“I’ll drive,” Max said, running around to the front of the SUV.
Lana moved to join him, but Trey stopped her.
“I need you back here with me,” Trey said as he grabbed his medical bag. “You too, Brooks. I can’t work on Zane with him thrashing around this much.”
Ignoring the curious neighbors coming out of their houses, she and Brooks climbed into the back of the big SWAT vehicle and held on as Max jumped behind the wheel and squealed out of her parents’ driveway.
Lana glanced back at her parents’ house as they drove away, staring at the blown-out windows and bullet holes. The weekender of stuff she’d come to collect that had seemed so important a little while ago was still lying on the porch, forgotten. Zane had been shot over nothing.
“Do we take him to the compound?” Max asked.
“No,” Trey shouted back. “Head for Saunders’s private clinic. This is more than we can deal with in the kitchen of our barracks.”
She had no idea where this private clinic was, but she hoped they could get there quickly.
“Lana, I need you to hold Zane down while I get the bullet out,” Trey said. “Normally, something like this would be a piece of cake, but now, I’m not so sure.”
She climbed around Brooks, which took a little doing. The guy was so big he took up the majority of the space back there. Clearly, the manufacturer had never planned to have this many alpha werewolves in the back of one of their SUVs.
Lana climbed on top of Zane’s legs, holding them with her body weight, then leaning forward to latch on to his right hand in an effort to keep his flailing claws from tearing anyone apart.
“Brooks, we could really use your help here,” Trey grated out as he tried to hold Zane’s left arm and cut into the man’s triceps at the same time.
“Hold on,” Brooks said. “I’m getting Doc Saunders on the phone. I’m hoping he has a clue what the hell we should do.”
When he got through to the doctor, he flipped the speaker on, then threw himself across Zane’s chest. “Trey, do that paramedic shit of yours and start talking. I’ll keep him still.”
“Doc, Zane took a bullet to the arm that was filled with poison of some kind,” Trey said. “The wound isn’t serious, but it’s causing him major problems.”
“Describe major problems,” a calm voice responded from the other end of the line.
Easy for him to be calm, Lana thought. He wasn’t holding on to a thrashing 240-pound ball of claw-covered muscles who was bleeding and in pain.
“He’s nearly unconscious, but his body is going through spasm shifts, back and forth from one form to another. I’ve even got some fur growth going on, and Zane has never come close to achieving full wolf form.”
Lana looked at Brooks in shock, but he shook his head. “Later.”
“He’s been convulsing nonstop since getting hit, and his heart is racing like crazy,” Trey continued. “He’s sweating like hell, too.”
“Have you gotten the bullet out yet?” Saunders asked.
“I’m working on it,” Trey snarled through gritted teeth. “It’s rather difficult at the moment.”
Lana’s eyes widened as Trey slashed the wound open wider with a scalpel, then shoved two fingers into it. A few seconds later, he came out with the bullet, or at least what Lana took to be the bullet. It didn’t look like much more than a piece of mangled metal to her.
Trey dropped it in his medical bag. “Taking the bullet out didn’t help, Doc. He’s still thrashing and convulsing.”
“Flush the wound with as much saline as you have,” Saunders ordered. “And while you’re doing that, can you describe this poison? What does it smell like?”
Trey frowned as he took a bottle out of his bag and began irrigating the bloody wound with saline. “Um…it stinks.”
“Not helpful,” Saunders snapped.
“It’s medicinal smelling,” Lana clarified, talking loudly as Zane howled. “Like sulfur mixed with a mild wild onion. It burns on contact with the skin and can cause an allergic-like reaction similar to a first-degree burn after only seconds.”
“Okay, not sure who I’m speaking to now, but you sound like you know what you’re talking about, so keep going,” Saunders said. “Tell me everything you can about the poison.”
Lana related what had happened at the mall and the other night at the club, making sure to mention that washing the stuff off her skin had helped.
