He just had to hold the inhaler steady over Taggart’s nose and mouth and keep his hand from shaking so Taggart could keep breathing in the steam. Daddy’s hand slid over his, helping steady him while they waited for any sign from Taggart.
On the other side of Arlington, Cosmo silently scrubbed at the blood beneath Taggart’s fingernails, having thoroughly cleaned the blood from his skin.
He had to be okay.
He just had to be.
Taggart, can you hear me? Please be okay. I am so sorry if me coming to Cookietown brought that thing here and into your home. It’s just that I recognize his smell from my home. He was one of the ones who destroyed it. I didn’t realize he could turn into smoke and shadows though, or I’d have been on the lookout for that too. Please be okay. I need to see you smile at me again. You and Daddy have made me such a happy little bird to have found you, but nothing will ever be right again if you don’t wake up, so please, please, please, please wake up for us.
When Taggart’s chest heaved, Soren’s eyes went wide, especially when it happened again. He kept the mask in place though, because heaving was a good sign, it meant coughing should happen soon, and once it did, Taggart’s lungs would hopefully empty of whatever essence of the foul thing it held.
Harsh, wheezing sounds came next, then Taggart surged upward, while Soren pulled the inhaler away as he doubled over, harsh, heavy coughs bursting from deep in his chest. WithArlington supporting him, Taggart coughed and kept right on coughing, dark mucus and saliva dripping from his lips and nose that Soren wiped away with one of the washcloths he’d left on the edge of the couch.
He was still so pale, and he looked exhausted, but coughing was better than lying there limp, so Soren kept right on hoping everything was going to be okay. The coughing went on so long that it looked painful, and the whole time, Daddy held Taggart steady, while Soren wiped away the dark sputum that dribbled from his lips.
Finally, the coughing stopped, and Taggart sagged against Arlington’s chest. Soren hugged them from the side, resting his head against Taggart’s shoulder, and breathed out a sigh of relief.
Everything would be better soon.
He hoped.
Arlo
With nerves on edge, Arlo held Taggart while Soren clung to him. They’d both given him a scare today, and his heart rate hadn’t even come close to settling back down yet. Gently, Arlo laid Taggart back on the couch, shocked when, seconds later, Soren shifted to his Oxpecker form and settled in to roost right on Taggart’s shoulder, where he could softly tweet in his ear. Arlo pulled the blanket pooling around Soren and smoothed it out over both boys, tucking them in together gently. Staring down at them, all Arlo wanted to do was smash something.
How the fuck had that thing just walked in there?
How had it known about the project?
There was no doubt in his mind that it had come to cause harm and to find out what information they had about the rogue council members’ disgusting practices.
He needed to look at the security feed recording, but not yet. He just couldn’t make himself leave his boys yet.
Not when he couldn’t trust that there weren’t others like it. And not when he still had no clue how the fuck something like that got past him and all the way inside undetected.
There was a slight tremble in his hand when he reached first to stroke Taggart’s hair back and then smooth Soren’s feathers. Several still looked bent and ruffled, like they’d gotten pulled out or broken off at the base. There had been a moment when the fight had spilled back into the doorway of Taggart’s office, that he’d glimpsed wings flapping at them, right before the door had swung. After seeing the dented plaster and finding his boys, he knew exactly what had happened.
Soren had attempted to close it while in his oxpecker form, but the small bird hadn’t been strong enough to keep that smelly bastard from getting in there again. The fact that he’d stood his ground beside Taggart was huge for his little bird, but now he needed to make certain that they were never put into that kind of position again. Neither were fighters and their forms, compared to Arlo and Bash’s or even Harley and Nomad’s, were tiny.
Maybe that wasn’t fair. Not when Cosmo sat a few feet away, having moved back to his mate’s side to wait for Arlo to join them. That little black-footed cat was deadly, but he had received training in a way that Soren and Taggart hadn’t, and wouldn’t, if Arlo had anything to say about it. Giving them basic defence tactics got bumped off the list. He never wanted either of them fighting, and after today, wasn't certain he could handle teaching them anything besides to get out of harm's way, so he’d worry about it later.
When Taggart’s hand reached for Soren, only to drop on his own belly, Arlo lifted it and placed it on Soren’s back, so Taggart could stroke his feathers and use them as a touchstone. His movements were slow, but when he started stroking, Arlo knew it was safe for him to step away for a moment, to get him something to drink and speak with Nomad, Harley, and Cosmo.
“That’s got to be another enhanced being,” Arlo declared when he was far enough away. “Right?”
“If so, there’s no way of telling with the damage you and Bash did, what it started as,” Nomad pointed out.
“From the look of things, the results were similar,” Harley added quietly. “When Nomad was attacked, the claws transferred some kind of poison. We had to force him to burn it off in order to save him.”
“It was the same when Bash destroyed the owl that came after him and Romy in the wallow,” Arlo admitted. “I had to goad him into fighting me until he’d purged the blood that had dripped into his mouth and gotten absorbed into his system. We need to get samples of whatever that thing is and find someone who can analyze it and hopefully come up with an antidote before someone dies. We’ve been lucky three times now. Something tells me our luck won’t hold out forever.”
“No, it won’t,” Harley agreed forlornly. “And I never want to go through that kind of stress again worrying we were going to lose Nomad.”
Cosmo, who was seated on Nomad’s lap, gave the big man a squeeze and pressed his head right over Nomad’s heart where he could listen to it.
“It was terrifying,” Cosmo murmured. “Even for me, with everything I’ve seen.”
“That’s exactly what I can’t shake right now,” Arlo said as he turned to look back over his shoulder at the boys. “I was utterly, absolutely terrified that I was about to lose one or both.”
