Chapter 5 With Broken Wings #2
“Human poison?” Zane gaped. “Why would our detectors not check for that?”
“Because we’re idiots,” Casimir bit out. “We’re so focused on supernatural threats that we overlooked the obvious. Common household toxins wouldn’t trigger our wards or detection spells.”
“Do something! Please, you have to help him!” I looked around, realizing Koa was no longer with us. “Where’s Koko?”
“Took the book to the lab.” Casimir reached for his phone. “Identify the poison to find the antidote.”
Brummy let out a pained whine, his legs jerking. More foam bubbled from his mouth, thicker now and tinged with pink. His breathing grew worse, each inhale a battle.
“Not now,” I whispered, my hands over my mouth. “Not after everything you survived! You can’t leave me, Brummy!”
Tears blurred my vision as memories flashed through my mind.
Brumous huddled in that too-small cage in the basement, ribs showing through his patchy fur.
The way he’d latched onto me when I stopped Arabesque from drowning him.
How he’d somehow always known whenever my stepmother was coming and alerted me, giving me precious seconds to prepare for her cruelty.
“Stay with me, Brumous,” Zane pleaded, voice cracking. “We were gonna terrorize the squirrels together. We were gonna shred Cas’ leather jacket and blame it on raccoons. Please, please don’t go.”
Seeing Zane like this made it harder for me to control myself. The bond between them was so special. They’d shared thoughts, dreams, jokes that none of us were privy to. Brummy wasn’t just a pet to Zane; he was a friend, a confidant who couldn’t judge or betray.
“She did this on purpose! Not a physical attack. Not coming after us directly. But this? Something I can’t fight—” Zane’s words dissolved into a sound that was half sob, half snarl.
I shuffled closer, wrapping an arm around him as we both cried and watched Brummy fight for each breath. His paws twitched weakly, and the sounds coming from his throat grew more strained.
“What could it be?” I looked to Casimir for answers, for hope, for anything, and saw him pacing, phone held tight in his hand.
“Angelo? Common toxins that could cause seizures and respiratory distress in canines. No time to explain. Foaming at the mouth, tremors, elevated heart rate, disorientation. Onset was quick. Less than thirty minutes.”
Brumous’ breathing was so shallow now, his chest barely rising with each inhale. Zane was beyond words, his body curled around the wolf, whispering pleas that broke my heart. Brummy’s eyes were glazed, not tracking any movement, and I felt him slipping away.
“Antifreeze!” Koa barreled back into the room, his eyes locked on us. “The molecular signature on the apple page is ethylene glycol!”
“Ethylene glycol, Angelo!” Casimir barked into his phone. “What? No. Yes.”
“Antifreeze?” I repeated. “Like in cars?”
“Yes. It’s deadly to animals. We can’t smell it, but canines can.” Koa’s face darkened with rage. “It smells alluringly sweet to them. Like candy.”
“Alcohol!” Casimir bellowed. “Angelo says alcohol is an antidote!”
And Koa took off like a shot.
“You mean we can save him? Just with alcohol?” Hope flickered in my chest, fragile yet fierce. “Let’s do it!”
“If we’re not too late.” Casimir pocketed his phone and dropped to his knees next to Zane. “Makes sense. Ethanol competes with the antifreeze for the same metabolic pathway in the liver. It prevents the antifreeze from breaking down into the compounds that cause renal failure—”
“Shut up and get some hootch!” Zane boomed.
As he carefully pried open Brummy’s locked jaws, the razor-sharp canines sliced through his thumbs all the way to the bone.
Blood welled and dripped onto the wolf’s fur, but Zane didn’t even flinch.
His hands, slick with his own blood, continued to work, obviously worried about using too much strength and snapping Brummy’s bones.
“Stop!” Casimir ordered. “You’re going to sever a tendon!”
“He’s dying! What does it matter if I lose a fang-rotted thumb?”
The raw pain in his voice silenced Casimir, who turned his attention to Koa as he thundered up to us, holding up a glass bottle.
“Goblin Moonshine!”
“Molecular weight 62.07, lethal canine dose 1.5 milliliter per—”
“Math later! Eyeball it, Ko!”
“No! I need to calculate—”
“No time!” Zane roared. “Ko! Now!”
Koa upended the bottle, pouring half the contents down my baby’s throat. Some of it spilled down Brummy’s chin and onto the carpet, and the smell hit me a moment later, so potent that it made my eyes water.
“Enough!” Casimir rumbled in his commander voice. “You’re going to poison him trying to save him from poison!”
For one dreadful moment, no one moved. The only sound was Brummy’s ragged breathing and the soft patter of alcohol and blood dripping from his fur onto the floor. Had we made everything worse? Were we in time?
“Brumster?” Zane whispered, his voice small and broken. His bloodied hand hovered over the dire wolf’s side, afraid to touch, afraid to hope. “Please, buddy.”
Five heartbeats of pure terror. Brummy convulsed, vomited a rainbow slick, then blinked. Once. Twice. His eyes crossed and uncrossed as if he were trying to watch a fly on the end of his nose. Then one rolled toward Zane, pupil swelling like a black hole.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Casimir whispered.
Brummy sneezed, and a daisy chain of fireballs erupted from his nostrils. Zane collapsed back onto his haunches, his laughter bordering on manic.
“Attaboy, Brum-Brum! Blow snot rockets like Zaddy taught you!”
“Koa, that was far too much!” Casimir massaged his temples. “His fucking blood is probably flammable right now!”
Koa, still holding the half-empty bottle, shrugged.
“Whoops.”
The single word, so utterly my Koko, broke the tension like a dam bursting.
A laugh bubbled up from my chest, half-hysterical, and the adrenaline that had been keeping me upright began to ebb, leaving me shaky and weak.
I leaned more heavily against Zane, watching the steady rise and fall of Brummy’s breathing.
“Too much or not, it worked!” Zane hugged Brumous’ head, his injured hands smearing blood everywhere. “Told you my boy’s indestructible!”
“Indestructible and drunk,” Casimir scoffed.
“Who cares? Brummy’s alive! Shaking off death like it was an unwanted bath.
” The naked relief on Zane’s face made my heart ache.
He looked years younger, his armor stripped away, as he pressed his forehead against Brummy’s, his red hair mingling with charcoal gray fur.
“Don’t you ever scare me like that again. Got it, Wolfword McFuzzypants?”
Brummy responded by licking a stripe up Zane’s face, from chin to hairline, with a tongue that seemed to have doubled in size and halved in coordination.
“I think that’s a promise.” A watery laugh escaped me.
I touched Brummy’s flank. The unnatural heat had dissipated. His breathing, while uneven, was stronger. The pink-tinged foam stopped coming from his mouth.
“Is he really going to be okay?” I asked, hardly daring to believe it.
Casimir took Brummy’s head between his palms and examined his now-dilated pupils.
“The alcohol should prevent further metabolism of the antifreeze. We’ll need to get fluids into him, run some tests to check kidney function, but…” He paused, his eyes softening as they met mine. “Yes, I think he’ll be okay. Needing to be monitored, but okay.”
Every muscle relaxed at once, and I would have toppled over if Koa hadn’t caught me.
“Seri?” Zane’s voice sounded almost fragile. When I looked up, I found his eyes, still red-rimmed from crying, fixed on me. “I love him so much.”
That broke something in me. Fresh tears spilled down my cheeks as I nodded, unable to form words past the lump in my throat.
“Let me see your hands.” Casimir turned his attention to Zane’s injuries.
The cuts were already beginning to knit together, one of the benefits of dhampir healing, but they were deep enough that even accelerated healing would need extra time.
Koa, his strong arms still wrapped around me, kissed my forehead.
“Arabesque soaked the apple page in antifreeze. My guess is because the stitches there were very dense and would hold more than any other page. I think I can save the rest since Brummy didn’t chew them.”
“That would be wonderful.” Gratitude bloomed in my heart to know I hadn’t lost the whole book.
“The evil stepmother sent a fang-rotted poisoned apple?!” Zane growled. “How cliche can you get?! She gonna appear in disguise with an enchanted rose next? Lure us into a gingerbread house? Leave glass slippers on the stairs to trip us?”
“She lost today, but she’s still going to pay,” Koa spoke over his ranting.
The cold fury in his eyes sent a shiver down my spine.
Sweet, steady Koa was the last of the brothers to anger, but also the most terrifying when pushed too far.
He didn’t show his anger like the others.
Where Casimir grew cold and Zane wild, Koa turned quiet, deadly, banking his rage like coals that would burn all the hotter.
He was right, though. Arabesque had failed.
The thought kindled something fierce and protective in my chest. My stepmother had tried to take Brummy from us.
She had calculated exactly how to bypass my mates’ magical defenses.
But she hadn’t counted on how fiercely we would fight for what was ours.
Because that’s what Brummy was. Ours. Family. ‘Ohana.
“She is going to pay for this,” I echoed. “One way or the other.”
Then Brummy let out a strange sound, halfway between a whine and a hiccup, drawing our attention back to him. His eyes rolled in opposite directions for a moment before focusing on Zane with an expression that could only be described as utterly, completely sloshed.
“I think we might have created a monster,” Koa said, amusement creeping into his voice.