by JF Holland
“Luc, old friend, problem?” Leonard asked, stepping into the room.
Leonard took in the confusion on everyone’s face as they watched Luc with his body between Sophia and the rest of the room.
“Aren’t you meant to be on a date?” Balin groaned, holding his stomach, and Leonard’s nostrils flared.
“What the fuck have you done,” he sighed, stepping closer to the bed, tutting.
“I have a rune-stone in me. That psychotic bitch left a rune inside of me which is why I’m not healing,” Balin gritted out from between his teeth.
“We don’t know that yet,” Sophia spoke up from behind Luc’s wing, glaring at him, but he stared back at her over his wide shoulder.
“Luc, you need to move,” she informed him, scowling.
“Non, not until I know he is completely calm. I will knock him out if he touches you again.” Sophia growled low in her throat, scowling at him, but he just shrugged, eyes once again on Balin.
“I’m sorry, Luc, Aunt Sophia. Balin will behave now. Won’t you?” Lana scolded, mouth flat as she looked at her mate, then sighed as he groaned again.
“Have I missed the party?” Thomas asked, stepping into the room; black bag in hand.
“Thomas, thank the goddess, he’s opened his stomach,” Sophia replied, peeking out from behind Luc’s wing. She tried to bat it out of her way, but it held firm before her like a curtain.
“I think we need some room to work here,” Thomas murmured, trying to edge around people, but there was not much room with so many in there.
“You will take care of him?” Sam asked, looking worriedly from Balin to the surgeon.
“The very best. Any problems, you’ll be the first person I shout,” Thomas promised him and he nodded.
“Son, no more, please,” Sam told Balin, his forehead resting on his as he pushed his sweat soaked fringe out of the way. With his mouth, grim, he left the room, Helena moving to one side as he passed, and then following him down the stairs.
“Jaden, the grizzly twins are downstairs, they need to know where you want them to look next,” Maya said from the doorway. He turned, then head turning towards his brother he looked back at her.
“Go, Leonard replied, I will watch over him,” he told Jaden, who with a sigh, pushed himself up. He gripped Balin’s hand and squeezed. “Listen to them, no more fucking about or I’ll hold you down myself while Luc knocks you the hell out and ties you up. Do you hear me?” Balin nodded, wincing, his hands dropping to his stomach, but Thomas was already there, applying pressure to the wound with clean gauze.
“Leonard, can you hold this for me, while I go wash up?”
“Sure,” Leonard sighed, sitting on the bed. He removed his leather jacket, and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, before taking over. “So Luc, you going to stand there like a guard dog, or are you going to help?” Leonard asked over his shoulder as Balin ground his teeth.
“I’ll help, but if he touches her again, or looks at her the wrong way, I’ll still knock him out.” He folded his wings and held out a hand to Sophia. “Come, you sit here, helping her take a seat by Balin’s legs. “At least if you sit here, he can’t kick you. Not with his legs being the way they are at present,” Luc growled, again giving Balin daggers and making Leonard laugh.
“Stop laughing jackass, what happened with the date? Come on spill, I need to take my mind of this,” Balin groaned, eyes squeezing closed.
“Shit, what can I do?” Lana said sitting by his head on the other side of the bed.
“Just being here helps,” Balin told her.
“I can’t believe you did this. I’m so pissed with you right now… if you weren’t in so much pain, I’d… I’d,” she shook her head, swallowing.
“I’m sorry. The thought of some foreign body, something that shouldn’t be inside my body being there… it’s just…” Balin shuddered.
“Yeah, try being a female.”
“Huh?” Balin frowned, then read her mind and laughed.
“Ouch, my dick is not strange,” he laughed again. “Shit, stop making me laugh, it fucking hurts,” he groaned as he squeezed his eyes closed and sucked in a breath.
Sophia’s brow rose at her niece, and Lana blushed, then shrugged.
“Thomas what can I do to help?” Sophia asked, watching Luc from the corner of her eye as he stood arms folded, leaning against the wall, watching her like a hawk.
“Sit the hell down or leave the room, you’re making me nervous.” Sophia growled as Luc just grinned at her, a foot resting on the wall behind him.
“Men are arseholes,” Lana mumbled, and Sophia nodded.
“Hey, I take offence at that one,” Thomas replied, coming back to the bed with a light and retractor. He handed them to Sophia, then put on a pair of gloves and wrapped a rubber tourniquet around Balin’s arm, above his elbow.
“What’s that for?” Balin asked suspiciously, trying to see what he had in his hand.
“Say goodnight,” Thomas replied as he pushed a needle into his vein, depressing the plunger.
“Hey…” Balin slurred, eyes drifting shut and breathing, levelling out.
“Thank you,” Lana swallowed, wiping beneath her eye as she stroked Balin’s dark, perspiration soaked hair off his forehead.
“What did you give him?” Leonard asked, looking towards Balin, watching his chest rise and fall.
“Just a shot of Ketamine.”
“I thought that just relaxed?” Leonard asked, watching the steady rise and fall of a deeply sleeping Balin.
“Not the amount I’ve just given him.”
“He’ll be okay?” Lana asked, worriedly.
“Yes, I just needed to give him enough to buy myself a few minutes, especially if I’m to try to locate a possible rune.”
“Do you have access to an x-ray or ultrasound?”
“Back at the hospital, yes. I’d like to just have a quick look here if I can.”
“If it was easily located, wouldn’t you have seen it when you initially examined him?” Lana asked, still stroking his hair, more to calm herself than him, as he was out of it now.
“To be honest I wasn’t looking for foreign matter. All I did was check that there was no internal damage to his organs.”
“Okay, what are we doing?” Leonard asked.
“I need to put some sheets around the bed and then have a quick look. Sophia, what am I looking for?”
“I’m thinking a small rune, no bigger than a pebble.”
“Any idea where she’d have put something like that? There’s an awful lot in the abdominal cavity.”
“I’d be thinking more towards the diaphragm, in line with the heart.”
“Why there?”
“I don’t know, it was something Luc said earlier.”
“What did I say earlier?” Luc enquired, forehead scrunched as he tried to think back.
“When she cursed you, she touched you above your heart. Davion had a necklace around his throat, the pendant resting high on the chest. Balin was cut upwards, towards the heart. Then add in her penchant for removing hearts, or eating them.” She shuddered at the thought of that one.
“You’re thinking she’s going for places near the main arteries, the ones that lead directly to the heart? that’s possible I suppose. There is a large aorta in the stomach that leads to the heart,” Thomas replied. “Okay, let’s get some covering on the bed and see if we can locate it quickly.”
“What if you can’t”
“Then it’s fortuitous that Leonard is here.”
“Why?” Lana asked.
“Because I’m going to have to go with you to the hospital to put the whammy on a few people so we can get him what he needs.”
Lana nodded, turning slightly so she couldn’t see what they were doing with Balin’s stomach.
Chapter Eighteen
S ophia held the rune in her hand, mouth grim.
“That tiny thing caused all his problems?”
�
��Yes, look at the etching on it,” she told them holding the stone between her finger and thumb so they could see it.
“It looks like a wonky, C,” Lana replied, staring at the little symbol on the rune, no bigger than a thumb.
“It’s Perthro, it means initiation, things unexplained, something hidden. She obviously has a sense of humour,” Sophia told them.
“Why so,” Thomas asked, washing the area around Balin’s stomach before putting fresh gauze over the wound and tightly binding it to hold it in place.
“It’s a rune that is associated with the Phoenix,” she informed them dryly. “Usually meant for powerful forces of change, or in this case as she’s placed it in reversed, stopped change in Balin’s case.”
“So now you’ve removed it, he should be able to shift to heal?” Lana asked.
“We’ll soon find out,” Thomas replied as Balin groaned and his eyes flicked, opening.
“Hey baby, it’s gone,” Lana told him, stroking his hair back again.
“That’s good, fuck my stomach hurts. Who ran me over with a truck again?”
“That would have been the way you tore at the wound yourself. Would you like me to give you another shot?” Thomas asked, removing the stained clothes and gauze and wrapping it all up; including his gloves before dropping everything into the wastepaper bin.
“No, no more shots, I’ll survive,” he yawned.
“Sleep Balin, I’ll perform another healing session on your shortly.”
“Is that going to be needed now?” Lana asked, confused.
“I need to add in some protection, and smudge him and the room. Then I’ll leave some of the herbs to be sprinkled over a candle. But be warned, it has to be lit at bedtime for the next week once I’ve finished.”
“Why?” Luc asked, curious despite himself.
“I need to make sure I’ve fully reversed the spell she put on him.”
“Removing the rune wouldn’t do that?”
“Not always, it depends on what type of spell she used as she placed it inside him. If it was a rushed thing, then just removing it may do the trick.”
“But?” Lana asked.
“I want to make sure I’ve covered all the bases.”
Sophia stood from the bed, and looked around her, frowning.
“What have you lost?” Luc asked, pushing off from the wall.
“My bag,” she asked.
“I left it downstairs, I’ll go grab it for you,” Luc replied, stepping out of the room.
“Can someone get a hold of Agatha, if she’s working on Davion, I think she needs to know that there may be more going on.” Leonard nodded, standing up and pulling his phone out of his pocket as he headed towards the bedroom door.
“I still want all the details about your date,” Balin shouted after him, and Leonard just threw him the birdie over his shoulder on his way out of the door.
Chapter Nineteen
J aden needed to get out of the house for a while, especially after the day he’d had. So, he took off with Nathan and Adam to do a quick search of the area.
He’d been out earlier that afternoon, visiting Evan, Cathy and Gavin Collier to see how they were holding up after losing Michael to that psychotic bitch the night they’d rescued Balin. Jaden’s gut twisted just thinking about the death of the kid, and the devastation his loss had left behind for his family. The only good thing for them was that Phillip Lennon was not only the local coroner, but also a Lynx shifter. He’d helped to fabricate the reason for Michael’s death, and it had been logged as an accidental drowning after he’d fallen and hit his head while out picking flowers near the river. Elliot had then signed the death certificate. The local human doctor had turned out to be a great source of help to them.
Jaden had arrived back at the house behind Luc and Sophia. There was definitely something going on between those two, but he didn’t have the mental capacity to work it out just now. It was Michael’s funeral tomorrow, and that on top of Balin not healing was more than enough for him to worry over. They also still had not located Maisie, and her being on the loose was a huge black spot on all their futures. Helena and Sam hadn’t had their binding ceremony yet, until this was settled; and they had gotten rid of the threat to them all it just wasn’t safe. Throw in a full moon coming up on Friday, and several wolves who’d had to seek help to control their natural instincts during the last full moon, you had a mass of tension building. Throw in a nosey bastard reporter who was also sniffing around and he had one hell of a headache.
Henry Smith was a weasel of a man, and that wasn’t because he was a shifter, no. He was just your average human, but also a vile piece of shit to boot. He’d been turning up in all sorts of places he had no right being, even getting the backs up of the local police as he sniffed around for a story.
He’d arrived in the area after getting a tip off about the van drivers murder. The bastard had the community in fear for their lives, printing shit stories about sacrificial killings and cannibals. Okay, he’d admit it, Maisie was definitely killing as some kind of sacrifice, as well as getting off on it. In fact, Agatha thought the van driver’s death was probably directly linked to Davion and his present condition. All-in-all, there were just too many damn variables, too many people on the playing field now, and it wall all adding up to a cluster fuck that was coming to a head. He just hoped to god they didn’t lose anyone else before this was over.
“Balin’s awake and they have the rune,” Maya sent to him as he moved through the trees. His tail moved from side to side to help him balance as he picked up speed moving along the branch highway. The grizzly twins were either side of him on the ground searching for any signs that she’d passed this way.
“Thank you. Just give me an hour, then I’ll be back. Love, you, baby,” Jaden sent back to her. A sound came from up ahead and he dropped to his belly, a soft rumble leaving his chest to warn the twins. They froze, melting back into the bushes as Jaden’s whiskers sifted through the scents, ears twisting as he tried to pinpoint the location of the sound. Head tilting, his tail twitched and his top lip lifted of his teeth as that nosey bastard reporter walked below the tree, camera slung around his neck. He thought about dropping down on the scum bag and seeing if he’d shit himself, then had to suck back a bark of laughter from rumbling up his cat’s throat. He watched as he slowly edged his way through the trees, and shook his head because he walked right passed a grizzly who sat with his back to a tree.
“Don’t you dare,” Maya sent to him, laughter in her voice.
“Awe, come on honey, don’t be a spoil sport. It would serve the nosey bastard right, maybe I should see how fast he can run,” he mused, resting his muzzle on his paws.”
“No, come home if you can’t find anything, Sophia has finished Balin’s healing session. Come have something to eat. Plus, Nathan and Adam’s muscle is required,” Maya informed him.
“Why, what’s happened?”
“Agatha can’t find the rune, which they now suspect is in him somewhere. Elliot popped around, he has a portable ultrasound at his surgery. He’s willing to open up the clinic so Thomas can use it to see if they can locate it.”
“As soon as this arse is out of the way, I’ll be back,” Jaden promised, tracking the reporters progress through the woods.
“Oh, and Jaden, Norman Holden rang, he needs you to nip into the police station in Upper Lunaton in the morning. They have a few more questions to ask,” she sighed.
“Brilliant, is Leonard still around?”
“He is, although he’s leaving shortly, he has another date,” Maya snickered.
“Okay, ask him if he’ll meet me at the station tomorrow. If I get there around ten in the morning, I can still make it back for Michaels funeral,” he sighed.
“Will do, see you soon.” With that, she was gone and Jaden lay broodingly, watching as the round, profusely sweating reporter disappeared.
Once he was sure he’d gone, he held still for another couple of minutes, lis
tening out, just in case he doubled back. Then, he dropped down, twisting as he contorted from four to two legs, muzzle vanishing until he stood, brushing his hair off his forehead.
“Jaden, what do you want to do?” Nathan asked, stepping up to him, a piece of grass between his teeth as Adam came swaggering over.
“We need to get back; your muscle and vehicle are required to get Davion to Elliot’s clinic. Plus, if the reporters hanging around we daren’t get caught out here, not in animal form.”
“Okay, I take it we’re walking out on two legs then?” Adam grumbled.
“Yes, not worth the risk,” Jaden added, turning on his heel and heading back towards home.
Chapter Twenty
H ere, drink your tea,” Luc told Sophia, an arm beneath her head as he helped her to sit up. She’d collapsed after performing Balin’s healing session. He was now sleeping peacefully, Lana curled up beside him, candles with Thyme, Cumin, Cayenne Pepper and Star Anise, sprinkled over the flames had been left burning after she’d smudged both Balin and the room first. She’d used those particular herbs, as they helped to repel any hex he may have on him. Or on the off chance that Maisie had left any other surprises behind that they’d not come across yet. It should also help his healing along, she just hoped that he would now be on the mend.
Sighing, she drank the tea as Luc held it for her, then yawning, she lay back against the cushions.
“Thank you, Luc,” she mumbled, around another yawn. He put the cup of the coffee table and knelt beside her, sifting his fingers through her hair, watching her broodingly.
“Would helping me affect you this way?”
“It may, or may not. I won’t know what I’ll need to do, not until I do some research on possibilities,” she informed him, blinking, trying to keep her eyes open.
“Sleep, I will watch over you, or would you rather I took you to mine to rest?”
“I don’t have the energy to move,” she admitted, a smile tilting her lips.
Leaning over, he gently brushed his lips over hers. “I would carry you,” he smiled against her mouth when he felt her shiver beneath his touch.
