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Pale blur in the headlamps and then a dull thud against the wing. She stamped on the brake and climbed down from her Rover on shaking legs to approach the huge shape sprawled on the tarmac, enough light from the full moon to see now that it was a dog.
He didn't appear to be badly hurt, looking about as if he were shaken by the impact but not in any great distress. Big dog, coat of fawn-coloured shag on a frame like a Dane. The tag on his collar said Andy. "Are you one of Constable Davidson's boys, then? Well, let's have you in somewhere safe and we'll ring him in the morning."
Although how she was supposed to do that, when an animal this size must weigh more than she did... She opened her empty boot and patted the floor invitingly. The dog staggered up to all fours, swaying and seeming to favour a hind leg. Standing, he was hip-high at the shoulder, and it was as well he lacked the balance to try to rear up on her, he'd easily have knocked her to the ground. But he seemed to have the idea of what she was about, putting a paw up and heaving himself clumsily into the Rover. She tucked up his scraggly tail out of the way of the door and shut the gate, hoping he'd be a polite passenger and not be ill all over her boot.
And a fine evening to be greeted at her gate by the mad barking enthusiasm of her own Toby and Brechan -- "None of that, now, he's our guest for tonight." Constable Davidson's dog was still limping. Her two shrank back from this gigantic stranger without so much as a token attempt at a sniff of his bum as he walked into the house as if he owned it and huffed down onto the rug in front of the hearth with an outsized sigh.
Nothing seemed to be broken, from what she could tell, although he winced and whined as she ran her hands gently through the surprisingly silky fur of his hip. Bruised, then, and lucky she hadn't been going faster. Striking an animal this size would have been like hitting a sheep. Or a person.
There was a wee pouch clipped onto his collar like a Saint Bernard's cask, which turned out to hold a mobile, some money, two condoms, one of those foil space-blankets folded up tiny in its wrap and a small packet of unmarked pills. Why a dog would need any of that was rather beyond her, but she supposed the constable was only being sensible having some spare kit about. Perhaps this one was a police rescue-dog, he was certainly big enough to haul a drowning victim from a pond like a Newfoundland. Probably smart enough to work at his own initiative, too, sent on with a few supplies until the authorities could step in for the proper assist. Slate-grey eyes watched her with a keen intelligence until she had to laugh and tuck everything away again; "All right, boy, I'm not nicking your wallet."
She ran fresh water into a bowl and set it where her guest could lap some up without having to rise fully onto his bad leg. Brechan had ventured nearer to the big dog now, a puzzled frown on his spaniel face that made her chuckle. They'd met Constable Davidson out walking one or another of his indeterminate number of huge mutts a time or two so far, but this one would be as new to them as he was to her. And an intact dog, at that (she wondered if the constable meant to breed him or had simply lost at the arm-wrestle for it), no wonder they'd be a bit nervous around this unfamiliar scent. Well, they would just have to work it out amongst themselves whilst she got her bath, she supposed, not much more she could do about it all until a polite hour to ring anyone...
When she came out it was to find that the stranger had followed her dogs into the bedroom, eyeing Toby and Brechan as they settled into their accustomed places on the foot of her bed. With a look as if to say well, when in Rome the enormous mongrel slithered into the space left between her two springers. "Friends now, then?" she chuckled. "All right, just so you leave me a bit of it, there's a good dog..."
She could ignore the rumpus of canine bodies shifting about in the night, even with a plus-one, she'd done it every night since Harold had cleared off with that silly little chit from the newsagents who was younger than their marriage, but it was harder to sleep through the small insistent cheep of a mobile ringing somewhere, nearby but not on the bedside table where she usually left hers. Mindful of the time Toby had made off with her last phone in the night and quietly chewed it to bits before morning, she sat up to check on the pile of dogs at the foot of the bed.
Except Constable Davidson's dog wasn't there. What was stretched out between Toby and Brechan in the rising dawn light was Constable Davidson himself, mother-naked except for that now-loose collar, a spectacular bruise coming up on his hip. The same hip that the dog had been favouring...
Werewolves weren't real. Not even in the Brecon Beacons. But all the same, as the man sighed and opened slate-grey eyes, what other reasonable explanation could there be? "...Mrs Price."
"Constable Davidson?"
His collar chirped again. "Erm, sorry, need to take this --" He reached up and pulled it off to fumble the mobile out: "Yeah, no, not dead in a ditch, just -- Listen, I'm down the lane at Mrs Price's, I'll need to... Yeah, probably, while then? Right, have a kip and -- See you." He rang off and turned an apologetic smile to her. "Sorry. Erm..."
Irrelevant details seemed safer. "Your, ah, Mam? Girlfriend? ...Boyfriend?"
He'd started blushing at the first try and now went rosy to his chest. "Minder. I must have gone after a scent, she can't always keep up with me in the dark." He abruptly seemed to remember that he wasn't wearing a stitch. "Erm, would you have something I could...?"
She pointed toward the door of the bath and averted her eyes as he slid down from the bed, moving stiffly, the poor thing. "And if you'd like to, well, freshen up," she offered, thinking she'd certainly feel a mess in a situation like this. With a murmur of gratitude he closed the door of the bath behind himself and a few moments later she heard the water start.
Constable Davidson reappeared just as she was beginning to think she might better forget that strange dream and go back to sleep. He'd found Harold's old dressing-gown, which didn't suit or fit him any better than it had Harold but a good thing she hadn't been wasteful enough to dispose of it with the rest of Harold's mess, anyway. He sat back on the foot of her bed, patting Toby's head absently. "I don't usually, ah, turn up naked in people's bedrooms like this... How did I get here, was I running after your dogs?"
"Oh, you don't... you don't remember what you do when you...?" He shook his head, damp curls the colour of the dog's coat sticking up in mad spikes. "That, erm, bruise on your, you ran into the lane in front of my car, I couldn't miss hitting you. I was going to ring -- you -- Well. You're not too badly hurt, though?"
He rubbed his thigh with a look that seemed braced for more pain than came. "No, 's alright, not even the first time I've been hit by a car. Got the better of the last one, a bit -- If I did any damage I'll have it mended --"
She was sitting in her bed, talking with a werewolf, whom she'd knocked down in the road, and he was worried over the trouble he'd caused her? "Have you... been doing this a while, then?"
"Long enough." The small, resigned grimace spoke eloquently to why a young and seemingly fit constable had left the bustle and promise of a career on the city force for this quiet posting on the dull edge of nowhere, which question had been the subject of much gossip since he'd turned up a few months ago as the new owner of the old Morgan farm. Maybe not so remarkable, now, that such an otherwise warm and open man had been playing his personal life so close to the vest that half the village thought he'd come here to forget a broken heart and the other half conjectured that it was another bloke who'd broken it.
"You certainly do seem to have yourself sorted. You've, you've got your mobile, you've got --" She felt her face going hot. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry, it's just... You are the prepared one, though."
Constable Davidson gave an expressive shrug. "Well, this sort of thing, could wake up anywhere. And have. Although, some places have been better than others..."
And if she did not mistake herself, that was a distinct Look.
Oh, my.
He was a werewolf, he was half her age, he was her neighbour and he was a werewolf and bloody hell he was fit...
Oh, what the hell.
And a werewolf was like any man when it got down to it, it turned out, everything in the usual order (and quite intact, thank you), and no more given to bite unless he was asked nicely. It crossed her mind, briefly, to wonder what Harold would think of her young thing. Her strong, young thing, nevermind having to be so careful of his hip, who sweetly distracted her from her stray fancies with a well-timed why, grandmother, what big --
Constable Davidson, well, Andy, she couldn't really stand on formality at this point, settled back in the pillows with a contented grin that said the rewards of keeping an open mind to the possibilities were manifold. She propped herself on an elbow to study his oh-so-human features in sleepy wonder. "Was your friend giving you a lift?"
"Will do a bit later, yeah. Got mates over, she'll be getting them off to bed before she can come round for me."
"Mates, as in other werewolves?"
He looked slightly embarrassed that she'd finally come out and said the word. "It's not an invasion or anything. We're just trying to get on with it like anyone else. Helps to share it, is all. I make it sound like a bloody support group," he added, rather forlornly. "It's only I've the nicest place to run about. Know that's exactly why Torchwood helped me buy it --"
It was the first time she'd seen the guileless expression falter. "What's a Torchwood?"
"Nothing, division I worked with in Cardiff." With a strange, sad smile Andy slipped back into the dressing gown, and picked up his collar from the foot of the bed. "Make you a cuppa?"