Gritting her teeth against the pain, she hung on. It would have been easy to pass out, but she couldn’t. She needed to tell Damon what to do. He wouldn’t know. His team would have been in transit already when this unnamed animal was discovered and the information transmitted to CAT Command. Her voice came out low and harsh. “Get the quill out. Barbed.”
If she could have managed it, Ravyn would have cursed.
*** *** ***
Damon didn’t realize how badly Ravyn was hurt until he heard her voice. He’d been busy studying the odd-looking animal, making sure it was dead. One look at her and worry replaced fascination. The last time he’d seen skin that color, his grandfather had been on his deathbed. The thought registered and then his training took over. He pushed aside the fear and lowered her to the ground. She was conscious, her teeth biting into her bottom lip. Using his knife, he slit the sleeve of her shirt and exposed her arm. The area around the quill already looked red and swollen through the dirt.
Pulling the spine out of her arm would cause tissue damage, especially with the end barbed. Damon took out his camouflage shirt and ripped it so he’d have some pressure bandages ready. The wound would bleed as soon as he removed the quill. Her pulse was too rapid, her respiration shallow and she began to sweat. All symptoms of shock.
“Out. Poison.” Ravyn’s voice sounded like a croak.
He barely heard the words, but it forced him to act. He’d been worried about blood loss, but if the quill had some kind of venom, it had to be pulled. She flinched as soon as he handled her arm even though he’d been careful to touch her away from the puncture. Damon reached for the barb and noticed his hand shook.
“Steady yourself,” he said. He’d directed the words to himself, but he realized Ravyn had taken them to heart. Her body stiffened slightly, her uninjured arm coming up to her face.
Focusing all his attention on the wound, Damon braced himself and yanked the quill straight up. Ravyn gave a muffled groan. Startled, he glanced up. She’d put her hand over her own mouth to suppress any noise she made. The woman continued to impress the hell out of him.
The bleeding began immediately, and he quickly grabbed a square of the shirt and applied pressure. Her breathing became easier and her hand slid to her chest. The blood seeped through the cloth and he added another pad. His number one priority was to stop the bleeding.
“Are you still with me, sweet pea?” he asked after a while.
He took the sound she made to be assent and added another compress. It felt as if the flow was slowing, but he didn’t dare ease the pressure to look. Damon did a quick check. Her pulse still beat too rapidly, but her breathing seemed to be normal and her skin color was better. His worry about shock lessened.
“Ravyn. Ravyn,” he said her name insistently until her lashes fluttered and her lids opened a fraction. “What symptoms are you going to be experiencing?” The silence dragged and Damon worried he’d left it too late. Her voice, when it came, was so soft he had to lean closer to hear her. He pushed aside his fear again, but he couldn’t get the constriction out of his throat.
“Muscle weakness. Rapid pulse. Hallucinations.” She left a long pause between each word. “Drunkenness. Headache.”
Damon waited, but Ravyn didn’t say more and her eyes drifted shut. The bleeding appeared to have stopped, and he added another pad before firmly securing all the bandages with a strip of fabric. Sitting back on his heels, Damon looked around. He knew it would be better not to move Ravyn, but he didn’t have that option. The sound of the gunshot would have carried, and they’d been here too long already. Every instinct he possessed told him to get away from the area, that it was dangerous to stay.
Decision made, Damon donned the pack, arranging it toward one side. Ravyn hadn’t moved and he frowned. He sat her up, put his shoulder into her middle and stood. She didn’t respond in any way and that worried him. He shifted her body so she was balanced better and started walking.
Someone on the CAT team had to have taken a barb. The symptoms she’d rattled off were too precise to be speculation. Ravyn’s muscles were completely limp, making her a dead weight. He had no information about the animal, but he guessed one spine couldn’t kill a human. If the biggest animal on Jarved Nine was ninety pounds, it hadn’t needed to develop a strong venom.
“What the hell did you think you were doing putting yourself in front of me?” he groused. Ravyn didn’t respond, but he hadn’t expected her to. “That thing had six more spines ready to fire.”
Damon staggered at the thought. If he hadn’t drawn his pistol and shot immediately, she could have taken another hit and that could have killed her. She’d been in a lot pain and hadn’t been able to warn him.
Carrying Ravyn slowed his pace considerably and he required frequent rest stops. Sweat covered his body and dripped down his face. Because her muscles had remained limp, he hadn’t realized she’d regained awareness until she’d started singing, mangling a bawdy drinking song almost beyond recognition. In the hours since, she’d alternated between singing, delirium and oblivion.
He blinked back the perspiration from his eyes and winced as Ravyn missed a note. The woman was remarkable in many ways, but she couldn’t carry a tune. That didn’t stop her from trying, though. She was singing “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” and kept losing count. Thank God, she couldn’t produce much volume with her stomach resting on his shoulder.
Still, he preferred her singing to the hallucinations. It scared the hell out of him when she slipped into them. She talked to dead people. Her parents and stepfather liked him, she’d assured him after a long conversation with them. He’d only heard her side, but he’d gotten the gist of it without her passing on the information. What worried him was people on the verge of dying often saw deceased relatives. That was bad enough, but Ravyn had delusions that terrified her so badly, she’d emit shrieks of horror. They were muted by her position over his shoulder, but that didn’t stop his blood from running cold.
“Damon!”
He hadn’t realized the singing had stopped until he heard his name. “What?”
“Damon, where are you?”
“Oh, hell,” he muttered. He’d rather hear two thousand more verses of the beer song than go through this again. He brought his free hand up and rubbed her bottom. “I’m right here, sweet pea,” he said louder, hoping she could hear him.
She whimpered, and he knew she was deaf to anything outside her head. She shifted and he stopped walking. He was lucky her muscles were slack or she’d be thrashing right now.
“Help me,” she called, her voice raising goose bumps on his body. “I need you. Damon, help me!”
His heart pounded and his legs went weak at the anguish her words betrayed. He put her down and sat, cuddling her in his arms. Ravyn’s movements were weak, but her agitation was evident anyway. Her moan started low and became a wail.
That changed to one word repeated over and over. “No, no, no, no!” she cried.
Damon rocked her and made soothing noises. Nothing seemed to help. Then, as quickly as her hallucination had started, it ended and Ravyn went lax in his arms. Her eyes opened and she looked up at him. For a moment he thought she actually saw him, but the impression didn’t last long. Her eyes still held a haze.
“You left me,” she accused. His heart started to race. “You left me.”
Closing his eyes, Damon tightened his hold on Ravyn. Somehow she knew he couldn’t be trusted to protect her. Maybe she sensed his past failure. He didn’t know. “No one’s going to hurt you,” he vowed. “I’ll die first.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The raucous screeching of some nearby lizards pulled Ravyn from sleep. Her head pounded, and although she willed them to be quiet, they didn’t stop. Hoping to block the noise, she rolled on her side. She felt something scratchy as she moved, but forgot about it as pain slammed into her. Quickly, she returned to her back and took deep, calming breaths until the agony in her arm began to subside. Her relief was brief. The overly sweet smell of flowers made her stomach lurch.
Swallowing hard, she forced her eyes open and frowned. She was covered with leafy branches. Damon must have gone off, she guessed, and had concealed her the best he could. Ravyn pushed the foliage off with her good arm and then wished she hadn’t. The rising sun lanced into her head like burning lasers and she squinted, trying to block out the bright light. Carefully, she sat up. She needed to find Damon, had to make sure the image of him going off to face the killer alone was only a nightmare.
Standing took effort and Ravyn swayed unsteadily. Her headache intensified. She knew should stay put, but she had to be sure Damon was okay. Looking around, she tried to find a sign showing which way he’d gone. She didn’t see anything to tip her off, but she could sense him. Her hesitation was short-lived. She
knew
where he was and she
had
to see him. Now. She stumbled toward the rising sun, eyes narrowed against the glare.
Every step challenged her physically, her entire body protested the demands she made on it. Gritting her teeth, Ravyn made herself keep moving. Her watery eyes didn’t make it easy to see where she walked and her sore arm brushed against a tree branch. The pain nearly dropped her to her knees, but she feared if she went down, she wouldn’t get up. Instead, she clung to the branch until the burning torment stopped and she could continue.
It seemed like an eternity before she spotted him. He stood amid a group of trees, his arms crossed over his chest, staring off into the distance. Ravyn stopped short and sucked in her breath. Relief gave way to appreciation. The man made her knees sag in a way that had nothing to do with muscle fatigue.
“How are you feeling?” he asked quietly, turning his head and checking her out.
“Fine.” At his skeptical look, Ravyn lifted her chin and tried to smile. It felt weak even to her and she changed the subject. “What are you looking at?”
For a moment she thought he would quiz her further about her health, but he said, “I’m trying to decide the safest route to the Old City.”
When his attention shifted from her, Ravyn made her way over to him. He couldn’t have seen her walking, yet as she pulled even with him, he slipped an arm around her for support. Giving up the pretense of feeling good, she leaned into him and followed his gaze. The sun was rising behind the Old City, giving the whole place a rosy glow. It was so beautiful, so radiant, she caught her breath in wonder. Ravyn thought she saw an enormous pyramid of energy emanating from the top of the wall surrounding the city, but she blinked and it was gone.
“Did you see that?” she asked in amazement
“See what?” He sounded distracted.
Ravyn glanced over at Damon. He hadn’t noticed anything, she decided. If she told him what she’d seen, he’d only worry. It hadn’t been another hallucination; she was past those. “How the sun is making the city glow,” she said. It wasn’t a lie, it just wasn’t what she had been talking about.
“Yeah, it’s very impressive.”
Okay, she could take a hint. “What’s up?”
That finally garnered his full attention. “Where we’re standing now, it’s the last cover we’ll have until we reach the Old City. It looks like the grass isn’t even knee-high.”
“And this is the most dangerous stretch for us.”
Damon’s frown deepened. “Yeah. All he has to do is wait and we could walk right into him.”
“If we don’t have any cover, he doesn’t have any cover.”
“Odds are he knows the area. We don’t. There may be some place to hide that we can’t see from here. Or he could just wait inside the Old City. Logically, this would be our destination.”
“He can’t enter the city. There’s protection around it.” Ravyn didn’t miss Damon’s concerned look. Darn it, that had just slipped out. She wasn’t used to watching her words around him.
“Do you think you should lie down? That venom from the barb could still be in your bloodstream.”
Ravyn shook her head carefully and relaxed against his body again. “I’m fine.” And maybe if she said that often enough, it would be true. They were so close to their goal, but she didn’t know how she’d make it the rest of the way. “Besides,” she continued, “you’d sense him if he was close. You have before.”
Damon grunted. A quick peek told her he had gone back to studying the terrain. She knew he wouldn’t take any chances with her safety, wouldn’t trust his instincts telling him the route was clear. She looked out over the land herself, trying to guess what Damon was considering. Her attention quickly drifted.
The early morning air held a hint of the sea. The Old City was built three kilometers inland from the largest ocean on Jarved Nine. Ravyn wished she could see it, but the ridge they stood on wasn’t high enough for that kind of view. For a girl raised on the beaches of California, seeing the ocean only once in eight months had been torture.
The aura of the Old City seemed to intensify, pulling her thoughts away from the water. It had to be a trick of the sun, but it felt as if they were being welcomed.
All are safe within these walls.
Ravyn didn’t know where the thought came from, but it wasn’t hers. She shivered slightly, but not in fear. The energy from the city seemed to envelop her and she opened herself up, returning the embrace with joy.
“Sanctuary,” she murmured, lost in the feeling.
Ravyn caught Damon’s sharp glance and the way his lips tightened. He didn’t comment on what she’d said, but she knew he wanted to. Then his expression changed and she realized he’d reached a decision. He pulled out one of the weapons, pressing it into her hand. “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll go get our stuff.”
“I’ll go with you.” Her grip on the gun tightened.
“No, you won’t. You’ll be lucky to make it to the Old City without being carried. I don’t want you wasting energy when we have to come back this way anyhow.” His voice deepened as he added, “You’ll be safe here, sweet pea, trust me.”
Ravyn sighed. She did trust him, and he was right about her expending her strength. She hated that “Okay,” she agreed grudgingly, “but don’t take too long or I’ll come looking for you.” The fear of something happening to him if he was out of her sight was too strong for her to put aside.