“Who is this?”
“Arne!” she said in relief, nearly attacking the box with excitement. “Arne, I need you!”
“Elizabeth?” The video screen came to life and a grayscale Arne with disheveled hair appeared. His tired eyes widened, and she didn’t want to know what bloody image his screen displayed. He straightened. “What happened, are you all right?”
“I’m fine, but Henry isn’t. I need your help.” Her voice cut off as her chest closed in on her again, a sob rising to her throat. She tried to breathe.
“Elizabeth.”
She straightened and wiped her face with the back of her hands. “He’s going to die.”
“Elizabeth, Henry is…” He appeared conflicted.
“Dammit, Arne, I know! I’ve known for a while, so you don’t need to cover for him. What you need to do is get out here and help me get him home!”
“I’ll be right there,” and the screen went black.
***
Elizabeth allowed Arne a moment, fighting her impatience. It was lonely under the night sky, even with the chirps of insects, and her chest shuddered with urgency. Within the trees, a yellow square of light reminded her she never turned off her bedroom light. How many people had heard the brawl, and how hadn’t Arne?
Just when panic began flooding in, the gate opened and Arne jogged from the mansion, wearing a robe over his pajamas and house shoes on his feet. As soon as he met her, she ran into the forest, hoping he could keep up. She shoved branches aside as she ran and when she reached Henry, nearly skidding to a stop at his side, from behind her Arne breathed, “Dear God.”
He knelt beside her. “What happened?” he asked in a rush, shining a small flashlight over the makeshift bandage. Nearly the entire ensemble had been dyed a rich, dark red.
“Stabbed by a Diableron.” His eyes were full of questions when they shot to hers—not questions about what Diablerons were, but questions about how she knew. “There’s no time to explain, but the poison is taking over and we need to figure out how to get him home so I can fix him before he bleeds out.”
Arne grasped the beast’s fur in his fist and yanked, something painful enough to wake him if any consciousness remained inside, and the beast opened his eyes, baring his wild and ferocious fangs. “It’s all right,” Arne said. “It’s me.” After a short second, he nodded. “Yes, it’s Arne.” Elizabeth stayed at Henry’s bottom half, putting more pressure on the wound, and tepid blood oozed from her jacket as she pushed, like excess water squeezed from a sponge. The slimy, slick texture left an unsettling flutter in her stomach, but a deep breath steadied her. Arne threw her a quick glance then added, “Yes, yes, Elizabeth is fine. I need you to come home with me so we can get you mended, all right?”
A pause.
“Yes, you can. You have to.”
The beast’s eyes, covered with an opaque glaze, began to drift again and Arne yanked harder on his fur, making him snarl again. “Now!” Arne commanded. “Up!”
It took him a moment, but he stood, and with Elizabeth at his end and Arne supporting his front, they eventually guided him through the gate and his large front door. The beast stumbled and swayed, and didn’t seem aware of her.
She couldn’t stare at the interior of his darkened mansion, since she focused all her energy on keeping him upright, and just when they got to a large room off the foyer—a sitting room—he collapsed on the floor, lying again on his side. The floor felt like marble, she thought as she knelt next to him, and when Arne flipped on a light switch, illuminating a massive, elaborate chandelier above, she saw it was marble, swirled with black and grey. One foot from where he fell lay a large, intricate rug, covering most of the cold, unforgiving floor. But the only thing registering—besides her blood-stained arms and clothes, and a bloody strand of hair hanging over her eyes—was him, his fur caked in more blood than seemed humanly possible.
Frantically, she felt for a pulse, not knowing where she might find one on a creature like him. But he was human inside, so she put her index and middle fingers together and pressed them against the top of his trunk-like neck, beneath his long jaw bone. She closed her eyes, visualizing the blood-flow in his carotid and willing the pulse to come through his thick skin and fur. It knocked against her fingertips then, ever so faintly: more heightened than usual and only slightly unsteady. “I’ll need to get medical supplies. Maybe from Doc—”
“We have them,” Arne said. “Once in a while, when he gets into it with a wolf or bear, they come in handy. And of course when Eustace shot him last month…”
“What do you have?” she asked, pressing harder on the wound. He wasn’t all the way under because he groaned again, his hind leg twitching. She wondered what went on inside his head, and even though she knew it was, she prayed it wasn’t nightmares.
Arne ran from the room and behind him called, “Everything but local anesthetic!” He returned only seconds later, holding two large black duffle bags. “Sutures, bandages, dressing, and even morphine.”
She looked to him in surprise.
“We had to be prepared for anything,” he said with a shrug.
“How old is the morphine?”
“I cycle through it. The last time I restocked was eight months ago.”
“How did you…?”
“Elizabeth, Henry’s resources are unlimited. We have our ways.”
She looked to the side. “The morphine will relieve any pain he’s feeling, and it may even dull the effects of the poison.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t. I don’t know anything about how it’ll react. It could be deadly if the poison was chemical, but since it’s probably a biotoxin…” They stared into each other’s eyes, words not needed. The information on Diableron toxin in her book lacked medical details, if she recalled correctly, but it did mention that the toxin put the brain in some hypnotic, vacant-yet-sleepless state, and that while in that state, victims experience the most excruciating pain known to man, that can, eventually, put them into cardiac arrest. Besides, Henry’s heart rate was more rapid than she’d ever noticed, so the toxin couldn’t be an opioid of any kind. Which meant complications weren’t likely to occur if she injected morphine.
Finally, Arne nodded. “Do it. Do whatever your gut tells you, Elizabeth. Yours is one of the only ones I trust.”
She didn’t allow herself time to doubt what her gut told her, and before she knew it, she was opening one of the boxes holding an eight milligram morphine carpuject cartridge. The liquid was pale yellow in color, almost clear, and she was grateful it hadn’t expired, that Arne had been vigilant enough to keep it stocked. Opening a sterile syringe, she popped off the caps and connected the blunt tip to the cartridge, drawing up all the medication. She shoved it into the robust muscle of his backside—his glutes, if he were in human form—and successfully injected all eight milligrams.
He twitched.
The next instant he jerked into a crouch, his claw ripping down her forearm and forcing a shriek from her chest.
Cradling her arm, she scrambled back until her spine pressed against the wall, her breathing sharp. She made eye contact, but he wasn’t Henry right now, or even the monster he sometimes pretended to be. He was wild and violent, and his eyes said he didn’t know who he was. Arne backed up next to her. “It’s all right,” he said, lifting his hands, and the beast snarled, following it with a deafening roar. They both flinched. “It’s me, Henry: Arne.”
The beast’s eyes began to go slack again, and with a final growl, they rolled to the back of his head and he fell to his side.
Arne stared, slack-jawed. “How much did you give him?”
Still holding her arm, blood seeping through her fingers, she watched the beast on the floor, his chest lifting and falling in a slow and deep breathing pattern—like it did when he fell asleep. “Eight milligrams,” she answered. She’d been taught to start a patient off slow—one or two milligrams. But some people can get ten milligrams safely and judging by the beast’s size, it was only a matter of time before he would need more. Thankfully, there were four more unopened cartridges of morphine and even more unopened syringes.