“Deal.” The daemon grinned. “Rue have best ideas.”
“I have terrible ideas that get us into trouble.” I tapped him on the chin. “You just like trouble.”
“Best…” he parted his hair, ready to pass me a section, “…ideas.”
“Time,” I called without having glanced at my watch. “We need to break this up before it goes too far.”
The thing about ghosts was they were already dead. Theories were well and good, and I was all for testing them, but there were limits. Derry had a mate and a pack depending on him. I didn’t doubt he was capable in a fight, but I put myself into his mate’s shoes too easily. For her sake, I couldn’t stand by.
“Hold on.” The daemon scooped me into his arms and dropped from the tree. “Watch back.”
“Thanks.” I drew from Colby, readying a containment spell that ought to work on Fang. “Hey, you.”
The wolves ignored me in favor of shredding themselves down to the bone.
Derry was winded, bleeding, and favoring one paw.
Despite his grievous injuries, Old Man Fang was not.
“Ugly,” I yelled, illuminating the tip of my wand. “Come get some.”
“That rude.” The daemon cut me a scowl of disapproval. “Dead-wolf can’t help he not pretty.”
“That’s not—” I bit my tongue as the spectral wolf lunged for my throat. “Sorry, fella.” I meant to tap him with my wand, but his fur was sticky, his skin gelatinous. He was solid, but my wand punched through him like paper. I flung the spell on the tip of my tongue and cringed as goo exploded. “Eww.”
Blobs of glowing jelly rained down on us, and they began jiggling before they hit the ground.
“I saw that going differently in my mind.” I dragged a hand down my face. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
As we looked on, the bits wiggled and rolled until they bumped into one another and began to form an arm that hauled itself toward another large blob that took on the shape of a leg. On and on, the process continued with disturbingly fascinating results.
“Derry hurt.” The daemon didn’t wait for permission. He lifted the wolf in his arms. “Take to motel?”
One look at the alpha assured me I had no time to waste on further attempts at containment or banishment. We had to get Derry medical care. Fast. And we had to be careful how we went about it.
Derry hadn’t mentioned how many packmates had made the trip with him, but no alpha traveled solo in foreign pack territory. I wanted to believe we could trust those he had chosen, but I refused to chance it.
“Let’s go back to where he shifted,” I decided. “His phone must be in his pants.”
From there, assuming I could unlock it, I could find his mate’s number and call her for instructions.
“Hurry.” The daemon snuggled the giant wolf against his chest. “It okay, Derry-wolf.”
My sense of smell might not be on par with theirs, but I had a decent memory and ran ahead to the cemetery. I located Derry’s clothes and pulled out his phone then breathed a sigh of relief when it wasn’t password protected. He made it even easier with an ICE icon in the center of his home screen.
Clearly, this scenario played out often enough with wargs they disabled security during shifts and kept their emergency contact front and center on their home screen.
With no time to waste, I mashed the button and waited for someone to answer. “Um, hi?”
“What has he done now?” A woman with a throaty voice sighed at me. “How many bones are broken?”
“Not sure,” I answered. “Can I ask who I’m speaking with?”
“Marita Mayhew, the long-suffering mate of the man whose phone you’re holding.”
Given it was his phone, and his emergency contact, that was good enough for me.
“Derry got in a fight with Old Man Fang, and he’s lost a lot of blood. He’s unconscious, but I wasn’t sure what to do with him. I don’t want him to face repercussions from the pack if he’s seen in a compromised state.”