savage 06 - the savage dream

by Blodgett, Tamara Rose

  He fell away and landed on his back.

  Philip's face met his from above and upside down. “Ye do not lay a hand against a female. Especially this one.”

  Jim opened his mouth like a beached whale. Open. Shut.

  “Corpse,” Jim croaked illogically.

  Philip's eyebrows rose. Then his gaze shifted to Edwin, whose body had begun to stiffen. Maybe he'd have lived if he could have been tended too. But beaten half to death and left in the fun weather of the midwestern winter, there was zero chance for survival.

  Philip's expression changed, and he lowered his body enough to scoop up Calia.

  She shuddered and sobbed against him.

  Jim lay there.

  Vaguely, he noticed the stars glittering like chips of mercury in the velvet of a sky without a trace of light pollution.

  It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever witnessed.

  Jim figured he was dying.

  A person at death's door had all kind's of time to be introspective.

  He couldn't feel his feet or hands, and his guts felt rearranged.

  And for extra fun, breathing wasn't happening because he was pretty sure his ribs had skewered his lungs, courtesy of Philip.

  Jim gave a last, gurgling sigh and closed his eyes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Vaughn

  How many Blood Bearer's heads had he taken?

  Many.

  Hair made stringy with sweat had escaped its club and hung in Vaughn's face. He swung it away as another of the Bearers charged.

  Immensely powerful, the enemy used his fangs to shred the meat of Vaughn's forearm as it rose to protect his face.

  His arm came apart in viscous strings of skin and pain so horrible Vaughn removed his psyche from the tether of his body. Using his hand in a brutal caress, Vaughn drew his damaged arm backward and cupped his adversary's chin. He pulled it to the side with a twist while using his other hand at the back of the Bearer's head. Vaughn was helpless to stop a moan of agony from the pain the move cost him.

  Vertebrae snapped, and the head fell without the stem of bony support it had enjoyed moments before.

  Vaughn drew his dominant fist back and struck the Bearer's face in a hard punch, further compromising the head.

  The head needed to be pulverized, or the Bearer would rise, and Vaughn and Zaid would fight the same enemy again.

  Zaid fought beside Vaughn, their whispering strikes echoes of the other as their backs brushed, making slow progress to the meadow.

  Finally, they broke free.

  Vaughn's leg was kicked out from beneath him at the last second and he landed hard on his back, half in and half out of the wood.

  Except for that dangling leg, Vaughn had made it.

  His relief was short-lived. That instant, a Bearer landed on the one appendage that remained inside the cover of forest.

  Vaughn tried to crawl out of the woods. His left arm was a useless ruin, so Vaughn tucked and grabbed with his right. Vaughn's forearm dug a path ahead of him and lifted and dragged the rest of him.

  The Bearer hung on.

  Zaid was ahead. He clutched Vaughn underneath the shoulders and yanked him fully free of the shadows.

  Moonlight and open air landed on the Bearer. He screamed, high and piteous in the exposed openness.

  Hands released Vaughn and clawed their way through the compacted snow to re-enter the forest—too late.

  As the moon cast its silver light on the Bearer, he began to sizzle and blacken. There were no flames, but a state of advanced decay.

  The creature rotted from the inside out.

  His hate-filled gaze found Vaughn.

  Damning him.

  Vaughn inhaled deeply and smiled.

  Vaughn had won a victory by the slimmest of margins, and this one would suffer true death.

  Then his mind sobered.

  He and Zaid were there for a purpose, and with an incapacitating injury—and mayhap more Fragment about in the dead of winter—they were vulnerable. They were not truly safe.

  Then there was the issue of Edwin.

  When he heard a terrible wailing, Vaughn had a sudden portent.

  His eyes met those of Zaid, and his warrior friend helped him to his feet.

  “It is Calia.”

  Vaughn nodded, grimacing at his numb arm and wasting a glance on the black slime of the Bearer's corpse. He turned back to Zaid. “She gives away our location quite freely.”

  “Aye. Yet—methinks her reason is sound.”

  Vaughn followed Zaid's gaze over the sparkling carpet of white. There, in a pool of blood and other bits lay Edwin.

  A man Vaughn did not know struck Calia.

  He and Zaid did not exchange words but ran to prevent more harm coming to her by another's hand.

  Just as they arrived, a sound kick was administered to the thin, oddly attired young man of indeterminate origin.

  “What say you?” Zaid asked. But Vaughn was observing the scene. Calia was hysterical, Edwin dead, and the strange man lay in an apparent unconscious state.

  “Jim attacked Calia,” the huge warrior of a foreign Band stated.

  A hiss carried across the open pasture, stirring stalks of frozen pasture grass like a secret whisper.

  The Band turned. Ulric stood at the edge.

  “We will meet again.”

  The words were spoken so quietly they should not have carried. Vaughn shuddered.

  The Bearers stood shoulder to shoulder at the place where the wood became sparse. A smattering of trees stripped of leaves stood like indifferent toothpicks.

  “Evil,” Adahy said in Iroquois. Vaughn recognized some of the Red Men words he had learned through trading. He did not need to know what Adahy said exactly, for the sentiment was clear. He was sure they all felt similarly.

  A hand fell on his arm, and he sucked in a breath, jumping like a female at the foreign touch. His eyes had been so consumed by the sight of the leader of the Bearers he had been blind to the nearness of others.

  He glanced down. A small female with hair as dark as a raven's wing and skin like alabaster walked her fingers in a slow crawl to where the wound of his arm was located.

  “Do not, young female,” Vaughn cautioned, not understanding her intent.

  “I shall,” she said in a slightly dreamy voice, “heal your wounds, warrior.”

  Without further preamble, her fingers dug into the worst of it, and Vaughn screamed at the brutal intrusion in a low, miserable timbre of agony.

  The Red Man held his arms like a vise, and he struggled against the pain. Her fingers sunk deeper, and he yelled for her to stop.

  “She heals,” the Red Man said.

  As Vaughn's eyes were dryly rolling in his sockets and his stomach starting to rise, heat took the place of where the sickening pain had been.

  Vaughn went loose in the arms that held him.

  Suddenly, those fingers, which had been so torturous, caressed and stroked the wounded area again and again.

  Deeply.

  Then they invaded more shallowly.

  Minutes later, they were on the surface of his skin.

  Vaughn opened his eyes and looked at his arm. It was completely healed.

  The Red Man let him go. Vaughn spotted Zaid watching everything from a horse length away.

  His inattentiveness angered Vaughn. “Thank you for your assistance,” he said sarcastically.

  Zaid smirked. “You did not need what I offer.” His gaze went to the young female.

  Vaughn made a low noise of disdain and scanned the immediate area. The place where the leader of the Bearers had been was empty. The threat of the Bearer's had receded. For now.

  He sank to his knees beside Edwin and hung his head. Finally, he looked up at Calia.

  “You be Calia?”

  She nodded, most of her body buried against another of the Band. Vaughn stifled his jealously.

  Now was not the time to embrace emotion. They were terribly exposed in the
ir current position.

  Calia was his betrothed. Yet her brother had just died, and she had been at the tender mercies of a species he had encountered only once before from a distance.

  With a final glance at the woods, where a war had been waged, Vaughn stood.

  Vaughn did not feed words of comfort to himself. He would not self-delude.

  They had escaped, yet they had not won.

  There was no winning against the Blood Bearers, but simply enlisting in a game of avoidance. If the Bearers had been set on having the women, they would be theirs even now.

  Something was afoot.

  But Vaughn had not come to figure out the problems of the mid-plains, but to escort Edwin and Calia.

  He had failed to return both children to their mother, so one would have to suffice. But the reunion would not be a happy one.

  It mattered not. He had to fulfill whatever part of his duty he could.

  Vaughn regarded the large warrior who had assumed the position of protector of Calia—who by rights was the charge of him and Zaid as she hailed from their home clan. As Vaughn looked into Calia's eyes, he knew she would not be wooed with brute force.

  No, he must use skill.

  “We are here.” Vaughn cleared his throat and remembered the Healer and turned to her. “Thank you.” His face flushed with shame that he had not acknowledged her earlier.

  She seemed unperturbed by his lack of manners and rewarded him with a small smile. She kept her arms locked around the waist of the Iroquois warrior who looked suspiciously of Band.

  “You are welcome, Vaughn of the Band.”

  His eyebrow lifted.

  “I am Elise.” She lightly touched the chest of the male who held her. “This is Adahy.”

  He clasped his arms around the free forearm of the Iroquois. “We are well met.”

  Adahy nodded, and Vaughn could not help but admire the silent strength he presented.

  His gaze fell on Edwin's still body on the snow then went to Calia.

  “Let us look after him.”

  Calia's face dropped into her palms, and she sobbed. The women held each other while the males began the somber task of burial in full view of the Bearers, for there was no doubt that they watched.

  Their proximity did not trouble Vaughn and Zaid. They knew the Bearers could not exit the woods.

  It was better to have the enemy in sight. Their party would be in danger when they began to travel to the bridge, and the Bearers used the corridors of woods that connected the large forests with the smaller ones, like intersecting lily pads.

  The Bearers would follow the women, for they had been marked through taking blood.

  Vaughn would determine why.

  Bearers did not choose females not of their kind.

  He focused on Calia.

  She was a Select. She should not have been chosen—unless something horrible had occurred.

  There could only be one answer: The large Bearer, Ulric, had chosen a mate outside of his Clan—without her express knowledge, under cover of falsity. Toward what end?

  The legend said that the Bearers had once been Clan. If that were so, both women could technically be claimed.

  Vaughn stared into the depths of the forest, his gaze seeking and coming up empty.

  He would not allow them to have the Healer or Calia.

  He nodded to Zaid, who retrieved the rucksacks they had hidden underneath an outcropping of flat stones that were cream and caramel colored, blending most closely with the snow.

  Zaid extracted a short spade.

  The men worked to dig a hole. The tone was somber, their enemies on all sides, as they buried one of the Band.

  Brother, warrior, kinsman.

  Calia's sobs were loud in the stillness as Edwin's body was slowly lowered into the ground.

  Elise hugged Calia as the males worked to close the hole with frozen dirt and her grief.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Jim

  Jim had regained consciousness when the Band guys were burying Edwin. Calia had calmed down since his beat-down by Philip, and Jim had failed twice to stand on his own. That big bastard had broken his ribs with the kick.

  Jim glared at Philip.

  Then Elise had come and healed him.

  He'd passed out a second time from what she'd done with her fingers. When he woke, the grave was long gone, and he'd been dragged behind the group on some kind of tarp thing erected between two poles.

  Jim would have given his eye teeth to be in a lab right about now.

  Instead, all he could think about was Team Gut, his stomach letting out a not-so-subtle roar.

  “It's frozen solid,” Jim exhaled in disgust as he stared at the frozen haul of pheasant, his ribs throbbing with healing. “And, I don't know about you but I could eat a Hippo's ass.”

  Elise's face puckered in confusion and Jim snorted out a laugh. A plume of frosty air smoked out and floated away.

  “You speak of eating the buttocks of animals with alarming frequency, my friend,” Philip said good-naturedly, and Jim spared him a second scowl.

  Philip chuckled, and Jim restrained the urge to flip him the bird.

  The sun had risen and the Big Feet had sunk back into their forest hidey-hole.

  Now that the threat of being human pin cushions to the apey vamps had passed for the moment, food was all that mattered.

  “We risk notice with a fire,” Vaughn commented thoughtfully, scanning the narrow corridor between two great swaths of trees.

  Big flakes of dried blood were still glued to his face like a morbid patchwork quilt. Jim had Fragment blood ground underneath his nails. He was lamenting it wasn't another culture so he could scrape it out and study the DNA with his pulse-finder. The P-F could chart the DNA to pre-Neanderthal dates to a gnat's ass if he had just one flake.

  But no one cared about the Fragment, many of whom were modern-day criminals displaced here from when the Pathway had been illegally used.

  Jim grumped. He was hungry, thirsty, colder than hell, and sick of all the bullshit of this world.

  But they'd escaped the Fragment—for now—and the Forest Devils, Blood Bearers, Stone Giants, or whatever they were, were tucked away for the day in the forest.

  They were the scariest things running in these parts, so the woods were off-limits. Vaughn and Zaid, from a clan not too far from here, had encountered the big-feet vamps—as Jim liked to think of them—once before, knew more of the lore, and had scarier shit than this recent fun to recount. It didn't seem possible. Jim thought his ears would ring forever from the pounding he'd received.

  Adahy gave a rolling shrug of his massive shoulders and commented, “Heat and food are vital or we all die.”

  Jim couldn't argue with that. The decision to down food and get warm at the same time outweighed the fear of a wandering group of Fragment seeing their fire like a smoke signal. He watched as Philip, Adahy, Vaughn and Zaid worked together to build a fire. They built it a good distance from the woods. Yet the two sides of the forest felt chokingly claustrophobic as they rose on either side of their group.

  Jim swore he could feel the eyes of the Tree Men on him, though every time his gaze passed over the woods, he saw no one.

  Vaughn began speaking. Calia listened but said nothing, listlessly pushing the coals around with a stick. She'd plow the tip into the snow to quench the flame then go back to shoving it into the coals.

  Philip sat beside her and watched her closely but didn't interfere.

  Jim felt like he'd been plopped into a big relationship mess he had no background information about.

  But soon it wouldn't matter. Jim admitted he wanted this group to get to where they were going safely—they were the good guys. But he wanted his ass out of there in the worst way.

  He came back from his thoughts when Vaughn said, “If we keep to the bridge, the Blood Bearers will not follow.”

  “How do you know?” Jim asked, sitting as close to the fire as he could get. Fat f
rom a defrosting double row of strung pheasants spit in the flames, popping and crackling.

  Jim's mouth began to water.

  The pheasant were lined up, twenty total. Once they'd been plucked of their feathers, they were actually pretty small. Jim didn't even care there was no other food to go with them.

  Fuck the fries. . Jim was starved.

  “When we encountered the Bearers before, they seemed afraid of the bridge.”

  Jim didn't think Ulric was afraid of anything. He had the distinct feeling that he'd been biding his time. It was what he was biding his time for that made Jim uneasy.

  There wasn't a person in this place that wasn't dangerous, and the element of surprise was the norm not the exception.

  The food was ready, the canteens having been laid around the perimeter of the hastily created fire pit, and slowly the frozen water had melted.

  They ate and drank in consuming silence, their basic need for food, water, and safety keeping idle conversation at a minimum.

  *

  Jim licked his fingers. Noting that he didn't have a napkin, he licked his lips.

  He felt like a million bucks. The bland meat had gone down like heaven on a bone.

  Elise laughed softly. “You were beyond hunger?”

  Jim nodded then stood. “I thought I'd never eat again.”

  “Aye,” Philip said, throwing the bones from his third pheasant in the fire.

  Even Calia, so slim she appeared vaguely malnourished, had eaten an entire bird and rested against Philip with eyes half-hooded with fatigue and satiation.

  “We do not have to continue to the Clan of Massachusetts, Calia,” Philip suddenly said, holding her chin and directing her gaze to his.

  Was it Jim's imagination, or did the new guys tense up?

  Nice. Here we go again.

  “Calia accompanies us, warrior,” Vaughn said in his distinct and quiet voice.

  Philip looked ready to jerk his head off.

  “Philip.” Calia turned inside the circle of his arms, and he squeezed her against him. “I do not wish to leave you—or to reside in a clan I do not know.”

  Philip's pose relaxed, and Vaughn frowned.