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Chuff.
Well, okay then. I felt a little guilty that I hadn’t justasked, but it had been a fucking day. I was tired. And hungry. And not currently eating my rapidly cooling fried food, which was congealing in the car.
But I was at least not enough of an asshole that I was going to go back to the chair now that I knew the dog wanted me next to it—him. Next to him.
I’m a dick, but I’m notthatmuch of a dick.
So I stayed there, on my aching feet with a pit in my stomach, as a vampire veterinarian examined a Xolo dog shifter at twelve-thirty in the goddamn morning while throwing me some serious shade that I was just going to stand there and take.
And I had to be back at work by eight.
Fuck my life.
“I would like to get an x-ray of this leg,” Zhou remarked. I nodded. “They are expensive,” he warned.
And let’s just go ahead and add a goddamn vet bill to the list of things making my life suck donkey balls.
“Do it,” I replied, knowing I sounded exasperated, but lacking the capacity to conceal the emotion. The vet studied me for a moment, then nodded and picked up the dog, who immediately whined.
“I believe he would like you to come along, detective.”
“Yeah, fine.”
I followed as we went into a back room that had what looked like a damn airport scanning belt in it. I raised one eyebrow.
“Usually we have to actually tie or hold down our patients,” Zhou remarked. “It will be pleasant to not need to do so.”
He arranged the dog on the platform, and although I could tell he was being gentle, the dog whimpered a little, anyway.
“I am sorry,” the vampire told him. “But I’m afraid I need to know what I’m working with here.”
The dog’s chuff was halfhearted, and I felt like someone had punched me lightly in the solar plexus. Goddammit. The last thing I needed was to get attached to a shifter who refused to shift out of dog form and was also a murder witness. Talk about complicated.
Zhou gently laid a small square of lead-lined shielding over the dog’s bits, then led me into the little alcove to the side where we would be blocked from the x-ray radiation.
“Is that… usual? The shield? Aren’t most people’s pets… fixed?” I asked.
“We do occasionally see someone who breeds,” came the mild reply. “They appreciate it if we don’t destroy that biological functionality.”
I just nodded, wishing I’d brought my bag of probably-now-cold grease with me.
A few presses of a button and re-arrangement of the dog’s body, and we headed back into the room.
The vampire pulled out a laptop and pulled up some black-and-white images that were clearly the x-rays he’d just taken. “The hip appears dislocated,” he stated. “And he has a femoral fracture.”
“Shit,” I muttered.
The vampire looked over at me. “I should be able to relocate the hip manually, although, I’m sorry to say, it will be quite painful, especially with a fractured femur.”
The dog whined.
I petted his head. “I’m sorry, bud.” I looked the vet straight in the eye. “Are you sure you can just… put it back in?”
“I do not know that I would use the wordjust,” Zhou replied. “But I used to be an orthopedic surgeon, so, yes, I have every confidence in my ability to relocate the joint.”
“Used to be?” I asked.
His crimson eyes bored into me. “Hospitals do not allow vampires to continue as human surgeons,” he replied darkly.
