Cormac had Ben’s arm over his shoulder and practically hauled him off his feet as we climbed the steps to the porch.
“Cormac!” Ben hissed, his voice a rough growl. “Kill me.”
He just kept saying that.
I shoved through the open front door. “To the bedroom, in back.”
Ben was struggling less, either growing tired or losing consciousness again. We went to the bedroom and hauled him onto the bed.
Ben writhed, then let out a noise that started as a whimper and rose to a full-blown scream. His body arced and thrashed, wracked with some kind of seizure. I held down his shoulders, leaning on him with all my weight, while Cormac pinned his legs.
I shifted my hands to hold on to his face, keeping his head still and making him look at me. His face was burning up, covered with sweat.
“Ben! Sh, quiet, quiet,” I murmured, trying to be calm, trying to be soothing, but my own heart was in my throat.
Finally, I caught his gaze. He opened his eyes and looked at me, didn’t look away. He quieted. “You’re going to be okay, Ben. You’re going to be fine, just fine.”
I said the words by rote, without belief; I didn’t know why I expected them to calm him down.
“Kitty.” He grimaced, wincing, looking like he was going to scream again.
“Please, Ben, please calm down.”
He closed his eyes, turned his face away—and then he relaxed, like a wave passing through his body. He stopped struggling.
“What happened?” Cormac said.
Ben was breathing, soft, quick breaths, and his heart still raced. I smoothed away the damp hair sticking to his forehead, turned his face toward me again. He didn’t react to my touch.
“He passed out,” I said, sighing.
Slowly, Cormac let up his grip on Ben’s legs and sat back on the edge of the bed. Ben didn’t move, didn’t flinch. He looked sick, wrung out, too pale against the gray comforter, his hair damp and his shirt bloody. I was used to seeing him focused, driven, self-possessed. Not like this at all. I was always the one calling him for help.
How the hell had this happened?
I didn’t ask Cormac that, not yet. The bounty hunter looked shell-shocked, his face slack, staring at Ben’s prone form. He pressed his hands flat on his thighs. My God, were they shaking?
I unbuttoned Ben’s shirt and wrangled it off him, carefully peeling the fabric away where the blood had dried, pasting it to his skin. The adrenaline was fading, leaving my limbs weak as tissue paper. My voice cracked when I said, “What was he saying? About you killing him? Cormac?”
Cormac spoke softly, in a strange, emotionless monotone. “We made a deal. When we were kids. It was stupid, the only reason we did it is because it was the kind of thing that would never happen. If either of us got bitten, got infected, the other was supposed to kill him. The thing is—” Cormac laughed, a harsh chuckle. “I knew if it happened to me Ben would never be able to go through with it. I wasn’t worried, because I knew I could shoot myself just fine. But Ben—it was for him. Because he wouldn’t have the guts to shoot himself, either. If it happened to him, I was supposed to take care of it. I’m the tough one. I’m the shooter. But I couldn’t do it. I had my rifle right up against his skull and I couldn’t do it. By that time he was screaming his head off and I had to knock him out to get him to stay in the Jeep.”
I could picture it, too, Cormac’s finger on the trigger, tensing, tensing again, then him turning away, a snarl on his lips. He was grimacing now.
Even at a whisper, my voice was shaking. “I’m glad you didn’t shoot him.”
“He’s not.”
“He will be.”
“I brought him to you because I thought, you’re a werewolf and you get along all right, and if he could be like you—he’d be okay. Maybe he’d be okay.”
“He’ll be okay, Cormac.”
With his shirt off, Ben looked even more pale, more vulnerable. Half his arm was chewed up and scabbed over. His chest moved too rapidly, with short, gasping breaths.
“We should clean this up,” I said. “He’ll be out of it for a while. Maybe a couple of days.”
“How do you know?” Cormac said.