With a grunt, Clay staggered forward. His eyes bulged as he tried to fling the lizard off his hand. Its jaws were locked! His mind worked like a steel trap, now. Aly’s screams drifted into his narrowed focus as he whirled around on his heel. Clenching his teeth, Clay took the hand the lizard clung to, and with all his might, smashed it into the side of the rock face.
Aly shrieked as the Gila monster’s jaws popped open, as it was killed on impact. Clay staggered and fell to his knees, holding his mangled left hand. She raced to his side. His flesh was already beginning to lose color. His eyes were large and dark. Sobbing his name, she knelt over him.
“The sling!” Cantrell rasped. “Get that sling on my upper arm. Make it into a tourniquet!”
Her hands shaking, Aly did as he ordered. The poison injected into Clay’s hand would be moving rapidly up his arm. She took off the sling, wrapped it quickly around his arm, tightening it into position with a stick.
“Oh, God, Clay!” she cried. “What—”
“The venom kit,” he whispered harshly, trying to force his hand to bleed. If he could make the four puncture holes bleed, some of the poison would drip out instead of being absorbed into his bloodstream. “Get it! Hurry!” The first wave of dizziness struck him. He could die! Clay tried to steady his ragged breathing. He had to stave off his panic. Aly’s sobs heightened his fear. She fumbled through the pack, her hands shaking so badly that she dropped the kit once she’d located it.
“The shot,” he told her, feeling his arm going numb because of the tourniquet on his limb. “Give me the shot as fast as you can, or I’m dead—”
Aly tore open the venom kit. Inside was an antivenin shot. She jammed the needle portion into the tube containing the solution. “Where?” she cried.
Clay’s breathing was becoming labored. He had to force each breath he took. God, but the poison was working fast! Sweat ran down into his eyes. He was so cold, and yet his entire body was wringing wet with sweat. “Anywhere!” he croaked. “My leg…”
She shoved the needle through the fabric of his flight suit and it sank deep into his left thigh. Pushing the plunger, Aly looked up at him. Clay was becoming semiconscious. Jerking the needle out, Aly tried to cushion his fall as he pitched forward. “Oh, God, Clay. Fight to stay awake! Fight!”
Aly’s voice was like an echo in his head. Clay felt his hand slipping from his injured one. His mouth fell open and saliva drooled out the corner of it. He’d barely been aware of the needle entering his leg, or of Aly’s hands settling on his shoulders to turn him onto his back.
“No!” Aly begged hoarsely, “Clay, don’t die on me! Don’t you dare! Fight back! You hear me? Fight!” She shook him hard.
Terror ate at Aly as she watched Clay struggle to stay conscious. His flesh was pasty, almost gray. His breath was coming in halting gasps, and he labored for every one he took. Aly released his shoulders, turning her attention to his injured hand. She retrieved the razor blade from the kit, slicing into two of the puncture wounds. There was a suction device, but her hands were shaking too badly to use it. Placing her lips over the now bleeding punctures, she sucked hard, spitting out the contents gathered, again and again. The poison would have pooled at the bottom of each hole the Gila monster had made. In moments, Aly had pulled as much out as possible from all four wounds.
She shakily got to her feet, looking around. The rider on the burro was much closer. Anguished, she knelt at Clay’s side. His lashes fluttered, his breathing becoming shallow and fast.
“Clay? Clay, listen to me!” She gripped his shoulder, placing her mouth next to his ear. “I’m going for help, you hear me? I’ve got to get help! I’ll be back. I promise I will!” She looked down at him. His flesh was beaded with sweat. “I’ll be back—I won’t desert you. I promise. Oh, God, Clay, hang on! I love you! You can’t die on me!”
Sobbing, Aly staggered to her feet. She turned on her heel, and began running across the hard pebbled desert toward the man on the burro in the distance. Her throat burned with tears, her vision blurred. I love you, Clay! Oh, God, please don’t take him from me! We’ve just found each other!
It was dark when Clay regained consciousness. His vision was blurred, and he was seeing double. The flicker of candles provided the only light in the darkened place. The first face he saw was that of a rotund Indian woman dressed in a blue cotton dress, with feathers and beads around her neck. She looked ageless, her black eyes glinting liked polished obsidian as she studied him in the thick silence.
“Clay?”
Aly! Her voice was terribly off-key, and he realized she was crying. Unable to move his head because he was simply too weak, he shifted his eyes to the right. Taking each breath was like inhaling fire into his lungs. It hurt to try to pull the air in or to force it out of his body. Aly’s face was contoured with anxiety, her eyes large and filled with fear. Her cheeks were wet and glistening beneath the light of the candle.
“No, don’t talk,” she whispered, leaning forward, touching his damp brow with a cool cloth. “We’re here at the Huichol village. Señora Madalena is their doctor, and she’s going to help you.”
He was so thirsty. Clay felt Aly’s hand cradling his, holding on to it as if he would slip away. His throat was constricted, and he could no longer swallow. Blackness began to stalk him again, and he closed his eyes, focusing on Aly’s cool hand, on her tremulous voice.
“I love you, Clay. You’ve got to fight back, you hear me? Please, don’t leave me. I love you….”
Madalena nodded. “He returns to the Between. The Land of the Shadows beckons him,” she grunted out in poor Spanish.
Aly looked over at her. Madalena’s husband, José, was the one who had brought Clay to their village on the back of the burro. That was an hour ago. It had seemed like an eternity to Aly as she’d struggled to hold Clay on the animal’s back. José had led the beast to the hamlet, bringing them to his wife. “Wh-what can be done to save his life? Surely, you must know. You live out in this godforsaken desert with those Gila monsters.”
“That is true, señorita. My ally told me of your coming. He warned me that a man would be bitten.” Her eyes narrowed in her dark brown face, leathery from years in the brutal sun. “That is why I sent my husband.” She sighed heavily. “The bite of a Gila monster is fatal.”
Fighting her anguish, Aly continued to grip Clay’s listless hand. She didn’t understand how Madalena could possibly have known of their arrival. Right now, it didn’t matter. Madalena had met them at the door of her adobe home, a pallet already prepared for Clay. “No! Please, can’t you do something else for him?” Already, Madalena had cleaned out Clay’s gruesome-looking wound with a special medicine from one of the many jars on the shelves behind them, and bandaged it. The old woman had told Aly that she was the shaman for her people. Right now, help from anyone was better than nothing in Aly’s mind and heart. Already, José was riding as quickly as possible toward a Mexican army outpost two and a half days from the village. Aly had given him written instructions to carry with him. The army would call the coast guard, and a way would be cleared for the rescue not only of Clay and Aly, but also of Dan Ballard. But any outside help would be too late to save Clay’s life, and Aly knew it.
“You must fight to return his shadow to us.” Madalena spoke slowly, wagging her finger at Aly.
“What do you mean?”
“I will perform a ceremony to call back his shadow from the Land of Death. You must be part of this, for your love of him is strong and unblemished.” Madalena frowned, her gravelly voice dropping to a bare rumble. “Already he prepares to depart. His skin grows gray. Next, it will turn blue, and then he will be gone.”
Aly hung her head, gripping Clay’s hand. “He can’t leave!” Tears welled in her eyes. “We’ve gone through so much with each other, Madalena! Through so much hell. A-and when we finally discovered we did care for each other, I—I got frightened.”
“Humph,” Madalena snorted, slowly rising to her thickly cal
lused bare feet. Although the home was sparsely furnished and had a dirt floor, it was scrupulously clean and neat. She waddled ponderously to the rear wall of the small one-room adobe house, searching through the many fetishes that lay on shelves and hung from hooks. “Your love for him must outweigh your fear, señorita.” She chose a gourd rattle covered with the feathers of a great horned owl, goddess of the night. The handle was beaded in a red and black design. Turning, she came back, her eyes slits. “Be prepared to see and hear and feel many unnerving things, señorita. The Shadow Song I will sing will call the spirit of the Gila monster, and I will ask his forgiveness, so that he will remove the poison from your man’s body. And then you must close your eyes and see Señor Cantrell’s shadow. When he comes to you, embrace him. No matter how much he struggles or resists you, hold on to him.” She leaned down, staring deeply into Aly’s large, frightened eyes. “You will want to run and scream. You must stay here, at his side, while I sing. Your courage and love must outweigh the Darkness I call.”
Aly gave a jerky nod. “I don’t understand what you’re going to do, but if it’ll help, I’ll do anything you say, señora. Please, hurry, will you?” Under other circumstances, Aly would have pooh-poohed the ancient Indian ritual. But now, she welcomed any help that might improve Clay’s chances of surviving. There was a wisdom and knowing in Madalena’s eyes that outstripped present-day medical knowledge, and Aly’s hope strengthened.
Madalena grunted, a satisfied glint coming to her eyes. Settling down slowly on her knees, she faced Aly and Clay. She raised the rattle, muttering in her own language, moving it clockwise over Clay four times. With a flick of her wrist, she snapped the gourd once, the stones rattling violently.
Aly jerked. It felt as if a sonic boom had smashed against her, and yet the shaman hadn’t touched her with the gourd. Her eyes widened enormously as the shaman began a low, vibrating chant that rolled through the house like a reverberating drum. Aly’s hands tightened around Clay’s. The room felt as if it were tipping, losing its square shape. She blinked as the sonorous voice of Madalena rose and fell like waves crashing and beating against an unseen shore. Darkness and shadows began to dance around them. Aly blinked rapidly, thinking she was seeing things. She had heard of medicine men and women, of their powerful abilities, but she’d never been confronted with them before.
She tasted her fear as the song grew in volume and power. Each time Madalena made a circle around Clay’s body and shook the gourd, Aly winced. It felt as if an invisible hand were slapping her hard each time, making her mind spin and tilt a little more out of control. Clinging to Clay’s hand, wanting him to live more than anything else in her world, Aly accepted the distorted reality swirling around her that deepened and expanded every second, as the song thundered through the room.
Clay felt as if someone were pulling him back from the abyss he floated in. He felt light, a feather wafting on air. It no longer hurt to breathe or to struggle to get air into his lungs. The darkness gradually turned to light, and he saw Aly walking toward him, a serious expression on her face. He smiled, waving to her. He loved her so damn much that it made his heart ache with joy.
Why was Aly looking so solemn? He laughed and bounced like a deer toward her. Her walk was cadenced, sure. “Look!” he shouted, “I’m floating! Isn’t this great?” And he circled around her as she came to a halt.
“Clay, you’ve got to come back with me.”
He floated lightly to the ground, facing her. When he realized she wasn’t smiling or feeling his happiness, he sobered. “But it’s great here, Aly. I mean, I’m like a bird, flying free.”
“You can’t stay, Clay. I love you. I want you to come back with me.”
The anguish was in her eyes and in her husky voice. Aly reached out, opening her arms to him. “Come to me, Clay. Come home with me. I need you, even if you don’t need me. Please?”
“I need you, too, honey,” he said, and he walked into her arms, sliding them around her small, strong shoulders. He kissed her hair. “God, I love you so much, Aly.”
With a sob, she tightened her arms around him. “I know you do. Now, come on, let’s go back….”
Aly sat at Clay’s side, her head dropping to her chest. The movement awoke her. Madalena had left hours earlier after singing the Shadow Song. Aly roused herself, fatigue slowing each of her movements. Taking a cloth, she squeezed it out in the red pottery bowl at her side, and then wiped Clay’s perspiring body as he lay naked and unmoving beneath a blanket.
Had a miracle occurred? Aly wasn’t sure. At the height of Madalena’s song, she felt totally disoriented, pulled out of her body. Aly remembered meeting Clay and their conversation. He’d come back willingly with her. When she’d awakened later, having no idea how much time had passed, she was lying on the floor next to him. Madalena had placed a pillow beneath her head and left them alone.
Tiredly, Aly sponged Clay’s clean limbs, memories flooding her. Awakening after the song, Aly had scrambled to her knees, going immediately to Clay’s side, wondering if he was alive or dead. To her surprise and joy, he had more color to his skin, and he was breathing a great deal more easily. Aly had removed his smelly flight suit and made him comfortable on the pallet. For the past hour or so, she had awakened off and on to bathe his sweaty body.
“You’ve got to live,” she whispered, placing her hand on his shoulder. His flesh was warm again to her touch, not clammy as before. “I don’t care if it was the antivenin shot taking hold or Madalena’s song, Clay, you’ve got to pull through this. I love you….”
It was the middle of the next day when Clay became conscious. Incredibly weak, he felt as if it hurt even to barely lift his lashes. Light was filtering in from an unknown source behind him. Where was he?
“Clay?” Aly leaned over him, her voice hushed as she met and held his dark, hooded eyes. Anxiously, she touched his bearded cheek. “It’s all right. We’re here at the Indian village. Help’s on the way. I—I think you’re going to be okay.”
He blinked, assimilating her trembling voice. She was no longer in her flight uniform. Instead, she was wearing a white knee-length shift belted at the waist with a multicolored sash. Her hair was clean and recently washed, too, framing her lovely but strained features. Nothing made sense. His mind refused to work.
“…where…” he croaked.
Slowly, Aly covered the events of the past day and a half. Clay was having difficulty absorbing her explanations. Slipping her arm beneath his shoulders, she gently maneuvered him upward, his head resting against her shoulder and breast. Madalena had prepared a special juice for him to drink, to help wash the poison from his body. Aly placed the cup against his cracked, dry lips.
“Drink,” she urged him softly.
He was dying for water, slurping the drink noisily, some of the contents spilling from the corners of his mouth.
She smiled and pressed a kiss to his hair. “Madalena said you’d be thirsty when you woke up. More?” Aly removed the cup and blotted his mouth and chin with a cloth. Her heart swelled with so much love that she thought it might burst.
“Y-yeah….”
Dipping the cup back into the bowl, she allowed Clay to drink as much as he wanted. Four cups later, he was sated. Aly laid him back down. He looked more alert, taking in his surroundings. His gaze moved back to her.
“The dress…” Clay began with an effort. “You look pretty….”
Sliding her hand down his arm, she laced her fingers into his. “And you’re a sight for sore eyes. Madalena is washing out my flight suit. Her daughter, Nina, loaned me something to wear in the meantime.”
Exhaustion stalked him. Clay clung to Aly’s husky voice and the coolness of her hand in his hot, sweaty one. Closing his eyes, he whispered hoarsely, “I love you….”
Aly knelt there, hearing the words and watching Clay sink back into a deep, healing slumber. The words she’d thought would never be spoken by him hung gently suspended in the house. Clay was barely conscious wh
en he’d said them, perhaps still a bit delirious. But it no longer mattered to Aly. Nearly losing him had torn away any last barriers erected during their nine-month war. Their future was uncertain, but fear of losing Clay outweighed her fear of never having had a chance to tell him that she loved him. What he would do with that information, she didn’t know.
Sighing, Aly released his hand and lay down next to him, her arm across his chest to comfort him, even in sleep. She knew how much Clay loved to have her next to him. Tiredness overtook Aly, and in minutes, she was sound asleep, her head nestled next to his shoulder.
Chapter Eleven
Aly’s clean scent entered Clay’s nostrils. He stirred, inhaling her fragrance deep into his lungs. This time he was able to breathe easily. Lifting his lashes without much effort, he saw a sputtering candle sitting on a shelf opposite where he lay. Shadowy light danced and wavered throughout the quiet room. The wind could be heard, but the house was warm and protected from the desert elements.
His senses were sluggish and disconnected as he worked hard to remember where he was. Clay’s attention focused on the warmth against his right side. Barely turning his head, he felt a slight smile pull at the corners of his mouth.
“Aly?” His voice was rough from disuse. She was lying beside him, her arm across his chest.
At first just stirring, Aly snapped awake when she heard Clay call her a second time. Getting to her knees, she tried to shake off her sleepiness. Automatically her hand went to his shoulder. His flesh was warm, not fevered as before.
Clay watched her from beneath half-closed eyes. She was wearing a thin cotton gown that fell to her knees. He could see her body outlined by the candlelight through the shift. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” he croaked, clearing his throat.
“It’s all right,” Aly reassured him in a hushed tone, reaching for the cup. “Are you thirsty?”
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