Underdogs The First Stories

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Natalie's fingers were tender, soft and cold against her neck. Dale kept her eyes closed and focused on her pulse throbbing against the collar. If she was capable of speech, it would have consisted of three words urgently repeated. "Get it off." Natalie pinched Dale's skin and whispered an apology, her voice trembling on the verge of insanity. Finally, the latch came free and the collar fell away. Dale cried out with relief and grabbed Natalie, hugging her tightly. She was sitting on the back of a junked car, with Natalie between her legs, and Dale never wanted to leave that spot although she knew she would have to.

"Thank you."

Natalie just nodded. They held each other, Dale's grip too strong to be broken by any conventional means. She breathed deep, replacing the stink of the past day with Natalie's freshly scrubbed odor. Dale wished she had an idea what Natalie was thinking, what was in her mind. She was too afraid to ask and confirm her fears, so she just stayed silent. The adrenaline that had gotten her through the past thirteen hours was fading, leaving her exhausted and terrified. She wanted a bath. She wanted a long, long sleep. She wanted... Ari.

She lifted her head and looked back the way they'd come. "We have to help her."

"I... the gas..."

"It will have dissipated by now." She eased out of the embrace with obvious reluctance.

"No." Natalie was shaking her head vehemently. "You don't want to see what I saw. It was..." She swallowed a lump in her throat. "It was the worst hallucination you could imagine, Dale. I don't want you to see that."

Hallucination. Thank God. Dale touched Natalie's cheek. "She came for me. I have to go help her."

Natalie pressed her forehead against Dale's. She was crying when she pulled away and walked a few feet down the path. When she returned, she had a shotgun in her hand.

"Take this."

"Thank you. Call the police. Ask for Officer Bryn Decker, make sure she's here."

Natalie nodded. Dale slipped off the back of the car and almost fell. She righted herself against the trunk, waited until her head stopped swimming, and then set off down the path. Though Natalie had brought her down the trail only a few minutes before, she felt like she was walking somewhere she had once seen in a dream. Her mind was hazy and uncertain, and the moonlight seemed far too bright to be real. She felt nauseated when she reached the shack and put it off to remnants of the gas in the clearing. She took shallow breaths and pushed the door open with the barrel of her gun.

Three women and a dog were inside the room. All of them were covered with blood and none were moving. The gun shook in Dale's hand as she moved into the room, identifying Ari by her hair. She knelt and touched her shoulder and softly, almost too softly to be heard, she said, "Ariadne?"

Natalie appeared in the door again. "Oh, no. Dale." She looked away from the carnage. "I-I called the police. They're on the way."

"Call an ambulance, too." Dale's eyes were wet with tears. "And the coroner."





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The nurse was a vixen. She was wearing green scrubs under a heavy jacket with the caduceus on the chest. Her red hair and bright blue eyes gave her away first, and Ari realized she couldn't smell. She couldn't move. She was strapped to a gurney that was being moved across rough ground, and it was the jarring that had brought her around. The fox looked down at her and smiled, lightly touching Ari's wrist. Ari looked down and saw she still had all ten fingers. Ha. I won that round, Beck. She dropped her head back to the pillow, exhausted from the strain of even lifting her head a few inches.

"Sorry about the rough ride," the nurse whispered. "We're almost there."

Ari shook her head. "Happy to be around to be bounced around."

The nurse stroked Ari's hair. "Help me get her up."

They lifted the gurney into the back of an ambulance and Ari squinted at the bright lights overhead. The doors closed with a slam and the nurse moved up toward the front of the truck. "We're going to Basin Medical Center."

"Harborview is closer."

"My name is Monica Seward, and this is a special situation. We're taking her to Basin."

The driver looked back at Ari, shrugged, and the ambulance came to life around her. Monica knelt near Ari's head and took her hand.

"How are we feeling?"

"Where's Dale?"

"She's the one who told me about you. She said you were special."

Ari closed her eyes. "The others..."

"Dr. Regan is fine, but she's being treated for exposure to nitrous oxide." She glanced toward the front of the cab. "You killed one of the women you were fighting. She had a record. Penelope Hurst."

Ari remembered exactly the moment Pen had died. It was going to haunt her for quite a while. But Sadie and Beck... they'd survived. The thought struck fear in her. "What about the others?"

"They're receiving treatment at the scene from some of our people. They'll be held and questioned by the police."

Ari wet her lips with her tongue. "I think I won."

Monica squeezed Ari's hand. "I think you did, too."

Ari relaxed and let herself drift off. She trusted Monica to take care of things while she took a little nap. Just long enough to clear her head and maybe forget about some of what she had done in the shack.





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Bryn stayed away until Ari's third night in the hospital. It was a special hospital with a designated wing for "special patients." Ari's roommate on her second night was an elderly Great Dane with a bacterial infection. He was moved by the second day and she'd been alone since then.

Bryn was there when Ari woke up, hunched in the visitor's chair and looking forlorn and guilty. She glanced up when Ari moved, happiness and wariness vying for dominance on her face. Finally she stood and moved closer to the bed. She put her hand on Ari's arm, and Ari thought, Cat. Her sense of smell was back. Her brain was still foggy; the doctors said that was a side effect of exposure to the gas.

"Hey."

Ari nodded a greeting.

"I wasn't sure if you'd... if I was welcome. So I kind of stayed away as long as I could. The department cut you a check for your work. It won't cover everything you went through, but hopefully it'll... it'll make things a little more bearable."

"We should break up."

Bryn looked surprised, but only at how blunt the words had been. She nodded. "Yeah. I was kind of thinking the same thing. I didn't want... and after this..."

"Long time coming."

"Yeah," Bryn said again.

"Did you get 'em?"

The silence was so long that Ari started to get scared. If they'd gotten away, if Dale was still in trouble while she was lying here defenseless...

"We got them. Sadie Dillon and Rebecca Collier are in custody. Penelope Hurst is dead."

Somehow Ari doubted that was the full extent of the story, but she was too tired to push. As long as they were in jail, she could rest her eyes.





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It was night, and raining, when Ari woke again. Dale was asleep in the empty bed next to her. Ari stared at her and fell asleep waiting for Dale to wake.





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Ari was released from the hospital five days later. Dale had brought her clean clothes and she changed into them before signing the waiver that said she was leaving against medical advice. The doctor warned her not to transform for at least another week, and Ari had no problem making the promise. She wondered if she would ever willingly transform again. She took the bus home, no longer sure where her car was, and crashed in her own bed.

The next morning, she woke up early and dressed. She was careful of her bandaged wounds, moving gingerly to avoid aggravating the wounds on her calves. Beck had caused those injuries. Ari had thought she was trying to tear her apart piece by piece. Maybe she was. She ached at the memory and pushed it aside as she left her apartment.

The blood transfusion she'd gotten at the hospital had been very carefully selected. A canidae blood donor was matched on type, species, and breed. Blood from a normal person would interact badly with her canidae blood, and a transfusion from a different breed of canidae would have caused a volatile mix that would cause intense pain the next time she transformed. Smarter canidae banked their own blood, but Ari had never bothered. She nearly died of blood loss because of her oversight, and she made a vow that she would start as soon as possible.

The office was a welcome sight. It felt like home. She made a quick circuit of the space, touching the little tchotchkes and mementos she had put up but never really looked at anymore. Each one had a memory, and she realized that Sadie had been dead wrong.

She wasn't a wild animal. She wasn't a wolf. She was a person with an amazing ability. She picked up a packet of ketchup and smiled. Her first meal with Dale, a Big Mac torn apart and devoured off the street. Dale Frye, facing down three punks and then rescuing a dog that could have been wild and feral. That was the kind of person Dale was.

"You look good in here."

Ari smiled and turned around. Dale was leaning against the door frame, her hair hanging loose. She wore a lilac-colored top and a long purple skirt. There were no physical marks on her from her ordeal and, in fact, she looked like a vision.

"I was just thinking about you."

"Only good things, I hope."

"Always." She put down the ketchup and walked to her desk. "How's Natalie handling things?"

Dale sighed as she sat across from Ari. "She still insists she hallucinated most of what she saw in the landfill. All that matters is that I'm safe. And that I stay safe."

Ari had been afraid of that, and looked down at her hands. "Ah."

"Don't 'ah' me, Ariadne Willow. Don't go making my decisions for me."

Ari frowned. "But... if she wants you to leave..."

"Then maybe she doesn't love me as much as she thought she did." Her voice cracked a little. "If we can't work this out, then it's a deal-breaker."

"What if I fire you?"

"Then I'll hate you and resent her."

They were silent for a long time.

"Did you hear about Sadie?"

Ari shook her head. Bryn had tried to tell her a few times, but Ari never wanted to hear it. She could tell from Bryn's expression that whatever she was going to say was just going to make her mad.

"She made a deal."

"Motherf*cker." She slapped her hand down on the desk and stood up. She faced the window and rested her forehead against the glass with her eyes closed.

Dale sighed. "She gave evidence against Victoria Fennick. They shut down her entire organization. Eighteen thieves throughout Seattle, the majority of them canidae or felidae. It was a huge thing, Ari. Bryn is getting a commendation, and we are getting the biggest check I have ever seen."

"Not worth it."

"No. We won't forget what happened any time soon, but the money will be a good start."

"What's going to happen to Sadie now?"

Dale leaned back. "Witness protection."

She'll be out there somewhere. Looking for vengeance.

Ari sat down and looked across the desk at Dale. They had both been badly beaten. Ari's relationship with Bryn had been completely destroyed. Dale's relationship with Natalie was on life support. A sadistic bitch was out there in the world somewhere with nothing but time to plot and plan and figure out how to get back at the women who had destroyed her whole life. Ari shook her head and tried not to be despondent, but it was difficult.

"We went through all of that, for what? Some money in the bank? What do we have to show for it?"

Dale shrugged. "We have each other. We went through all that, and we're still here."

Ari wanted to scoff, wanted to shake her head in refusal and claim that it only meant they were right back where they started. But it was the truth. They had gone through hell, and they'd both come out the other side. Not unscathed. But together.

That would be enough. At least for the moment.


End