A Cursed Bloodline
Page 61

We arrived at the San Salvador airport close to dawn. I didn’t bother telling Michael to influence the minds of everyone we passed. We didn’t have the time, he didn’t have the energy, and at that point I couldn’t care less who saw the giant wolf strapped to our roof.
My eyes cut Michael’s way. Poor guy. His feeding allowed his leg wound to heal and prevented bloodlust, but not much more than that. He’d have to nourish a lot more to regenerate his arm. And still he managed to invade enough minds to permit our entry onto the runway and find us a ride home.
Tye and I waited for him in silence, mostly because I refused to speak to him. He leaned against the hangar wall, alternating between scowling at me and watching Aric. “What do you expect will happen when you return to the Den?”
“I expect his Elders to cure him. Or maybe Emme can heal him. If not, perhaps Tahoe’s head witch could counteract the spell or something. Genevieve’s strong, she—”
“Can’t,” Tye finished for me.
“What?”
Tye’s voice slowly rose with anger. “Genevieve can’t reverse the spell. Emme can’t heal him. The Elders can’t cure him. There is no cure!” He pushed off the wall and shoved his face in mine. “They will kill him, and you, you will watch him die.”
The heat from my anger surged fast enough to suffocate. “Why are you here?” I shoved him away. “If this is what you really believe, why do you stay?”
Tye’s thick brows angled in frustration. “Because I don’t want him to kill you and I don’t want you to watch him die!”
Michael returned, his pace slowing when he caught Tye and me facing off. “I located a U.S. cargo plane here to deliver goodwill medical supplies. They’re scheduled to fly back to San Diego sometime tomorrow. I convinced them to leave for Tahoe right away. We can fake an emergency landing if we have to.”
I rushed forward to retrieve Aric, just as he woke up. He threw his body against the cage, hard enough to tip the SUV over.
The huge vehicle and cage rattled against the concrete and Aric still wouldn’t stop. He slammed into the bars, hard enough to bend them and snap his ribs. Tye shot him with four tranquilizers—and that only partially doped him. He tried to shoot him again and ran out of darts. Michael fired six more times before finally knocking Aric out. I couldn’t believe it. The cage and chain barely held him despite being reinforced with magic.
Michael reloaded his gun. “The moon sickness makes him increasingly stronger and violent. We’re running out of time.”
I dropped my hands to my sides. I hadn’t realized I’d clasped them against my mouth. “How soon can we leave?”
“As soon as the pilots are done refueling, we’re out of here.” Michael took in the crowd that had gathered from the commotion. “I’ll be right back.”
The group of pilots and grounds crew walked away smiling after Michael was done with them. Among them were two women. Michael used the opportunity to eat, again. When he finished I’d already cut the ropes binding the cage to the SUV. He helped me push the cage into the cargo plane. Tye didn’t help. His only contribution was to swear.
Michael nudged me a few hours into our flight. “You should sleep, you don’t look well.”
I could have slept for a week, but my worry for Aric kept my lids wide open and my heart thumping. He lay with his back to me. I’d been watching him breathe for a long while, agonizing over the spasmodic rise and fall of his chest. His ribs were slow to slide beneath his fur and reattach, taking close to an hour rather than mere moments.
The moon sickness was interfering with his ability to mend. I shuddered, wondering how else it ravaged his body.
I forced myself to rise rather than taking Michael up on his offer and pushed my sweaty hair away my face. “Shouldn’t we give him some water or feed him?”
“The only thing he wants to eat is us,” Tye answered irritably.
I ignored him and went to find something I could use as a bowl. A helmet stuffed into a storage compartment seemed like my best bet. I filled it with a bottle of water from a cooler we’d found, and grabbed a pack of dehydrated meat the pilots had purchased. I ripped open the pack with my teeth and shoved it into the cage. As I worked to position the water close to the bars, something about Aric’s eyes caught my attention. They rolled from side to side, but they no longer glimmered green. I smiled. “Michael, Aric is getting better. He’s—”
Tye launched himself on me and slammed me against the rear of the plane. Aric had awoken in a vicious state. He crashed his body furiously against the metal bars like a battering ram, shaking the whole plane. Michael shot him repeatedly, but it didn’t slow him. His snarls rumbled with menace despite the blood that soaked his snout.
“I’m out of darts!” Michael yelled.
Aric’s thrashing moved the cage directly over the two rifles that remained. Tye and Michael kept trying to snag them, but Aric’s snapping jowls held them to a standstill.
I tried to sound as soothing is possible. “Aric, stop it.” He beat himself against the bars, jolting the cage forcibly against Michael and knocking him aside. I raised my voice. “Aric, no!”
He fixed his gaze on me. I thought he recognized me, but his menacing stare and the increasing growls said otherwise. If any other predator had stared at me that way, my tigress would demand we snap its vertebrae. But this wasn’t some unknown aggressor. It was Aric. “Baby. It’s me. Please don’t look at me like that.”
In one jump, Aric forced the cage toward me, cornering me near the entrance to the cockpit. His snout protruded through the bars mere inches from my throat. The metal creaked and bent as his mangled face advanced through. His oozing nose scraped against my skin. He was almost to me.
The sound of rapid fire reverberated from the rear of the plane. Michael had reached the gun.
One of the pilots burst into the cargo area. He seemed confused, but unafraid. “I don’t know what the hell that was,” he called over his shoulder. “Everything seems in order.”
“Turbulence,” sputtered Michael. He sprawled on the floor breathing heavily.
“It must have been turbulence,” the pilot repeated before returning to his seat.
Michael continued to pant. “I’d told them not to notice us or the cage.”