Wolf Tracks - Bianca D'Arc Page 0,17

She would leave as little evidence as possible of their presence here and would do her very best to leave no traces of what would happen here behind when they left.

Helen cleaned as she went, erasing the blood by the door before pulling the heavy drapes over the locked sliding glass door. Only then, did she turn on the bedside light.

She gasped when she finally saw the ruin of Jim’s left thigh. How had he been walking on that? It was still bleeding, and if she didn’t do something soon, he could easily bleed out from that horrific wound. Mouth set in a grim line, she set to work.

*

Hours later, Jim roused from his unconscious state, instantly wary. He didn’t recognize his surroundings as he cautiously peeked out of half-closed eyelids. He gazed around the dimly lit room, realizing he was, most likely, in a hotel room. The furnishings and their arrangement told him that much. He kept going, noting everything he could see from this position.

Jim’s eyes opened completely when his gaze landed on Helen, sunny blonde hair mussed, asleep in a chair in the far corner, next to the bed he was laying on. He moved and heard a crinkle. Only then did he realize he was lying on plastic. White plastic that was stained red in places with his blood.

Memories he thought had only been fanciful dreams, or hallucinations, came to him. Helen had found him on the beach and made him get up. She’d supported him and given of her incredible power to allow him to walk for what felt like miles, but had probably only just been a short distance up the dark beach from the place where he’d been ambushed to the last hotel on the strip.

She had saved him. And healed him, judging by the lack of wounds on his torso and the big wad of clean white gauze wrapped around his left thigh. That had been a killing bite when it had been made. Jim had known it but had refused to accept it. He hadn’t wanted to go down to a Pack of hyenas. No way. No how.

Yet, when he’d been on his last dregs of energy, he’d seen fireworks. He wasn’t sure if that was a memory or some sort of delusion, but he could’ve sworn he’d seen actual fireworks chasing the hyenas away. Then, Helen had come. Had she set off the fireworks? It seemed crazy, but that might just be what had happened. He’d have to ask her when she woke.

Right now, she looked exhausted. Beautiful, of course, but also drained. As if she’d given all her energy to him. Hell, she probably had.

Jim tried to lever himself up into a sitting position on the side of the bed, but his body didn’t really want to cooperate. He laid back down and tried again, a few minutes later. This time, he was able to scooch up to sit against the headboard, his legs stretched out in front of him. Good enough.

He could feel strength returning to him slowly as he woke more fully. His shifter constitution meant he healed faster than most. His Alpha nature added to that inner strength. It was also what allowed him to hold the battle form through all the challenges he’d faced last night. Still, four against one had been rough odds with trained fighters working in concert the way the hyenas had been doing.

Jim would have to get on the phone to Arch and see if he could get any intel on a hyena mercenary group working in the States. Those bastards had been too disciplined to be just a random group of shifters. Plus, Jim knew, from his time as a Navy SEAL, that quite a few of the hyena shifters in Sub-Saharan Africa were well-trained fighters who had gone from war to war in their native land. A few of them had, no doubt, made the move across the ocean to try their luck as soldiers of fortune in the Americas.

Jim wondered if the four men had been paid for their efforts last night or if they had dedicated themselves to the Venifucus cause. He would be disappointed, though not surprised, to find that some shifters chose the path of evil, seeking worldly gain. Some—like the hyenas he had run across during his time as a SEAL—just liked the chaos of warfare. It appealed to their predatory nature. The freedom to indulge in killing was something every predatory shifter worked