I saw the door to the washing cubicle, though, and sighed in relief.
A few minutes later, I had Nik inside that same cubicle.
Getting him there had been a little tricky. Nik wasn’t exactly a small guy, and the round opening hung a good three feet above the floor of the bedroom. Even so, we’d managed it with some helping pulls and pushes from me.
Now Nik sat on the tile floor, struggling to pull off his jacket, which was littered with burns and powder, and not a small amount of blood. Watching him try to do it on his own for another few seconds, I exhaled in exasperation when he didn’t ask for help, and knelt down to help him anyway. Pushing his hands aside, I moved around behind him, assessing the damage, as well as the places where the fabric was punctured by shrapnel.
I noted one piece of metal embedded in his arm that looked sharp.
Assuming Nik really did turn human when he wore that form, it wasn’t near any major arteries. Making a snap decision, I knelt down next to him and grabbed hold of the sharp piece, wrapping my fingers around it and yanking it out with a sharp jerk.
Ignoring his gasp of surprise and pain, I proceeded to use the same piece of metal to cut the fabric of the jacket off him, at least around the larger piece of metal sticking out of his shoulder. I managed to cut it most of the way off his hurt side a few minutes later. Then, moving carefully still, I began rolling the thick fabric off his remaining arm.
He winced when I started, and looked at me even, but didn't argue as I finished.
Instead he braced himself, as if in pain and trying to stay silent. He remained that way until I tugged the last of the jacket off his wrists. When I reached for his shirt, getting ready to cut that off him, too, he caught my hand.
"Dakota, I’m okay."
I stared at him. "No, Nik... you’re not. Give it a rest, okay?”
He looked down, watching his own blood run down the drain.
“Just let me help you,” I said, exhaling in frustration. “Jesus, what’s the big deal? You’re going to let yourself die, just because you don’t want my help?”
"I won't die."
"You know that for sure?"
He made a noncommittal gesture.
Looking down at himself, he seemed to make up his mind a few seconds later. Nodding reluctantly, he placed his hands on the tile floor.
“Okay,” he said.
Biting back a sarcastic comment, I slid closer to him again and started unfastening his shirt.
That time, he let me.
Sliding around behind him on the wet tile, I cut the fabric around the piece of shrapnel, then peeled the remainder of the sodden fabric off his back. I still had to pull it carefully off the long cut and burn I could see, as well as easing it off the main shrapnel wound that now showed through as a thick metal spike in his back, surrounded by burnt flesh.
When I got a good look at his skin, I sucked in a breath.
“Will it kill me?” Nik asked calmly. “When I pull it out?”
I stared at his back, fighting to control my reaction, or at least to keep it out of my voice.
Forcing my eyes to the most recent injuries littering his back, shoulder and arms, I returned my gaze to the main piece of shrapnel, which I knew was the object he meant.
I struggled to answer his question, biting back a kind of fury as I looked at the rest of him.
"No. I don't think so," I said after a too-long pause. "There's one burn that looks pretty deep, but it's not bleeding much so I think the wound is cauterized. And it shouldn’t kill you, to get out the piece in your shoulder. It’s going to hurt like hell, though... and you’ll probably be sleeping on your stomach for a few weeks."
I frowned, looking at the other injuries on his back.
From what I could tell, Nik had been sleeping on his stomach for a few weeks already.
My anger worsened briefly, but I shoved it aside. I didn’t have time to be pissed off about that now. I’d have to be pissed off about it later. Forcing my mind off the Pharei guards and what they’d done to him, I focused on the problem at hand, instead.
Looking at the shrapnel in his back, I felt my lips purse.
“How are we going to get it out, Nik?” I said, leaning closer to his back. “Do you know any doctors we could call to come here? Because I don’t think I should do it. It’s not that big, but it’s in there a good few inches...”
"No. It’s all right,” Nik said, his voice almost dismissive. “Go in there... open that door.” Nik prodded my arm, pointing at a recessed panel set into the tile wall. “There should be medical supplies in there,” he explained. “Unless someone has stolen them.”
I crawled over on the tile to where he’d been pointing. Glancing back to confirm that I’d gotten the right spot, I hit the latch when he nodded. The panel slid soundlessly open, revealing a number of instruments on hooks inside the narrow compartment.
“That one,” Nik said, pointing. “That is a sealant gun. We need that.”
Pulling the tube-like instrument carefully off its brackets, I waited for his nod again.
Then I slid back over towards him on the tile, not hiding my puzzlement.
“What are you going to do?” I asked him.
Nik acted like I hadn’t spoken.
“I’ll need your help,” he said. He pointed at the metal cylinder, what he’d called a sealant gun, which I still gripped in one hand on the tile. “Use that to close it. It has antibiotics and will clean the cut, so just put it right over the blood. It should be enough."
“Enough for what?” I said.
He didn’t answer that, either.
“Nik,” I said, exasperated. “How do I...”
But he had already wrapped his fingers around mine, and around the cylinder, as soon as I got close enough. I looked down, following the motion of Nik’s hands as he showed me how to work the trigger. He flipped it sideways to show me the end then, depressing that trigger and causing some kind of sticky substance to came out.
Testing it with another brief squirt, Nik nodded, then pressed something on the side that caused a blue-green line to light up on the side.
“It is good,” he said. “It’s full.”
He handed it back to me.
I nodded. “Okay, great,” I said. “But what do I do with it, Nik? How is this stuff going to get that piece of metal out of your back?”
When I glanced up, Nihkil wasn’t looking at me, though.
I watched him touch and prod that part of his upper back with careful fingers.
Then he grasped the shard, shifting the angle of his hands until he had a grip he liked. Before I knew what he intended to do well enough to stop him, he yanked it out, straight out and back, in one hard jerk.
I shouted, but I was already too late.
Nihkil collapsed.
He hadn’t made a damned sound, so I panicked, snatching the sealant gun off the tile.
Muttering angrily, I knelt by him on the floor, my hands shaking as I activated the gun the way he’d just shown me.
I leaned over to get a better look at his face as I applied the sticky substance to the deepest part of the wound. Nothing sprayed from the opening, thank goodness, but a pool of blood widened rapidly under his shoulder and ribs. His skin turned chalk-white where I laid the sealant gun on the wound, right before the oozing paste swam into the black-looking hole. I held his skin as I worked, concentrating as I covered every millimeter of broken flesh.
Then I went over it again.
And again.
Bending down, I laid my hand on his chest, listening, fighting back my own panting breaths.
I was pretty sure his heart worked just like any other human heart. I didn’t know if he’d die as easily as a human, too. A few seconds later, when his heart appeared to be beating stronger in his chest, I started breathing again.
I went over the wound a fourth time, just to be sure.
Then I went over the burn on his back with the sealant, remembering he’d said it had
antibiotics in it. I went over the smaller gash in his arm, too, and a few other cuts and abrasions I found. Then I turned on the water dispenser, using his shirt to wash the ash and other crap off him. Thinking about the fact that I hadn’t done that first, I checked how much was in the sealant gun, then turned on the overhead faucet, crouching over him to break the spray as I washed off the main wound and the burn, too.
The sealant stuff seemed to be waterproof, though, so I don’t know how much good it did.
Even so, after I’d washed him, I put another layer of that crap on his wounds again.
I kept checking his face and the tile while I did it, looking for any indication that he still bled from the main wound.
I didn’t see any.
Laying the sealant gun on the tile, I finished picking pieces of metal and stone out of his back from smaller wounds, finding glass under the fine coating of powder embedded in his skin. Once I'd gotten everything I could find, I dragged him out from under the water altogether and turned him over carefully.
I checked the rest of his body, making sure I hadn’t missed anything.
If I had, I couldn’t find it.
Only then did I sit back, letting myself react.
Feeling light-headed, I leaned against the wall, my hand still on his arm until I realized my legs and most of my dress and body were still covered in ash and half-dried blood. Turning the water back on, I stuck my whole body under the spigot, fully clothed, that time washing the front side of me, too. I managed to get most of the powder and smoke off my body from the blast, along with that goop that rained down from the ceiling to put out the fires.
I couldn’t do anything about the dress of course. It was toast. But I unwound what remained of the braids in my hair and washed that out, as well.
I didn't take my eyes off Nihkil through any of it.
He was still breathing.
I told myself he’d just passed out from the pain, but when he still hadn't moved when I finished shampooing and wringing out my hair, I started getting nervous.
Maybe I needed to call Ledi.
Nik might be pissed when he woke up, given that it risked our being caught, but I didn’t much care at that point. The bomb blast hadn't been the first major injury Nik had sustained that week. Maybe it was more than his body could take, given that he’d been underfed, beaten, drugged and whatever else.
My eyes returned to his back, to the damage that had been inflicted on him before the bomb.
Most of the newer marks still looked relatively fresh.
Bruised black surrounded harsh reds, vivid against his pale skin. Some of the marks were old enough to be more than halfway healed, but even those looked large enough and dark enough that they must have been severe when they happened. They hadn't just bruised him up... they'd cut on him, hit him with blunt objects, with whips. A handful of marks even looked like burns, like they'd used a branding iron on him, or maybe a cattle prod.
He had older scars, too.
Those bothered me more for some reason.
The coarse scar tissue looked like it had pulled and stretched, as if staying with him through each transformation before snapping back to its original shape.
I wondered why he couldn't erase the scars as part of his morph ability.
Maybe it had something to do with that “base form” thing Nik explained to me.
Or maybe, once they imprinted on a particular life form, that shape remained the same, more or less, and could only be modified through some kind of sustained effort. If that were true, then Nik must have set features for other lifeforms, too... features he could modify temporarily, but that always snapped back once he stopped exerting himself. I wondered if the scars and marks I could see now showed up on those other lifeforms, too.
I touched them with my hand, even as I thought it, somehow feeling a different Nihkil within them, one I barely recognized.
Still fingering his back, I glanced down.
His eyes were open.
He looked up at me when I looked down, his irises a light brown, nearly gold.
Pain stabbed at my chest, like a finger of fire.
Relief washed that away, too, a few seconds later.
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I held, even as I gripped his arm tighter in my hand, helping him sit up.
Nik did as I prompted, holding my hand, his black hair dripping water. I found I understood the expression on his face when he glanced back at me, his eyes light-colored again and holding a near-question.
The vulnerability there made me forget I’d wanted to punch him in the face after he pulled that stunt with the shrapnel.
Anyway, he was right.
I had to get him off this freezing-cold tile.
I struggled to my feet, helping Nik up next to me.
He straightened as much as the low ceiling would allow, only a slight waver in his stance, his fingers splayed on the ceiling. I helped him shuffle, bent-backed, to the opening in the wall. I jumped down in front of him to help him out, turning in time to see him sit heavily on the cubicle's ledge.
I took his arm as he reached the floor, then helped him to the pile of thick, sofa-like cushions.
I looked away as he struggled out of his pants.
I almost felt him grimacing in pain, though, presumably because I could pick up some of that through the lock.
He gripped my shoulder tightly as he undressed. He nearly made me lose my balance when he leaned most of his weight on me to yank off the last of each pant leg.
When he finally managed it, I felt a kind of relief on him, as if he'd finished doing the last thing he needed to do, at least for now. He didn't make any attempt to reach the bed on his own, but simply stood there, naked in front of me, so I eventually caught hold of his arm.
I made a point of not looking down as I brought him the rest of the way to the bed, where he let me help him down. He lay down carefully on his good side while I hit a depression in the wall, popping open a storage bin and tugging out blankets to throw over his shivering form.
I started to get down beside him, but he held up a hand to stop me.
Staring at him in disbelief, I froze.
"Nik." My frustration sharpened when he shook his head at me. "You’re kidding, right? There’s only one bed. You'll have to get over it, okay?"
His eyes turned impatient.
He gestured towards me, using more elaborate motions of his hand, but I still didn’t get it.
I looked down at myself.
"I’m too dirty?” I said. “I showered, okay? Look, I won't even touch you...”
"No,” he said in English. Pain briefly contorted his features. "Take off the damned dress, Dakota. Take it off... then come here."
I fell silent, staring at him. Then I shook my head. “We’re not doing that, Nik. Not now. You’re half-dead...”
“I won’t try to fuck you,” he clarified. “Just come here. Please, Dakota.”
I flinched a little at his choice of words.
Maybe more because they startled me, though.
I mean, I knew he knew that word. I’d just never heard him use it, really. Or maybe I’d just never heard him use it in that particular context.
I looked down at myself, feeling my jaw tighten as I turned over what he’d actually said. He was hardly in a position to try and force himself on me.
Really, it was difficult to think of a good reason not to, even apart from that. He'd seen me naked before. The dress was in shreds. Anyway, Nik probably wouldn't be conscious long enough for it to matter.
I told myself all of those things, even as I felt my mind skirt around other reasons why I might be willing to comply with his request.
Before I could go there, though, I decided I didn't care.
Reaching for the strap at my right shoulder, I slipped the remnants of the dress off my arm and hand, moving mechanically as I did the same on the other side.
Then I peeled the wet cloth down my body past my waist, writhing and t
ugging before I stepped out of the last of it, keeping my expression neutral as I walked over to where he lay. I watched Nik look up at me as I climbed under the blanket. I couldn't help noticing he stared unapologetically, without even a whisper of feigned shyness, much less disinterest.
On the contrary, his eyes glassed over in those few seconds, holding a different kind of urgency under the exhaustion.
When he stared at me below the waist, I felt that glimmer of not-human on him again... strongly enough that it almost made me nervous. He caught my wrist once I lay there on my side, pulling me nearer to where he lay.
I tugged the covering over us as he brought me against his chest. I let him do it, but turned around, so that my back faced him.
If he minded, I couldn't feel that on him, either.
Instead, the overwhelming feeling I got off him was relief, followed closely by that sharper, more animal thing that I couldn't put my finger on well enough to give it a name.
Resting his face on my shoulder, he closed his eyes.
His heart beat against my bare back.
He held me tighter, that vulnerability once more wafting around him.
Then he just... fell away.
21
BAD AND GOOD FEELINGS
IT SEEMED ONLY a half-second passed before I opened my eyes.
Light burned my pupils, even as sound made my head throb. Before I could wrap my head around where I was, or who I was with, Nihkil was already awake, pulling me under him, his eyes fixed on the wide, oval-shaped opening forming in one wall.
Remembering how I’d made a point of locking the door the night before, I clutched his arms in a silent question. Before I ask Nik anything directly...
A voice rose, jerking my eyes towards the door.
"Nik. Dakota."
I flinched, even though I knew the voice, as well as the man standing there.
Ledi watched the two of us from only a few yards away.
He stood the right of the oval doorway and also the bed, flanked by a line of dark-uniformed men who continued to increase in number as more filed through the door.
The Morph (Gate Shifter Book One) Page 28