Page 160 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

Sticky liquid coated my fingertips from a wound at the back of her head, and I practically exploded. If I’d arrived ten minutes later… I gritted my teeth.

Cursing at her frozen state, I hurriedly fixed her clothes and rushed back to the compound with her in my arms. Kicking the infirmary’s door open, I yelled, “Help! Now!”

“What—” Eislyn rushed in from the adjoining room. “Put her over there. What happened?”

“Where’s the doc?” I laid Kali down on the steel table in the center of the room. “I wanteveryonehere. Save her.” My fist hit the metal surface. The structure rattled from the force, yet she didn’t even flinch, just stared at the bright lights dotting the ceiling.

“Calm down.” Rooted in her spot, Eislyn raised her palms, her voice controlled. “I’ll get the doc, but you need to cool off. Jayce! Get in here!”

A yawning man appeared in the adjoining room’s doorway, his gray t-shirt and sweatpants wrinkled. “What’s up?”

“Wake up the doc,” Eislyn ordered, checking Kali’s pulse.

I rammed my fist into the wall. The assistant jumped and dashed out of the infirmary.

“Talk to me. What has been done to her? Any broken bones?” She lifted Kali’s t-shirt. “Whose blood is this? I can’t find the wounds.”

“A soldier’s,” I ground out. “I think he hit her head before strangling her. I tried to talk to her, but she won’t respond.” I ripped at my hair, pacing alongside the wall, glancing at her lying as still as a corpse.

Striding into the infirmary, the doc headed for the sink. “Stats?”

Eislyn carefully examined Kali’s skull, dabbing a strip of gauze to soak up the blood. “She’s steady but non-reactive. Her skull is intact besides a shallow wound that is already clotting. The swelling is local, no fractures. No other broken bones or visible external wounds apart from small cuts and scratches,” she rattled off while the doc scrubbed his arms with a bar of soap. I wanted to stuff it into his mouth so his hands were free to fucking take care of her.

He toweled off, pulled on a set of fresh disposable gloves, and shone a flashlight in Kali’s left eye, then the right. “What happened?”

“She was attacked,” I snarled. I was not explaining it anew. He should have been here. The whole fucking med team should have been here.

“Calm down.” The doc walked over to me with his hands raised. “Yelling won’t help her.”

“I don’t give a shit,” I bit out, my fists trembling at my sides from the effort it took me not to reach for my knife. “Fix her.”

It killed me to see Kali pay no attention to Eislyn cutting off her tattered t-shirt. Her half-naked body was nearly as pale as the silvery table. As pale as my sister’s corpse I’d had to leave in that military truck.

Eislyn switched places with the doc. “Zion.” She gestured to the white stool pushed against the wall. “Sit down. Please.”

Her soft voice furled around my knees, beckoning them to bend, and I slumped on the seat. She pressed a damp towel into my hands, as red from the soldier’s blood as the gunshot wound Gedeon had received while prying me off my sister’s remains.

“She’s in shock,” Eislyn explained. “Not unconscious. That’s a good sign. But you have to let us do our jobs. We need to know if any…internalwounds are a possibility. I hate to ask, but did anything else take place?”

My grip on the wet cloth tightened to the point my knuckles bleached. “She found out Alora is gone. She said she wanted to be alone, so we let her go to Vice for her shift. She didn’t return home, so I went looking for her and found a soldier on top of her in the clearing. He was throttling her—” My voice broke. “If I hadn’t gotten there in time…”

“But you did.” Eislyn squeezed my shoulder and waited until I raised my head to meet her steady gaze. “Can I trust you to let us examine her without jumping us?”

Rubbing my forehead, I nodded. They fussed over Kali, and I almost leaped out of my seat when she helped them take off the rest of her clothing. But when the doc touched the tender flesh of her neck, Eislyn had to step in to stop me from punching his face. He was obviously causing her pain and distress from how she winced.

“We think she has a concussion,” the doc finally announced.

“You fuckingthink?” I wanted to snap his neck for only thinking.

“We know.” Eislyn pulled off her bloody blue gloves. “It’s just a nicer way of saying it. It’s not high grade and should fully heal over the course of a week. She’ll have a nasty bruise on her neck, but her trachea is not damaged. She’s mostly in shock. We want to keep her here overnight for observation.”

“No.” I strode to Kali sitting on the edge of the table, hugging her knees, oblivious to our conversation. “I’m taking her.”

“That’s not a good idea.” The doc hovered at my back. “We need to watch her for any signs of deeper injuries.”

“If you can’t do anything more exceptobserve,I’m taking her home and watching over her myself.” I secured the blanket Eislyn had wrapped Kali in and slid my arms under her knees and back. She didn’t resist, only kept hold of the woolen fabric.

Eislyn opened the door for us to pass. “Is Gedeon aware of this?”