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Once there, he immediately rolled over, showing Zhou his belly.
I pointed to the scar, and Zhou leaned in closer, his gloved fingers probing the area around the whitish slash.
“You don’t know where you got this, Taavi?” he asked.
A whine.
I shook my head in confirmation when Zhou looked up at me.
“Does it hurt?” the vampire asked.
Another whine, but an odd one.
“It hurts sometimes?” I asked, surprised and a little stung, to be honest, that he hadn’t told me. Although how the fuck I expected him to have done that, I don’t know.
A soft chuff.
Zhou frowned, his fingers once again probing around the scar. Then he looked up at me. “I can’t feel anything, but I wouldn’t be able to if they’d done something to his kidneys—which is the logical organ to target for something like a beta blocker. A dog’s kidneys are pretty high up—you’d access them through the belly, yes, but a drug pump attached to the kidneys wouldn’t be noticeable from outside the body.”
“What does that mean?” I asked him, feeling my pulse accelerating with nervous anxiety.
“Well, I’d like to start with an x-ray,” he replied. “I didn’t include any internal organs when I did the initial examination of his hip, and I didn’t see this particular scar under all the grime.” He grimaced. “All the cuts and abrasions also kept me from noticing.”
I just nodded. “Okay, then what?”
“That depends on what we see on the imaging.” He looked down at Taavi. “Should we proceed?”
A whine-chuff.
Zhou looked at me. I nodded.
This time, Taavi walked with us to x-ray, and Zhou picked him up and positioned him on his side on the platform.
I stood with Zhou while he took the slides, then we came back into the room. Taavi immediately sat at my feet and leaned into the side of my leg. When Zhou pulled the images up on his laptop, he frowned, then turned the screen so I could see it.
I don’t know what the inside of a dog is supposed to look like, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t supposed have a little box nestled somewhere under its ribs and spine. “Shit,” is what I said out loud.
Taavi whined, looking up at me.
Zhou angled the screen so he could see, and he whined again, louder this time.
“If you don’t recall ever having a device surgically implanted…” Zhou trailed off, letting Taavi answer.
Taavi whimpered, pressing harder into my leg. I bent down to run my fingers over his ears.
“Then I would suggest we remove it,” Zhou said softly. “Normally I wouldn’t advocate for surgery, but if these are the people who are responsible for the deaths of several other shifters—”
“They are,” I confirmed.
Zhou nodded. “Then I would be very wary of leaving anything of their design inside your body. But,” he continued, his crimson eyes focused on Taavi’s sharp face. “The decision is ultimately yours.”
Taavi looked up at me.
“Your body, bud,” I repeated.
He whined again, then shuddered.
I crouched down, his pointy face with its bat ears and mismatched eyes between my hands. I looked at him, and I could see the fear in his doggy expression.
