I may have pissed on Cornelius’s bones in both forms, but it’s as if he pissed on me. Repeatedly. For my whole life.
***
I catch her scent on the breeze not fifty paces away and every hair on my coat rises. Why does she smell so close? She’s not okay. I pick up pace and follow the scent until I see her, in a trench beside the road, curled into a ball, rocking back and forth, and crying.
The path she took here was strange and erratic. One look at her and it hits me, the path she took through the grass rather than on the gravel road.
I shift to man form when I see the top of her golden head.
“Ivy!”
She twists to look over her shoulder at me and her eyes are filled with wet. Her cheeks are red and swollen and her chin trembles.
“It… it bit me.”
“What bit you?”
“The snake. Maybe both of them, I don’t know. There was a… tussle and they were all tangled up. They slithered away.” She gestures with her hand.
“Fuck.”
They were mating. She obviously happened upon a mating. This was the time of year for it and if she wandered through the trench along the road a long way, it’s not a surprise she happened upon that. She smells like me, but that clearly didn’t matter stepping into a mating between snakes.
Her tight jeans are bulging around her ankle and it’s obvious that she’s swelling where she was bit.
“I should’ve worn my Uggs.”
“Your what?”
“My purple boots.” She gestures to the canvas ankle shoes she has on. Her circulation is being cut off, so I grab the cuff of her jeans and rip upwards to give her leg some room. I see the bitemark just below her ankle, above the shoe. I pull her shoe off.
“Oh no! My Lucky jeans. Shit, Tyson…”
“Getting bit by a snake isn’t very lucky, Ivy,” I inform her.
Her brows furrow and then she shakes her head. “Not that kind of luck – never mind.” Her face goes panicked and she forces a swallow. “Am I gonna die?” she whispers, “because it feels like –”
“No!” I interrupt and then wrap my mouth around the wound and suck.
“What are you doing? That’s poison!” She tries to pull back, but I don’t allow it.
I hold her calf firmly and I suck and spit and suck and spit.
Her heart is beating very fast. Too fast.
I taste her blood belatedly and taste something vile within it. The venom.
I smell Riley Savage in the air. And the one he called Lincoln.
My attention snaps over my left shoulder.
They’re both shifting to man. “Tyson. What’s happened?” Riley demands.
“Back the fuck up!”
“What’s wrong? Let us help.”
“A snake bit me,” Ivy says, and I see she’s got her hands over her eyes.
I sift fingers through her silky hair.
“Ivy? Look at me. You won’t die. I won’t allow it. Understand?”
“I can’t look at you, Ty. They’re naked.”
“What kind of snake?” Riley asks, leaning over and looking at her ankle. “Stop, with the suction, it won’t work. She needs antivenom. Let’s take her to Aunt Cat. Don’t carry her prone, keep her head above her legs.”
“Aunt Cat?” Ivy asks, eyes still covered. “Who’s she?”
“She’s a healer. And Tyson’s mother,” Riley tells her.
“Come! Fast!” Lincoln demands, leaning in to look at Ivy’s ankle, too close; I growl at him.
He rears back and says, “Come! Cat’ll help! Hurry.”
I lift her up and we run.
I run for my life. For hers.
***
By the time I get to that village, Ivy’s skin feels hot and her body trembles in my arms.
They’ve beat me there as they shifted to wolves, but I’m not far behind, even as man and even with her in my arms because I run faster as man than I’ve ever run in my life. I feel her distress, I smell the sickness as that venom courses through her veins, and I feel her fear, knowing she’s running a fever and it’s climbing and climbing.
From there, things happen quickly. A man and the woman who I saw earlier come out the same door at the gas station, with a now-shifted to man, Riley who is talking on a phone.
“Come with us,” the woman calls.
“I need a healer. Now!”
She’s already looking at Ivy’s ankle, which is even more swollen.
“I’ll take you,” she says, then ushers me to a truck that’s parked at the back of the gas station.
Riley nods at me, communicating I should go with her.
I climb into the back seat, holding her in my arms and as the man with her starts the truck for her, Riley calls out. “I’ll meet you at the clinic. They’re getting ready for you.”
Ivy trembles in my arms despite her skin feeling hot to the touch. I grind my teeth together and hear a motorcycle start up. That’s Riley, behind us.