Blood Trail - By Tanya Huff Page 0,75

"Dad!" He threw himself to his knees, pushing Vicki away. "What happened to my father?"

"Ricochet. Our marksman missed."

"Is he... ?"

"At least one busted rib and some torn up muscle. I don't know about internal injuries."

"Why is he just lying here? We've got to get him to a hospital!" He put his hands under his father's shoulders.

Vicki lifted them away. "Calm down, there's an ambulance coming."

"If you're being shot at in human form now, we'll have to report it," Barry put in, touching Colin lightly on the back.

"He wasn't," Vicki told him, getting to her feet. "He changed when he hit the house. You must be Barry Wu."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I want to talk to you."

"Yes, ma'am. Later. Uh, if he changed in the house, then... " His gaze flickered to Celluci and back.

Vicki sighed. "Yes, he saw." She turned to Celluci, wiping her bloody fingers on her shorts. "Please put the gun away, Mike."

Breathing heavily, he looked down at the gun as if he'd never seen it before.

"Put it away, Mike."

He looked up at her and his brows drew down into a deep vee. "This is crazy," he said.

"There's a perfectly simple explanation," she told him, moving closer. She'd jump him if she had to. With luck, he'd hesitate before shooting her and she'd be able to disarm him.

"Okay." He tossed the curl of hair back off his forehead. "Let's hear it."

Vicki glanced back at Nadine who shrugged.

"Go ahead," she said. "If you think he can handle it."

Vicki thought they didn't have much choice, at least not until they got that gun back where it belonged.

"Your simple explanation?" Celluci prodded.

Squaring her shoulders, she met his eyes and said, as matter-of-factly as she was able, "Werewolves."

"Werewolves," he repeated blankly, then he bent and slipped the .38 into its holster, twitching the leg of his jeans back into place before he straightened. He looked down at Shadow, rubbing himself up against his father's fur, at Storm and Cloud who were doing much the same, and then over at Henry.

"You, too?" he asked.

Henry shook his head. "No."

Celluci nodded. "Good." He drew in a deep breath and then he started to swear. In Italian. He kept it up for almost three minutes and managed to dredge up words and phrases he hadn't used since childhood. Most of them, he screamed at Vicki who waited patiently for him to run down.

Henry, who spoke fluent if slightly archaic Italian, noted, moderately impressed, that he only repeated himself in order to add adjectives to the profanity.

His vocabulary ran out just as the lights of the ambulance turned in at the top of the lane.

The moment they showed, Nadine took charge. "Cloud! Get Shadow back upstairs and make sure he and the twins stay there. Storm stay in fur-form; your ear is still bleeding. Tag, get some clothes on."

Tag? Vicki repeated silently as Stuart scooped up a pair of sweatpants. Stuart's fur-form name is Tag?

"Colin," Nadine continued, closing the hall door behind Cloud and Shadow, "you follow them into town in case he needs blood. Vicki, could you go in the ambulance? If he wakes up... "

"No problem."

She'd told the others and asked Vicki - Henry noted the distinction with some amusement.

As the paramedics carried Donald out on the stretcher, Celluci grabbed Vicki's arm and pulled her to one side.

"I'm going to follow you in. We have to talk."

"I'll be looking forward to it."

"Good." He drew his lips back off his teeth in a parody of a smile. No one in the room, vampire or wer, could have done it better.
Chapter Eleven
"Because the hospital has to report gunshot wounds, you should know that."

Colin glanced over at Barry and the two Ontario Provincial Police constables standing talking by the nurses' station. "You said it was a ricochet."

Vicki rolled her eyes. "Colin... "

"Okay, sorry. It's just, well, what am I going to tell them?"

"You aren't going to tell them anything." She smothered a yawn with her fist. "I am. Trust me. I've been at this longer than you have, I know the things a police department wants to hear and the way they want to hear them."

"Vicki." Celluci leaned forward and tapped her on the shoulder. "I hate to burst your bubble, but you are quite possibly the worst liar I know."

She turned to face him, pushing her glasses up her nose. "Lie to the police? I wouldn't think of it. Every word out of my mouth is going to be the truth."

"So there's been someone taking potshots out of those woods