Dirty Lying Wolves

7. Bad Timing

Dom

The sickness was passing. It had only been a few hours at this point, and I was more than glad to see Lady Thea's powers had worked. When I stopped having headaches and nausea completely, I knew the others would be on their way too. Maybe they already were, since they had shifted into their wolf skins.

"How are you holding up, Jack?" I asked.

The wolf nearest to me gave an exhausted whimper but nodded. I looked at the others.  "If you're not already coming down off of it, you will be soon. Get ready to shift back and we can go get something to eat. I'm starving."

What I didn't mention was the pretty persistent craving for a hit of lunaria's dream. But they'd figure it out on their own. Nothing to do about it now except distract ourselves. There was no way I wanted a hit of that ever again, and I'll do everything in my power to stop Amelia from taking us down that road again.

Not that it was her choice to start it in the first place. Apollo was a tricky bastard, that's for sure.

My eyes drifted to Amelia and Jerod. Amelia was still next to me, clearly exhausted but holding stubborn and not making a sound. She also hadn't met my eyes since I last mentioned the old pack. She was either pissed at me, mulling over what I said, or both. Probably both.

Jerod was a little further away. He had been digging things out of his pocket for a while now. A little red Hello Kitty pouch. A candle. A knife. A bright green string. I didn't know shit about dark magic but I knew enough to keep a close eye on him.

I grunted as I got up. I walked over to where I had left my shorts before deciding to stay with Amelia and pulled them back on. I made my way to Jerod and nudged him with my foot.

"Hey, warlock," I said. "It's been more than nine hours. When is this going to end?"

"Finding out," he grunted.

A low growl of frustration crept into my throat but I put it out. If he had a way to find out, I wish he had done it sooner. I just backed up and crossed my arms over my chest. If I wasn't going to be a part of it I was at least going to watch. I was still pretty pissed that this accident happened in the first place, and as soon as Jerod could form whole sentences again I was going to beat the truth out of him until I had an explanation of what was going on.

Jerod was slow going, pausing a lot to hold his stomach or gag. He spits up a little blood at one point, but nothing too worrisome. When he finally had his string, knife, some kind of powder, and a crumpled up flower, he pricked his thumb and smeared blood down the string.

Then, he spoke a bunch of warlock gibberish, and the string began emitting vivid purple smoke. I'll admit, that was a pretty curious sight and I was nearly tempted to take another step back from it but my pride didn't let me in the end.

Jerod finished his string of magic words, and at almost the instant he stopped, an ugly as sin green demon stepped through. Its eyes bulged, its teeth protruded, and its skin sagged. The thing took a good look at Jerod and chuckled.

Okay, that made me smile a little.

But when it started speaking in that same gibberish Jerod had used to summon it, I was lost. It was pretty obvious they were having a conversation, but about what I had no idea. There was a lot of back and forth, Jerod's answers were pained and short, which only seemed to amuse the demon further.

"For the last... time! My liver... is... spoken for!" Jerod snapped.

"You need me to step in and kill this thing?" I asked.