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Again.
He rinsed his mouth out with the water Linda brought, and splashed some on the wound. He sucked on it again and spat it out.
He was still doing that when Dennis McKenzie shoved him aside. “Poison?” he said incredulously. He glanced at the dead body and swore.
“I gather you know him,” Benny said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
“Yeah,” Dennis said. He pulled something from a black doctor’s bag and gave Duncan a shot. “His grandfather is one of the old Alpha’s staunchest supporters.”
“He was at the pinochle night?” Benny asked.
Dennis nodded. “He was there, but I don’t think he stayed long. He wasn’t still there when we were eating. I looked,” he said, adding, “It’s just an antihistamine. Surprisingly, young shifters, pre-shift, get stung, bit by snakes, all those things, more often than you think.”
Dennis pulled out a baggie and gingerly scooted the knife into it. “I’m curious what it is.”
“Acted fast,” Benny said. He rinsed his mouth out. “And Doc? If you’ve got a light dose? I wouldn’t mind some.”
Dennis looked at him through narrowed eyes. He reached into the bag and pulled out a strip of small white pills. “Take two. With lots of water,” he ordered. “And keep rinsing and spitting.”
Benny clutched the pills and found the bathroom. He could hear Ryder down the hall talking to the women in the bedroom. He had a headache, too. He rinsed his mouth again and spit.
This shit had to stop.
Ryder found him in the bathroom. “Doc said to check on you,” he said. “Duncan’s going to be fine. Is there a reason why someone is locked in the rig you were in and pounding on the window to get out? And some kid is refusing to let us do anything about it?”
“Will is kind of a literal-minded young man,” Benny said. He started laughing and couldn’t stop. Ryder just shook his head, a half-grin on his own face.
“You OK?” Ryder asked.
Benny nodded. He wiped at his mouth again. “Nasty stuff,” he said. “Dropped Duncan like a he’d been kicked by a mule. My mouth went numb getting it out. Some kind of snake venom I’d guess.”
“Didn’t know anything like that worked on us shifters,” Ryder said, frowning with concern.
“Jedediah Jones and some other Europeans were experimenting with drugs that would work on a shifter,” Benny said, frowning too. What had he heard? Well it would come to him.
Or not.
He hadn’t realized how much he depended upon his memory for stories and information until his memory was no longer reliable. His wolf whined, and Benny reassured him automatically.
“There are more recruits in a house near the college,” Benny told his brother. “And, Will —the clueless one? He told a story of how he got turned —just like we suspected. He says he was taken to a cabin in the woods north of here, to train to be a soldier. But he wasn’t much good at it, so they gave him to Bjorn to put to work here in town. Will says they called the cabin, ‘the lodge.’”
Ryder swore. “Guess it’s better we learned of that today rather than tomorrow when we were going out there for a funeral pyre,” he added sourly.
“Truth,” Benny agreed. “So the dead guy? Dennis said his grandfather was inner circle.” Probably wasn’t what it was called here, he admitted. What was he going to say — one of the Alpha’s pinochle partners?
Ryder grimaced. “So we’ve got one more viper pit to clean out? And we need to get these women to Duncan’s house? Anything else before supper?”
“Supper is at the pack house,” Benny reminded him. “Marta McKenzie is expecting us.”
Ryder just stared at him. “Would you at least give me a running start if I ride out of here?” he demanded.
Benny chuckled. “You’ll find me on your right as we blow past the city limits.”
