Page 14

Mia huddled awkwardly in the cramped space between her seat and the dash, her eyes pinned to the canopy visible beyond the driver’s side window.

Why hadn’t she asked Zoran to stay with her, to turn the conveyance around and come back with more warriors? Why hadn’t she asked him to be careful?

She wrapped her arms around her knees, stiff and uncomfortable and terrified of the predator Zoran was facing. A cry pierced the air, the cry of someone in pain. Mia jerked, startled, and cracked the back of her head against her door. Not a woman, couldn’t be a woman. They were miles from anywhere, stuck somewhere between the farm and the fort.

Fear wound through her, a dark miasma whispering of pain and death and things that go bump in the night, and Mia began to tremble. Something hit the vehicle, rocking it. She gasped, then slapped her hands over her mouth to silence the whimpers mewling from her throat. Another hit, the slice of metal through metal. A zzzt-pow rang out, and that eerie human-like cry came again.

A white head filled the window across from her, and Mia froze, too terrified to scream. The creature looked almost like an overgrown, furry salamander: wide, flat head, mouth stretching nearly from one pointy ear to the other, larger, rounder nostrils than a salamander. The nostrils of a hunter. Its pale blue eyes were mounted above its snout, and they were pinned on her.

The vyirkolen inhaled deeply, its nostrils flaring, then it placed a huge, talon-tipped paw against the window and pushed. Mia forced herself to sway with the vehicle’s rocking as the vyirkolen snarled, revealing the two rows of sharp, pointed teeth lining the roof of its mouth.

Another zzzt-pow . The vyirkolen jerked around, whining, and fell away from the vehicle. Zoran strode into view, his sword swiping down once, twice, and an oily black fluid sprayed through the air. He stood there for a moment staring down at the road, then opened the door and leaned in.

That dark fluid flecked his sternly shaped face and a stench like rotting fish wafted into the cab.

“The vyirkolen is dead,” he said flatly. “Can you find the conveyance’s medical kit?” When she didn’t respond, he snapped, “Mia! I need you.”

That jolted her into action. She unwound and awkwardly pushed herself out of her cubbyhole into the seat she’d vacated. “Where is it?”

“Behind the seat.”

He withdrew as she twisted around and started digging behind his seat for a first aid kit, cursing herself the entire time. Why hadn’t she taken the time to familiarize herself with the vehicle the way she would’ve done on Earth?

The answer popped immediately into her mind: because she trusted Zoran with her life.

Pure foolishness, she thought as she dug through the weapons and other items behind the seat. Hadn’t she herself observed that he couldn’t shadow her around forever? Wasn’t she an independent woman, capable of taking care of herself? Or, at least, on knowing that Zoran had stashed a first aid kit in his car before he needed one?

She found a box that, when opened, contained the Xeruvian analogues of bandages and emergency ointments. Zoran grunted, and the vehicle rocked again. Mia scrambled out onto the road and caught another glimpse of the vyirkolen . Zoran had hoisted it up and strapped it down to what would be the trunk of a human car. Its head and front legs draped over the vehicle’s side, nearly dragging the ground.

Horror froze her in place. Xeruvian cars were larger than human ones, taller and wider. If the vyirkolen ’s front paws could reach the ground, then it must be massive.

Bile coated her throat and her stomach lurched. Salty saliva filled her mouth. Mia spat, swallowed, and spat again. She would not disgrace herself by vomiting her lunch onto the road. Would. Not. Do. It.

Hadn’t she seen worse when she was a kid, traveling the world while her parents tried to save one impoverished village after another? Kids with bellies distended from hunger and malnutrition. Bloodied corpses mutilated beyond recognition by junta machine guns. And much, much worse.

She spat again and forced herself to straighten. If Zoran could find the courage to face a monster, the least she could do was stiffen her spine.

“Mia, the antivenom.”

She whirled around and found him leaning both blood-coated hands against the conveyance’s trunk. The brown undertones had leached from his skin, leaving it a sickly granite-like gray. Three gashes in his arm leaked merlot-colored blood.

“In the car,” she said. “You’ll have to find the medicine. I can’t read Xeruvian.”

He snorted weakly, staggered, and nearly fell. When she reached forward to brace him, he waved her off, felt his way around the vehicle, and dropped into the passenger seat.

His eyelids fluttered over dull, leaf-green eyes and his head lolled against the seat.

Mia bit back a curse as she fumbled the kit open and held it in front of him. “Which one is the antivenom?”

He slid one unsteady hand into the box, brushed aside bandages, and retrieved a white cylinder with a silvery cap. “Open. Press against…neck. Mark.”

Quickly, she flipped the cap open, pressed the cylinder’s end against his throat above his mating mark, and flung a hasty prayer to his gods and hers.

“Please let this work,” she whispered, then depressed the button on the cylinder’s opposite end. It punched against him, ricocheted lightly against her palm, and Zoran grunted.

“Anything else?” she said.

He slumped against the seat, unconscious.

Panic flooded her. They were in the middle of nowhere. Literally. She had no clue where except that one way led to the fort and the other back to the farm. Zoran had been badly hurt, she had no idea how to drive the vehicle or signal for help.

She and her fellow abductees had barely figured out how to message each other through their tablets, let alone communicate with anyone else.

Her mind settled, and she chastised herself for the momentary lapse as she yanked bandages out of the first aid kit and wrapped them tightly around the cuts scoring Zoran’s arm, then quickly searched for and tended any other wounds. Scrapes on one shoulder, more claw marks down his thigh. His clothes had been shredded in places and his skin was clammy under her hands.

Nothing she could do more than that, since she couldn’t read Xeruvian , for heaven’s sake, something she intended to remedy as soon as possible. At the very least, these kits needed secondary labels in English.

Furious now, she sealed the kit, tossed it into the back, and pulled out her tablet. Quickly, she sent a message to Jyrak and another to Alara on the scant hope that their technology worked this far from civilization. She didn’t know how it worked, because she was human and Zoran had thrown her headfirst into his culture, and she didn’t know anything, not the language or the customs, not how to procure clothing or pay her own way, not how to defend herself or patch up Zoran or read.

Fuck’s sake, when was the last time she’d been in a country where absolutely no one else spoke English?

Her head swam under the weight of it all. She dropped to her knees, squinching her eyes closed against the tears welling up in them, and tried to breathe around the overwhelm.

Zoran groaned, and that saved them both, jarring her out of the panic attack threatening to engulf her.

She forced herself upright, cursed her wobbly legs, and carefully maneuvered Zoran into the passenger seat, not an easy task. He was heavy and a deadweight, and no, she was not going to worry that he was completely out of it until she could do something about it. If the worry gained a toehold, she’d panic, again , and that might cause another delay, one Zoran couldn’t afford.

Once she’d shut him inside the vehicle, she rounded the back and stopped dead in her tracks. The vyirkolen was still dead, thank God, though no less intimidating. It really was massive, easily larger than a Bengal tiger, and leanly muscled, like a Greyhound. No tail, she noticed faintly, and the stench. She gagged again and touched a hand to her nose. Zoran had nearly sliced off its head and there was a gaping, cauterized hole in its chest cavity surrounded by drying black blood.

It had done so much damage to him before he killed it.

Mia shook off the reflexive fear and scurried around the car and into the driver’s seat.

And stared blankly at the controls as the seat automatically adjusted beneath her.

She sucked a deep breath into her lungs, reaching for calm. Ok, she could do this. She’d watched Zoran drive, and while she hadn’t paid close attention, she knew roughly how to maneuver them around. Stop and go were relatively easy; she couldn’t read Xeruvian, but she knew which buttons braked and which accelerated. The engine was still running, something that had completely slipped by her in her panic.

Tentatively, Mia touched the acceleration paddle. The vehicle jerked forward, lurched to a halt mere inches from the edge of the road. Once more, she decided, mustering her courage, and tried again. Eventually, she managed to maneuver the vehicle around, wincing every time it jerked or rattled or ground, and pointed them back the way they’d come, one eye on Zoran, the other on the long, lonely road stretching ahead of her.

Something tightened on Zoran’s hand, waking him. He slitted his eyes just enough to take in his surroundings, surprised by how blurry his vision had become. Not so blurry he couldn’t recognize a healer’s room when he saw one, or understand that he was flat on his back and someone had to have carried him there. His body ached and he shuddered under a light fever, and slowly, memory returned.

Mia laughing under the sunlight. The jungle curving overhead. A vyirkolen standing in the roadway as if awaiting their arrival.

As if it had known exactly where they would be.

Low voices drifted to him, and he placed them one by one. His mother. Jyrak. Malev Dravos, the clan’s healer. His mate remained oddly silent, her fingers alternately gripping and stroking his hand.

Then Mia rose above him, and his vision cleared. Dark circles marred the skin beneath her eyes and her hair had become disheveled. A speck of vyirkolen blood dotted her cheek. He tried to lift his free hand and wipe it off, and discovered to his shame that he was too weak to care for her.

She trailed a cool cloth over his forehead. “How do you feel?”

He grunted. “My wellbeing is unimportant. Are you injured?”

“No.” Her voice held none of her usual effervescence. So flat was its tone, he wondered what had drained her happiness away during his lapse into unconsciousness. “That was the most foolish, pigheaded, jerk faced risk I’ve ever seen anyone take.”

Ah. Her fear had turned toward anger. This he could understand. “There was no risk, Mia. Have I not said that I would never allow harm to befall you?”

She yanked her hand away from his and slapped the cloth down on the stand beside him. “But you never said anything about harming yourself. How could you, Zoran? That thing could’ve killed you. Jyrak told me it normally takes at least two warriors to down one, and you went out there alone . You could’ve died .”

“And leave you defenseless?”

“Stop it!” she said, her voice breaking on a raw sob. “Don’t you understand? I could’ve lost you.”

“Mia. My love.” He caught her hand, clamping down when she tried to wiggle away, though his hands shook and his muscles ached. “Look at me.”

Stubbornly, she shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “You can’t talk your way out of this one, Zoran.”

“Then I will do what I must to assuage your hurt, whether you look upon me or not.” Careful of her fragility and his own weakness, he tugged her forward. “You cannot lose what refuses to leave, pjora-la .”

Her eyes flew open, huge and tear-filled and raw in her grief, then she flung herself upon his chest and buried her face in his throat. He wrapped trembling arms around her, pulling strength from a well running deep within him, holding her as she shuddered against him.

“Don’t ever do that again,” she murmured.

He could not make that promise, refused to lie to her in the doing. Given the same circumstances, he would act exactly as he had, and would ever and always willingly place his own life between her and whatever sought to do her harm.