“She’s breathing, but she’s not conscious,” Matto said in a terse voice. “It looks as if she tried to get to the helicopter. There’s a blood trail.”
“Bullet wounds?” Calian asked.
“Not major. She has scrapes, it looks as if a bullet grazed her left arm and her right arm is broken.” Kansas brushed a snowflake from her cheek. “We need to get her to the lodge. Her skin is cold as an icicle. I’ve no idea how she managed to avoid worse injuries. The helicopter is a mess.”
The snow wasn’t falling as heavily now. In fact, it had stopped, and the snowflakes striking them were falling from the towering spruce.
“Is it safe to move her?” Calian asked.
“If we don’t, the cold will kill her.” Kansas stood. “Damn, it’s freezing. My balls are trying to crawl into my body.”
“We’ll take turns carrying her,” Matto said. “While the rest of us run as wolves. No point us all dying of the cold.”
“There must be a First-Aid kit someplace,” Calian said. “With one of those emergency blankets.”
“I’ll do a search,” Matto volunteered. “You guys start back to the lodge.”
“What about the bear?” Dakota asked.
“Dead,” Calian said. “The Hallsten brothers’ father. He gave me a message for them before he died.”
“He was sick.” Kansas sighed. “His flesh was rotting inside. A cancer of some sort.”
Calian nodded. “We’ll retrieve him in the morning.”
“I’ll carry Renee,” Dakota said. “Kansas after me to speed her healing.”
Calian stared at her still form. “Will she make it?”
“As long as we warm her up fast,” Kansas said. “Let’s move.”
The trip back to the lodge seemed to take much longer than the outward trip. Exhaustion clung to Calian, and one glimpse of his three brothers told him they suffered as much as him.
It was with relief that they reached the lodge.
“Kansas and I will warm her in the shower,” Dakota said.
Calian wanted to protest, but the twins with their healing powers were the best option. He and Matto stoked the fire in the kitchen and another in the lounge. They manhandled a mattress from the nearest bedroom and placed it in front of the fire. Once they’d done that, Calian heated several cans of beef and vegetable soup.
He and Matto were drinking soup when Dakota and Kansas carried Renee out to the lounge. They placed her on the mattress.
“Grab the First-Aid kit for us,” Kansas ordered.
Wordlessly, Calian followed the order.
Dakota knelt beside Renee’s still form. “We will set her arm and bandage it. It’s best she remains asleep. Her breathing is better now, so we’re not too worried. Grab a shower to warm up. Once you’re done, we need to change to wolf and sleep on either side of her. She couldn’t have crashed in a better place. It was more sheltered from the wind, and the polar bear had given her his jacket, or at least that’s what I presume. The jacket reeked of bear.”
Calian and Matto headed for the shower. The warm soup and the hot water helped to chase away the chill lingering in his bones.
When he and Matto returned to the lounge, Kansas and Dakota lay in wolf form, one either side of Renee. They’d stoked the fire and covered Renee with two woolen blankets.
Calian checked the kitchen fire and added more wood to that one too. The empty soup pot told him the twins had eaten. One more thing to do before he slept. He’d try the sat phone. The sky appeared clearer now, and he might get a call through to Sax.
The call went through, and to his relief, Sax answered almost instantly. “Did you find her?”
“Yes,” Calian said. “We’re at the lodge. The twins are healers, and they say she has a broken arm along with bumps and contusions and a close run-in with a bullet. She’s unconscious but they say she will recover. We have another woman who is dead. We think she was an assassin.”
“I’ll let everyone know this end. What do you need?” Sax asked.
