Deceived By the Others

chapter 14



“Go inside, love; we’ll take care of this,” Chaz grated out, forcing the words. Someone had broken off the fletched end of the arrow, but the point was still deeply embedded in the muscle of his shoulder, and no one seemed to know what to do. It was obviously hurting him badly, because he was having a tough time speaking around the pain.

Someone had once told me that the touch of silver to a werewolf was like putting your hand against a frying pan with the flame turned up full. The longer you kept it there, the deeper the wound and the more flesh it burned. Keeping it against your skin would almost guarantee permanent damage. By itself, it wasn’t a life-threatening wound, but if the arrow had come closer to his heart or some other vital organ, it could’ve been. The longer that little arrowhead stayed in there, the higher the chances the muscles around the wound would be too injured to heal properly, meaning he’d lose mobility in that shoulder or arm. A lesser Were might have bled out or had the silver taint their blood too much to recover, but as long as this was handled quickly, Chaz would be okay. He’d have nothing more than a scar to show for it.

We didn’t have any doctors in the pack, and God alone knew where the nearest hospital was. If I could pry a bullet out of him, I could do this, too. I hoped.

“Back up, please. Give me some room, guys.”

“No, Shia! Get inside. Whoever did this is still out there,” Chaz said.

“I’ll get inside as soon as I take that thing out. Guys, hold him down, please?” I turned to Nick and Dillon, gesturing for them to keep him still. They looked helplessly between me and Chaz, obviously not wanting to upset their pack leader, but also wanting to give me the chance to help him. None of them seemed interested in touching the wooden shaft of the arrow, as though that part of it would magically turn into silver and start hurting them too. “Come on, we don’t have all night.”

Reluctantly, the two guys gripped Chaz’s upper arms, holding him down against the log we’d been sitting on earlier, muttering apologies as they did. Simon leaned on his legs without being asked, and I was grateful for the help. Growling soft epithets under his breath, Chaz shut his eyes and waited for the inevitable, his expression and the tension in his muscled frame telling me that he was steeling himself the way that someone else might for getting a shot at the doctor’s office. This wasn’t going to be pleasant.

I took a deep breath to steady myself and put one hand around the shaft of the arrow. I didn’t know whether it was barbed or not. Yanking it out might do more damage than leaving it in there. Using the edge of Chaz’s ruined shirt, I gently brushed some of the blood out of the way and peered at the wound, trying to catch a glimpse of the silver head through the swelling, irritated flesh. Gross. Only the memories of having seen far, far worse from Max Carlyle’s handiwork kept me from being too squeamish to do this.

The head of the thing didn’t look barbed, but I wasn’t sure. I had to move hair out of my face so I could see. The shifting shadows, as people behind me moved in and out of the light, also trying to catch a glimpse, didn’t help either.

The arrow had lodged fairly deep and, though the silver was keeping the wound from closing, it was hard to see around the swelling the best way to drag it back out. Setting my free hand against his chest a little below where the arrow had pierced his skin, I used my other hand to pull it out as gently as I could.

There were a couple of times in the process of removing the stupid thing that I could feel it catch on muscle or tendon, making his breath hitch. I made every effort not to do any more damage on the way out than it had caused on the way in. Difficult to tell around the blood, but I was pretty sure I was pulling it out straight.

It took a few intense minutes, during which sudden muscle spasms or jerks made me grateful that some of the guys had agreed to hold Chaz down, but eventually the arrow was freed. I grimaced as I looked over the blood-coated shaft, noting that silver lined about half an inch of it above the arrowhead itself, guaranteeing the wound would be more irritated and slower to close. To a low-ranking Were, or a new shifter like Ethan, it would have been fatal.

Chaz lay there for a long moment, taking deep, shuddering breaths as the others stepped back, giving him room to recover. With a great deal of grumbling and groaning, he levered to his feet, waving off any efforts by the others to help. Keeping a hand pressed to the still-bleeding wound, he started off toward the woods, followed closely by the Weres who had stayed behind.

Despite the pain lacing his tone, there was anger and hard command in Chaz’s voice. The promise of retaliation was almost enough to make me pity whoever had done this. Almost. “Do you know if the hunter has been found yet?”

“No,” someone spoke up from behind us. “No one’s come back from the forest yet. They’re still looking.”

Dillon touched my arm lightly as I moved to follow, giving me pause. “You should go inside now. Let us handle this.”

“She can hold her own,” Chaz said, looking back over his shoulder. “We might need her help if there’s more silver involved. Just keep her safe.”

Dillon looked back and forth between us before shrugging and taking up a protective stance at my side, lingering a little too close for my comfort. I wasn’t used to having a bodyguard, but he looked ready and determined to take a bullet or arrow for me if necessary. Weird. On the bright side, Chaz had confidence in me, if not necessarily for the reasons I would’ve wanted. That much was comforting.

Several of the shifted Weres were sniffing around the edges of the parking lot, moving through the trees in the general direction they thought the arrow had come from. Chaz called out when we got closer, though it was probably more for my sake than theirs.

“Find anything?”

“No,” someone replied, puzzled. “There’s no spoor. Not a hint of anyone’s having been out here except for the kids earlier.”

“The hell?” Nick muttered. “There must be something.”

Frowning, Dillon looked up in the trees. “Did anyone check for any sign up there?”

“No. Why?”

Dillon pointed upward, and though I looked, I couldn’t see anything. The others around me muttered curses and exclaimed softly as they saw something I couldn’t make out in the shadowed limbs above our heads.

“What is it?” I asked, momentarily annoyed at being handicapped by my paltry human senses.

Nick stomped over to a particular tree, and one of the shifted Weres came too and stared upward, holding out a clawed hand to catch Nick if he slipped as he started climbing. It was strange, but somehow right. I knew the wild-looking beast in front of me would never hurt one of his own. I was a different story. The way those feral golden eyes watched me when I came closer was just plain creepy.

“There’s some equipment or something tucked into the branches up there. Hold on a second,” Nick called down, probably more for my sake than anybody else’s.

The others gathered around the base of the tree. Chaz was looking better, and he slid his good arm around my shoulders, head tilted up like the rest of us to watch Nick climb.

A few moments later he shimmied back down, landing in a crouch much more like a feral beast than a man. He had a grim look on his face as he showed a scrap of torn cloth and an arrow he’d tied it around, along with a thick branch he’d obviously broken off. There were claw marks embedded in the wood, big and deep enough to show they weren’t from any ordinary bird or tree-dwelling animal. No bear or other forest creature large enough to make such marks would venture so far up, practically to the top of the tree, where the limbs would be too thin to carry its weight. That was why Nick had climbed up there instead of one of the shifted Weres.

“I don’t recognize the scent on the cloth or the branch. What about you, Armina?”

Armina? That meant the big black and gray Were beside us was Seth’s mom. I sorely hoped she was more trustworthy than her son, though I wasn’t exactly holding my breath.

The great shaggy Were leaned forward, nostrils flaring as it took in the scent of the cloth, arrow, and tree branch. Shaking its—no, her—head, she settled back on her haunches and spread her clawed hands in a remarkably human gesture of puzzlement. She didn’t know who or what it was from either. It was difficult to tell her thoughts on the matter considering she couldn’t talk in her current form, and the rapid shift would prevent her from turning back for a while. Most likely she wouldn’t be able to talk about it until tomorrow, after the full moon had set and she’d gotten some sleep.

Did she not find anything because she was covering for her son? No, I didn’t think so. There were other shifted Weres out here too, and they’d pick up what she missed—or covered up.

Some of the others came forward, pressing their faces close to the cloth or tree branch that Nick held out before him. Even Chaz took a cursory sniff, though none of them seemed to know what the scent was. Their inability to recognize it pissed Chaz off even more. I was alarmed to note his eyes were reflecting the last dying rays of sunlight filtering through the trees, cat-like in these shadows.

“This is un-f*cking-believable. What the hell is out here? It’s not one of us. It’s not a Were-cat. What the hell is it?”

“I don’t know,” Nick said, fists clenched tightly around the items in his hands. “If I knew, I would tell you. It’s Were-something, I just don’t know what.”

“Can I give it a whiff?” Mr. Cassidy asked, startling me. I hadn’t seen him among the others earlier. Too busy getting blood on my hands and yanking arrows out of my boyfriend, I suppose. Mrs. Cassidy and George were also there, a little apart from the others. It struck me as an unspoken show of their being different from, but supportive of, the Sunstrikers.

“Sure, be my guest,” Chaz muttered sourly. The luminescence in his eyes seemed to be fading now that he was more irritated than outright angry.

Mr. Cassidy came forward, extending his hand for the cloth and the arrow. Nick handed them over, careful not to let the silver arrowhead brush against any exposed skin. The old man lifted it up, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply through his nose. His eyes flashed open, and he looked down in surprise, then anger. “I know this scent. This was a guest, a recent one.”

“Who was it?” Chaz demanded.

“He goes by Hawk. I have a hard time believing he’s the one who did this, though. I’d like to speak with him myself, but he checked out earlier today. So did the other two boys he was here with.”

Crap. “Did you get their contact information when they arrived? Like an address attached to a credit card, a cell phone number, anything like that?” I asked.

He shook his head, frowning. “Maybe. I’d have to check my records.”

“Check them, and let us know what you find,” Chaz said.

“I can’t just give out his information. Really, let me try to contact him first; then I’ll let you know what comes of it.”

“Hey, I’m a P.I.,” I said. “I can call my partner back in the city and have her run a trace on the guy if you can give me any information about him.”

Mr. Cassidy gave me a thoroughly disapproving look, handing the stuff back to Nick while he spoke to me. “Young lady, I’m not in the business of telling the secrets of my patrons. If he really was responsible for this, I can guarantee you I won’t let him get away with it, but I’m not going to start a witch hunt based on a scent. There’s a chance I’m wrong, that it was somebody else, and I’d like to make sure before you all go jumping to conclusions and do something we’ll all regret later.”

Chaz growled softly, though I knew he was struggling mightily to keep his temper in check. He liked the Cassidy family and this retreat, so I doubted he wanted to do something to get himself banned from returning. “Look, we just want to ask him a few questions, too. We’re not going to kill him unless he tries something like this again.”

“Sonny, you listen up, and you listen good. This is my territory. You’re here by my invitation, and I will revoke it if you abuse my hospitality and good will. Give me the opportunity to find out what’s going on in my own damned territory before you start horning in, got it?”

I’d never seen Chaz look so sullenly submissive as he did right at that moment. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Mr. Cassidy relaxed a little, some of the tension filtering out of his brawny frame. “I’ll find the boy and let you know what he says as soon as I hear from him.”