Page 38 of Destined Predator
He almost didn’t need the dog. It was easy to find Casey’s clothes, shed when he must have shifted, and so know which way he’d gone. Rhett scooped them all up as he came across them, and gave Hurricane his head, letting him follow Duke east across Tucker land. And off—crossing the far pasture, at the boundary of their property, Rhett felt Casey’s distress and knew he was in trouble. The feeling wasn’t a thought so much as a tug in his gut, a wire thrumming low and urgent.
“Where are you?” Rhett called, making both animals swing their heads to him.
“The ridge,” Rhett heard in reply and he touched his heels to Hurricane, making him move.
The ridge was empty, although Rhett’s flashlight beam showed him crushed and trampled undergrowth. Fresh—edges still wet where stems had snapped, dirt scuffed in a tight half-moon. Something had circled here. “I’m near,” he said out loud, feelingdumb. He could have just thought the words. “Down the other side?”
He caught a sound from Casey in reply, and Duke was already scurrying down the slope, so Rhett followed. Duke stopped at the bottom of the gradient and whined, refusing to go on. Why? What would make him do that? A dozen scenarios, all sickening, played out in Rhett’s mind. He slid from the saddle, landing on springy plants and shone the flashlight on them. They made almost a carpet. His brain whirled, identifying them. Monkshood. It wasn’t native, and if it did grow by any chance, ranchers and farmers pulled it up.
It was toxic to dogs. The stink was green and bitter, a chemical bite under the plant’s faint sweetness. Rhett dragged his bandana up over his nose on instinct, useless against poison but good against panic. “Stay back, Duke. Stay,” he ordered, probably unnecessarily. The dog was well-trained, including in what to avoid, like Monkshood. But that was the old name for it. The plant had another name, a more common one nowadays.Wolfsbane.As poisonous to wolves as it was to dogs. And that had to include coywolves. “Casey?”
He pushed the word down the bond like a palm through tall grass—steady, deliberate, the way you touch a skittish colt.
“West,” came to him.
Rhett followed the track marks through vegetation that shouldn’t have been there to something else that shouldn’t and had never been there before—a pit. Wolfsbane grew along its top and down its sides, and at the bottom lay a coywolf. “Casey!” Rhett yelled, but the figure didn’t stir.
He’s not dead. I’d know. He got the feeling Casey had shut down, if anything, to conserve, well, himself, if he couldn’t shift to human form, avoiding the toxin and scramble free of the pit. Rhett took a deep breath, then pulled the rope free of his saddlebag and threw it down into the pit. He tied the end he heldonto Hurricane’s saddle horn, then climbed down into the hole. The pit’s dirt walls crumbled under his boots. Cold leached up from the earth the way river water does, slow, marrow-deep. He shoved past it.
“Casey Akers,” Rhett whispered. “What we gonna do with you, huh?”
In the short term, that was tying the rope around his middle. “Hurricane, walk!” Rhett yelled up to his horse. Hurricane was used to dragging calves and acting as a pulley, but never in these conditions. He’d do his best though, and him pulling, with Rhett ensuring Casey didn’t get too banged up in the process, was easier than dragging or pushing him would be.
“Easy, boy. Walk on.” Rhett kept his voice low and even; horses read your heartbeat faster than men did.
“Rhett?” he heard, just as the weakened coywolf, sagging where it was tied around its stomach, opened its eyes.Hiseyes. “I’m here. We’re gonna get you fixed up,” he whispered. It seemed to take an age to get the both of them to the lip of the pit, then over, onto flat ground, and wasn’t something Rhett ever wanted to do again.
He untied both ends of the rope, clicking his tongue at Hurricane when he tried to shy away. Animals acted weird around shifters, Jack had said. Well, too bad. Casey yipped, making Rhett realize he was lying on the poisonous plants. “Here,” he ordered, holding the horse’s reins and making him kneel so he could sling the coywolf across his back. It would have to do.
Every muscle in Casey went taut at the saddle’s creak, a flash of prey-instinct that punched Rhett in the chest through the bond. He laid a palm to the coywolf’s shoulder—with me—and felt the tension ease by degrees.
As soon as they were across the wolfsbane, at the foot of the ridge, Casey slid from Hurricane to the ground. “What, thinkyou can walk?” Rhett asked, understanding the proud alpha needed to be just that. “Duke, friend.” He stood still until the dog accepted Casey. “Well, okay. Guess it’s just me riding home then.”
He kept the pace moderate, although he wanted to tear back to see to Casey, because it was clear the coywolf was struggling, his limbs trembling. When they were halfway across the near pasture, Rhett ordered the dog home, like his owner had said to do, and watched Duke streak into the distance. He’d have to give Jerry some good steak for his German Shepherd. Casey remained in his shifted form until after they got to the ranch buildings and Rhett stabled Hurricane, only shifting to human when they reached the ranch house, when he crouched, shaking.
“Hell, Casey!” Rhett was aghast at Casey’s swollen, reddened skin, including his face, and his labored breathing. He could hardly stagger inside. “I’m gonna put you in the bath, okay?” The old tub filled like a stock tank in spring, steam ghosting up the window. Rhett kept one hand on Casey’s wrist the whole time, counting heartbeats more than seconds. It was all he could think of to do, to soothe his flesh. That and getting some activated charcoal, for any toxin inside him. He returned with it to Casey in the still-filling tub, and wrapped his hand around the glass, helping him drink.
Casey made a face, rolling an eye at him, and Rhett huffed out a laugh. “It can’t do any harm,” he said. Casey clutched his stomach and heaved. “Ah. Except that.” He stood back while Casey levered himself out of the tub, then left the bathroom for Casey to vomit. Rhett used the time to call Jerry, warn him that his dog was on his way home, and inform him about the toxic plants, and the pit. “Do whatever you have to do at first light to get all that dug up and the hole filled in,” he ordered. Jerry would.
He added, “And tell Phil to keep hands away from the east ridge tonight.” No way was he explaining wolfsbane and pits over a landline.
Rhett spared a couple of minutes to look up information about the toxin.
“Hey.” Rhett went back to Casey, who looked a lot better. Almost back to normal.
“Why am I in the tub?”Casey asked. “You got a fetish about water?”
“No. Well, maybe. Seemed a good idea?” Rhett replied, only realizing afterward that Casey hadn’t spoken out loud. “What happened?”
“Jackals. Jackal shifters.”
Rhett considered Casey’s terse reply. They must have been the ones who attacked Greg, and maybe left the traps…but they couldn’t have planted something that was poisonous to dogs, even in their human form, could they? “The feds have gone,” he said, to catch Casey up. “They just issued a general warning to be careful. You got a headache or palpitations?”
“Huh?” Casey pushed his wet hair back to see Rhett.
“Symptoms from the poison in the monkshood. Wolfsbane, I mean.”
“I don’t think so. I’ll check. Ready?”
