by Kathy Lyons
He shook his head to clear it. There had to be a reason he was suddenly feeling better. The electrolytes in the sports drink he’d finished had probably kicked in. That was it. It couldn’t possibly be because Laddin had snuggled up tight to his side.
“Better,” he said quietly. “More solid.”
“You grounded into your body, and all it took was a little raunchy talk.” He gave Bruce’s shoulders a squeeze. “See? Now you don’t need to shuck your corn.” Then he waggled his eyebrows. “Good one, right? Didn’t think I’d know that one, did you? Since I’m city-born and -raised.”
“I grew up in Indianapolis. That’s not exactly Mayberry.”
Laddin drew back, taking his arm and his heat with him. “Where?”
“It’s from a TV show my mom used to love. We’d watch the reruns together.” He let his head drop back onto the straw bale. “It was filmed in black and white.”
“Ugh. You guys in the Midwest are living in the Dark Ages. You know that, right?”
“Not me. My mom. And yes, we know.” Although in his mother’s case, it was more like the Denial Ages. But rather than think about that, he shifted against the straw bale, feeling strength come back into his body. His hard-on was still hungry, and he really missed Laddin’s touch, but it didn’t seem like his only lifeline anymore.
He watched as Laddin jumped up from the floor, brushing off his pants with quick swipes of his hand. Bruce took his time pulling on the sweatpants, doing his best not to gasp when the fabric skimmed over his dick. It made no sense. He was hard and horny, and he was watching Laddin as if the guy were the newest Playboy centerfold. Bruce had always noticed cute guys before, but he’d never had such an overwhelming reaction to one.
“You said my brother was like… that he needed….”
Laddin dug into the trunk again and pulled out a T-shirt with a wolf emblem on the front. The thing was all wavy hair as the creature howled to the moon, and beneath it were the words Wulf, Inc. “A blow job after every shift?”
Bruce’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”
Laddin laughed as he threw the T-shirt at Bruce. “Not after the first few times. That didn’t stop him from wanting one, though.”
Bruce couldn’t imagine his brother as one of the crass crew—the guys who talked nonstop about sex with bad jokes, crude references, and stupid double entendres. His brother had never been that lame, and the idea that Josh had turned into some beast that needed to rut all the time just reinforced his need to get his brother out of here.
“It’s the Nero guy, isn’t it?”
Laddin smiled, his expression growing wistful. “They’re cute together, aren’t they?”
Cute wasn’t the word he’d use. What he’d seen was a lot bigger and much more dangerous. They were consumed by each other, trapped in each other’s spheres and unable to break free. He had no doubt that Josh thought he loved Nero. His brother was naïve that way. When he fell, he fell hard and gave his all. As a kid, Josh had always obsessed over things, while Bruce had scrambled to keep their father completely unaware of the fallout. Josh’s first dive into chemistry had been when he tried to recreate the experiment that created the Flash. That had cost Josh all his hair and all Bruce’s allowance as he tried to hide the damage to the basement. As time wore on, Josh’s experiments had gotten more sophisticated, but his habit of completely immersing into whatever—or whomever—was still there.
Bruce, on the other hand, knew better than to trust the first kindhearted guy who showed up. Sure, Nero pretended to cherish and protect his brother, and the sex was probably off the charts. But he’d also turned Josh into a werewolf, talked him into risking his life, doing God only knew what, and most telling, he’d destroyed Josh’s relationship with his family.
Or he’d tried to. Bruce was still here for Josh, and he was going to do what he should have done from the very beginning: protect his little brother. And if that meant diving into Josh’s nightmare world of werewolves and other monsters, then that was what he was going to do.
But first he needed to learn the lay of the land. He leaned back against the straw bale, consciously relaxing his pose, as if all he needed was a beer and a plate of nachos. “Give it to me straight. What exactly does it mean to be a werewolf?”
Laddin echoed his pose, only he settled onto the fender of the car as he stretched out his legs. “It means you can turn into a wolf.”
Yeah, that part he’d already figured out. “But how?” He leaned forward. “I need details.”
“I could give you a ton of them, but it won’t matter. You are a fairy-fruit werewolf. None of the rules apply to you.”
“And those rules are….”
“Individual.”
Sounded like a recipe for disaster. Or the standard bullshit con artists used to cover their dirty deeds. He just couldn’t figure out if Laddin was one of the brainwashing cult leaders or another guy caught in someone else’s charismatic orbit. He certainly seemed nice enough, but Bruce would need a lot more to go on before he could trust Laddin.
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s start with Josh, then. How did he join your ranks—?”
They both looked up as the barn doors started rolling open. Someone was coming, and Bruce didn’t want to be sitting here half-naked when he met whatever foe decided to stroll in. Plus, it was cold outside, so he pulled on the wolf T-shirt and jumped to his feet.
Laddin was much more casual. He tilted his head to look through the growing crack in the door; then he smiled at Bruce. “Why don’t you ask him yourself? That’s the team coming back. We’ll get your assignment from them.”
Bruce frowned. “My assignment? I didn’t join your team.” It was a knee-jerk response. He never joined anything without triple-checking the small print and doing an exhaustive internet search for scams. His father had drilled distrust into him from the day he was born. Unfortunately, Laddin was smart enough to point out the flaw in his statement.
“You ate the fruit, you joined the team. Wulf, Inc. is responsible for all the lupine shifters in the world, and the bite marks on my jeans prove you qualify. Ergo, you get assignments from us.”
“Is that so?” he challenged. “I have to obey you. No loophole, no way around it, no—”
Laddin cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Of course there are workarounds. We’re magical creatures. The only rule about us is that there are no rules unless we make them.” Then he leaned forward. “Which we do, because it makes everyone safe, including you.”
That was bullshit of the first order. Only abusive people spouted, We make the rules, and you have to obey for your own good. But he didn’t say that. Instead, he turned toward the car just now heading inside, and blew out a relieved breath. Josh sat in the front passenger seat, alive and apparently whole.
Good. His brother was alive.
Now came the hard part—rescuing him from this whacked-out cult.
Chapter 5
EVERYBODY LOVES WULFRIC
LADDIN WATCHED as Bruce tried to straighten up, something that was hard to do in slouchy sweatpants and a too-tight T-shirt. The guy was big, that was for sure. He had shoulders that could lift a car and probably had, given that he was a firefighter. But he was also a grouchy sourpuss who tended to look on the dark side of life.
Laddin knew the type. Bruce had probably been disappointed too many times by people who had promised something and failed to deliver. Welcome to the club, buddy. But going through life with a growl was just a waste of energy, and Laddin had no time for people who wasted anything that could be put to better use. His mother had taught him that the first time he’d whined about his messed-up hand. Every time he grumbled, she made him do chores until he discovered that he could do twice as much as people with two normal hands, simply because he didn’t waste time complaining.
“Your clothes are in there,” he said to Bruce as he gestured inside the van. Then he did his own bit of getting ready.
He checked his cell for messages from Cap
tain M (none), reported via voicemail on Bruce’s progress (wolf back to human), and then prepared to meet the most awesome man in Wulf, Inc. history. Because the car that was pulling into the barn had Nero and Josh in the front seat and Wulfric, the two-hundred-year-old founder of Wulf, Inc., in the back.
Laddin didn’t know much about Wulfric except that he was incredibly reclusive, everyone wanted to be his friend, and he only came out when the world was ending. He and his witch mother had deployed to Wisconsin when the lake had turned to poison, but he’d been as ineffective as everyone else at finding the demon. And now Laddin was going to get a chance to meet him, all because he was at the pizza farm along with the other members of Wulf, Inc.
It wasn’t until Nero had thrown the car into Park that Laddin realized Wulfric, the man of shifter legend, looked like he’d been chewed on by an ogre. Half his face was swollen, and the other half was ripped into shreds. There was blood everywhere, and he’d slumped sideways in the car with his mangled face pressed up against the window.
Laddin rushed forward, intending to open the car door, but stopped, realizing the guy would fall onto the ground. So he stood there looking awkward, his hands hovering uselessly near the door handle. Meanwhile, Nero and Josh both got out. A closer look showed that they too were worse for wear. Or at least their clothes were, given the tears and blood splatter. They, on the other hand, appeared completely healthy despite their anxious expressions.
“What happened?” Laddin asked.
“Hellhounds,” Josh said as he opened the back door and gently reached inside. “Don’t trust your eyes with him. He’s got a fairy glamour that makes him appear beautiful.”
Laddin frowned. Wulfric looked anything but beautiful right then. More like a special effects monster gone bad.
“We got Wiz to dispel the magic for now,” Josh continued. “But if he suddenly looks like the picture of health, it’s an illusion.”
Got it. “Why didn’t Wulfric shift?” That was the fastest way to heal.
“Too exhausted,” Nero answered. “He should be in a hospital, but they’re overrun with regular human casualties right now. Besides, he’s better off resting here and waiting for one of the clerics to magic him better.”
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 for him. 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? and Can 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 off Grey’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. Everybody in 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?”
“He’s got a room here,” Nero said. “We just need to get him there.”
“I can walk,” Wulfric said.
“Maybe you can,” Bruce said, “but no one looks macho passing out. And I don’t think your face could take another hit.”
“My face has seen a lot worse,” Wulfric answered, but he gestured his acquiescence. “I am at your mercy.”
It took time and coordination to move Wulfric out of the car and onto the backboard, then carry him inside to the guest area of the main house. The pizza farm was also a quaint B&B that had been completely rented out by Wulf, Inc. Wulfric’s room was the first on the right, and they gently set him down on the bed.
“Thank you,” Wulfric said, his voice melodic. Lying there on the bed in his bloody clothes, he looked small and vulnerable. Then he looked at Josh, Laddin, and Bruce in turn. “Welcome to Wulf, Inc. Mot
her and I are grateful for your work.”
He spoke with old-world charm that should have seemed strange, but it still managed to touch Laddin’s heart. He didn’t mention that none of them had fully signed on yet, especially Bruce. Or that Laddin intended to leave after the next moon.
Exhaustion seemed to kick in, and Wulfric’s eyes drifted shut. Bruce set down the heavy field medical kit and looked to Nero. “I’ll stay here until the… whomever arrives. He shouldn’t be left alone.”
Nero dropped his hands on his hips and looked Bruce over from head to toe. “Josh, stay with Wulfric for now. Your brother and I are going to have a little chat.”
Bruce rocked back on his heels, set his jaw, then turned to Josh. “Never thought I’d see the day you blindly took orders from anyone.”
Oh shit. There was that grumpy guy taunt. Obviously Bruce didn’t like anyone ordering his brother around. But instead of facing off with Nero, he had to poke Josh—probably to get Josh to fight for himself. But whether Bruce realized it or not, Nero was in charge. So as Josh’s face grew ruddy and his jaw jutted forward, Laddin quickly stepped in to interrupt the fight before it started.
“Yes, Josh will obey,” he said. “Because Nero’s his trainer and the alpha. That means Josh has to take orders until Wulf, Inc. decides he’s safe to go free.”
Bruce’s jaw tightened and a muscle over his eye twitched in anger. Well, he’d better buckle up, because it was about to get worse.
“And furthermore,” Laddin said as he rounded on Nero, “Mr. Paramedic is my problem, so if there’s anything to get straight, I’ll be the one to do it.” That was a dicey position to take because technically Nero was the highest-ranking person in the room except for the unconscious Wulfric. But new recruits were always touchy. That was why they had one person in charge of each new puppy. And though Laddin had zero experience training a newbie, he was still the only one who should be disciplining Bruce. Those were the rules, after all. But would Nero abide by them?