"I'll be the judge of that. I'm the doctor."

"So you keep reminding me," I grumbled. "Are you going to help me, or scold me?"

"I'm thinking about putting you in my car and driving you to the hospital myself, but you'd probably just try to bite me. Honestly, you're worse than David and Newt."

"I'm not a German Shepard."

"No, you're a bloody wolf, Joel. Now let me have a look at your neck."

I grunted an affirmative and glared at the ceiling while she ran her slender hands around my throat, looking for bruising and broken bones. There were a couple tender places that made me express some choice words but nothing that seemed to scream I was dying to Maddie.

"You keep calling what you saw a hunter," she said at last, pulling back from me and balancing on her haunches. "Why?"

I shrugged. "He was big. Vaguely human. He hunted me."

"Claws?"

I squinted but nodded. "Yeah."

"You have some marks on your neck that look like… nail prints? But not quite right. Beyond that just some bruising over your jugulars. Your 'hunter' seems intelligent. It knew just how to put you down without hurting you too badly."

"You're telling me," I muttered. Then, "Hey, Maddie…" I let my voice trail away, already not liking what I knew was coming when I said my next words. "You wouldn't happen to have a rape kit around the house, would you?"

"Fuck!"

I actually winced at that, and looked away, shaking my head.

"I'm pretty sure I don't need it, but I'd like to know for sure."

"We should go to the hospital, Joel."

"Not happening. It's here or nowhere, Maddie."

She covered her face with her hands and got up to pace in circles, her mutters devolving into German that I was fairly sure were insults to my "bloody, male stubbornness."

"Okay, okay. I'll do a kit for you, Joel, but if I find anything you're going to the hospital and the police and don't you growl at me, young man!"

My teeth snapped together, but I managed to cut my snarl off. I hated being bossed around, but I doubted I'd win against Maddie when she was in this mood. "Deal."

"What? I'm not sure I heard you."

"I said deal. But only if you run some samples of that gel on my ankle and this." I held out my arm and Maddie frowned at the yellowish-green mess.

"What is that?"

"Blood. His blood, Maddie. I got a few cuts in. I don't know if any of this is usable anymore, but I'd still like you to have a look at it."

"I think I want a look at it… I can't believe this."

"You say that like you didn't spend months listening to Seanmháthair."

Maddie sighed and scrubbed at her face with the palms of her hands. "That's not what I mean. I can believe in gods and faeries, I'm not sure I can take a serial killer and a mysterious hunter showing up in the woods, at the same time. I'm tired, Joel."

"So am I," I admitted.

She sighed again. "I'll get the kit, you get your pants off, I guess."

Half of me wanted to make a crude remark, but thought better of it. Maddie wouldn't appreciate my attempt at humor right now, and maybe I wasn't in the mood, either. It didn't matter. By the time Maddie came back I was staring at the brand on my hip again and of course she would hiss, "What's that?" at me.

"Little gift from the hunter."

"Oh, like the fact it fixed your ankle for you? You could have mentioned this sooner. Let me see."

"Looks like a burn," I informed her when she leaned in.

"It does," she agreed. "An acid burn…"

"Acid? I thought… maybe something else. Didn't have time to think about it much, actually."

"Apparently. I'm going to clean this and bandage it before doing anything else."

Muttering in German again, she rummaged through some supplies before glancing up at me and asking. "What do you think it means? The symbol."

"Don't know. It's not one I recognize."

And I didn't particularly want to run through what had been forming in my mind while I sat there, going over and over what had happened in the woods. Adding in the facts of my knife being left by me and my ankle being tended to. Too many things were jangling in my subconscious, coming together in ways I wasn't sure how to feel about.

The god hadn't wanted to kill me. He could have, but he hadn't. In a strange way he'd honored me by returning the knife. And yet he'd treated me as prey. Stalked me. Toyed with me. Marked me.

Marked me the way humans tagged deer.

I'd been a fun hunt. Maybe even a challenging one.

And I'd been tagged.

The implications of that were varied and probably not favorable if I valued staying alive. Prey was only tagged if the hunter wanted to find it again, after all. Wanted to track it.

I wasn't about to tell Maddie this little tidbit of a thought, and perhaps my tone even clued her in that this time my stubbornness wouldn't be one she could win against. She didn't ask about the mark again, in any case. Just cleaned it, bandaged it, and proceeded to poke and prod me places I wasn't fond of being poked and prodded for the rape kit I'd asked for.

It wasn't till she was done and I had my pants up again that she said anything else.

"Hey, Joel…"

"Yeah," I grumbled, more tired than I could remember being since Seanmháthair's death rite, my mind already on bed and a shower.

"This… hunter. In the woods. Everything happening in Cutter's Bend. Do you think it's related?"

"Yes." It was a clipped answer, but a truthful one. Maddie was one of the few people I'd willingly give answers like this to, and sometimes I thought her knowing could be a problem. Nothing like people knowing they were close enough to you they could press your buttons.

"What should we do?"

And nothing like knowing they relied on you as much as you relied on them. I ground my teeth together at the question because it cut my heart out.

"Stay out of the woods. Keep Helen out of the woods." She blanched at the mention of her wife and all I could do was growl my way forward. "If the dogs bark at something you can't see… run."

"Okay."

Her voice was small and I hated that. Especially from Maddie. My fireball physician. But it was better she was prepared than stupid. "A few prayers might not hurt, either. If you still remember how to pray to Cernunnos."

"Don't you patronize me, Joel O'Kelly!" she snapped, standing. "I might not be exactly a pagan or a Christian, but I still remember your grandmother and the old gods. I'll have a few words with Odin too for good measure."

I gave her a curt nod, mirroring her stand even if I wobbled in the process. "I'm going home, Maddie. Let me know what you find out."

"I suppose it's no use offering to drive you, is it?"

"You know the answer to that."

Her frustrated sigh was sign she did, and maybe I should have let her do it. Pack me in her car and drive me home to my studio. But I wanted time alone with my own thoughts now that my head was clear.

Time to come to terms with being tagged prey.