Page 10 of Hoofin’ It

“Gonna get one of them ones that look like real eyeballs? I hear they’re squishy, just like the real deal.”

“We’ll see.”

With a grin that bordered on the demented, he leaned towards me. “Did you put it in a jar?”

Why did everyone want to know if I had my eye in a jar? “I didn’t keep it.”

“Why not?”

Uncertain of how to respond, I stared at him. Sally pawed at the ground and snorted, giving me a perfect excuse to escape Old Harold’s interest. “Just didn’t. Had other problems to deal with at the time. Anyway, I need to be getting Sally home so I can feed her and bring Hopper and Skunk in from the pasture. You have yourself a good day.”

“You, too. Don’t be a stranger!”

I refrained from sighing my relief until the old man had crossed the street. “All right, Sally. I hope you don’t mind a bit of a hike, because you don’t get to hitch a lift in the back of the van this time, girl. You might be cute, but you have to earn your keep, and that means walking home with me.”

My alpaca flicked an ear at me and followed without complaint. I gave her some extra line so she could sniff and explore anything of interest along the side of the road. In some ways, she reminded me of a really tall dog with a lot of fur, as she found every single rock and bush fascinating.

Plastic bags scared her almost as much as my mother’s dishwasher, and I laughed at her antics. After manhandling Hopper and Skunk most my life, her hundred and ten pounds wasn’t much of a challenge, although I had to work to keep her from running away. Laughing, I hauled her in and stroked her neck and back until she calmed.

“Silly Sally. The plastic bag isn’t going to eat you. You’re as bad as Skunk. He thinks the tractor’s sole purpose is for murdering all equine kind. Only time we can bring it out is when he’s in his stall where it can’t get him.”

Sally didn’t seem very impressed, but at least she spit on the bag instead of on me. Green goop dripped off her chin, and she stared at me in undisguised horror, smacking her lips as though questioning her actions. Her ears drooped sideways, and she made a pathetic little moan.

“That’s not the brightest thing you’ve done today, fuzzy.” I rubbed her ears and led her away from the dangerous bag. A better man would’ve picked up the litter, but I drew the line at dipping my hands in alpaca spit to spare the environment from a bit of plastic.

Since I was guiding her away from the evil bag, she was happy to go, pulling on her lead in her eagerness to escape the threat. It’d been a long time since I’d laughed so hard. Sally enjoyed bouncing around, chomping on tall grasses and examining everything with the curiosity of a newborn.

Absorbed in watching her antics, I ignored the vehicle coming up behind us until I heard the crunch of gravel as it slowed. Expecting a curious neighbor wanting to catch up and make small talk, I stopped and turned to see who it was.

A lot of people owned guns in Nebraska. I had enough time to identify the shooter as a middle-aged man in a black suit driving a beat-up Ford before he opened fire. I felt the first round catch me in the shoulder before registering the concussive blast of the weapon discharging. The muzzle flashed a second time, but I felt nothing more before my vision faded to black.

Chapter Four

My would-be killer couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn at point blank range, so while the shooter managed to punch a pair of holes through my shoulder, he missed anything important, including my heart and lungs. I’d done more damage to myself when I fell, cracking the back of my head into a rock.

Concussions sucked.

Mages could fuse bone with a little work and time, but organs, especially the brain, were another matter entirely. Some people believed if mages and doctors could overcome the obstacles surrounding the regeneration of soft tissues, they’d unlock the secrets of eternal life. Closing wounds and encouraging skin to heal with minimal scarring was as close as humanity got.

Luckily for me, since gunfire wasn’t a common occurrence near my parents’ place, several curious neighbors searched for the source of the commotion. Instead of bleeding to death on the side of the road, I woke up in the ER. ID’ing me was easy enough; everyone in town knew who I was, and within ten minutes of my arrival at the hospital, both my parents showed up, still in uniform—mostly.

Dad’s had seen better days, since shifting from human to his hybrid form tended to make a mess out his clothes. Under normal circumstances, I doubted the doctors would have let an enraged, frothing werewolf into their ER, but there were benefits of being a werewolf’s son. We shared the same blood type, and if he were going pass the lycanthropy infection to me, he would have before I’d been born. While normal human blood would keep me alive and kicking, werewolf blood would enhance my healing beyond any magics humans possessed, although I’d pay for my hastened recovery with a high fever.

I still had to consent to the risks of contracting lycanthropy, which I found amusing. Mom did, too.

Dad just snarled until Mom tired of his ruckus and swatted his muzzle to make him stop scaring the doctors. While I thought it was hilarious, no one else appreciated my good mood. After everyone in the room had taken a turn scolding me, the nurses began the transfusion process. A pair of doctors did something to my shoulder—something I wasn’t invited to watch; they poked me with a needle, and the lights went out.

Growls woke me.

Normal people would have panicked at hearing snarling werewolf nearby, but having spent most of my life listening to my grumpy father vocalize his displeasure, I ignored his fussing, leaving Mom to deal with him, and moved on to the next interesting thing, a rather obnoxious and steady beeping. My mother had several ways of calming her cranky werewolf, most of which weren’t suitable for an audience. I wondered how they’d manage after she had her first shift.

I probably didn’t want to know. Actually, I was a hundred percent certain I didn’t want to know. I was grateful my mother had found a way to calm him without the risk of giving me a little brother or sister.

One of me was bad enough. I couldn’t imagine my parents inflicting another child on Earth. The Earth wasn’t ready for another Gibson spawn.

“You two are noisy,” I complained. I’d get around to opening my eye eventually. Maybe. “Can’t a man enjoy his near-death experience in peace?”

“Oh, baby,” my mother whispered, and a moment later, I felt her brush my hair off my forehead.