Running with Rogues

CHAPTER 9 - BREAK FOR IT

Merry Christmas Everyone! These updates seem to be getting later and later (sorry!!) but you're gonna have to be patient with me for a few more weeks :/ Welcome to Italy, New Zealand and Romania.

I rolled onto my side and did some coughing. My lungs were still burning, but I could see again, so I reckoned I wasn't about to drop.

Somewhere to my left, five packlings were lying on their bellies and getting trussed up like pigs for slaughter. The police weren't being gentle with them, and I wondered whether they were enjoying being outnumbered and outgunned for the first time in their lives.

"Bryn?" I asked, brushing the hair out of his eyes. "Rise and shine, bud."

He didn't move. I lifted his head up, checking for any serious injuries, but there were only a few cuts and a handful of bruises. Before I could try any first-aid, one of the police officers pointed an assault rifle at my chest.

"Get down," he snapped. "On the floor, right now."

"Oh, you guys really suck," I sighed. "I am the victim in this here situation."

If I had been dressed like a respectable human woman, they would have left me the hell alone. I was covered in blood, my shirt was torn open and sodden with rainwater, and they had literally seen Kieran trying to blow my brains out. But I was wearing trackies and a threadbare waterproof. My tattoo was visible. I looked like trouble.

"Shut your mouth and put your hands where I can see them."

He had a gun, so I did what I was told. He had me kneel on the concrete while a regular police officer came over and patted me down. She didn't find anything, of course, but it was an extreme test of my patience to sit still and wait for her to finish while my cousin was bleeding.

And then they decided to search Bryn. He was unconscious and covered in blood, but he looked like trouble, too. One of them rolled him while the other checked for weapons. By the time they were done, I was having to wrestle with my wolf to keep a growl in my chest.

"You gonna cuff him next?" I demanded. "He didn't do shit. Me neither. We were the ones getting beat, if you couldn't tell."

"No, we're not going to cuff him. This is just a precaution," the firearms officer told me. "Barnes, call him an ambulance, would you?"

"That's better," I muttered. We'd have to bail before the ambulance got here, of course - humans found it a tiny bit weird when wounds started scabbing over before their eyes, but I appreciated the thought.

He looked me up and down, noting the blood. "What about you? Do you need one?"

"No," I said. My arms looked like they'd been through a cheese grater, and it felt like someone was kicking me in the chest every time I took a breath, but I wasn't about to drop dead. "Can I check on my brother now?"

Sometimes it just slipped out, and I will admit I didn't try awfully hard to stop it.

"I don't see why not. No sudden movements."

I crouched back beside Bryn. He was beginning to stir now, but not fast enough for my liking. I tugged on the link again. His eyelids flickered, and that was all. Since his nose was still bleeding, I rolled him onto his side and opened his airway like I'd been taught.

"Come on," I whispered.

I felt eyes on me. Not the police, not the onlookers - no, this was something different. Something sinister. All the hairs on the back of my neck were standing on end.

The car which had arrived just before the police was parked twenty metres away, but the engine was still running. The nearside window was rolled down, and there was a man in the passenger seat with jet-black hair and piercing eyes. He must have been about the same age as my parents - mid-thirties or thereabouts, and I knew exactly who he was, because I could feel his wolf even from here.