep it in, to hold it together. Luis held her close, still whispering in their language.
“Thanks,” I said to Cormac and Shumacher.
The scientist stood by the door, watching with her neutral, clinical gaze. “Her shifting under duress in public would have been a disaster.”
“Good thing it didn’t happen, then,” Cormac said.
Got that right. If she’d shifted in the middle of the crowd, the odds of her getting out without hurting anyone, even by accident, were slim. At least here, with friends looking after her, she had a chance of staying safe and in control. I couldn’t tell if she was right on the verge of shifting or not.
“You two might want to stay outside for now,” I said. “Just in case.”
Even Cormac didn’t argue, and they both stepped quickly outside and closed the door.
I pressed to the wall, ready to help if needed but wanting to stay out of the way, to avoid upsetting her precarious balance. If she was going to shift uncontrollably, she’d have done it by now, I thought. But I didn’t know her well enough to tell. Luis did, and he continued holding her, cradling her. Were-jaguars didn’t have packs like wolves. I didn’t know if the contact would help. Then again, maybe it would, not because he was another were-jaguar, but because he was her brother.
Using the hem of my shirt, I wiped at the blood spattered on me, which didn’t help to clean it up, really. So my shirt instead of my arm was bloody—hardly seemed an improvement.
Finally, Esperanza sighed, slumping in Luis’s arms. Her skin had lost the sheen of fur, and her hands were hands, with human fingers and fingernails, resting on her lap. Luis continued whispering at her, murmuring at her, until she seemed to fall asleep. He tried to clean some of the blood off her face, using a corner of his shirt. Didn’t have much more luck than I had.
When he finally looked at me, his face was ashen and lined with worry. “That was too close,” he said.
?
?Is she going to be okay?”
“Pissed off when she wakes up, but yes. I think so.”
I opened the door, let Shumacher back in and introduced her to Luis, who thanked her. Esperanza started to rouse, as if from a brief fainting spell, her face creased, struggling to sit up. She said something in Portuguese, and Luis reassured her.
“You might want to stay here for a time,” Shumacher said. “At least until that crowd clears out a little. Your friend is standing watch, keeping people out.”
If I focused, I could still hear shouting. I settled in to wait. Shumacher pulled a cell phone from her jacket pocket and made a call. She waited for an answer, and waited. When the number went to voice mail, she left a message.
“This is Elizabeth Shumacher, there’s been some trouble outside the hotel and I just wanted to touch base. Please call back when you get this.”
“Who?” I questioned. She looked worried.
“Sergeant Tyler,” she said. “I hope he’s all right.”
“He probably just missed the call,” I said.
She made another call. “Yes, can you call room twenty-four eighty, please. Thank you.”