Chapter Thirteen
Taggart
The house was full of rhinos, their scent similar to Arlo’s.
They were watchful as Bash dragged the smelly man into the living area, where he dropped him unceremoniously on broken furniture.
He couldn’t think about the damage to his space when his feet crunched over metal and plastic as he scampered after Arlo.
Despite how tight his lungs felt when he moved, all Taggart could focus on was the tiny bird in Arlo’s hands as he carried him ever so carefully into the kitchen.
It fared a little better than the main room. But everything was a mess.
Whatever Soren had been cooking did not smell great, now it had gotten burned. The arid smell of smoke had Taggart decide to shift if only to turn off the stove. Naked, he blushed as he switched off the stove and turned to watch Arlo lay Soren on the table, feeling several gazes on him.
There was blood on his skin, and under his fingernails, and his mouth tasted like burned copper. He sniffed and wiped his hand over his mouth, attempting not to gag.
“Darlin’, I need a syringe to give Soren some water, and I need a fleece blanket to keep him warm. Can you find these for me?”
Taggart recalled he had a syringe when he needed to take medicine because he didn’t enjoy taking pills.
“I got a syringe in the bathroom, Daddy.” He lopped out of the room, uncaring his dick wacked off his thigh.
Taggart rushed into the bathroom, rifling through the cupboard above the sink, making things fall into the sink and clatter loudly.
He ignored it and dashed into the bedroom to find his special blankie.
He took but a second to grab a pair of shorts and slip them on, feeling just too vulnerable after everything to stay naked with the nasty soiling his home.
Dashing back into the kitchen, he didn’t yelp as a piece of metal dug into the sole of his foot, but it was close as he gave what he’d found to Arlo.
The room was silent as everyone watched as Arlo tucked the over-large blankie around Soren and then dripped water into his beak. “Come on, baby, Daddy needs you to open your eyes,” he encouraged softly.
At first there was nothing, then there was a whirring noise, slight but there. Moments passed as Taggart held his breath, which helped with the burning shards in his lungs, waiting.
He cried out when Soren opened one eye and moved his beak into Arlo’s large hand.
“That’s my brave boy. Daddy needs you to shift so I can see the damage. Come on,” he coaxed, as Soren gave a pitiful tweet.
“I need a cuddle,” Taggart rasped, his throat feeling painful as tears leaked down his cheeks. “Please.”
More moments passed as Soren moved within the blankie. Then there was Soren, one arm was purple with bruising. A torn and bleeding lower lip went with one puffy and swollen eye, yet his lips quivered into a smile. “I d-didn’t f-fly away, D-Daddy.”
Scooped up off the table, with Taggart’s blankie tucked around his waist, Soren buried his head into Arlo’s shoulder and reached out a trembling hand to Taggart.
He took it and pressed it to his fast-beating heart, needing the contact.
When it wasn’t enough, he wrapped himself around Soren and Arlo as best he could, allowing the tears to flow freely, the shock finally setting in.
He shook as Arlo wrapped an arm around him and hugged them both tightly.
The door burst open behind them, making Taggart cling tighter as he felt Soren freeze. “Are you okay?” Cosmo demanded, his blond head bobbing in front of them as he jumped up and down to get a good look at them.
“What did we say about charging in?” Harley stated in a stern voice.
“I was worried, Daddy.” Cosmo didn’t sound happy.
“It’s okay,” Arlo murmured, “Cosmo, can you stop jumping, it’s making me dizzy.”
“I think everyone should sit down,” said Bash from the doorway. “We need to figure out what this fucker is. Then we can look to sort the damage.”
“We need to get that thing out of the house. There’s enough enforcers here now, and we have Harley, Nomad and Cosmo if we need reinforcements. Just remember, he’s mine when we’ve finished interrogating him.”
Bash nodded at Arlo before he disappeared and returned dragging the unconscious man-thing. Soren whimpered as Taggart held his breath, the smell in the room was vile.
“What the hell is he?” Nomad asked after all the enforcers and the men working in the garden left, and Taggart and Soren were seated next to each other.
Arlo paced at the side of the table. “Don’t know, but I’ve fought nothing like it.”
Taggart tried to take a breath, thinking it would be easier, only he couldn’t get any air into his chest. The tightness increased as if he’d placed an elastic band around his chest and then someone had pulled it tight to the point he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to breathe again.
When he’d bitten and clawed at the thing, the smokey stuff it released, he’d inhaled… a lot of it.
Had the thing gotten inside him? Was killing him slowly?
Panic filled him as he felt everything waver in front of him. His mind was screaming at his mates, but they couldn’t seem to hear him. His lips parted, but no words came out. He shook, his alarm growing when he could do nothing, not even lift an arm to draw attention to himself.
He slumped forward, and his head hit the table as the world became white.
Soren
His head was still fuzzy, but the moment his mate slumped forward and hit the table, that didn’t matter anymore.
He wrapped an arm around Taggart and grabbed the table with a free hand to keep them steady and in their seats.
Arlington’s arms wrapped around them, and Soren could feel his Daddy’s worried confusion as he leaned over to start speaking in Taggart’s ear.
“Darlin’ what’s wrong? Can you hear me?”
When Taggart didn’t answer, Soren tried speaking in their mate’s mind.
Taggart, Taggart, it’s all okay now, it’s okay, Daddy and his friends made everything safe again.
When no response came for either of them, Arlo scooped Taggart from the chair, eyes roving around for a place to lay him. He was too big for the table. Soren wrapped a blanket around his waist hiding his nakedness, rushing at the same time across the room to clear broken bits off the couch.
Arlo laid down the pale, unconscious Taggart, who didn’t make a sound. There was blood on his skin and hands, around his mouth and even under his fingernails, and all of it smelled foul, like the smelly thing that they had dragged out of there.
His steps weren’t the steadiest as he whirled away from their side to rush to the bathroom, returning with a bunch of washcloths and a nail brush to the kitchen, where his hand trembled when he reached for the handle on the faucet.
Then the bouncy blond man the big scary bikers had called Cosmo was there at his side, turning on the water and helping him soak the rags and fill a shallow bowl with warm, soapy water.
Their eyes met over the sink, and Cosmo nodded to him, steely resolve in those bright, expressive eyes, which helped bolster Soren’s own.
“Let’s clean that icky stuff off him,” Cosmo said with determination.
Soren’s brain couldn’t form words, but he wrung out the warm washcloths he held while Cosmo did the same, the two hurrying over to where Arlo was still trying to rouse Taggart and encourage him to open his eyes the same way he’d done with Soren.
Cosmo pressed in on one side of Arlington, to clean Taggart’s hands and beneath his fingernails with the brush, while Soren moved to the other side of Arlington, to clean his mate’s face.
His eyelashes didn’t even flutter when Soren touched his cheek with the cloth, but Soren drew in a deep breath and focused on the blood, getting it off his mate.
As he cleaned around Taggart’s lips, he recalled the way his mate had wrapped around the foul thingy’s leg, scurrying up it, clawing, biting.
Peeling his mate’s lips back, he started cleaning the inside of his cheek, running the cloth over his teeth, thoughts whirling. If his mate had gotten blood in his mouth he might have swallowed some or inhaled the shadowy essence of that thing, there had to be a way to purge it from his body.
Think.
Think.
Breathing in, Soren took a moment to just focus and run through all the things he’d learned living in a lively home with a family that believed in homeopathic treatments for any ailments that cropped up.
Something popped into his head, and he dropped the cloth on the edge of the couch and whirled away, feet crunching over broken bits as he raced down the hall to the bedroom.
There were still a couple of boxes he hadn’t unpacked, things he hadn’t been sure where to put, unlike everything he’d unpacked and tucked away in the kitchen.
Tossing the lid of the first one aside he rummaged inside until he found the little steam inhaler he’d carried with him from home.
At the time he’d taken it, he’d done so because it was one of the few unbroken things left in the home.
Now he set it up the way he had for his cousin so many times in the past and brought it over, trembling as he held it in front of Taggart’s nose and mouth, so he’d breathe in the essential oils.
It just had to work.
It had to.
He’d used eucalyptus and lavender for healing, relaxation and to open the lungs up so Taggart would cough up anything he’d inhaled. If he’d swallowed that thingy’s blood, he wasn’t sure what to do, not that they could do anything while he was unconscious.
He just had to hold the inhaler steady over Taggart’s nose and mouth and keep his hand from shaking so Taggart could keep breathing in the steam. Daddy’s hand slid over his, helping steady him while they waited for any sign from Taggart.
On the other side of Arlington, Cosmo silently scrubbed at the blood beneath Taggart’s fingernails, having thoroughly cleaned the blood from his skin.
He had to be okay.
He just had to be.