The Taint of Wolves

Home Truths

Chapter 34: Home Truths

His blood was hot against my face.

I had dreamed of his blood on my hands in my most twisted moments, where my anger and pain overcame my fear of having to face him once more. I had not imagined this. His breathing was stuttered and pained, short bursts of gasping groans as he sunk into me. My fingers tightened on him and though his weight should have been no problem, but as panic consumed me, my strength fled.

Blav cried out for him, stuck behind the crumpled jeep. Easton's hand, shaking, rose to clasp my arm.

Alive.

His heartbeat was there. Alive.

"Easton?" I breathed, afraid to look at his face. Afraid to let my voice be heard, heavy with panic. "Easton?"

"Let's get him inside." Adken was at my side, a strong arm wrapping tight around Easton. He peered down at his face and I caught a sight of him, grey and his face twisted in a grimace.

"Here." Grant at my other side, sliding an arm around Easton as Blav had. "We need to get inside."

The two of them pulled Easton inside and I stayed there, in full view of the sniper. The gleam was obvious on the hill. They were making no attempt to hide from me.

I stepped forward, churning that panic into rage. I could wield this. I could use this. I would break their bones and grind them to dust with a curl of my fingers. How dare they! I would take the bullet, but not him.

"Nova, what are you doing?" Blav hissed. "Get down."

The little Ravager, Ophelia, was hiding behind the barn. She stared at me wide-eyed as I stepped forward, running my tongue along my teeth. Easton. They had hurt him and why did that hurt so god-damn much? I knew why, but now I knew that the Ravi knew too.

"They're trying to lure me out, aren't they?"

I spoke into the evening air, watching the dark rise of the slumbering hills. The farm was silent after the fight had ended, leaving only the haggard breathing of the tired and the rasping breath of the dying Ravager. If they shot me now in the skull or heart, no meddling by the Ravi would save me. I would die, as if I was just a human girl.

Yet, still I called their bluff.

I knew Doc-Mai, probably better than I knew myself. She wouldn't want to lose to me. Not like this. If I died, all her years of work would die with me. There was still more to be injected in, to be twisted out. The Ravagers were mirrors of me, but I was her main attraction. She just wanted me back. She would shoot me, but she knew too that a bullet from a rifle like that might shatter bone but I would piece myself back together again. I had been faced with the spray of a shotgun, a bullet to the knee-cap that had been one of many times I had begged – begged – for death.

But they had popped champagne when my knee-cap reformed and the cartlidge began to slide back together, generated by wrongness that they had twisted inside of me.

Doc-Mai wanted me to come for them.

I was coming. Just not now.

"There's a Ravager dying around the barn." I told Ophelia. "Pull them inside. Blav, tell them there's a sniper in the hills."

Blav just stared at me as I stalked to the crumpled jeep and hauled the Ravager there over my shoulder. With another hand planted against the crumpled jeep, I pushed. "Stay behind the jeep, Blav."