Fear engulfed me like a brutal, body-wide bruise. “Don’t move, Cam.” I stepped aside, scanning the otherwise empty living room, and Austin leapt through the doorway on four legs, Bishop and Vance on his heels.
Panic flashed across Cam’s features. He dropped the bottle and the cloth and spun toward the back door, just as Jace kicked it open.
Mistaking me as the lesser threat, Cam spun toward me again, grasping for something at the back of his waistband with his right hand.
“Gun!” Jace shouted.
Cam aimed a pistol at me. He fired three times, the blast of sound deafening in such a small space, especially for sensitive shifter ears. The muzzle flashed as something crashed into me from the right side, driving me across the room. I landed in a musty armchair, pinned by an enormous but familiar weight.
“Move!” I shouted as I shoved Bishop over, dimly noting a sharp, burning pain in my right arm. And the fact that my own voice was drastically muted in my ringing ears. By the time I regained my feet, Austin had Cam pinned to the ground, his muzzle biting into his prey’s throat with enough pressure to break the skin and drip blood on the floor, but not to crush his throat.
Or rip it out.
Yet.
Jace grabbed the gun Cam had dropped, clicked the safety back on, then shoved it into his own waistband, as Tucker followed him into the small space, snarling.
“Hold him there,” I said, and Austin growled softly without removing his teeth from Cam’s throat.
“Charley!” Vance shouted as Jace pulled a set of metal handcuffs from a pouch at his waist.
“Where’s Davey?” I demanded, nudging Cam with one foot.
“Charley!” Vance shouted again, and I glanced around the room, but didn’t see him.
“Shift back.” Jace tossed his backpack at Tucker’s feet. “They need first aid.” His focus slid from me to my left, and I turned to find Bishop sitting in the chair I’d just clawed my way out of, his left hand clutching his right shoulder. Where blood poured from a bullet wound.
“Shit!” My focus scanned him, looking for any other injuries. “Are you okay?”
“Fucking peachy,” Bishop growled through clenched teeth. “You?”
I knelt next to him, trying to apply pressure to the wound, but pain lanced my right arm. Which was when I managed to piece together the past minute and a half.
Cam had fuckingshotme, and Bishop had caught a stray bullet when he’d tried to tackle me out of the way.
“Don’t move until we can examine you,” Jace said to me, tapping on his phone. Probably texting Spencer. “Just sit down, and I’ll be right there.” He pocketed his phone and turned to Austin, who still stood snarling at our handcuffed prisoner. “Don’t let him move.”
“Charley! Get the fuck in here!” Vance shouted again, appearing briefly in an open doorway across from the kitchen.
Pulse racing, I shoved myself to my feet, clutching my injured arm, and lurched across the small, crowded space, dodging human and feline forms on my way to the only bedroom. Where I found Vance sitting on the edge of a full-size bed, next to my sister’s prone form.
“She’s out cold,” he said as I sank onto the other side of the bed, still struggling to hear him while my ears rang. “And burning the fuck up.”
“Goddamnit.” Horrified by my sister’s bright red cheeks, I felt of her forehead, where I left a smear of my own blood.
Vance frowned at me, sniffing in my direction. “You’re bleeding.”
“Fucker shot me. Bishop too,” I mumbled, pushing Davey’s sweat-soaked hair back from her forehead. “My arm’s useless. I need yours.”
Vance nodded, his jaw tight, eyes narrowed with a calm but deep distress. “First aid kit?”
I swung my backpack onto the bed from my good shoulder, wincing at sharp pain caused by the motion. “In there. We’ll need the scissors. And ice. Find every bit of ice in this shithole. Put in a bag or wrap it in a towel.”
He disappeared into the living room, on a mission, and I began a frustratingly slow and methodical exam of my sister, looking for the bite. Or the scratch.
As the ringing in my ears began to fade, I heard the guys talking in the other room, along with Bishop’s bitter hiss of pain, but I registered little of it until Vance returned to my side.
“She definitely didn’t come willingly. Huge bump on the back of her head,” I said as he sat on the other side of the bed. “Probably a concussion, but that’s the least of her worries at the moment. There’s a scratch mark in her inner elbow. It was probably tiny, until it swelled up.” I lifted her left arm to show him a bright red, inflamed spot that smelled vaguely of an early-stage infection.
