The Clinic

by Cate Culpepper

  Brenna numbly closed Jess’s shirt. Last night’s damage, added to the punishment she’d already taken, made her wonder how Jess was conscious at all.

  Brenna looked up into her eyes again, and again. That was their mutual undoing. Jess’s stern gaze softened, and Brenna released a long breath and sank against her. She slid her arms around Jess’s waist and rested her forehead carefully against the hard swell of her shoulder.

  “Do you realize we’ve had the worst fucking courtship in history?” Brenna asked finally.

  Jess arched an eyebrow and Kyla chuckled. “Bren…adanin. I’m afraid we don’t have time for—”

  “It’s going to be our last chance, for a while.” Brenna sniffed and lifted her head. “Camryn and Shann will kick it off pretty soon. Kyla, both of you, just be ready.”

  “And just what are they kicking?” Jess asked hollowly. “Two unarmed Amazons against three men, five rifles, and one mad-banshee scientist?”

  “Shann says to remember Dyan’s last training.” Brenna lifted her brows, hoping this made sense. “She told me to remind you that Dyan’s last order was still in stock.”

  “In stock?” Kyla looked puzzled. “You mean in effect?”

  “No, in stock,” Jess said, suddenly looking healthier than she had moments before. “Not Dyan’s last order, the last ordnance in stock. The last supplies she ordered.”

  Brenna nodded.

  “Of what, already?” Kyla pleaded.

  “It was a training in explosives, Ky, remember?” Jess explained. “Shann brought dyna—”

  That’s when the other end of the camp blew up.

  Chapter Nine

  The sudden blast shattered the dawn stillness, and even Brenna, who’d been braced for it, started hard and gripped Jess’s waist with icy fingers. It was only two sticks, thrown from strategic positions above Caster’s camp, but in the sleeping silence their sharp concussion carried as much shock value as an A-bomb.

  The orderly assigned to sentry duty came awake with a startled yell, firing twice into the air before he was fully on his feet. That’s all Brenna saw before she focused on freeing Jess and Kyla.

  She had, in fact, sequestered something in the most convenient hiding place available, her cleavage. Not a bomb, but a small utility knife. Jess’s eyes widened a little when Brenna retrieved it, but she seemed to appreciate the blade’s efficiency in cutting through the ropes holding her erect.

  Brenna helped Kyla stand, and the two of them were able to support Jess, but they were a swaying, clutching group for the first disorienting moments of the fight.

  There was shouting now, male voices as well as Amazon war cries, and the dirt thrown by the TNT thickened the mountain air, transforming the enclosed camp into a hazy battlefield. The dynamite itself had not injured anyone, and Brenna guessed Shann and Camryn had placed it carefully with that intent. Amazons tried not to kill unless necessary, the guiding premise of Tristaine’s warrior women, according to Shann.

  Caster’s orderlies put up a respectable fight once roused. Any resolve to preserve the lives of potential study subjects quickly dissolved. Tent flaps opened, and dark muzzles emerged to spit barks of thunder and snaps of red fire through the haze.

  Jess had one arm around Brenna’s neck and the other around Kyla’s. The strength was returning to her legs, and walking was possible now. They were headed back toward the trees Brenna had emerged from only minutes before, but Jess hesitated, craning her head back to assess the fight behind them. She stopped abruptly and lifted her arms from the shoulders of the smaller women.

  “Go on,” Jess said.

  “Hey!” Brenna caught Jess’s hand. “Shann said to wait for her at the top of—”

  “Good idea,” Jess said, still trying to see her other sisters through the dust and confusion of running bodies, shouts, and rifle fire. She pulled her hand from Brenna’s grip. “See you there.”

  “Jesstin, you are not—”

  But Jess was gone, moving stiffly but gaining speed as she disappeared into the hanging cloud of dust enveloping the camp.

  “Brenna?” Kyla touched Brenna’s shoulder. “You might need to understand Jesstin a little better. Amazons can’t just—”

  “Kyla,” Brenna interrupted, “maybe you, and Jess, and every other Amazon in punching distance needs to start understanding me a little better!”

  And she was gone too, yelling curses at Jess. Kyla threw a look to the heavens and followed her sisters into battle.

  Without the unlamented Stuart, Caster’s forces consisted of Dugan, two other men, and five rifles. Brenna coughed and squinted in time to catch a fleeting impression of the status of the clash.

  Shann was stronger than her slenderness implied, but she struggled with an orderly easily twice her size. She used his bulk against him to good effect, but she was no warrior, and the rifle clenched between the combatants could still be won by either.

  Brenna’s stomach gave a nasty clench when she saw Jess tackle the burly man who grappled with Shann, but her attention was riveted by Caster standing ten yards to her right, swinging up a rifle at some target behind her and taking careful aim.

  Brenna started for the scientist before the rifle discharged, knowing only that the bullet was intended for an Amazon. She heard a cry of pain—Kyla, Camryn, she wasn’t sure who’d been hit—and then she leaped on Caster, hard enough to knock them both breathless, and carried her to the ground. The rifle flew from Caster’s hands as she fell, and she gave an unladylike grunt as her body smacked the earth.

  Brenna rolled with her, filling with a bone-deep fury she should have expected, with the Clinic incarnate flailing beneath her. Then she chanced a look toward the far tents and froze in dismay.

  Camryn lay curled on her side in the grass, clutching her lower leg, her face locked in a grimace of pain. Kyla crouched over her, her own features pale as chalk, scanning the arena for any new threat. The second orderly lay sprawled unconscious on the grass nearby. One of the young Amazons must have dropped him before Cam was felled by Caster’s bullet. That still left Dugan.

  Caster flung a handful of dirt and grass into Brenna’s face like a veteran of such cowardly ploys, and Brenna instinctively ground her fists into her eyes to clear them. Caster had just enough time to club Brenna soundly in the stomach with her fists, and then Dugan was on them, wrenching Brenna up off the gasping Caster.

  “Hey! Hey, Brenna!” Dugan roared. “Don’t you fight me now, pretty lady.” He pinned Brenna’s arms to her sides and pressed her against his chest, dancing to avoid her vicious kicks.

  Vicious, but not random. Brenna knew human anatomy well, and she’d been kickboxing long enough to aim for truly vulnerable areas. Brenna didn’t connect squarely. Her gouging knee only sideswept Dugan’s crotch, but it was enough to make him stagger and bellow with surprise.

  But not enough to release her. Instead, Dugan dropped where he stood, pulling Brenna down with him, until he straddled her supine body in the grass, one knee on either side of her. His face was distorted with both rage and pain, and he slapped her, hard. Brenna groped for the exquisitely tender soft spots between the jaw and the ear, but Dugan trapped her wrists in one hand and flattened himself over her.

  “I told you to try to be friendlier,” he breathed in Brenna’s ear as she struggled beneath him. “Parading down the hall by me a dozen times a day.”

  Jesstin’s boot rocketed into Dugan’s ribs, knocking him off Brenna and onto his side. She lifted herself on her hands and skittered backwards, clawing the grass to put distance between them.

  Brenna stared up at Jess, appalled. She had finally reached the end of her formidable strength. The powerful kick had apparently drained the last of Jess’s energy, and she crumpled when Dugan grabbed her legs.

  Dugan pulled Jess down beneath him and fastened his hairy hands around her throat. He hissed at her and his spittle hit her cheek, but Jess couldn’t even turn her head to avoid it. She had little hope of breaking his pinkie finger
s, and no hope whatever of dislodging his weight. She saw Dugan’s broad shoulders above her, and the sunlight outlining them began to darken to red in her vision as his large hands choked off her breathing.

  Vaguely, Jess heard Brenna cry out somewhere close by, and Kyla scream Shann’s name. Then nothing for a few seconds, except pressure and pain and the desperate hunger for air. Jess’s senses had started to fade when she heard the muted crack from Shann’s rifle.

  The big man stiffened over Jess, his hands jerking away from her throat. Gasping, Jess made a huge effort and managed to twist out from under Dugan before he fell, his skull shattered. She came to rest on her back, staring up at the morning sky brightening through the smoke and dust, and then both sound and light faded.

  *

  When her vision cleared, Jess was lying with her head pillowed in Brenna’s soft lap. Her head pounded sickly, only the most insistent of the aches awaiting her return to awareness, but fear filled her more urgently than pain.

  “Where’s Shann?” Jess began to sit up, but Brenna gently pressed her shoulders flat.

  “Shann’s all right, Jess.” Brenna’s teeth were chattering as if she were freezing. “Kyla is too. So am I. Camryn…Cam’s been shot, but it’s superficial.”

  A muffled exclamation escaped Jess and she tried to sit up again, but only until the pounding in her head hit a huge bass note.

  “Jesstin, lie still!” Brenna pushed her back down, too easily, her own eyes filling with tears she was too distracted to notice. “It’s over. We’re okay! Shann’s got them covered. Don’t sit up. Just look there.”

  Brenna supported Jess’s head so she could focus on the odd tableau at the other end of the camp. Shann, looking dusty and disheveled, but reasonably composed, was holding one of the rifles on the only orderly still functional enough to walk. He had just finished dumping the last of three male bodies into the Clinic jeep—one unconscious, two corpses—and now, under Shann’s silent gaze, he was escorting Caster to the waiting vehicle.

  Caster was limping, her clothing was torn, and she didn’t spare Brenna or Jess a glance. She paused as she reached Shann, and the two women regarded each other for a long moment.

  “It’s a pity we have no historians present to record this auspicious moment, Shann of Tristaine.” Caster’s rasping words reached them faintly. “The meeting of two great adversaries—the leader of a doomed band of renegade women and the scientist who will one day preside over her dissection.”

  “We might meet again, Caster.” They had to strain to hear Shann’s low voice. “But the women of Tristaine will thrive for centuries after we’re both dust.”

  “Poetic, your highness, but delusional.” Caster’s bitter gaze moved past the silent Amazon and focused on Jess and Brenna. “You’ll see me again too, ladies,” she called. “Brenna, I’ve found a lovely slave camp for you in one of the outer boroughs. You’ll help me mount Jesstin’s head over my mantle, dear, before I have you branded and shipped.”

  Then Caster lifted herself into the front of the jeep, her clothing tattered, a bleeding scratch on her throat, and her hair a snarled cap around her head, but her poise fully restored. She folded her hands serenely in her lap while the orderly keyed the ignition.

  Shann kept the rifle trained on the hulking black transport as it lumbered out of the camp and down a dry riverbed toward the base of the foothills. She waited until the sound of its powerful engine faded, then rested the empty rifle against a stump. “Brenna? Do you need me?”

  “We’re all right, Shann,” Brenna called. Their voices sounded unnaturally loud in the renewed stillness of the mountain air. “Jess is stable for now. See about Camryn.”

  Shann nodded and went to Cam, who sat with her back against a tree as Kyla bound her bleeding leg.

  Jess shifted in Brenna’s arms and lifted herself on one elbow. “Hey!” Jess barked at Camryn, almost accusingly.

  “She’ll be okay, Jesstin,” Kyla called over her shoulder, never taking her eyes from her work. Shann knelt beside her and checked her younger sister for signs of shock, taking her pulse, feeling her hands.

  “I got shot,” Camryn informed Jess. She sounded surprised, and she was ashen, but she didn’t seem particularly dismayed.

  “You should have ducked,” Jess snapped.

  “Jess, she had a rifle,” Camryn protested.

  “You should have ducked,” Shann and Jess said together, and Kyla snorted laughter and hugged Shann, though she herself was crying, now that they were safe.

  Jess rolled back into Brenna’s lap with a muffled groan. “Dyan’s response to every injury in the ranks,” she explained to Brenna.

  “Thank you. I wondered.” Brenna smiled. Her pulse was slowing to a bearable cadence again, and she cradled Jess’s face in her hands. “Jesstin, when you stand up, how many parts of you are going to drop off?”

  “I hope my head does.” Jess shivered once, hard.

  “Shann, can you bring us a—” Brenna stopped speaking as she looked up to see Shann kneeling beside them, already snapping out an army blanket. “Thanks,” she said instead, and helped Shann tuck it around Jess’s shaking body.

  “How good are you at extracting bullets?” Shann asked Brenna quietly.

  “I’ve done it on corpses.” Brenna swallowed. “But I know we don’t have the right instruments. All we have is a first aid kit. I don’t suppose there’s any way we could get Cam down to the City?” Her voice trailed off. She didn’t need either of the Amazons to answer that. “Shann, please tell me you packed antibiotics as well as dynamite.”

  “Some.” Shann nodded. “I did bring medical supplies, and I’ve seen some herbs we can use nearby.”

  “Herbs,” Brenna repeated politely.

  Shann smiled down at Jess, who was gazing at her blearily. “Hello, Jesstin.” She leaned over and rested her lips against Jess’s forehead for a long moment, then straightened. “I’ll wait until Brenna gets you back on your feet, adanin, and then I intend to knock you senseless myself.”

  “Hey, I did everything right.” Jess was puzzled. The warmth of the blanket and their hands was reaching her now, and she was able to relax a bit. “We had to move earlier than we thought, but we got everyone out.” Her expressive brows furrowed. “You mean the route? The path we took through the foothills? Shann, that was the shortest, easiest way. It was dumb luck that Caster—”

  “I mean drop-kicking a two hundred-pound man hours after a bad beating,” Shann interrupted calmly. “The latest in a series of them, from the looks of you. How is she, Brenna?”

  “Not good.” Brenna brushed Jess’s hair back. She was measuring her warmth, but she also wanted Jess to feel her touch. “She’s got a nasty fever that comes and goes, and it’s rising again. I haven’t had a chance to examine her thoroughly, but I don’t think anything’s broken. There’s no sign of internal bleeding, but she’s exhausted, just worn out.”

  Jess thought of refuting this clinical assessment, but she was too tired to care. Brenna’s lap was too soft and the blanket too warm. She heard Shann’s worried voice faintly, far above her.

  “Is she unconscious?”

  “Asleep.” Brenna’s smile was evident in her tone. “Listen.”

  Jess was snoring softly, secure in the certainty that her sisters were safe.

  *

  They had the rifles, and they had the dry riverbank. Both advantages allowed them to take over Caster’s abandoned camp temporarily, rather than drag their injured sisters farther into the hills. A view of the riverbed below would give them a little warning if Clinic forces returned, and the rifles would provide a quick defense if needed.

  Brenna helped Jess as far as an old stump near the tents, where they were setting up a makeshift infirmary. Jess rested her tender back carefully against the gnarled wood and waited until Camryn settled on the grass in front of her.

  “You’re all right with this?” Jess asked Camryn quietly. “I trust Brenna’s skill, Cam, but this is the first tim
e you’ve taken a strike in battle. You know you can ask for Shann.”

  “‘Sokay.” Camryn’s face was ashen as Kyla helped her ease back into Jess’s arms. “If that blondie can dig thorns out of Kyla without a lot of screaming, this’ll be a cinch.”

  Jess rested her chin in Camryn’s hair and returned Kyla’s wan smile. She pressed her younger sister’s freckled shoulders once in thanks.

  “Even if Cam didn’t need to be restrained for this, she’d want Jess to brace her.” Shann helped Brenna carry their assembled supplies to the stump. “Camryn and Jesstin are the only two warriors among us. If an Amazon is injured in battle, she often chooses a warrior to see her through the first healing, so she can absorb her strength.”

  “What strength?” Kyla asked flatly. “Jess is worse off than Cam, if you’re going by total of bruises.” She crouched beside Jess and touched the back of her neck, trying to get her to finish the last of Shann’s herbal tea. Cam had already downed two cups, and her eyes were a bit glassy.

  “Dang, why do you guys all have such cold hands,” Jess complained, swallowing the tea with a grimace.

  “I’m nervous.” Kyla showed Jess her trembling fingers. “Excuse me, I’ve never seen a bullet get cut out of my lover’s leg before. Oops.” She bit her lip.

  They all looked at Shann, who continued laying out medical supplies, unruffled.

  “You’re such a wimp, Ky.” Leaning back against Jess, trying to be tough and more than a little high, Camryn snickered. “My hands aren’t cold. I bet Shann’s hands aren’t cold either, and I know Jess’s aren’t—”

  Cam squeaked as Shann brushed her thin wrist with icy fingers.

  “I’m nervous too.” Shann smiled, which transformed her briefly from a handsome woman into a beautiful one. “I’ve seen this done, far too many times, but it’s always hard to witness a sister’s suffering.” She nodded at Brenna, who was kneeling beside her. “Luckily, the one adanin among us who must be cool is steady as a rock. Are we ready, Blades?”