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“Please hurry, Duke!” Wagner yelled.
“You’re awfully worried about someone you tried to kill earlier,” I said, and used talking to Wagner as an excuse to pull away from Olaf and walk toward the other cell.
Wagner was pressed up between the bars that separated his cell from Bobby’s, as if pushing hard enough would let him touch the other man. His concern seemed as real as the hysteria had earlier. Maybe he was feeling guilty. I knew I was.
“I know. I was stupid and crazy, and I’m sorry, but Bobby hasn’t moved at all since you guys left him there. Shouldn’t he have moved or done something by now if he was going to be all right?”
“Yeah,” I said, and I was suddenly afraid not of Bobby’s beast but of what I might have done to him. I wasn’t as strong as a real shapeshifter or vampire, but I was stronger than a normal person. I’d hit Bobby as hard as I could. I’d been fighting for my life, so I hadn’t held back. Had that been more than Bobby’s body could handle? God, it would suck if I’d accidentally killed him when we were trying so hard to save him.
“Could you have snapped his neck?” Newman asked.
“The uppercut was the most dangerous for spinal injury, and he moved just fine after that.”
“If he was human, I’d worry about some kind of brain injury,” Livingston said from the doorway.
“You mean a concussion?” I asked.
“Can shapeshifters get those, and if they can, do they heal from them better than humans do?”
“He is not dead,” Olaf said.
“Good to know, but I’ve never seen a shapeshifter take this long to heal from something like this. If he’s not seriously injured, he should be moving by now,” I said.
“Can he change into a biform?” Olaf asked.
“I can’t keep up with the new politically correct language. I thought biform meant any shapeshifter and bipedal was what we used for half-man forms?”
Olaf seemed to think about my question and then gave one nod. “Bipedal would be for leopard-man form, but that we are debating it proves that biform and bipedal are too close.”
“I prefer that for correct speech to Therianthrope for shapeshifter and Ailuranthrope for all werecat forms just because some humorless humans decided lycanthrope is an insult to anyone who isn’t an actual werewolf.”
“Does the prisoner have a bipedal form?” Olaf asked.
I shook my head. “He’s got the leopard form, and honestly it was one of the smallest beast forms I’ve seen in a wereleopard. It was about the same size as a regular leopard.”
“That makes him very weak.”
“Are you saying he’s not powerful enough to heal from a beating like this?”
“I am saying that he will not heal like a more powerful shapeshifter would—that is all.” He even spread his hands for me in an it’s-okay gesture. I realized that he was trying to soften the blow for me emotionally. The Olaf I’d first met years back would not have bothered.
I yelled, “Leduc, get in here with the keys!”
“And if I do let you in the cage, what are you going to do, Blake?” He spoke from the door as Livingston moved back to make room for him.
“See how hurt he is.”
“And then what?”
“We call—” And I stopped. “We can’t call an ambulance.”
“We have to,” Wagner said.
“I agree with Troy,” Newman said.
“Newman, you saw what Bobby almost did to me,” I said. “We can’t put EMTs or paramedics in there with him.”
“He’s unconscious, Blake, thanks to you, so no danger to anybody.”
