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“Fuck off, Tyler, you had fun,” the wolf said, advancing on me. “You’re out of shape, anyway.”
Tyler, the bear, growled. I pulled myself to my feet, avoiding the urge to put pressure on my injured front paw. My ass hit the wall as I moved back, leaving me without an escape route. If I teleported far enough away, I might sprint to safety. My paw would hurt like a fucking bitch, but it was pain or losing my life. I’d choose the pain.
“How are we going to play with this thing? Put it in a room and chase it until it can’t run anymore?” Tyler asked.
The wolf regarded me with sharp brown eyes. “That’s a good start. See how many injuries it can take before chasing isn’t fun anymore.”
I doubted I would entertain these predators for long. Glancing off to the side, I scoped out where I should teleport to, but there weren’t any places that looked promising. I’d have to wing it. Resting my paw down on the ground to prepare myself for the pain, I lunged forward at the same moment I teleported, landing on the gritty cement less than a hundred metres away from the shifters.
They cursed behind me, Tyler especially loudly at the annoyance of having to run again. The wolf’s cursing was followed up by a snarl, his predatory instincts kicking into overdrive. My feet carried me faster than I’d ever run before, each step causing a shooting pain up my leg. But, miraculously, I maintained my lead. A few blocks before I reached Club Chaos, the men trailed off in their pursuit, realizing where I was heading and not wanting to fuck with the highly trained bouncers or the AEA, which was only one call away from the club.
When I stumbled to a stop outside the front door of the club, the bouncer recognized me and shouted for Matthias. I didn’t get to see anything else before I passed out.
The world was too fucking bright, but quieter than it should be. No music. And there should be music because I’d passed out in front of the club. Jolting up in a panic, pain lanced through my injured paw, but I relaxed when I saw my surroundings. Bright pot lights illuminated the chair I was laid down on, Matthias sitting behind his desk and poring over a pile of documents. He glanced up, catching my movement, and cringed. “I didn’t know if I should take the screw out of your foot,” he said. “Figured you might wake up and claw one of my eyes out if I tried while you were unconscious.”
He was put-together as always, but a small red paw print stained one breast pocket of his button-up. He’d been the one to carry me in here. Had he told Freya what happened? She rarely answered her phone, not even for him. I looked down at my paw, then back up to him. Since I was awake, I’d like him to remove it. I wasn’t sure how he was expecting me to say that, though.
For a couple of seconds, we locked gazes until Matthias barked out a laugh. “Shit, sorry. Do you want me to take the screw out of your foot?”
I nodded, and he stood from his desk, walking around the aggressively large piece of wood and kneeling in front of me. “Don’t scratch me.”
No guarantees. This was going to hurt like a bitch. I dug the claws of my free front paw into the fabric of the armchair. “Can you detach?” Mattie asked, forehead scrunched up in offense.
Twitching my ears, I dug my claws in deeper. I thought he didn’t want to be swatted at. He couldn’t have the best of both worlds here. “Gods, fine.”
He had a wad of tissues in one hand and grabbed a bottle of cheap vodka with the other. “We don’t have much for first aid supplies,” he muttered.
Dousing my wound in vodka made it sting, but the burn was nothing compared to the fiery pain when he pulled it out. He tried to twist the screw out at first, like it was holding up a fucking shelf or something, until my hiss made him dart back. Bloody screw in hand, free from my flesh, he watched me warily until my hackles lowered. Then he shifted forward again and put more vodka on my wound, catching the excess with the tissues and patting away the seeping blood.
“You’ll have to get Freya to bandage it. We don’t have anything. Probably should, but not many of us can get hurt badly enough to need medical attention.”
Nulls were the ones who injured themselves often and needed things like first aid kits to keep them alive and well. And familiars, apparently. Freya may heal me when I returned home if she hadn’t drained herself too much from the fight with the vampires and subsequent healing of herself. “I want to ask what happened, but I doubt I could guess and you can’t exactly tell me,” Matthias said.
I shrugged.
“I’m assuming she wasn’t, since you’re not panicking over her safety, but was Freya with you?”
A shake of my head made a bit of tension release from his shoulders. “Good to know that she and her familiar are both fucking reckless about going it alone. If you can’t portal back to her yet, you’re welcome to stay. I’ve got hours of work to do.”
I did a brief assessment of my body, noting my energy hadn’t increased much during the sleep. Probably because it was less ‘sleep’ and more my body shutting down involuntarily. Curling my tail around my body, I snuggled back into the fabric of the armchair. Matthias went back to his work, and I went to sleep.
When I woke up the next time, Mattie was gone and there was a note beside my temporary cat bed, inviting me to stay however long I needed. A glance at the wall showed the clock sitting at nine in the morning. Enough sleep, and therefore enough energy, to teleport home.
“Ozzy, where the hell were you?” Freya asked when I appeared on the familiar kitchen counter. “I was worried when you still weren’t back this morning.”
I puffed up with pride at how she worried for me, though her affection resulted from the bond between familiar and witches. Nothing more.“I tailed Shan last night and got a little caught up.”
Her gaze scanned me, noting my bedraggled appearance. There was blood in my fur, both from the vampire and from me. She looked nothing short of gorgeous, wearing a pair of loose sleep shorts and a tight tank top that did plenty to distract me from the invasive pain in my paw. “Caught up how?”
How should I put it to make the experience sound less horrible? Fuck, there wasn’t a gentle way to explain.“Chased by a pack of shifters through the streets of Westwood. But I made it back to Club Chaos and Matthias took the screw out of my foot.”
Purple eyes widened in surprise, she reached out to lift my front foot. Easy to tell which, since the bottom was caked in blood. “Screw? Angels, how did you get away from them with a screw in your paw?”
“I’d like to say it resulted from pure skill and badassery, but I can only credit luck.”
The skin warmed where she held me, her lips parting to whisper the words of a healing spell. Her spell stitched the skin back together, filling in where the flesh had been torn. It wasn’t an entirely comfortable feeling, but the relief at the end was worth the discomfort. My paw was a little sensitive, but otherwise I couldn’t tell that I’d been injured at all.
“Why were you in Westwood? You said you were following Shan?” she asked.
