He was right. With a grunt of acknowledgment, I focused on the ones where bone showed through. The ribs had done their job and protected the vital organs from the vicious claws.
Josh appeared beside me with a bowl of hot water. I grimaced when I identified it as the same one Chloe had used to wash Peter’s wounds the day I’d found out I was a wulfleng. Dillon will pay for this. The thought gave credence to the rage within me, and I had to close my eyes and wrestle it back down.
“Liam!”
“Yeah, I’m here.” Together, we washed off the worst of the gore. Peter looked white as a sheet, because too much of his blood lay beneath him. “We need something strong to carry him,” I said. I took Peter’s vitals as Josh went along the hall and into the closet, returning with a quilt. With infinite care, we eased Peter onto it and carried him on the makeshift stretcher to the living room couch.
I stood over him for a moment, and the anger I’d buried deep while I tended him forged to the surface like magma in a volcano. My fists clenched and the claws emerged to dig into my palms. I embraced the pain and growled.
“Liam, Doc Hayek should be here any minute, he’ll bring the plasma. Peter will be fine.”
“But Chloe is out there.” My hands tightened and warmth dripped from my fists as claws penetrated my flesh. “With Dillon.”
“Leave Dillon to Chris.”
I glanced up at the old clock on the fireplace mantle. My operation had taken less than an hour. Chris is still at least an hour away. “Not soon enough,” I said, and looking into Josh’s eyes I saw grim acknowledgment.
“All right. We wait for Doc, then we’ll go together. Track him, save Chris time.”
Wulfan mate for life. Chris’s voice echoed through me. I couldn’t let anything happen to Josh.
“There are three more IV bags in the truck,” I said.
“You’re not going after Dillon.”
“I need you to stay with him, Josh. If he comes around, he’ll kill himself trying to get out there. Disconnect here to change the fluids,” I showed him, “and reconnect . . .”
“I’ve done fluids before, remember. You stay—I’ll go. I can shift—you can’t.”
“I’m taking Peter’s gun. When Chris gets here, he’ll come after me. It might take me a while to find them.”
“Let me go,” pleaded Josh. “You can’t win against Dillon.”
“Look at me and tell me you can.”
He couldn’t and he knew it. Josh was wulfan, but he wasn’t an enforcer. Dillon would make mincemeat of him.
Of course, I wasn’t an enforcer either. Or a wulfan. But I knew how to fight, and damn it, Dillon and I were meant to do this. I couldn’t explain it, but this was right.
“I’ll do everything I can to stall until Chris gets to me. But I can’t leave Chloe with him. I have to try.”
The bleak look Josh gave me said it all. “Chris will skin me alive.”
“No he won’t. He loves you.” I fished fresh ammo from the drawer and shoved it into my pocket before fetching Peter’s gun from where he’d dropped it on the deck. Whatever had happened, Dillon hadn’t given him the chance to use it. “The worst he’ll do is lock you in the cage for a day.”
“Dammit, Liam.” Josh grabbed me by the shoulder and forced me to stop moving long enough to meet his gaze. “Don’t let the wulf cloud your mind. If Dillon has lost it, his wulf is in control. That’s his strength, but also his weakness. You can’t outmuscle him, but you can outthink him, if you get the chance.”
I nodded, and on impulse, hugged him. “Don’t tell Chris, he’ll be jealous.”
“Just survive, please,” Josh said.
“This is my fight.” I let him see the commitment in my gaze. “Dillon and I have been heading for this since he arrived.” I grinned at him and affected a deep, accented voice. “I’ll be back.”
Josh groaned. “Oh, God, you’re so much like him. Heaven help us all.”
I didn’t have to ask whom he meant. I turned away from him and passed through the kitchen door, closing it behind me. Then I jogged into the darkness.
* * *
I smelled Dillon the moment I stepped off the deck. Sniffing, I walked to the steps leading to my cellar door. The entire entryway reeked of him, and I snarled when I realized why.
Dillon had pissed all around my doorway. He must have been doing it for days—likely from the time I left.
The rage rose within me, primitive and wild. I spun, took a step, and my foot kicked something in the grass—a baseball bat. Peter’s bat, the one he kept behind his kitchen door. I bent to lift it and saw blood on the end. It smelled of Peter; someone had belted him with it. Hard. My stomach twisted, thinking of the way the bones had shifted beneath my fingers.
Why would Dillon bother with a bat? The man’s fists were weapons all on their own.
My second discovery was another shock. Just outside the entrance to the trail lay a half-eaten body. My heart stopped when I saw the shapeless, crumpled form surrounded by a metallic scent cloud of blood. Peter’s, but most of it belonged to something else. I stepped closer, and my brain continued to make olfactory connections. An image popped up—the body was a sheep, or what was left of one.
I clenched my teeth as I entered the woods and sniffed. Every branch along the trail was rank with Dillon. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized that madness had a scent, but it did. It caused me to curl my lip back over my emerging fangs and made my heart pound until I thought it would leap from my chest. For the first time that evening, I could unleash the wulf that had been shredding me from the inside out. The
