“I think everyone should sit down,” said Bash from the doorway. “We need to figure out what this fucker is. Then we can look to sort the damage.”
“We need to get that thing out of the house. There’s enough enforcers here now, and we have Harley, Nomad and Cosmo if we need reinforcements. Just remember, he’s mine when we’ve finished interrogating him.”
Bash nodded at Arlo before he disappeared and returned dragging the unconscious man-thing. Soren whimpered as Taggart held his breath, the smell in the room was vile.
“What the hell is he?” Nomad asked after all the enforcers and the men working in the garden left, and Taggart and Soren were seated next to each other.
Arlo paced at the side of the table. “Don’t know, but I’ve fought nothing like it.”
Taggart tried to take a breath, thinking it would be easier, only he couldn’t get any air into his chest. The tightness increased as if he’d placed an elastic band around his chest and then someone had pulled it tight to the point he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to breathe again. When he’d bitten and clawed at the thing, the smokey stuff it released, he’d inhaled… a lot of it.
Had the thing gotten inside him? Was killing him slowly?
Panic filled him as he felt everything waver in front of him. His mind was screaming at his mates, but they couldn’t seem to hear him. His lips parted, but no words came out. He shook, his alarm growing when he could do nothing, not even lift an arm to draw attention to himself.
He slumped forward, and his head hit the table as the world became white.
Soren
His head was still fuzzy, but the moment his mate slumped forward and hit the table, that didn’t matter anymore. He wrapped an arm around Taggart and grabbed the table with a free hand to keep them steady and in their seats. Arlington’s arms wrapped around them, and Soren could feel his Daddy’sworried confusion as he leaned over to start speaking in Taggart’s ear.
“Darlin’ what’s wrong? Can you hear me?”
When Taggart didn’t answer, Soren tried speaking in their mate’s mind.
Taggart, Taggart, it’s all okay now, it’s okay, Daddy and his friends made everything safe again.
When no response came for either of them, Arlo scooped Taggart from the chair, eyes roving around for a place to lay him. He was too big for the table. Soren wrapped a blanket around his waist hiding his nakedness, rushing at the same time across the room to clear broken bits off the couch.
Arlo laid down the pale, unconscious Taggart, who didn’t make a sound. There was blood on his skin and hands, around his mouth and even under his fingernails, and all of it smelled foul, like the smelly thing that they had dragged out of there.
His steps weren’t the steadiest as he whirled away from their side to rush to the bathroom, returning with a bunch of washcloths and a nail brush to the kitchen, where his hand trembled when he reached for the handle on the faucet.
Then the bouncy blond man the big scary bikers had called Cosmo was there at his side, turning on the water and helping him soak the rags and fill a shallow bowl with warm, soapy water. Their eyes met over the sink, and Cosmo nodded to him, steely resolve in those bright, expressive eyes, which helped bolster Soren’s own.
“Let’s clean that icky stuff off him,” Cosmo said with determination.
Soren’s brain couldn’t form words, but he wrung out the warm washcloths he held while Cosmo did the same, the two hurrying over to where Arlo was still trying to rouse Taggart and encourage him to open his eyes the same way he’d done with Soren.
Cosmo pressed in on one side of Arlington, to clean Taggart’s hands and beneath his fingernails with the brush, while Soren moved to the other side of Arlington, to clean his mate’s face. His eyelashes didn’t even flutter when Soren touched his cheek with the cloth, but Soren drew in a deep breath and focused on the blood, getting it off his mate.
As he cleaned around Taggart’s lips, he recalled the way his mate had wrapped around the foul thingy’s leg, scurrying up it, clawing, biting.
Peeling his mate’s lips back, he started cleaning the inside of his cheek, running the cloth over his teeth, thoughts whirling. If his mate had gotten blood in his mouth he might have swallowed some or inhaled the shadowy essence of that thing, there had to be a way to purge it from his body.
Think.
Think.
Breathing in, Soren took a moment to just focus and run through all the things he’d learned living in a lively home with a family that believed in homeopathic treatments for any ailments that cropped up. Something popped into his head, and he dropped the cloth on the edge of the couch and whirled away, feet crunching over broken bits as he raced down the hall to the bedroom. There were still a couple of boxes he hadn’t unpacked, things he hadn’t been sure where to put, unlike everything he’d unpacked and tucked away in the kitchen.
Tossing the lid of the first one aside he rummaged inside until he found the little steam inhaler he’d carried with him from home. At the time he’d taken it, he’d done so because it was one of the few unbroken things left in the home. Now he set it up the way he had for his cousin so many times in the past and brought it over, trembling as he held it in front of Taggart’s nose and mouth, so he’d breathe in the essential oils.
It just had to work.
It had to.
He’d used eucalyptus and lavender for healing, relaxation and to open the lungs up so Taggart would cough up anything he’d inhaled. If he’d swallowed that thingy’s blood, he wasn’t sure what to do, not that they could do anything while he was unconscious.
