"Those panels won't support your weight," she warned him.
"No, but this is a hospital and this is the old wing. I bet they have a cable ladder for their computer and electric cables . . ." As he spoke, he'd hopped on the empty bed and pushed up a ceiling panel to take a look.
"What's a cable ladder?" Stella asked.
"In this case, it's a sturdy aluminum track attached to the oak beam with stout hardware." He sounded pleased as he replaced the ceiling panel he'd taken out. "I could hide a couple of people up here if I had to."
He was a mercenary, she remembered, and wondered how many times he'd hidden on top of cable ladders.
He moved the empty bed away from the wall and climbed on it again and removed a different panel. "Do you think you can get this panel back where it belongs after I get up here, boy?"
"Sure." Devonte sounded thoroughly pleased. If anyone else had called him "boy," he'd have been bristling. He was already well on the way to a big case of hero worship, just like the one she'd had.
"Stella." Her father took off his red flannel shirt and laid it on the empty bed behind him. "When this is over, you call Clive, tell him everything, and he'll arrange a cleanup. He knows who to call for help with it. It's safer for everyone if people don't believe in vampires and werewolves. Leaving bodies makes it kind of hard to deny."
"I'll call him."
Without his shirt to cover him, she could see there was no softness in him. A few scars showed up gray on his dark skin. She'd forgotten how dark he was, like ebony.
As he peeled off his sky-blue undershirt, he said, with a touch of humor, "If you don't want to see more of your father than any daughter ever should, you need to turn your back." And she realized she'd been staring at him.
Devonte made an odd noise - he was laughing. There was a tightness to the sound and she knew he was scared and excited to see what it looked like when a man changed into a werewolf. For some reason she felt her own mouth stretch into a nervous grin she let Devonte see just before she did as her father advised her and turned her back.
David didn't like changing in front of anyone. He wasn't exactly vulnerable - but it made the wolf edgy and if someone decided to get brave and approach too closely . . . well, the wolf would feel threatened, like a snake shedding its skin.
So to the boy he said quietly, "Watching is fine. But wait for a bit if you want to touch . . ." He had a thought. "Stella, if she sends the Linnfords in first, I'll do my best to stay hidden. I can take a vampire . . ." Honesty forced him to continue. "Maybe I can take a vampire, but only with surprise on my side. Her human minions, if they are still human enough to walk in daylight, are still too human to detect me. Don't let them take Devonte out of this room."
He tried to remember everything he knew about vampires. Once he changed, it would be too late to talk. "Don't look in the vampire's eyes, don't let her touch you. Unless you are really a believer, don't plan on crosses helping you out. When I attack, don't try and help, just keep out of it so I don't have to worry about you."
Wishing they had a wooden stake, he knelt on the floor and allowed himself to change. Calling the wolf was easy, it knew there was a fight to be had, blood to be shed, and in its eagerness it rushed the change as if called by the moon herself.
He never remembered exactly how bad it was going to hurt. His mother had once told him that childbirth was like that for women. That if they remembered how bad it was, they'd lack the courage to face the next time.
But he did remember it was always worse than he expected, and that somehow helped him bear it.
The shivery, icy pain slid over his bones while fire threaded through his muscles, reshaping, reorganizing, and altering what was there to suit itself. Experience kept him from making noise - it was one of the first things he learned: how to control his instincts and keep the howls, the growls, and the whines inside and bury them in silence. Noise can attract unwanted attention.
His lungs labored to provide oxygen as adrenaline forced his heart to beat too fast. His face ached as teeth became fangs and his jaw extended with cheekbones. His eyesight blurred and then sharpened with a predatory clarity that allowed him to see prey and enemy alike no matter what shadows they tried to hide in.
"Cool," said someone. Devonte. He-who-was-to-be-guarded.
Someone moved and it attracted his attention. Her terror flooded his senses like perfume.
Prey. He liked it when they ran.
Then she lifted her chin and he saw a second image, superimposed over the first. A child standing between him and two smaller children, her chin jutting out as she lifted up a baseball bat in wordless defiance that spoke louder than her terror and the blood.
Not prey. Not prey. His. His star.
It was all right then. She could see his pain - she had earned that right. And together they would stop the monster from eating the boy.
For the first few minutes after the change, he mostly thought like the wolf, but as the pain subsided, he settled back into control. He shook off the last of the unpleasant tingles with the same willpower he used to set aside the desire to snarl at the boy who reached out with a hand . . . only to jerk back, caught by the strap on his wrist.
David hopped onto the bed and snapped through the ballistic nylon that attached Devonte's cuff to the rail and waited while the boy petted him tentatively with all the fascination of a person touching a tiger.
"That'll be a little hard to explain," said Stella.
He looked at her and she flinched . . . then jerked up her chin and met his eyes. "What if the Linnfords ask about the restraint?"
It had been the wolf's response to seeing the boy he was supposed to protect tied up like a bad dog, not the man's.
"They haven't been here," said Devonte. "Unless they spend a lot of time in hospital prison, they won't know it was supposed to be there. I'll cover the cuff on my wrist with the blanket."
Stella nodded her head thoughtfully. "All right. And if things get bad, at least this way you can run. He's right, it's better if the restraint is off."
David let them work it out. He launched himself off Devonte's bed and onto the other - forgetting that Devonte was already hurt until he heard the boy's indrawn breath. David was still half operating on wolf instincts - which wasn't very helpful when fighting vampires. He needed to be thinking.
Maybe it had only been the suddenness of his movement, though, because the boy made the same sound when David hopped through the almost-too-narrow opening in the ceiling and onto the track in the plenum space between the original fourteen-foot ceiling and false panels fitted into the flimsy hangers that kept them in place. The track groaned a little under his sudden weight, but it didn't bend.