Laddin swallowed. Wulfric the Legend looked like he was about to lose his lunch as Josh gently shook him awake. “How long will that take?”
Nero’s expression turned grim as Josh helped Wulfric straighten up and move away from the window. “He’s got a freaking death wish. He ran in front of the entire hellhound pack—as a damned human—to buy time for people to get away. And before you ask, no, I don’t know why there were hellhounds running around the lake. They were probably attracted by the mystical shitshow we’ve got going. Wulfric was there doing some sort of seeking spell for the demon. Luckily, we were looking forhim. If we’d been a few minutes later, he’d have been lunch meat.” Nero rubbed a hand over the back of his head, and his eyes were haunted. “It’s a mess up there, Laddin. Everyone is trying to figure out why Lake Wacka Wacka is poison. We got military, scientists, reporters, and the paranormal everywhere. It’s a real fucking apocalypse.” He added those last words in an agonized whisper as he bent to help Wulfric out of the car.
“Don’t open that door!” Bruce snapped as he moved around the car. “Josh, get out of my way.”
Nero’s head snapped up. “You don’t issue the orders around here.”
“I’m a paramedic. Hate me all you want, but I’m your best shot of keeping him alive.” He grimaced as he looked inside the car. “Short of a hospital.”
Josh backed out of the way, his expression completely locked down. “He’s really important, Bruce.”
“They’re all really important. Now get me a med kit. Whatever you’ve got.”
Laddin leaped to obey, but Nero was closer. He got to the van first and peered inside, but he obviously didn’t remember where everything was. So Laddin elbowed him out of the way, grabbed Bruce’s empty cage and passed it to Nero, then crawled inside to grab the kit. And while he was maneuvering, Nero grumbled a question at him.
“Is he stable?”
It took a moment for Laddin to realize he was referring to Bruce, not Wulfric.
“Good job getting him human and all,” Nero continued. “But how freaked is he?”
“Not freaked at all,” Laddin said as he passed the basic kit over to Nero. He still had to grab the defibrillator and anything else that might be useful. “He chose this, remember?”
“Which makes him really untrustworthy,” Nero said before he rushed back to the car with the kit.
Laddin couldn’t disagree. No one chose to become a werewolf without having ulterior motives, and in Bruce’s case, there was a fairy involved. That always made things dicey. But there hadn’t been time to ferret out any of that information. Still, Bruce was a paramedic and a firefighter. That had to count for something.
Bruce was working on the greatest werewolf of all time, asking him questions like,Where does it hurt?andCan you follow my finger?As Laddin came closer, he had to admit that Bruce looked more than competent. He worked on Wulfric with a businesslike efficiency, not seeming to be distracted by his patient’s fame as he opened up kits, put in an IV, and gently probed for deeper wounds.
“I can clean out these cuts,” he said to Wulfric, “and put on bandages. But you’ll need a plastic surgeon or it’ll scar—”
“No, he won’t,” Nero said from Bruce’s opposite shoulder. “Wounds only make him more beautiful.”
Wulfric’s swollen lips curved. “True.”
Bruce grunted. “If so, then you’re going to be gorgeous.”
“Gorgeous is a step down for him,” Nero said. His tone was light, but his expression was worried. “What about internal injuries? Brain bleeds? Arrhythmias or spinal stuff?”
“You get those terms offGrey’s Anatomy?” Bruce asked. “You’d have to be at a hospital to find out. And then you’d have to ask the doctors.”
Wulfric shook his head. “My mother can—”
“She can’t,” Nero interrupted. “She wandered off. That’s why we came looking for you.”
Wulfric sighed and closed his unswollen eye. “She’s looking for the demon.”
That was obvious.Everybodyin the paranormal world was looking for the damned demon poisoning Wisconsin. And the vanilla humans were looking for everything else, from a microscopic black hole to radioactive algae.
“All right,” Bruce said as he stepped back from the car. “I’d prefer to put you on a backboard and carry you to a hospital, but failing that—”
“I’ve got the backboard here,” Laddin said.
Nero frowned. “The van had a backboard?”
Laddin didn’t bother answering. He already knew that the field wolves never read their emails or paid any attention to the recommended organization of the van.
Bruce was all business as he grabbed a blanket to set underneath Wulfric. Laddin could see the plan without asking. He was going to help Wulfric roll onto the fabric and then they could ease him out of the car. “Great. So where do we carry him?”
