Doctor Who_ Wolfsbane - Jac Rayner [49]
The bright lights faded to black. The pain dulled.
The breathing stopped.
* * *
The wolfs senses worked foster than ever before. By this gravestone, fallen with the earth‟s upheaval. „Harry,‟ said the Doctor.
Deep, deep below the ground. Blood, and the stench of fear still. But life - there was no life. They were too late.
Chapter Nine
The Biter Bitten
Burning air dragged into tortured lungs. Sarah coughed, retched, tasted earth and bile and blood. The pain came back, harder and sharper than before. Her mind grumbled at being dragged from its brief, peaceful rest, and then she realised what that peace had been and her eyes flew open.
The Doctor was there, sitting up. He‟d been leaning over her, and she realised suddenly she could taste his breath inside her mouth. Or was that her imagination? And it might have been a trick of the dull orange lamp light, but he looked as concerned as she‟d ever seen him - concerned in a small, personal way, that is, not the giant concern he always had for races and worlds and galaxies.
„I‟m not dead, then,‟ she said. It was meant to be a joke -
not a very funny one, a sort of casual thing - but it came out sounding like a complaint.
„You‟re not dead, Sarah,‟ he replied.
She tried to make a show of being fighting fit and able to look after herself, pulling herself up on to her elbows and looking round. It didn‟t work, she didn‟t convince anyone and certainly not herself. She fell back. The Doctor carefully put out a hand and helped her to sit up, and she wasn‟t embarrassed to accept it. He draped his coat around her shoulders, and she pulled it tight. Her hat had gone goodness knows where, and the Doctor plonked his tartan tam o‟shanter on her head. She considered it for a moment, then removed it and placed it back on his wild curls. A shiver overtook her, and she couldn‟t speak for a few moments.
Now she looked around. She was back on the surface, just by Harry‟s grave - only it wasn‟t Harry‟s grave, she now knew.
The coffin lid was beside the newly dug hole, and it was in pieces, seemingly ripped apart. For a moment she wondered if she‟d found some blind strength in her last moments and managed to burst out to the surface. But that was clearly silly.
„Did you do that?‟ she asked the Doctor, bewildered, and then realising he didn‟t know the most important thing she had to tell him, „Harry‟s not dead either!‟
„Perhaps,‟ he said. There are conflicting reports.‟
„But that‟s his coffin, his grave, and it‟s empty! I know he‟s still alive! Look in the coffin!‟ She gestured back at the wooden box, at the fractured lid. „And how did you do that?‟
He beamed at her. „Luckily I had a friendly werewolf to hand.‟
Sarah‟s eyes widened. „A werewolf? A real one? Friendly?
Where is it?‟ She looked all around, but there was only the Doctor there. „You don‟t mean... you‟re not telling me you‟re a werewolf, are you?‟
„Do I look like a werewolf?‟ he boomed, seemingly offended.
He pointed at his face. „Do these eyebrows meet in the middle?‟
„Is that how you can tell a werewolf?‟
„No.‟
She struggled to keep up. „But there was a werewolf... and it‟s gone?‟
„Yes. I had to... It doesn‟t matter. She ran off.‟
„She?‟
He smiled. „Women can be monsters too, you know.‟
Well, yes, of course she knew. It just wasn‟t the image that sprung to mind when „werewolf‟ was mentioned. She had expected something more in the Lon Chaney Jr mould. „Why did she run, if she‟s friendly?‟ she asked. Then she let out a cry, as her brain tracked down a new pain, a pain she hadn‟t felt before. „She bit me!‟ Sarah pushed back the shreds of a trouser leg, the teeth marks still seeping blood clear even in the dim light.