While this was happening, Andrew was saying, “Where the bloody hell do we take him?”
“Hospital,” Zar said. “Emergency—”
“You’re mental—” Andrew panted as they carried him to the trailer door. “He’s a total wolf now.”
“He needs a vet,” I murmured, squeezing Isaac’s neck and shoulder. “Set me down.”
“What would we tell a vet?” Zar paused while Jed got into the caravan ahead of them, turning on a light.
“I can stand,” I insisted to Isaac, who seemed to be set on carrying me up after them. “Jed, spread a blanket on the bed. Then we can move him on that. Is there an emergency vet’s office even within an hour of here?”
We were in the middle of nothing, an expanse of hills and moonlight—one road in and out.
“Kage?”
“Move, Jay. Get some trousers on and hold the pressure on that leg.”
“Pull out that corner,” Zar said. “Right, go easy.”
While they rested Kage’s limp body across the bed and blanket, Isaac set me on my feet at the top of the steps in. I gained my balance, clinging to his shoulder while he removed the keyring from the door.
“Isaac—?”
“I know where we’re going.” He stared into my eyes, his green ones reflecting the pale glow still coming from my skin. “You have to sit down. They’ll hold onto him. But I need Andrew in the cab.”
I was distracted by the sensation of the blood running down my right arm inside the coat sleeves, stopped by Isaac’s wool sock which kept my hand warm.
Everyone seemed to be moving, including myself. Isaac had to get to the wheel. I had to get to Kage. Jason was already there, tugging on his pants, holding Kage’s face. Zar was giving orders: Kage didn’t need his face held. He needed his leg held, his wounds held together, the bleeding stopped, and warmth. Unconscious from shock or blood loss, he was freezing, his gums pale. Jed, on the bed itself, held the shirt around the leg, trying to find exactly where it needed pressure. Zar was trying to dry him and wrap more blankets around him at once. Andrew squeezed past him and Jason to reach us at the door.
They’d had the second coat tied around me like a skirt, trying to protect me from the elements, and it was sliding to the floor as I caught it with my mitts to give to Andrew. His sneakers were soaked and covered in mud that reached his bare feet inside. His cargo pants were muddy in the knees, smeared with Kage’s blood above that. Abs and chest, covered in goosebumps, were also streaked in blood.
I pushed the coat at him, but it was the wrong one. “Your phone—”
He found his phone in the coat I still had on, shoved it into his pocket, and pulled the extra jacket around my back, my arms through the sleeves.
“Andrew—”
The camper spun, my arm throbbed with heat while the rest of me shook with cold. All so fast. He was moving like lightening. Zar was calling back to us while he also moved fast, he and Jason trying to get Kage warm, squeezing the damp from his fur and wrapping him up while Jed held the leg and Zar kept one hand against the coat on Kage’s stomach, holding his insides in place. Andrew had said something, answered Zar, spoken to Isaac. Isaac was gone, the door shut. How long had he been gone?
So fast.
“—with us.”
“No,” I said. “I need to stay with Kage. I can help.”
The engine started.
“—off. Dry and wrap up and keep still. We’ll get you to hospital—”
“Kage. I’m fine. Isaac knows where to take him.”
“—first, but you—”
It was weird how I kept catching parts of what Andrew was saying as my own prayers went on for Kage, while I tried to move that way. Andrew was holding onto me, opening bags, messenger, duffel, rucksack, throwing things. The trailer lurched and I clung to him.
“Isaac wanted you up front. He may need help navigating.”
“I know.” Andrew had my wet underwear down. I stepped out while he traded it in a flash for a dry, blue pair he’d pulled from his bag. My own panties.
“I can help…”
“You can lie down and keep still and warm up.”
All that throwing of stuff. It seemed he’d chucked pants at Jed, caught a blanket from Zar, and was now helping me on with his own backup pair of cargo pants. He pulled these up and wrapped the blanket around me, guiding me back at the same time to sit on the bench seat where the table had been stowed down.
Then Zar was there. Andrew was gone. The door banged and latched.
Zar held onto me. “Cass, you should lie down. How’s your arm? Let’s wrap it through that and get some pressure on it. Are you warming up?”
While Zar moved to find something to tie around my arm, my path was finally clear.
I wasn’t glowing anymore. Kage wasn’t either. But he had to. He had to live.
I needed only a few steps as the camper swayed below me, out on the road, picking up speed. The cargo pants were much too long anyway, but sliding down was a problem too. A few steps, blanket slipping down my shoulders, blood slipping down my arm.
“Cass—” Zar spoke sharply behind me.
Jason leaned over, holding the coat and covers in, shaking, his face against Kage’s fur, wet with blood and water. Jed, on his knees on the bed and hunched over him, held onto the leg. The great, noble wolf lay flat, his bloody jaws parted, his paws dangling and jittering in the moving caravan, his blood soaking through coat and shirt.
He wasn’t going to make it. To look at him, the possibility that he could survive this was ludicrous. Like saying someone could survive a beheading.
I stopped the thoughts before they could take hold, a fleeting, fresh wave of terror, nausea, and I blocked them, said no, that’s not how this is. He’s not a man, he’s not a total wolf. He’s Kage and he’s going to live.
All in a step, Zar protesting, and I was there with Jason. I crept onto the bed with him, cradled Kage’s head into my lap on the soft cotton pants, and pulled off the left sock from my hand with my teeth instead of the right so the blood would not run down to my hand.
Zar wrapped the blanket once more around my shoulders. He was talking. About the first aid kit in the caravan, how he wanted to see my arm, wrap it up, how there was gauze and some cotton pad, and he could take care of my arm. He wanted to pull the sleeves down.
“Use it for his leg.”
“Cass, we have pressure there. Let’s look at your arm.”
I repeated my words and leaned over Kage, running my left hand into the tangled, damp fur. Behind an open wound across his shoulder, I pressed my palm over his heart, feeling his cool skin.
Again, there was the thought: he was too cold—a body, not a patient.
But I clenched my teeth and pressed. Jason’s hand clutched mine and I heard his gasping, choking breaths of panic, felt his own skin burning, sweaty, his hold crushing.
I took the panic and the desperation. I took the pain in my arm and head and fear and horror and shock. I took the focused but also frantic work of his cousins, the fire’s warmth and the water’s cradle and the air’s invincibility. I manufactured a willful, blazing certainty that my baby was all right and Isaac knew exactly what we needed to do and we would have help and we were going to win. Then I flung it down my own arm, sucking it from Jason’s skin, drawing it from the space, compressed it into my palm, and cast it into Kage’s chest.
The wolf gasped, his jaws worked feebly, and his ribs lifted and fell very faintly under my hand. He was glowing again—faintly. So was I.
No one had ever taught me this. I hadn’t known that what I was doing was possible. But most magic, the way Nana had taught it, was like that.
Magic is what you need, when you need it. Limited by how much of it you think you can do. Nothing more. Nothing less.
I understood in that moment—as I held him and cast and fought a building dizziness and blurred vision—what it all meant in a way I never had before. And I understood, more as if I’d known it a
ll along, that I had to keep the glow for however long it took to get to where we were going. I didn’t know if that would take half an hour or five hours, but I knew I could do it. I knew because Zar returned to hold onto me, his arms around my shoulders, and Jason kept clutching my hand, shaking, and Jed kept holding onto Kage’s leg after the bandaging, one hand for pressure and one very slowly stroking the blood-stained fur.
Chapter 9
I wouldn’t have been able to stay conscious without them. Even with all three, the glow had faded. We only held onto Kage and prayed by the time the Jeep stopped and the engine went silent. It had been an hour—more? I wasn’t sure.
Too long. Long enough that the thoughts crept back as they moved, ready to take Kage out of here on his blanket stretcher. Thoughts that we were too late. That he was still too cold, already hardly breathing, couldn’t go any longer, and nothing had even been done yet, nothing started in the way of, say, surgery or transfusions. But he couldn’t have a transfusion.
We must be at an emergency clinic. What were we going to say about having this wolf in the first place? After that, though, what about more? Like blood? Like them not knowing his anatomy and him not being compatible with canine blood transfusions? He needed blood from one of them. Which would look to a vet like a man was giving blood to a wolf. Which the vet couldn’t do.
But we were stopped, and we were here—somewhere—and he was still alive.
Because he’s going to live.
At a reminder from his brother, Jed pulled on the faded black jeans that Andrew had thrown at him. Then he and Zar took each end of the blanket while Jason held onto Kage’s spilling middle and I climbed shakily from the caravan, hanging onto the door with my now bloody sock hand, holding up my pants with my free left. Zar kept telling me to sit down, to stay here, that he’d be right back for me.
The night was cold, the wind gone. Stone buildings, streetlights, front lights, sidewalk and road stretched away right and left as I stepped out in the quiet night. I touched down straight onto the sidewalk. Isaac had pulled over, stopping in the street, blinkers flashing. We seemed to be in a neighborhood, with some businesses farther down at the corner. The air smelled of rain and faintly of coal smoke.
My foot seemed to freeze on contact with the sidewalk and I recoiled, holding the door. I’d forgotten I had nothing but Andrew’s socks on my feet. Where were my shoes? Had they brought them in the rucksack?
“Cassia?”
But Andrew ran up to me before Isaac got there. “What are you doing? You should be lying down.”
“Where are we?”
“Hell if I know. Come on.” Arm around me, trying to move me to get in the Jeep instead. “Moon…” He was sniffing. “Is that your arm?”
“It’s stopped.” It was Isaac’s blood-soaked sock he was smelling.
Isaac left him with me and ran up the steps to a front door from the sidewalk. Part of a row of stone terraced houses, all the windows dark. It was not a vet clinic.
“Is this Coniston?”
“Ambleside,” Isaac said, and hammered at the door knocker. It was metal, loud, reverberating up the quiet street.
Jed backed carefully down the steps, barefoot on the sidewalk, Jason squeezing after him, then Zar, all trying to keep Kage’s stretcher level.
“This isn’t a vet…?” Zar was looking around, noticing as I had that we were in front of homes. They made no further comment, though, following Isaac to the stairs.
I did as well, having to pull against Andrew’s arm, but also leaning on him.
Isaac knocked steadily on the door, pausing, knocking again, pressing the bell.
If this wasn’t Coniston, and we were at someone’s home… Isaac had said he’d known a family from the Mountain Pack in Coniston. Not this town of Ambleside. If he hadn’t brought us to wolves, and hadn’t brought us to an emergency clinic…
Andrew supported me, coming with me to stay with Kage at the foot of the few steps to the door. Lights were coming on inside.
Isaac waited, looking around at us, and knocked again. He was breathing hard, shoulders rising and falling. His breath made wisps of steam in the cool, damp night.
He faced the door again.
Something wrong, a chill up from the bottoms of my own cold feet. A tremble in the air, an uncertainty, a mistake in the making, a promise broken, a lightbulb blown… Something wrong and I wanted to move up to him, take his hand, pull him away.
The outside light beside the door flashed on. The door opened only several inches.
A young woman, early or mid-thirties, with dark hair disheveled by bed, in slender, modern glasses and a bathrobe over pajamas, stared out. She caught sight of us in that instant of opening the door, before her gaze hit Isaac right in front of her.
Her eyes widened, mouth opened, muscles growing taught, as if she’d received a blow. Suspicion instantly replaced by a face full of such horror, it seemed I could hear her silent scream. The wave was tangible, sweeping into me. I wanted to cry out, to stop something awful from happening. Isaac might as well be carving through her front door with a chainsaw for the look on her face.
“Isaac, no, leave her alone. We shouldn’t be here.” But my lips only moved, more whispers that weren’t even whispers, a plea unnoticed.
She stepped back, shutting the door.
Isaac caught it. “Madison, please.” His voice was achingly soft as well, gentle, as if to lull someone to sleep. “I’m sorry to be here. I’m sorry it’s so late. Wait, please. I have no right to call on favors. My being in the area had nothing to do with you, but a friend of mine has been hurt. Badly hurt.”
Her stricken gaze darted past him and the gap in the door to the rest of us. Me in the coats, hanging onto Andrew, wanting to weep in sympathy for her, over Zar, Jed, and Jason—all of them shirtless, two barefoot—then the blanket and the wolf. Each of us were bloody. Isaac’s shirt had blood streaks on it. Andrew’s cargo pants were caked in blood. The rest had visible blood on their skin. Jason had fresh claw marks carved down his ribs where his change had mostly healed them, but they still oozed drops of blood with his new exertion. And the wolf, the massive, apparently lifeless Eurasian wolf, lay on the blanket between them with bandaged leg, bound middle, fur black with blood…
Her eyes fixed on the wolf for a long moment of breathless silence like the hush after the tolling of a bell. Louder than any normal silence, while she stared at Kage.
“Madison?” Isaac whispered. “Please. We have nowhere else to go. If we have to try finding an alternative … if we lose any more time … he’ll die.”
Madison’s eyes met mine for some reason, flickering from Kage straight to me. I looked back, wanting to hug her, unsure what Isaac was asking, but praying for a yes all the same. I echoed his please in my mind, in my eyes.
She looked at Isaac. She still hadn’t said a word, but stared a moment more, took him in, glanced at Kage, and finally nodded. “Take him down there. I have to get dressed.” She shut the door.
Isaac let out a breath and drew a hand down his face, across his beard, to drop, his shoulders sagging.
We said nothing, having no idea what had just happened.
Chapter 10
Madison unlocked the door, then turned on the lights as she led us through the back of a small veterinary clinic that was just around the corner from where she lived.
As she walked, flipping switches, turning up the heat, grabbing scrubs, she fired questions at us: What happened? How long ago? How long had he been unconscious? Was anyone compatible?
Isaac mostly answered.
“He can have my blood,” Zar said at the last, teeth chattering. “He did once before—when he was…” He glanced at Jed and away. “So I know we’re good for a match. But I better… To make sure…” He looked at Isaac—more than confusion, panic all over his face.
“Change,” Isaac said. “If he’s going to give blood he should be in the same form to make sure.”
Madison didn’t
seem to hear this, grabbing bags of IV fluids, moving a tray on wheels, barking orders at them while they laid him out on the stainless steel operating table she indicated.
Isaac jerked his head at Zar, taking over Kage’s head at the blanket and table. “Washroom is toward reception.”
Zar hurried from the room.
“I need assistants.” Madison turned on an oxygen machine as she shoved it over, pressing the clear plastic cone with a black rubber rim into Isaac’s hand. “Keep that over his nose.” She pressed back his lip with a finger while his mouth gaped, looking at the color, pulled back an eyelid, then moved even faster. “Who else has any medical training?” She slid a stethoscope under Kage’s bloody elbow, holding her breath to listen for a few seconds—making me realize when she’d seen his mucous membranes she wondered if he was already dead.
“Everyone in the shops has first aid,” Jed mumbled, not looking up, back to holding Kage’s bandaged leg. Barefoot and shirtless, stubble on his face, blood on his skin, he was also shivering.
Madison passed clippers to Isaac. “Arm.” She set out needles and long rubber tubes. With her foot, she lowered the hydraulic table beside them until it was only a couple feet off the ground, threw down a rubber mat on it, then turned away to scrub her hands while Isaac was shaving the fur off Kage’s upper forelimb. Jason still held the coat. Zar walked back into the room with his nose twitching and newly golden eyes wide.
“Get on the table.” Isaac jerked his head at him.
Zar jumped onto the mat and sat down, looking vast on it, like setting a horse on the hood of a car.
“Jed, tape.”
Jed passed over a roll of surgical tape and Isaac wrapped it behind Kage’s ears to connect the oxygen mask to his face. While Madison was tugging on a mask and pulling over more tools, Isaac shaved the fur off Zar’s forearm as well.
Moonlight Whispers: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 8) Page 5
