Page 14 of The Inheritance

I’m losing my mind.

My leg was broken. I had looked at it and then hid it with my coveralls. The pant leg was stained with dark red, the result of a massive bleed. I’d left a blood trail across half of this cavern. I looked up. There it was, a ragged chain of dark smears.

I felt the edge of rising panic and shoved those thoughts right down before they dragged me under. It didn’t matter right now. I had to see what was going on with Bear’s shoulder.

I made my way to the nearest pond. An indigo hard hat lay on the rocks. I had a sick feeling that Stella might have been wearing it.

Nope, not going to think about that either.

“Come here, Bear.”

The shepherd padded over.

“Stay.”

Bear looked at me. All the commands Stella gave her were in German, and I could only remember a couple. The word for stay wasn’t one of them.

“Stay.”

Bear sat.

Good enough.

I needed to clean the blood off her, but who knew what the hell was in this water.

I flexed.

The water looked perfectly clear to my enhanced vision.

My talent pegged it as clean, but there were limits to what I could sense. If Bear had an open wound, and I dumped a bunch of alien bacteria into it… But then I crawled all over in that water with an open wound – which was mysteriously not open anymore, and yeah, not thinking about that – and I almost drowned in it. I was pretty sure I’d swallowed a bunch of it. Which was neither here nor there, except if there was some vicious pathogen in it, we were both fucked.

There was water in the canteens. All miners carried some. We would have to save that for drinking. There was no way to tell how long it would take us to get out of this cave.

Suddenly my mouth was dry.

I dipped the hat into the stream, scooped some water, and gently poured it over Bear’s flank, half-expecting the dog to bolt. Bear sat like a rock.

“Stay. What a good girl. The best girl. So good.”

Three hats later, the water ran mostly clear. A gash carved Bear’s skin over her shoulder. It was shallow and not too long. Most of the blood must have come from somewhere else. Someone else.

I exhaled. One of those carts should have a med kit on it.

“Let’s get some antiseptic on that.”

I needed to get across the stream and the slight wobble in my leg said that if I fell, I would regret it. The best place to cross was still the same – the shallow part where Aaron lay in two pieces.

I picked up Bear’s leash and made my way to the crossing. If she yanked me off my feet, there would be hell to pay. I waded into the stream, ready to drop the leash at the slightest tug. Bear whined and followed me. I slowly shuffled across the stream bottom.

“Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.”

The words came out like a curse. Melissa’s face was branded into my memory. I could replay it in my head like a recording. Six years. I couldn’t even remember how many breaches together. She knew my children’s names. She looked straight at me and yelled at London to throw the grenade.

“I thought she was my friend, Bear.”

Bear didn’t answer.

“I saw Melissa push Anja out of her way. And that over there is Anja’s body. She was twenty-six years old.”