Chapter 18

The entire trip to South Carolina had been spent in uncomfortable silence, apart from the occasional conversation between Alaric and Jeremy and the stops along the road to take a piss or fill up on gas. Isaac just wanted to get the job done and head back home. For some reason, this felt like a trip anyone else could have made and Peter was simply trolling him or something.

They had supplied the safe house and made sure they were secure and armed before they started to clean up the town. Isaac wanted to kill at least five of those hunters. Alaric was still a bit on the fence about really killing another human being, but what if they’d come for his girls? He’d likely kill them anyway then. But still, it wasn’t right.

Isaac tore right into the first hunter they encountered by accident, clawing the guy’s neck and slicing the carotid artery in one easy swipe before he unhooked his gun and headed straight into the group of hunters. They were all decked out in Kevlar vests, army boots, guns, the works, and this had all the signs for this to get out of hand, fast. “Isaac, fall back!” Alaric commanded in a soft voice, but loud enough for Isaac to hear it, but the werewolf ignored him and kept walking in, seemingly undetected.

“Jacques, long time no see,” Isaac said to a younger hunter. “Why are you always making the wrong decisions, huh?” He slapped him on the back, laughing, before pulling him out of the group of hunters, more to the side. Friendly. But he wasn’t. He slammed him against a wall, causing Jacques to cry out in pain and alerting the rest of the group that something was going on. Grinning, Isaac started to punch his former friend to a pulp before releasing him once he was unconscious.

When he turned around, he saw red dots all over his torso and shrugged before pulling a grenade out of his pocket, pulled out the pin and threw it into the group before running off, laughing. Alaric and Jeremy quickly hid behind a dumpster while Alaric shot Jeremy a look. “Don’t look at me, man, sometimes he’s enjoying himself a little bit too much!”

The explosion of the grenade sent various hunters flying, body parts flying through the air and landing on top of roofs, even biological matter was flung against the walls. The remaining hunters who weren’t injured or dead then ran after Isaac. Jeremy got to his feet and disturbed the dumpster they were hiding behind, which collided with the emergency stairs above them and a head fell right on top of Jeremy’s head.

“Classy,” Ric commented as he kicked the head away from Jeremy. “You okay there?”

“Oh yeah!” Jeremy grinned as he ran after the group of hunters that were now chasing Isaac. “Keep up, old man!” They often used this tactic with less harmful weapons, such as a flashbang grenade and then cornering everyone and tying them up, but this was fun. Fun, and Isaac was mental. Bella was going to kill the both of them for getting into trouble.

He wasn’t as fast as Isaac, and he found him being pounded on with fists and bats, but Isaac fought back and he was fighting dirty. “Hey man, leave some for me!” Jeremy called out as he ducked when someone took a swing at him.

By the time they had knocked everyone unconscious with several broken limbs, both Jeremy and Isaac were black and blue from their work out. Sore, too, but also ecstatic. During the drive out of town, the adrenaline started to wear off and Isaac lost control over the truck when he felt a sharp pain from multiple places over his body. Because of the reaction, he jerked on the wheel and steered the truck right off one of the mountain sides and the world fizzled out.

~o.O.o~

“No, Jeremy, there must be another incision somewhere,” Alaric said as he held the feverish werewolf down. It had been an easier job with him knocked unconscious, but now that they were burning off the wolfsbane and mistletoe, he started to come back to his senses, but still yelling in pain.

The truck was a total loss, everything was spread everywhere, including the weapons and some of the food they had brought with them. It was a miracle that all three of them survived. If it hadn’t been for Jeremy wearing the Gilbert Ring, he would have died the moment he had been impaled by a pane of glass. Thankfully, Jeremy had found his way back quite quickly while Alaric dealt with the unconscious werewolf after removing the glass out of Jeremy’s body. Alaric shouldn’t have survived the crash either, but he believed that his girls snuck a sneaky protection spell on him on his way out.

Isaac was nearly undressed now as they were looking for more cuts that were purple and black. The wolf was sweating and incoherent. He screamed and then whimpered before screaming again. Once they were both satisfied they had found every incision, the wolf passed out again and Jeremy and Alaric could take a breather.

“Yeah, so there’s no way we can get out of here,” Jeremy said as he looked around. “We kinda need Isaac to take us up, and he’s not doing well. He’ll take at least two days to fully heal with those broken bones of his.

Alaric sighed and shook his head. “I don’t think that’s gonna be happening. See if you can find one of our phones around. Call the school. If you find his first, call Bella.”

“Oh, she’s going to kill us,” Jeremy said as he moved and went to look for their phones.

“At least we’re still alive for her to get her hands on us. But I think she’ll be more interested in Isaac and I know crap about their type of wolf. She’s gotta know something or someone we can call to find out how to help.”

He nodded before finding Isaac’s phone. “Well, here goes nothing…” he said with a wince as he sat back down again and unlocked the phone before finding Bella’s number. He put it on speaker phone so he wouldn’t be the only one to suffer her wrath.

“Hey, when are you coming back?”

“Uh, Bella, it’s Jeremy.”

It was quiet for a moment and Jeremy could hear a breath getting sucked in. “What happened?”

“Well, first off, everyone’s alive and mostly in one piece…” He tried to ignore the snarling on the other end of the phone. “Look, it was a routine job. We just didn’t figure they’d lace their weapons with mistletoe and wolfsbane. Isaac was driving and ah… sent us off the road. There is no way that we can get back up there without Isaac’s help and he’s gonna need a few days to recover… he’s pretty banged up.”

“I don’t know a damned thing about mistletoe and only the basics about wolfsbane!”

“No, that’s okay, we burned it out of his system, but the crash broke a bone… or twenty… or something…”

Bella groaned before speaking. “There’s no way any of us here will get to you in time. Let me try calling someone who should be at a base we have set up. I’ll have to call my brother to see if he will tell me anything that might help him because I’m in over my head here. I just took him on as a beta two nights ago so I have no clue what to do.”

“Oh, that explains your relationship status,” Jeremy muttered as he scratched his head. “And what you talked about on date night.”

“Yeah, whatever Jeremy. Let me make some calls and go collect the guns and shit, don’t want those things laying around for when the cops show up eventually!” Bella then disconnected the call.

~o.O.o~

“Motherfucker!” Bella exclaimed as she was sitting opposite of Myriam and Caroline. Both girls were keeping her company today and they were just drinking coffee before they’d go to the movies, but that had to be put on hold now.

Both Myriam and Caroline had heard the conversation, of course, with their vampire hearing. “I think the burning of the wolfsbane and mistletoe out of Isaac’s system would suffice, so don’t worry about that,” Myriam assured her. “Want me to get Klaus and find us a car to start making our way down there?”

Bella blinked when her phone beeped with a message from Peter. We’re on our way, arranging a car from the safe house. I’ll have them back to you by tomorrow. “Well, apparently that’s not needed,” she said as she threw her phone on the table, before grabbing the phone again and dialing Peter’s number.

“Bella, I’m running to get your people out of a nasty situation, Jasper is with me, what’s up?”

“You fucker! This was supposed to be a routine mission!”

“I didn’t know this would happen. I don’t always get all the information like that. Shit gets fucked up sometimes and if I had known, I would have planned for contingencies. Believe me, I’m no more happy than you are because I might actually care for the dog. Just don’t tell him I said that. I’ll take it to my grave.”

“How badly is he hurt?”

“Don’t know until I get there, but I’d recommend calling your brother, asking him about broken bones and confirm the burning of mistletoe and wolfsbane with him. Now, can I continue running towards your beau?”

“Thank you,” she said softly as she disconnected the call and dialed Derek’s number instead, she felt a panic rise in her chest as the phone rang.

“Hey, Bella! What’s up?”

“What do you do when you get stabbed by mistletoe and wolfsbane?”

Derek was quiet on the other end for a moment as he could hear the panic in her voice. “You take a lighter and burn it out of every entry point in the body, why?”

“How does a wolf heal from broken bones? Like – a lot of them. The kind when you drive a truck off a cliff kind of broken bones?”

“He did what!” Derek exclaimed loudly, shocked.

“Shhh! You’re not around those morons and the other blood relative, are you? They all don’t need to know! And yes… I need help…I have someone going to get him but I don’t know what to do and the others aren’t that familiar with us.”

“No, I’m home alone,” he replied quickly. “We usually heal on our own, depending on the severity, it could take a couple of days and it’ll be quite painful. Maybe his bones need to be set, that will require some strength and some guts. I don’t think you should do that, so I hope you have strong people around you. He will need his rest, though. Want me to come over?”

Bella glanced over at her friends and hesitated. “No. While we are getting along okay and I’m okay with these calls right now, I can’t risk this base and Peter to find me. Maybe we can do something somewhere in the future, I don’t know.”

Myriam smirked. “You could always come visit New Orleans. Nik would love to see you! It’d be a real blast!” she giggled.

“Are you kidding me? Klaus will eat him alive!” Bella shot at her friend. “No!”

“Is your brother hot?” Myriam asked in turn. “Then we can set him up with this wolf bitch that keeps trying to move in on Klaus.”

“Myriam, stop it,” Bella glared at her. “Yeah, uh, let’s hope that Isaac will heal fine… he should be healing faster now that he’s a beta, right?”

“It all depends on his injuries and if his wolfsbane poisoning has been accurately treated.”

Caroline nodded. “I have every confidence that Alaric did what was supposed to after learning about that. It wasn’t that far of a stretch from the wolves we typically work with.”

“But Bella? I’m glad you’ve surrounded yourself with people who know their things. Let me know how he gets on, okay? I can’t do much from here other than being here for you.”

She couldn’t help but to smile. “Thanks, Derek. It does mean a lot. I’ll get back to you when I know more about how he’s doing.”

~o.O.o~

Isaac let out another groan as he was propped up against the truck. “You need to move me,” he said softly as he kept his eyes closed, wincing as he tried to move.

“Ah, we’re not moving you anywhere, buddy. You have a lot of broken bones,” Jeremy said as he took a bite off the apple he had found. They had rounded up all the guns and weapons Isaac had in his truck, which were a lot, as well as Alaric’s were in another bag for easy pickup. “And we’re waiting for the cavalry.”

“Gotta move,” he replied as another shock ran through his body. He let out a cry of pain when he decided to flop to his side and wanted to roll away but passed out again.

“Fucker,” Jeremy muttered as he pulled Isaac back up. “What part of don’t move is hard to understand? What if his back’s broken?”

Alaric stared at him, considering how adamant Isaac was in the short time he was conscious. “Maybe he was able to sense something we can’t?” he suggested, looking around for some unseen threat.

Jeremy sighed as he put his hand against the truck to push himself up and winced when a shock came from the truck. “The truck is static,” he muttered as he went looking for the source, but the truck was kitted out with a lot of electric stuff. The hunter made his way over and reached out, pulling his hand back quickly. “Yeah, let’s move him over by the tree. That ain’t right.”

“Sorry, Isaac,” Alaric muttered as he, too, got to his feet and pulled on the young man’s legs to make sure Jeremy could pick up the top half of his body. He heard some bones crack again. “Yeah… this is not good.”

“Hi!” a strange voice sounded from next to them all of a sudden. When Alaric looked up, he looked at the sparkling form of a Cold One. “The name’s Peter, I’m his boss,” he said as he pointed at Isaac.

“You’re a Cold One.”

“Yep,” he said as he hoisted Isaac over his shoulder. “And I know the sun’s out, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.”

Another one appeared shortly after and went over to the truck to assess the damage. “Bells is gonna have his hide for this one. I’m glad that I don’t have to see her for a while yet.”

“I think Isaac will have a harder time coming to terms with the destruction of his truck than she will,” Peter said as he grabbed a bag filled with weapons. “But she might not let him outside and play for a long time.”

The blond Cold One smirked. “Perhaps, but she’s living with the pup now and you said she’s Alpha? Knowing the girl, she rides her emotions pretty hard so she’s back and forth from an anxiety attack until you get him back to her. Phone call to brother or not.”

“Yeah. You’re gonna wait here for the car so they can get back?” Peter nodded as he put the bag down on the ground. “Torch the truck?”

“Yeah, we’ll clean up,” Jasper agreed and watched as his brother take the unconscious werewolf away from the place. “Right then, the name’s Jasper and I’m going to bring you up that mountain one by one,” he said with a nod. “And then we wait for the car. Oh, don’t be so confused and worried, your boy’s gonna be fine in Peter’s care,” he said dismissively before first bringing the bags up and returning to grab one of the men. “Who’s up first for a piggyback ride?”

“Your kind is gifted?” Alaric said surprised.

“And you win the washing machine!” Jasper cheered. “Well, some of us are gifted. Peter knows things, I can sense and manipulate emotions… I know a mindreader, a seer… Not the greatest decision I ever made in my life there.” He shrugged before bringing Jeremy up first and getting a grenade out of one of the bags before handing it to Jeremy. “Throw this down when I get your friend, okay?” He grabbed another grenade and headed back downstairs.

Jasper looked at the truck for a moment and moved it a little bit so that the gasoline that was leaking was more visible. “You’re lucky this thing didn’t explode with the short-circuiting going on.”

“Yeah, Isaac wanted us to move him.”

“Oh, but that’s because his kind can’t heal when they’re being electrocuted,” Jasper said simply as Alaric hopped on his back. He pulled the pin out of the grenade and threw it inside the truck before running up the hill where Jeremy threw his grenade down as well. The two grenades, with the gasoline, made a huge bang and a beautiful big bonfire. “So…anyone got any marshmallows?”