I follow him down the steps from the main house, walking out into the middle of the yard to meet those who’ve just arrived. Our walk turns into a run as one of them almost falls off their bike when they come to a stop.
Motherfucker.
I can smell the blood from here.
And something else that shouldn’t be there.
“Call your brother.” I don’t wait for a reply, racing across the gravel to catch Flint as gravity gets the better of him. “What the fuck happened?” This was supposed to be an easy run, recon for the weekend.
“Birch,” Jet hisses, getting off his bike and rushing to give me a hand with a now-unconscious Flint. I don’t need it, I could carry him easily on my own, but an injured brother makes everyone uneasy.
I knew that fucker was up to something when nothing happened after our fight at the pub. I’d fully expected some blowback from that, but our ride home had been surprisingly uneventful.
“I don’t know how they found us,” Jet snarls, anger and disgust lacing his tone, “but seven of them caught us just after the Wellsborne turnoff.”
Makes sense, that stretch of road is neutral territory and isolated. Thick forest on either side. “Casualties?”
He grins, canine teeth a little longer, a little sharper than they should be. “Let’s just say they’ll have to send someone to fetch three of their bikes, no way those fuckers are riding home.”
“Good.” The longer they take to heal, the longer they’ll keep out of our way.
We get Flint inside and up to his room, just as Callum appears in the doorway.
“Corey’s on his way.” His gaze darts to Flint. “How bad?”
“Not sure.” Jet starts to undress him, and I hurry to give him a hand. “Fuckers had silver-coated blades laced with wolfsbane. He got cut helping me out, but I don’t know where.”
Both Callum and I growl.
Not at the silver, we’ve got plenty of our own. It’s the only way to inflict damage that won’t heal straight away. But aconite-laced weapons? That shit’s a new low even for them. It’s a hunter method of incapacitating shifters and an unwritten rule that we don’t fucking go there.
At least it used to be.
“Definitely wolfsbane?”
I get a flat stare in return, then he rips open the front of Flint’s T-shirt.
The snarl I let out fills the entire fucking room.
It’s bad.
The whole left side of his body is an angry red, black lines spidering out from a wound that’s about six inches in length. It doesn’t look all that deep, but then it doesn’t have to be for the poison to do its work. There’s a trickle of blood where his body tries and fails to knit itself together.
Sweat beads his forehead. Wolves run hot as it is, but the heat coming off Flint isn’t natural. He’s practically on fire. As toxic as wolfsbane is, that one cut wouldn’t cause him to pass out. Not yet.
There has to be more.
I can smell it.
“Roll him.”
As we carefully turn him onto his stomach, I see it.
So does Jet because he swears and smashes his fist against the wall, leaving a hole behind. “Fuck!”
The stab wound in Flint’s left shoulder runs deep, the flow of blood a lot more than a fucking trickle this time. Just like on his front, black lines cover his skin, but these seem darker, more sinister, and my wolf stirs, unease dancing under my skin.
Corey arrives five minutes later, thank fuck, because the tension in the room is so thick at least two of us are in danger of shifting. There’s a wild look about Callum and Jet, a subtle shimmer in the air that tastes of magic, and from the surprised look Corey sends my way, I’m not doing enough to ground them.
