by Dean Murray
Once again the lamia was past me before I could do more than connect with a half-hearted, ineffectual swipe that skittered off of his scales.
I was bleeding heavily from my side and my right arm was only at seventy percent. I had to come up with something soon or I was a dead man. One or two more passes like that would wear me down to the point where he could dispatch me at his leisure. No wonder these things hunted werewolves for sport. They were the next best thing to indestructible and the one I was fighting wasn't even using his venom on me.
There wasn't any question—he was going to charge me again, but I didn't wait for him. Instead, I charged forward at the exact same time, blurring into motion in the hopes that I could throw off his timing.
I made as if to meet him head on again, but we both knew that would be foolish, so he was once again expecting me to dodge aside at the last possible second. I gave him exactly what he was expecting. I'd dodged to my left twice now and failed to get away cleanly both times, so this time I went right.
Which was exactly what he wanted me to do. The speed and ease with which he adjusted as I started my dodge told me that he'd let his weight shift to my right even before I'd started moving.
There was no possible way to get far enough to the right to avoid his claws. I'd started moving too early, even sooner than I had on the last pass, and he had plenty of time to veer as far right as he needed to in order to mow me down.
Everything was developing exactly as I'd hoped. I planted my right foot in the mud and pushed off as hard as I could, dodging to the left after he'd already committed himself to going right. Even my best dodge wasn't quite up to getting me completely out of his path, but that was okay too. I ducked under his right arm and then I hit him.
This time I didn't lead with my shoulder, I led with my claws. All five claws slid home and then I splayed them out in an effort to stop them from ripping out through his side. My duck to avoid his right arm, combined with the fact that my shoulder wasn't working quite right, meant that I hadn't been able to take him up high enough to hit anything vital.
I hadn't taken him in the heart and I didn't seem to have hit any major arteries, but my hand in his guts served as a kind of moving, fleshy anchor and I used it to flip myself around behind him.
His speed was still breathtaking, but this time, aided by the grip my right hand had on him, I managed to get around fast enough to slam my left hand home in his back roughly where the left kidney would have been on a human. It almost wasn't enough. He was already slowing, his hands were both coming down and back and I was low enough that he wasn't going to have any problems scraping me off of his back.
I did the only other thing I could do. I wrapped my left hand around a couple of his ribs, and then I pulled myself up with my arms far enough that I could whip both of my legs forward and sink both sets of talons into the meat of his calves.
He was strong enough to bear my weight along with his own, but the force of me pushing on his right leg as he tried to pick it up was enough to trip him up and both of us went crashing to the ground. Fortunately I was on top this time and I scrambled forward, repositioning to where I could get at his neck.
Less than five seconds later he was dead.
Chapter 11
Isaac Nazir
Unknown Bayou
Eastern Louisiana
I stumbled away from the corpse of the lamia I'd been fighting and looked over to Set, trying to judge his reaction.
"An honorable fight. We will take your group into the enclave so that you may wait upon the queen's pleasure."
Set drew in another breath as if he was going to say something else, but before he could do so Celeste yelled for me.
"Isaac, it's Ash. His pulse is getting weaker; I think he's bleeding internally."
I sprinted back over to the boat, shifting back down to human form as I arrived at the boat.
"Can you save him?"
I shook my head as I tore open the first-aid kit and grabbed the needle. "I don't know. If we had blood for a transfusion then I'd say yes, but he's already lost so much blood that I'm not sure he'll make it."
Set glided forward to within two feet of the boat. "You seem distressed. If you are not confident in your ability to save him, may I suggest an alternative?"
I'd been busy pulling off the long strips of tape I'd used earlier to hold Ash's wounds closed. "You have a way to keep him from dying?"
"I believe so. Your victory in the challenge entitles you to ask a boon from our enclave over and above the normal requirements of hospitality. If your request is that I do my best to keep your companion in arms alive, then I will do so."
"Yes, heal Ash, that is how we want to use the boon!" Celeste's voice was desperate. Despite her tough show back at the hospital, she didn't want to lose her brother now that she'd found him again.
Set turned towards her with an expression of distaste. "It is not for you to decide. Your consort has won you the right to petition my queen for an audience, but the boon is his and his alone. You may not usurp his rights in this area without declaring yourself…unclean."
Celeste swelled up like she was ready to give Set a piece of her mind, but I waved my arms at the two of them.
"That is my choice, made of my own free will, to save a friend—a companion in arms. If there is anything you can do to help Ash, then please do so."
Set examined me for a second and then nodded. "Very well."
He took one more step forward and then placed his hand over Ash's wound. His hands looked like they always had, but out beyond the ends of them, Ash's skin dimpled slightly as though the tips of invisible claws were resting on him.
It was a disturbing sight on several levels and I found myself wondering if I would ever see the lamias' real form. The thought of seeing them with their illusions stripped away was simultaneously tempting and repulsive. I got the feeling that I wasn't ready for the sight of their actual form, that I might not ever be ready.
Set closed his eyes and a second later his hand got hot enough that I could feel the heat radiating off of him from several inches away. That meant he was hot enough to burn unprotected flesh and it was all I could do not to tear his hand away from Ash's back. Only there wasn't any need. Not only was Ash not being burned, it almost seemed like he was radiating the same kind of heat.
Nearly a full minute passed and then Set pushed on Ash's wound with one side of his hand, compressing the flesh underneath with an exactness that was too precise to be happenstance. I tried to visualize the effect the pressure would have on the organs underneath Set's hand and decided that he'd just pushed the edges of the tear in Ash's renal artery a little closer together.
Two minutes later Set stepped back. "It is done."
I picked up Ash's wrist and checked his pulse. It still felt weak. "Would it be considered impolite for me to ask what it is that you did to help him?"
Set cocked his head to one side. "Such a question does not violate the guidelines of honor, but this language does not have all of the words necessary for a proper explanation."
I nodded my understanding as I realized that I'd been overlooking the most exciting aspect of meeting the lamia. They had a language of their very own, the first known non-human language anyone had ever encountered. It was enough to make me salivate.
Satisfied that I really did understand the difficulty of what I was asking for, Set pointed to Ash. "His life-fluid…the blood, as you call it, was leaking out of its proper pathways. Once too much blood is lost, he would have moved on…he would have died, so I took steps to stop the leak."
My mind was whirling at the possibility. Celeste had said that Ash was bleeding internally, which was one piece of evidence that Set hadn't diagnosed Ash without seeing inside of him, but he'd compressed Ash's renal artery, which I was pretty sure had been the source of the internal bleeding.
"You were able to see the leak, the tear, in his artery without opening him up?"
"Yes, one merely follows t
he circulation of the life-fluid and looks for places where it pools instead of continuing back to the throne…the heart."
"And then you were able to stitch it together from outside of his body?"
That earned me a frown. "No, I did not heal it. I merely slowed the leak. The breach is still there, blood still leaves through it, but much less. His body now has time to replenish what was lost, but there is danger still. The breach is still healing itself, but it has been likewise slowed. The…change is not stable or…permanent. When it lapses he will resume bleeding and if his body cannot seal the leak quickly enough he will still move on."
It almost sounded like he was saying that he'd slowed down time, which was impossible—except that Ash hadn't died yet. His pulse was still weak, but it hadn't gotten any weaker and given just how much blood Ash had lost, even a small tear should have killed him by now.
Ash was a shape shifter, so his body healed faster than a normal human's, but he was one of the weakest wolves I'd ever met. He was fast and deadly with the weapons he'd spent so much time mastering, but his makeup lacked something that most of the rest of us took for granted.
His beast was so quiet that I wasn't sure he really believed the rest of us when we described how hard it was to master the being that took up residence inside of us the first time we shifted forms. There were times that I envied him in that area, but it seemed linked to the fact that in human form he was only slightly stronger than someone with his general build normally would have been, and his constitution was unusually weak by shape shifter standards.
If it had been Jasmin lying there with a time bomb inside of her I wouldn't have worried. Assuming that she started with a normal amount of blood in her, her body, especially now that she was a hybrid, could have easily healed a small tear in an artery before she bled out. It was a completely different ballgame when it was Ash lying there.
There wasn't anything to do but hope that Set's solution would work. I couldn't open Ash back up right now without killing him. Maybe in a few days I could go in and sew the hole closed if Ash made it that long.
"Thank you, Set. I appreciate you doing that."
"It was no more than your successful challenge had earned you."
"That may be so, but I'm thankful nonetheless."
The massive lamia bowed his head in acknowledgement. "Very well. Come, we should be going now if we're going to make it to the enclave before the entrance moves."
Chapter 12
Isaac Nazir
Unknown Bayou
Eastern Louisiana
Two of the smaller lamias wordlessly helped me drag Celeste's silver boat further up onto the island. Based on the waterline on some of the nearby trees, it looked like we'd pulled it far enough up to avoid having it wash away. I hoped that was the case. I hated the thought of having to wade back to civilization through thirty miles of alligator-infested, chest-deep swamp water.
None of the lamias seemed to think it odd that Celeste didn't help move the boat. Apparently queens weren't expected to get their hands dirty with manual labor any more than they were expected to deal with challengers.
I'd shifted forms to help move the boat, but once the boat was safely tucked away between two large trees, I wasn't particularly excited about the idea of shifting again. I'd already worn far too many forms over the last forty-eight hours.
I'd resigned myself to the fact that I was going to be dealing with a horrific set of cramps in my arms and legs within the next few hours, but I was hoping to put off dealing with them until we'd made it to the lamias' enclave. Another shift back to human form and then again to hybrid form so that I wasn't walking through the bayou in human form would almost guarantee that I wouldn't make it through the next hour without writhing around on the ground in agony.
Celeste saw me looking at the bags and understood the quandary I was faced with. She came over to the boat and picked up one of the large, black duffle bags.
"Here, bend down and I'll loop it across your chest."
"I don't want to have you do anything to undermine your position with our new friends."
"I'll be fine, Isaac. Bend down so we can get moving. I don't want to have to march halfway through the bayou looking for a new portal."
My beast was apparently adjusting to the presence of the lamia enough that he was ready and willing to expend energy fighting over more mundane offenses. He took a run at the mental cage where I'd locked him away and gave it a good shaking. It was an unsubtle reminder that we still needed to settle the issue of who was the top dog around here.
If we'd been somewhere else where I didn't have to worry about what the lamia would consider lèse-majesté, I would have reminded her that she didn't have any place giving me orders. That wasn't an option, so I just shot her a dirty look and then did exactly as she'd ordered.
About the time she got the first bag situated across my shoulder, two of the smaller lamias stepped forward and took up positions to either side of me with their heads bowed.
"Bearers for you to use as you see fit, Eminence."
Set's voice had an edge of something that I thought might be impatience. Once the first of the bearers had the second black duffle slung across his back, he bent down and carefully lifted Ash. The lamia cradled Ash against his chest like he was worried any sudden move would break him.
Satisfied that the lamia was going to do his best to avoid reopening Ash's wounds, I reached down and picked Kristin up. Part of me wanted to leave her for the other lamia—my beast most definitely didn't like the idea of having my arms full around creatures like the one that we'd been fighting just minutes before—but I knew how I would have felt if Ash and I had swapped positions and it had been me unconscious and unable to watch over Jess.
I would have wanted for Ash to carry my girlfriend rather than leave her in the arms of something that was capable of accidentally injecting her with werewolf-killing venom. I still felt that way despite the fact that Jess wasn't my girlfriend and hadn't been in months.
Kristin normally wasn't very heavy, but now, after an injury that had come within minutes of killing her, she seemed as light as a feather to my hybrid arms. I shifted her around, careful not to cut her with my claws, until I was happy with how I'd positioned her and then turned back to Celeste.
I caught her partway through stripping out of her clothes. Everything important was still covered up, but she'd already unzipped her pants and had started sliding them down over her hips. She caught me eyeing the black lace panties that she'd just revealed, and went bright red.
"Turn around."
Normally I would have turned without her even having to ask me to, but I hadn't forgotten about the fact that she hadn't bothered averting her eyes when the shoe had been on the other foot.
"Didn't you say something about all of us from the Sanctuary pack being a bunch of prudes? You're the last person on earth I would have expected to be bothered by the thought of flashing a little skin." I said it in something less than a whisper, pitched so that it would carry to her ears, but not make it to the lamias who'd retreated back to rejoin their fellows as soon as they'd been given their burdens.
"Isaac, turn around. This isn't the time to be pushing. We can talk about it once we are by ourselves." It came out as a hiss, quiet enough that there was a chance that the lamias couldn't hear her, but loaded with plenty of indignation.
She'd just ordered me around two more times in less than five seconds. I'd expected my beast to respond with a flare of rage, but my beast wasn't mad…he was curious. I was still all wrapped around an axle over what had happened with Jess, but my beast seemed to have already moved on. Maybe not all the way, but enough that he'd noticed that Celeste was a very attractive female.
She wasn't trying to assert dominance, she was embarrassed. She was demonstrating vulnerability. With another guy it might not have mattered, but with a girl, with Celeste at least, my beast was willing to cut her some slack.
I captured her eyes for several l
ong seconds before nodding and turning around. The lamia had already turned their backs to her. "So what changed, Celeste? I know how things work in most other packs. You guys don't wear ha'bits, this isn't the first time you've been naked around someone."
She'd only waited the barest fraction of a second after I'd turned around to resume pulling her clothes off, but the rustle of fabric sliding across skin stopped as she considered my question.
"I'm not sure. You guys don't do casual nudity and I know you get mocked for it a lot, but it's not a bad idea. If I was running the New Orleans pack and hadn't had to worry about blowback from the Coun'hij, then I probably would have implemented a similar policy, but I guess that's just a smokescreen."
For several seconds she didn't say anything else and I'd almost given up on getting anything else out of her. When she started speaking again her voice was different, more vulnerable, less guarded.
"I guess it matters to me because it matters to you. You guys don't do casual nudity, so showing skin around you feels like it should be a big deal. Sorry, it's not a great explanation, but it's all I have to give you right now."
I tried to come up with something to say that wouldn't sound stupid, but I took too long. She resumed undressing and the sound of her clothes dropping down to the bottom of the boat was too distracting to allow me to continue thinking about anything else.
A second later I heard her bend down and pick up the discarded articles of clothing. The sound of Velcro pulling apart as she tore the tiny black bag she'd had mounted to the bottom of the captain's chair free of its mounting was followed by the swish of her hair as she walked towards me. Only it was all wrong. It wasn't the sound of hybrid talons on the aluminum of the boat, it was bare soles.
"Don't turn around yet."
I knew it was my imagination, but I could almost feel her behind me, scant inches away from my body as she unzipped the duffle bag hanging across my back and stuffed her things into it.