Desert Wolf (18 page)

“Tell me what happened.” Weary of waiting, she didn’t care which of the wolves spoke—whether it was Trask, her escort, or the wolf who’d been standing guard in Faust’s room at Bianca’s or the damn healer herself. Bianca had blanched when Sovvan walked in, but she didn’t have time for the healer’s upset. Not while Faust was in danger.

No one spoke immediately, so she glanced from Trask to the other wolf then back. “Well?”

The big, bald wolf shrugged. “I wasn’t there when it went down. I know he left Cassius’ place. Somewhere between the Alpha’s compound and the main gate, he engaged several wolves. By the time I got there, he was down.”

That much was obvious. Aggravated at the non-response, she glanced at the other wolf. “Do you know more?”

“Sorry, ma’am.” The wolf didn’t even look at her. “I was with Trask. After we got him out of the crowd, we recognized him and brought him to Bianca. I’ve been here with him ever since.”

Not helpful.
“How many wolves attacked him?”

“You’re assuming they attacked him,” the other wolf said with a shrug. “Could be he attacked them.”

“Faust would have no reason to randomly attack a Sutter Butte wolf.”

“Well, as far as we know, they didn’t have a reason to attack him—”

“JoJo, shut up.” Trask folded his arms. “Ma’am, we don’t know what happened. Cassius deals in facts not speculation. We don’t have the answer you want. Most of the wolves involved are either dead or wounded.”

“So, do you know how many there were?”

Frowning, Trask glanced from her to Faust then back before shrugging. “At least twenty to thirty.”

Ice flushed through her. “There were that many at the rest stop.”

“Closer to fifty there.” The update on the actual number didn’t make her feel any better.

How long had Faust waited before he’d gone out in search of her? Had the wolves been waiting to ambush him, or had he walked into the center of something else? The door opened, and Bianca’s scent filtered through the room.

“Miss Stark?”

Twisting, Sovvan didn’t quite turn all the way. “How is he? No platitudes, please, or half answers.”

“He’s not well.” The healer waved Trask aside before tugging a chair over from the corner. Instead of displacing Sovvan at his bedside, she perched on the chair. “The broken bones and torn ligaments are the least of his problems. It took me some time to track it down, but he was also poisoned.”

Neither of the two wolves on guard had known. The surprise in their scent a dead giveaway.

“I reached out to—well, it doesn’t matter. I’ve been in touch with Amy, as well as Gillian Chase. Gillian has encountered this poison before. It’s pretty devastating if it isn’t caught. Now, I can’t tell you when he was poisoned, except to say that it had to have been recently.”

“How recently?” Cassius’ voice crashed through the room, and she jumped. The urge to go to him warred with her need to protect Faust. Beaten? Broken? Poisoned? What the hell was wrong with his pack?

Curling her fingers over Faust’s, she checked his sluggish pulse. The man was a force of nature, his lackadaisical attitudes aside. He was also her best friend.

“Within the last twenty-four hours. I think it’s safer to say in the last ten to twelve.” Bianca’s expression tightened. She along with everyone in the room focused on the Alpha.

“Could Sovvan have been exposed?”

“I feel fine, and this isn’t about me. It’s about…” She turned to chastise him, but his unyielding expression and harsh gaze dried the words in her throat.

“I don’t believe so, Alpha.” Bianca lowered her head. The power radiating off Cassius threatened to choke the room. “I’m thinking it happened during his skirmish. I’ve been checking him for puncture wounds.”

“Is this like what happened in Hudson River?”

Sovvan frowned. From what she knew, a wolf in the northeastern pack had gone quite mad and used poison to kill several members of his pack—including a healer. Attacking healers went against the nature of every type of wolf, even the Sutter Butte ones.

Uncharitable thoughts burned like acid in her gut. She’d promised Cassius she would help them, but a part of her wanted to get her hands on those who’d hurt Faust. She only needed five minutes to pull them apart, to find out their greatest weaknesses, then she’d use them to…
stop.
She closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. The craven need for violence and immediate reprisal, to act without patience or verification, wasn’t her.

“I believe so, or at least a modified version of the same thing. I spoke to Gillian. As you know, we…”

“You healers speak to each other all the time, I’m aware. Get to the point.” Impatience crested in his voice as Cassius stalked farther into the room. When his hand came down on Sovvan’s shoulder, her world seemed to splinter. Half of her focus clung to the healer’s words, and the rest got lost in the boiling fury churning in her stomach.

“As far as I can tell, it’s very close to the poison used on the Hudson River wolves. I’ve been working on Faust’s injuries, but they’re resisting healing.”

Pain spliced Sovvan’s heart. “Make him shift.”

“If any of us were his Alpha, I’d have already said to do that, but he’s fighting me, or the poison is. It’s making mending a bone take far longer than it should…then there are the skull fractures.”

For a moment, she thought she might throw up. The heavy bruising on his forehead and cheeks looked puffy, but what brawler didn’t get hit?

“Why haven’t you brought in the other healers, to work in concert?” His snarl warmed her in a way the promise of violence shouldn’t.

“Because I don’t know if it’s him or the poison. When I try to push the healing, the injuries get
worse.
” Bianca didn’t shy away as she rounded on Cassius. “I understand you’re angry, but I haven’t been sitting on my ass here. I’m taking care of everyone in the best way I can. You might be better off sending him back to his pack. He needs his Alpha.”

“I can do it.” Tugging her shoulder from Cassius’ grasp, she cut a look at the healer. “The level of anxiety in this room is off the charts. If you want me to do anything, I have to try now before I start to unravel.”

“What will happen if—?”

Much as Cassius cut Bianca off earlier, Sovvan sliced her hand through the air. “I don’t have time to explain this to you. Just do as I ask. Anyone who doesn’t need to be here, get out and let me concentrate.”

Savage didn’t begin to cover the expression Cassius wore, but he jerked his head toward the other two wolves. The men bolted immediately. Claire stood in the doorway and she raised her brows at Cassius.

“Get out, but stay close,” he said to her. She nodded once then closed the door, leaving Bianca and Sovvan alone with Cassius. “What next?”

Not certain herself, Sovvan glanced at Bianca. “Can you do this with me here?”

“Yes.” Pushing away from the chair, she circled to the opposite side of the bed. “Whatever you do, just don’t do it to me.” Uncertainty lent a quivery note to her sentence. As if hearing it herself, she took a deep breath and then released it, adding with a greater confidence, “We need him to shift. The shifting will do for him what my gift won’t. It will mend the bones and damage. I’ll work on the purging the poison. The purge can cause it to come from his pores, and it will soak the sheets.”

One moment Sovvan was seated, the next Cassius removed her from the bed and jerked the chair over and deposited her in it.

Bianca bit her lip, as if fighting a smile. Why the hell she thought this process was funny, Sovvan couldn’t fathom. “Do you have gloves?” Her self-control in
not
glaring at Cassius deserved an award. Becoming her lover didn’t give him manhandling privileges. The sooner he learned those facts, the better.

“Yes.” She rose and crossed to a bag on the dresser table. “Surgical gloves can protect our hands, but it’s important you don’t let it get on you anywhere. Gillian says its skin absorbable, so once I purge it, we’ll need to strip him of everything here and burn it. We’ll also need to wash his fur…and I’m figuring he’ll take it from you rather than anyone else.”

“That’s fine.” She would manage. Had it really only been a few hours earlier she’d woken in Cassius arms? Or they’d played in the water? Then the woods? Accepting the proffered surgical gloves, Sovvan removed her jacket before putting the gloves on. “How far is the bathroom?”

“It’s across the hall.” Bianca pointed to the door.

Scooting to the edge of the chair, Sovvan reached over to touch Faust’s bruised cheek. The pale, washed-out cast to his features seemed to have dulled even his ginger hair. “All right, will you purge first, or do you want me to get him to shift first?”

Cassius crouched next to her, balancing one hand on her chair yet not quite touching her. The heat of his nearness slid around her like a nascent embrace.

“I’ll work on the poison, you work on getting him to shift. One of us has to work. The combination of the poison and his injuries are killing him.”

Grief fisted in the center of her chest. Losing Faust was not an option. He’d been with her in the worst of times. Stood by her side when others would have killed her, fought battle after battle without complaint… “He’s not dying.”

“Do it, Bianca,” Cassius said. “Take what you need and do it.”

They wasted no more time. The healer placed her gloved hand on the side of Faust’s head, mirroring Sovvan’s posture. The hum of energy surging in the room washed over her and Sovvan closed it out, focusing wholly on her sense of self. She withdrew from them. Inside her, nestled deep, she searched for the bonds she shared with the Hounds.

Like the Alpha, they pledged to her. Those connections were fragile, but present. Where they funneled power into Serafina, Sovvan siphoned away their weakness. The spillway didn’t reverse, but it gave her something to grasp. The Hound moaned, his whole body shuddered, and beads of sweat trickled from his forehead. In seconds, or was it minutes…? Time seemed to lose meaning. Dampness soaked his hair, and the smell…it curdled Sovvan’s stomach. She recognized the sour stench of decay and death.

Bianca didn’t cease her activity. The ebb and flow of her power washed over Faust until he began to writhe. Short cries of pain burst like staccato gunfire from his lips.

“Almost there.” The strain on the healer had to be tremendous, but Sovvan isolated the thread binding her to Faust, hovering over it and ready to pluck it like a string on a guitar. It would jerk his attention on a base level, one she knew he would respond to.

Cassius moved slightly, his hand brushing her shoulder, and she flinched from the contact. Everything in her wanted to lean into him, but she couldn’t afford the distraction.

Faust moaned, the pain in the single sound so poignant Sovvan, bit back a sob of her own.

“No more,” Bianca whispered. Exertion flushed Faust’s face red, sweat soaked him and he shook, blood welling from open scratches on his chest and oozing through the bandages.

Grasping the thread, Sovvan pinched the base of Faust’s ear. He hated the touch—a flick or a wet willy, they were all the same to him. “Shift,” she ordered him, flicking the thread inside as much as she squeezed his ear. “I
need
you.”

The moment elongated then Faust exploded in response. His bones crunched, grinding and breaking. His skin tore and slid away. The sheets shredded as his claws appeared. Sovvan knocked over her chair in retreat, and Bianca bounced off the far wall. The shift took a handful of seconds until a furious, ruddy-colored wolf with grey tips stood in the middle of the shredded bed sheets.

His golden eyes blazed, and his lips curled away from his teeth in a vicious snarl. He faced Cassius, hackles raised as his growl reverberated from him.

Muscles clenched, he prepared to leap, and Sovvan thrust herself in front of the Alpha, meeting Faust’s gaze. “No.” The order snapped out of her, leashing the Hound who’d given her his absolute loyalty, and his claws tore at the bed as he fought her, head shaking from side to side.

The worst of him, his temper and lust for the fight, rode him and she took a step toward him hand raised.

“Sovvan…”

“Shh,” she hushed Cassius with a hiss. Faust switched his attention back to the Alpha then she snapped her fingers. “No, Faust. Stop. I am not in danger. You will not attack.”

The wolf’s ears flattened then pricked forward only to flatten again. Adrenaline fueled him, and confusion clouded his eyes. She wanted so much to hug him.

“It’s okay. I’m safe. I told you he would protect me, but you have to let me help you now.”

The wolf staggered a step, and she edged forward. He growled, but it was a complaint not anger as she ran her gloved hand over his head.

“Shh, it’s okay.” Her heart thundered in her ears, and she trembled from the excitement and the relief. “Someone open that door and the one to the bathroom.”

Faust gave her a baleful look, then whirled at the door opening. He staggered sideways, and she braced him. Since he was considerably larger than her, she couldn’t carry him, but she could keep him on his feet. The wolves in the hallway stayed out of sight.

Praying Cassius got it and didn’t try to intervene, she circled the bed and headed for the bathroom. “Come, Faust, I need your help.”

The wolf lurched off the bed, and his impact with the floor made her wince. He stumbled like a drunk, yet still managed to make it into the bathroom with her. Flicking on the water for the shower, she pointed at him. “In.”

His lips peeled off his teeth.

“I’m not looking forward to smelling like drowned wolf either, and if my hair can look like I stuck my finger in a light socket, you can endure a bath. Get in.”

The rumbling complaints continued, but he finally thrust himself under the water. God, the smell of the poison was even worse wet.

“Bianca what do I use to wash it off him?”

When no answer came, she glanced out of the bathroom to find Cassius in the hall, arms folded, a tempest in his eyes. “She’s unconscious. Trask took her downstairs. Soap should be fine. Just wash him and don’t get a drop on you.”

The order stung her. “I didn’t intend to.”