The Clockwork Wolf by Lynn Viehl Page B

tell you what put me here?”
    â€œYou playing catch-me with two Wolfmen, beaters said.” He dropped into the chair beside my bed. “You look awful, but they’re much worse. Made me vow never to get on your bad side.”
    â€œYou saw the Wolfmen?” I sat up. “When?”
    â€œJust before I come up to see you. They brought the bodies here, and I know the cutter down in the morgue. He let me have a look.” His expression grew serious. “I know you didn’t do all that to them. Were someone too wicked for words.”
    â€œYou saw the mech, too.” I sat up quickly, biting my lip as my body punished me for it. “I thought I’d gone daft. Did you recognize what it was put there for?”
    He moved his shoulders. “Didn’t take that close of a look.”
    I eyed the wheeled chair sitting in the corner. “Can you help get in that, and push me down there, to the morgue?”
    He sighed. “Now why would you want to look at dead monsters, best forgotten? Good riddance to the rubbish.”
    â€œI need to talk to your cutter friend. Please, Doc,” I tacked on when he shook his head. “It’s for a case I have going. I need to learn as much as I can about these Wolfmen, and by the time I’m released the bodies will be gone and buried.”
    He pursed his lips. “The sisters’ll have me head and hide.”
    â€œThey’re too busy serving breakfast to the other patients. I’m a patient, not a prisoner. If any of them ask I’ll say I needed some air.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed. “Please, Doc. Help me. Can’t do it without you.”
    â€œSo you’re always nattering. Very well, stay there.” He retrieved the wheeled chair and positioned it beside me, and then helped move me from the bed to its caned seat. He then realized my bare legs were poking out from under the knee-length gown and snatched up the blanket from the bed, swaddling me with it. “If they haul me off to lockup for this, you’re bailing me out.”
    â€œIn a heartbeat,” I said, gritting my teeth against the pains stabbing my back and bottom. “Oh, you should say you’re my da, if they ask.”
    â€œIf I were your da, I’d give us both a proper thrashing.” He pushed me out of the room.
    My guess that the sisters would be too busy to notice us proved correct; only one glanced our way as Docket wheeled me down the hall.
    â€œShe should be in bed,” the nurse said as she shifted her tray to one hip so she could open a door.
    â€œGetting my gel some fresh air,” Docket said, pushing my chair a little faster.
    He wheeled me to a cage-front box and lifted thecage. “This is the lift they use for downstairs,” he said. “I’ll lower you and your chair down in it and then take the stairs myself. Unless you want me to carry you?”
    That would draw too much attention. “No, put me on the lift—and don’t drop me.”
    He patted my hand. “Not a chance, love.”
    The box, meant to transport items to the basement level, creaked a little as Docket wheeled me inside. I looked at him through the cage he lowered and crossed my fingers and my toes.
    â€œSet that pulley brake when it stops,” he said, nodding to a lever to one side of me. “Else someone might bring it up while we’re off ogling the dead.”
    I nodded, and winced as he released the pulley ropes and began lowering me down. The lift worked like a gigantic dumbwaiter, and as I descended into the shaft the light from the hall disappeared. I’d never been afraid of the dark, but suddenly I realized what the lift was really used for—moving dead bodies down to the morgue.
    The box round me shuddered and landed with a heavy thump, jolting me to one side. I set the brake, and wheeled myself over to the cage panel to raise it.
    â€œOy.” Someone beat me to the cage,