He pushed the outside door with his head.
Silas was on his feet before Daniel got through. The chair fell behind him. He looked first at Daniel's mouth, then at the blood running down his foreleg.
“What have you done?”
Daniel couldn't answer.
He tried to cross the room. His shoulder gave way and he struck the floor, hard enough to send a white flash through the pain. He lay breathing beside his own shoes.
Silas shut the outside door. He didn't lock it.
Daniel watched him pick up the blanket.
He wanted to be human. The wanting was immediate now, without any of the hesitation there had been at the river. He wanted hands, words, a way to hold the wound closed. He wanted the night out of his mouth.
For a moment nothing happened.
Panic rose in him. Silas had lied. There was some other thing he needed to do, some word he couldn't speak. He would stay like this until daylight, bleeding onto the floor while Jonas was taken away.
He tried to stand.
The body folded.
He didn't know whether he'd made it happen or merely stopped resisting. His back contracted so violently that his head struck the floor. The teeth seemed to fill his mouth before they withdrew. His forelegs bent and became arms in the wrong place, hands trapped beneath him.
He cried out, and the sound was human before it ended.
Silas knelt.
“Stay down.”
Daniel knew his own size again. Smaller, horribly exposed. Blood ran beneath his right arm from a wound high on the shoulder. The cut along his side opened when he breathed.
He tried to press his palm against it and couldn't cover both.
“Give me—”
Silas put the blanket beneath him, then folded part of it over his legs.
“Who did that?”
Daniel looked at the inside door.
Silas followed the look.
“Who?”
“Jonas.”
“The man at the inn.”
Daniel swallowed. There was a taste left in his mouth which he couldn't bear.
“Did he come after you?”
“No.”
Silas sat back on his heels.
Somewhere beyond the wall a door opened. Voices passed, one very close, then moved away. Daniel couldn't separate them now. The loss of those extraordinary senses was sudden enough to be another pain.
“I bit him.”
Silas's face changed.
Daniel wanted him to say it happened, that the body did things, that everyone who had it learned this way. He wanted a lie from the one person who might know how much truth it would take to make him stay.
“How badly?” Silas asked.
“I don't know.”
“You don't know.”
“His arm.”
“Were you trying to kill him?”
“No.”
“What were you trying to do?”
Daniel shut his eyes.
The wound in his side was hot. He could feel the blood, each small movement of it against his skin.
“Scare him.”
Silas didn't answer.
“I knew it was him.”
The words were easier in this room, with the man he hated. He didn't have to pretend to be someone Silas could still love.
“I followed him.”
“Christ.”
Daniel opened his eyes.
“You did it to me.”
Silas looked down at his own arm.
“Yes.”
“You said you'd carry it.”
“Yes.”
“Then do it.”
A silence followed. The heater went on making its uneven noise.
Silas moved to undo his shirt.
It was slow with the dressing. Daniel watched his fingers find the buttons and wanted to reach up and tear the cloth open. He could barely lift his right arm. He was human again, ordinary, needing another man's help to hurt him.
The inside door opened.
Leah stood there.
There was blood on her sleeve. Daniel couldn't look away from it.
“Jonas?” he said.
“He's with them.”
“Is he—”
“They're taking him.”
Her eyes moved from Daniel's shoulder to his side, to the blanket and the floor. Silas's shirt was open now.
She understood.
“Daniel.”
He pressed harder against his side. The pressure hurt, and he eased it.
“It's before morning,” he said.
As though that made anything better.
Leah came into the room. She shut the door behind her, keeping the workshop noise out. Daniel could hear footsteps faintly through the wall, people doing necessary things.
“He asked where you were,” she said.
“I heard.”
Her mouth tightened.
“You were still there.”
“Yes.”
Silas touched Daniel's good arm.
“Can you get up?”
Daniel looked at him.
He had come back because there was somewhere to put the hurt. He hadn't made it back to safety. He'd made it back to this man's chest.
“Help me.”
Silas put an arm behind his shoulders.
Leah moved as though to help, then stopped. Daniel saw the movement and hated that he had seen it.
He sat up. The blanket dragged over his thigh, catching at a scab on one of the old cuts. That pain was familiar. It would stay.
Silas knelt in front of him.
“You didn't need to do this,” he said.
Daniel couldn't tell whether he meant Jonas or the transfer.
“You offered.”
“I did.”
“Do you want me to keep it?”
Silas looked at the blood on his own hand, which had come from helping Daniel sit.
“No.”
There was no generosity in the answer now. There was a choice made, and perhaps a refusal to be seen breaking it. Daniel didn't ask.
He lifted his right hand.
The movement pulled through the damaged shoulder. He made a small sound and stopped short.
Silas leaned closer.
His chest was warm. Daniel's fingers touched the hair, then the skin beneath it. He could feel the heart again, an ordinary heartbeat in a man who was about to take what he had done.
He flattened his palm.
Leah stood beside the desk. She wasn't coming nearer. She wasn't looking away.
Daniel took a breath.
For an instant the pain seemed to change shape. It drew inward from the edges, a deep pressure at the shoulder and flank. His skin tightened beneath his other hand.
Silas made a sound.
Daniel kept his palm in place.
He knew what would happen if he took it away. Perhaps the damage wouldn't finish moving. Perhaps he'd keep some of it. The thought made him hold harder.
His shoulder closed.
He felt it. Warm blood still lay on the skin, but beneath it there was no opening. The pain along his side retreated as if something had been drawn out through a narrow place.
Across from him, Silas's shoulder split.
Blood ran down his bare chest. The matching cut opened along his flank, and he bent sharply, hands going towards it before he seemed to remember Daniel.
His breath caught.
Daniel held on until the breath finished.
Then Silas tipped sideways against the chair.
Daniel took his hand away.
The room had become quiet in a way he didn't trust. Silas's eyes were open, but he didn't seem to be looking at anything. His mouth moved slightly. Blood ran into the crease of his waist.
Daniel could lift his arm now.
He did, just a little. The movement was easy compared with a moment before.
Leah looked at him.
“I—”
He stopped.
Silas's body was still on the floor.
Daniel reached for a clean fold of the blanket. Leah was already moving. She took a cloth from the shelf, pressed it against the wound in Silas's side and told Daniel to use the other part on the shoulder.
He obeyed.
The old dressing remained on Silas's right forearm. Daniel saw it while he held the cloth, a strip of pale material beneath the new blood. The human wound hadn't gone anywhere.
“Phone,” Leah said.
His was on the desk.
He could reach it with his right hand. He could do that now. He called for help and gave the same address she had given minutes before.
The voice on the line asked questions. He answered as well as he could, looking at Silas, looking at Leah's hands. He didn't invent a different cause. He said there were serious wounds and blood and a man on the floor. He said the animal was gone.
That last part felt like a lie as soon as he spoke it.
He was sitting there.
The stillness looked like his own on the recording. Daniel wanted to believe it would pass with the light. He didn't know how much blood could be lost before then, what else could happen to an ordinary body after the wound had moved. They kept the cloths in place.
When he had given the directions, she said, “What happened to Jonas?”
He looked down at the phone.
“Tell me now.”
“I knew it was him.”
She kept her hand pressed against Silas's side.
Daniel began.