"Not news so far," he said, but his attention remained fixed on her, waiting for the rest of it.
"The thing is, with regular rabies, once the animal starts shedding the virus, it becomes symptomatic within ten days. So if you're bitten, and the animal makes it through quarantine, then you
know
it didn't have rabies. Which is what everyone assumed with the cat, and with the stray dog that killed Janean and its new owner." She waved the paper at him again, so caught up in the new concept she had a hard time putting the words together. "In those visions...I kept hearing the term
shedding rabies
. And I couldn't understand it, because
all
rabies is shedding rabies. But what if this new rabies allows the animal to shed the virus in its saliva for a long time before it gets sick? It could infect people, go through quarantine, and be released...no one would ever know it was carrying the disease!"
Masera just stared at her a moment, working it through, until he closed his eyes with the impact of it. "Parker's darkness took away our safety check. Every assumption health care professionals have made about the prevention and treatment of rabies would be invalid."
"
Is
invalid," Brenna said. "There's no way to tell how many animals have the new rabies by now, not if Parker's been spreading it with his dogs. And not without new detection tests—all the current ones assume the animal has viral damage to the brain by the time it's shedding the disease."
"God
damn
," Masera said with enough quiet vehemence to make Brenna wince.
"I think you should be careful with that one around here," she said, and rolled her eyes toward the pasture. "We don't want to get on anyone's bad side."
He gave a rueful grin. "Good point. But the ramifications—"
"Will your friends in animal control listen to you? Or we could go straight to the CDC—" She cut herself off, thought about Sammi and her sudden reticence after the CDC had contacted her. "On the other hand, I think they already know they've got something new on their hands. The question is whether they know just what. We might be able to save them some time..."
"I don't know who'll listen to us," Masera said. "We'll have to try them all."
"We could go to the media," Brenna suggested reluctantly. "We'd probably just look like crackpots."
"Maybe we would. We'll do what we have to." He had that look again—the one she'd noticed in their first conversation and many times since. The one that meant he had things to do and no intention of being dissuaded or interrupted. The one that said
join me or get out of my way
. Focus.
Only this time, she was part of it. "We'll do what we have to do," she agreed. "Your turn."
"My—" he gave her a puzzled look, then remembered the paper in his hand. "Hard to believe this information's just been sitting here on your couch."
"Not for that long," Brenna said. "Yesterday evening...I was sitting down with it when I—well, when I saw the things that made me call you."
"Remind me to thank you for that sometime."
"I'll put it on my list of things to do," Brenna said. "Now hand over that paper or get your tongue in gear."
He glanced at the page and shook his head. "Mars Nodens," he said, "is associated with Lydney Spring, which you knew. And he has an affinity for dogs, which you knew. What you probably didn't know is that the gods of that time went by a whole collection of different names, depending on the region in question. Throughout Ireland, Wales, and England, Mars Nodens is also known as Ludd, Nudd, Nuadu, and—" he looked up at her—"Nuadha."
Nuadha's Silver Druid.
It hit her like a physical blow; she literally felt the blood drain from her face as she whispered it out loud. "Nuadha's Silver Druid."
Druid put his paws on the edge of the couch, alert to his name. Druid, the dog whose footprints came from nowhere.
From out of the spring
. Druid, with his strange fits at strange times and memories he kept passing to her. Fits that occurred when he confronted a conjunction of things future and past, things from the memories conflicting with things as they were now. Dangers she hadn't yet realized were dangers.
Druid, with his ID and rabies tags that had led her nowhere.
Rabies I/ II
.
"He's been vaccinated," she blurted, still breathless in reaction. "He's been vaccinated against the shedding rabies!" Much to Druid's surprise, she pulled his collar over his head and shoved it at Masera. "Look—the local phone exchange that doesn't exist—
yet
. Five numbers instead of six on the rabies tag, a new cycle of vaccine—Rabies I &
II
. He's been vaccinated, and it's right here in his blood,
right now
. What could CDC do with
that
?"
"Arrest us, probably," Masera said absently—though his gaze on Druid was anything
but
absent.
"He came from the spring," she reminded him. "With memories of things that haven't happened yet, and a vaccine that doesn't exist yet. He came from Mars Nodens. Nuadha. From the—" and then she couldn't say it. Not quite. It was too absurd when put into words.
Masera was never so shy of such things. "The future," he said, but then even he looked surprised at what he'd said.
Brenna shook her head. "No. No way."
Masera said nothing. He looked at Druid and said nothing, although his mouth opened as he hunted for words. Finally he swore, a single emphatic word.
"Anyway," Brenna said, nonsensically enough, "Nuadha liked hounds. All his statues at his Lydney shrine are hounds. So if he was going to send a dog back from...if he was going to send a dog, he'd have sent a hound."
"Gaze hounds," Masera said, and shook his head, waving the print-outs at her. "They were all gaze hounds. Aloof dogs. Laid back, except for those moments they're on their prey. Cardigans are people-oriented herding dogs. Intensely loyal. The kind of dog who could connect with you so strongly, so quickly, that you'd put up with his problems."
"The future." She said it out loud, trying it on for size. And then realized, "A world where no one stopped the rabies," more horrified than ever to put the borrowed memories into perspective.
"
Or
Parker," Masera said. He reached over her legs to give Druid a gentle scritch, as much full of awe as affection. "He's here to change that. With your help."
"
Our
help, I hope," Brenna said. "We. Us. I don't think I can do this alone."
"We and us. Oh, yes." He gave her lower leg a squeeze, still looking at Druid. "
Nuadha of the Silver Hand
," he added. "That's what they called him." He dropped the paper in his lap, through with it. "He had a prosthetic hand made of silver, and an invincible sword that could not fail to slay his enemy. Looks like Druid here is one package meant to be all of it. No wonder he's nuts."
"I don't know," Brenna said, realizing that to Druid, even being in the Pets! parking lot for the first time—seeing Masera for the first time—could pull up conflicting memories of his own past. His own past...in the future. "I'd like to think I'd have done half as well under the same circumstances. Though that
does
explain why he's Nuadha's
Silver
Druid. I'd thought maybe it was for the speckling on his ears."
"Maybe it is," Masera said. "We could go nuts, too, if we give too much meaning to every little thing. There are enough meaning-laden things going on here as it is." He rubbed a hand along his jaw, looking speculative, still watching Druid. "Hold on," he said, carefully lifting her legs so he could get up, and not explaining further as he left the house. She heard his vehicle door close a few moments later and when he returned he had a hypodermic and packaged alcohol pad. She watched without questioning as he scrubbed the inside of Druid's front leg, held his thumb over the vein, and withdrew a full syringe of blood. Druid allowed it with a much put-upon sigh, his ears planing down to indicate his displeasure. Masera capped the needle and left again, just long enough to deposit the collection in Brenna's refrigerator.
She didn't ask why, as he returned a final time and reclaimed his seat beside her. She didn't have to. Instead, she asked, "What next?"
He gingerly rubbed his eyes. "Next? Are you hungry? I am."
"I missed dinner," Brenna admitted. "Not that I ever have what you might call a real dinner, but I missed it all the same. That's not what I meant, though." She put her hands over her face, covering her eyes with the sweater cuffs. Thinking, suddenly, that she had to return to work the next day, and that she had a groomer interview along with all the customer appointments. And she had the distinct feeling their work was far from done tonight.
"I know," he said. "Thought I'd fit it in while we still could. Because I don't think we have any choice—we've got to figure out a way to reinforce that spring anchor to Nuadha, and we've got to do it tonight. If Parker gets to it, if he re-orients it back to the darkness, we'll lose anything you might have gained today."
"The darkness," Brenna said, suddenly overcome by a moment of great silliness, just peeking out from above her fingers and cuffs. "Let's just call it Harvey. Or Fred."
"Parker Junior," Masera suggested.
"Parker Senior," Brenna said. "It's bigger than him, I think. And wild. He just doesn't know it." She dropped her hands, struck by a sudden thought. "You know, as long as old Fred doesn't have access to the spring, I think it's working through Parker. After it went for us at the spring, Parker looked beat. Just as bad as me and Druid. That's how I got out of there.
He
might actually be its weak point right now." Then she grimaced. "I don't really want to take that thought to its natural conclusion."
She should have pulled that trigger.
She still knew she couldn't.
"Then let's not," Masera said quietly. "Let's get something to eat."
She opened her mouth to protest, thinking of Parker and the darkness and the spring, but Masera shook his head. "I know," he said. "I don't want to wait, either. But we'd better not be hungry and exhausted when we go out there. It doesn't mean we have to wait till morning."
She still didn't want to wait...but she
was
hungry. And exhausted. She leaned her head back on the couch and sighed out some of that exhaustion. "It's dark now already," she said. "It's not going to be any darker later on."