Microsoft Word - Jacks-Marcy-Hunted-and-on-the-Run.doc (8 page)

Then the burning had returned, followed by the swelling, itching, and stiffness in his back leg. Then the colors of the trees had all started to blend together, and now his body was so hot he thought he might actually expire if he didn’t get some water in him.

“Stop, John. Stop.”

Those words hadn’t been spoken in his head. They were out loud.

Storm had actually stopped to shift back into a man while John feverishly wandered along.

Still, Storm had told him to stop, and he gratefully allowed his body to fall into a bed of cool leaves.

They had been cool for the first three seconds anyway because
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then they absorbed all the heat from John’s body, and it was like he had a quilt around him, which only made the heat that much worse.

He felt Storm’s human hands come to rest on his fur. They stroked him carefully then moved down to his injured leg.

The burn that followed behind his touch felt like he’d just been scalded with hot oil. Storm’s hand grabbed him by the scruff again to keep him from jumping up.

“You’ll injure yourself more! I’m sorry. Stay still,” he said, stroking John’s neck and ears.

He liked that, and it calmed him enough that he was able to put the pain out of his mind for a little bit. He even managed to smile as he looked up into Storm’s eye. He wasn’t wearing his eye patch, but John’s vision was still too cloudy for him to see any details of the injury. He could still sense the worry coming from the other man as he pet and stroked him.

Storm might want to be stubborn about what they were to each other, but he cared. Even if he didn’t love John yet, he still cared.

Otherwise he would’ve abandoned him, honor debt or no.

“Can you shift back into a man? I don’t think we’re near any more motels yet, but I’m picking up the scent of a cabin somewhere up ahead.”

Just the thought of a bed to sleep in made him all the more drowsy. Storm had to shake his shoulder to keep him awake.

“John, please…”

He was done. He couldn’t go on anymore.
“Leave me here
.
”

* * * *

Storm put his hands under the fur of his lover and hoisted him into the air. It worried him that the wolf didn’t groan in discomfort or pain, and, carrying his heavy load and the bag filled with their clothing, he ran the rest of the way, following his nose.

Mud and decaying leaves squished under his toes, but he didn’t
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stop. He didn’t stop when he stepped on a sharp twig, and he didn’t stop when the cramp in his side started up. He’d been running for so long, and not only was the long cut down his side irritating him, but now his muscles wanted to give out as well.

A shifter’s stamina could only get him so far.

Finally, the cabin he scented came into view. He’d known it was somewhere in the distance because the old wood scent and faint presence of humans was still in the air.

The scent of humans was old. Whoever the owners were, they weren’t here.

He understood why the second he got close enough to notice the details of the place.

It was more of a shack than a cabin. Storm’s first thought was that it was used for storage, but there were no other houses nearby that it could be used for. There was a lake behind it, right behind the shack, and the water glowed orange with the setting sun.

He couldn’t believe John had managed to go so long and so far with a silver bullet inside of him, and despite the look of the shack, Storm wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

The door was locked, naturally, but it was a padlock and not a bolt. The wooden door was gray with age, and it was a simple matter of breaking it in and stepping inside.

He thanked God at the sight of a bed and a stove. Shack or no, someone used this place to spend nights. Maybe they only came here for fishing and whatnot, but there were supplies here that he could use.

The bedsheets weren’t even dusty, but the bed itself groaned when Storm placed the heavy wolf on top.

He stroked John’s hair one last time before he went to check the cupboards.

The cabin was small, about the size of a studio apartment, only without a bathroom. Storm figured that whoever owned this place just went and did their business in the trees. The stove was gas, and it
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worked, and the water ran cold from the sink in the kitchen. Storm filled up a kettle and set it over the burner. There was no telling if the water was drinkable, and they would need clean water anyway for John’s wound.

He searched through the rest of the drawers and cupboards, few of them that there were, and he struck gold.

A first aid kit. There was a first aid kit under the sink. He opened it and found bandage rolls, needles, alcohol, and swabs. Just as good as that, there was also a tackle box with a pair of needle-nose pliers inside. They looked dirty, but he could clean them in the boiling water and pull out the bullet in John’s leg.

If he didn’t shift back into a man, Storm just might have to find a way to shave the leg first.

John was burning up. Storm needed to get that bullet out of him.

He needed to put a cold cloth on his forehead, and he needed to clean out the wound with the hot water.

Storm went back to the bed and put his hand on John’s forehead.

Wolves didn’t have any sweat glands in their skin, so it wasn’t like the fur was damp or anything, but it did feel overly hot, and his nose was dry.

“John, please, I need you to try and shift back into a man. I don’t know what to do while you’re in wolf form.” He barely had any idea of what he was supposed to do should John become a man, but it was a better place for him to start.

John blearily opened his eyes. Storm didn’t expect much of a reaction from him. He thought John would just close his eyes again and slip into unconsciousness, but he didn’t.

Storm should’ve known better than to doubt the stubbornness of an alpha werewolf. John’s bones began to shift and snap. His fur shifted and shed entirely off him, or shrunk back to normal size on him, revealing his pale skin.

The change took nearly two minutes, and the entire time Storm worried that John wouldn’t be able to go all the way and that he
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would somehow get stuck in that in-between.

He didn’t, and once he was a man again, John’s skin began to pour sweat. Even though his skin also felt hot, he shivered uncontrollably, and he reached his hands up to grip at his arms, as though trying to keep some of his body heat with him.

“C–cold,” he said.

“I know,” Storm said, stroking his hair, and happy beyond anything he ever felt that John was in human form again. “You’re going to be okay, just give me a minute.”

He pulled the thin blanket over his lover, despite the wolf hair that was on it. He kept John’s leg exposed at all times.

Now that he could see the wound itself, he was better prepared for what he had to do.

He’d suspected that the bullet hadn’t gone straight through, but now that he could see the wound, he wished it had.

He’d never been great with identifying guns by their bullets. Even when Tony had been trying to teach him a thing or two, nothing had ever really stuck with him. He didn’t like guns. He’d used them when he had to, but he preferred hunting with his claws.

The size of the entry wound wasn’t a good sign. Whether this had been from a rifle or a handgun, it didn’t matter. The bullet had struck and expanded the deeper it had sunk into John’s flesh. Hunters liked using those kinds of bullets, especially if they were silver, just for the effects of the poisoning. The bullets were hard and painful to remove as well, and that alone could be used as a form of torture to get not just werewolves to talk, but their supporters as well.

Storm soaked a dish towel in the cold water from the tap and set it over John’s forehead. There was some Tylenol in the first aid kit, but that would be nowhere near what John would be wanting or needing when Storm got started. Still, he grabbed three of the pills and took one of the soda cans out of the bag he’d carried with him.

It fizzed as he clicked it open, but it was still drinkable. He gave John the pills, holding his head up and helping him drink the warm
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soda.

“Water,” John said, touching the cold rag at his forehead when he chugged down as much sugary soda as he could take.

Storm looked to the boiling pot on the stove. “You wouldn’t want to drink that just yet. It’s not ready.”

He gently placed John’s damp head back on the pillow. Storm next took the boiling water off the stove and poured two separate bowls. He cleaned the pliers with one and would need to use the other for the wound itself.

He took another dish towel, the cleanest one he could find, and dipped it into the water before he started to clean away the dried blood.

A silver bullet could inhibit the fast healing abilities that most shifters had, but a wound like that could still heal too much if left too long, and Storm couldn’t have that.

He gripped John’s shoulder when he cried out at the touch of the hot cloth to his upper leg. To John’s credit, he didn’t try and shift away from the pain or push Storm away. He gripped the bedsheets and his back arched, seemingly against his will, but he knew he needed it.

“I’m sorry. I’m almost done,” Storm said, cleaning away the dried blood and dirt.

Once that was done, the wound flowed with fresh blood once more, and as Storm wiped it away, he could even see the bullet itself.

It was lodged tightly inside.

“Get it out! Get it out!” John said.

Storm’s heart cracked at John’s voice. It sounded as though his lover was fighting not to cry with the pain.

“This will hurt very much. Here,” he said, reaching into the bag and pulling out one of the pairs of jeans and twisting one of the legs around until it was as tight as a rope.

“No belts in here for you to bite on. Put your teeth around this.”

Again, with his eyes closed and barely paying any attention, John
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did as he was told.

Storm gently managed to turn him to his side so he could have a better angle to work on the wound. The bullet had struck the muscle of his upper thigh. It couldn’t have hit an important artery, otherwise he would be dead, and it was not deep enough to have struck the bone.

Storm took a deep breath, reached for John’s hand, squeezed it, and then dug the pliers into the wound to fish out the silver bullet.

John’s scream, even muffled against the denim he bit down on, was almost deafening.

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John couldn’t remember a time when he felt so much pain. He couldn’t even pinpoint exactly when it was that Storm had managed to get the bullet out of his leg. Maybe he’d passed out, he couldn’t remember. Either way, it had seemed like forever.

His leg was still throbbing by the time he finally came out of his pain-induced haze, but it wasn’t as bad as before. Storm was unwrapping his bandages and changing them for new ones, his face was the definition of concentration, and his white-blond hair was loose from its ponytail and down at his shoulders.

It was dark outside, and several lamps were lit up around the little hut they were in. John must have been sleeping for a time.

Storm looked up and their eyes met. John reached his hand out to touch along the side of Storm’s scarred eye. The lids were scarred shut, and there were no lashes either. From the sunken look of the socket, he’d guess there was no matching brown eye beneath the flesh anyway.

“How did you lose it?” he asked.

Storm reached down and quickly fished out his eye patch from their bag of supplies. He had it around his head and covering up the missing eye before John could stop him. “My brother,” he said finally. “Somehow my family found out that my tastes weren’t quite to their expectations, and when they did, they hunted me down. They might’ve killed me if…”

He trailed off, but John knew what he was about to say. They would have killed him had that hunter not saved his life, creating a life-debt that Storm felt he needed to honor.

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Storm’s hand came down to rest on John’s forehead. “You’re not feverish anymore.”

John took hold of his hand and brought it to his lips. “That’s good,” he said. Then he tried to pull Storm into bed with him.

Storm resisted. “That doesn’t mean you should be doing that,” he said, his tone partly scolding. “You’re a fast healer, but you’re still recovering from a shot with a silver bullet.”

“Yeah, I was shot.” John stared up into the face of his lover. “And I’m grateful you decided to take care of me.”

“I owe you―”

“You don’t owe me shit,” John insisted. “Don’t try and trick yourself into thinking that you only did it because you had to. I know you care more than that.”

When Storm didn’t say anything, John knew he’d won. He’d just wished the other man would admit to it.

Until then, there was something he wanted taken care of.

“Now, I was shot and nearly killed. I know exactly what I want right now.”

This time he did manage to get Storm halfway onto the bed before the next protest came. “Your leg―”

John captured his lips in a gentle kiss. They were plump and tasted perfectly of everything that John had ever wanted. The act also cut off everything else Storm had been about to say.

“Just go slow. We’ll be careful,” John said. He put his hands into Storm’s hair as the other man straddled his hips, bringing their mouths together again.

There was no way Storm could deny any longer that he wanted this, too. John felt the way his cock became thick as he sat on his lap.

Storm was so careful to keep most of his weight on the right side of John’s hips, not only to keep himself from touching John’s bandaged bullet wound, but to also keep as much weight as possible off of it.

They kissed slowly. John loved the soft feeling of Storm’s lips massaging his, the way his tongue slipped out so John could suck it
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