Bebe (24 page)

Jumping down into the snow, he turned to gather her into his arms. She reeked of infection and sweat; he didn’t care. He shoved past the gathered men, barely glancing at his uncle as he raced into the newer, bigger, more spacious northern station house.

“Get out of the way,” he barked at the man who ran ahead of him to open the door. “If you want to help, start a damn fire. This place is freezing!”

“Calm yourself,” Bach said, entering behind him. He gestured for Pani, a small and silent shadow at his heel, to come inside and then for the remainder of his men to get out. He closed the door behind them and saw to the fire himself. “My boy, no good ever came from being free with your irritation.”

But Tral wasn’t paying attention. He stood in the living room, Bebe like a limp doll in his arms, turning in a circle as his eyes swept the unpacked crates and boxes that had been his life at the smaller station house. There were less than twenty of them. He swallowed past a slight twinge of regret for not having had a...a bigger life somehow. He all but choked on an even larger twinge for not having had one that was more organized.

“I need my medical kit,” he said helplessly.

“I’ll find it,” Bach assured him.

“I need towels too.”

Dimly, he was aware of Pani hurrying down the hall to the bathroom, but the problem of what to do with Bebe was more pressing than trying to keep track of his uncle’s pet. Unless she opened the door to let a wild pack of human males roam through the living room, there wasn’t a whole lot she could do to make this situation worse.

The rustic wooden dining table was the closest thing to a sterile surgical surface that they had, and so, it would simply have to do. Tral lay Bebe down as gently as he could, pressing the back of his hand to her forehead and then her cheek, before turning his attention to striping her primitive fur clothes away. “Her fever is very high.”

“You knew it would be.” With a fire now crackling in the fireplace and medical kit in hand, Bach came to help him cut through the gut-thong cords binding her in animal hide. “Put enough antidote into her and she should come around fairly—”

He stopped when Tral got her first boot off and quickly unwound the crude bandages. They both drew back, mirror expressions of pity and disgust on their faces as the devastating extent of her wounds were exposed.

“You said she got into
vouka
,” Bach chided. “You never said it was this bad.”

“They’ve festered.” The sight and smell of it fouled Tral’s mood even more. He grabbed a chair, and pulled it up to the head of the table. “Help me roll her over.”

Still fully under the effects of the tranquilizer—the perfectly unnecessary, in his mind, tranquilizer—her limbs flopped lifelessly as he and Bach carefully positioned her from her back to her stomach, shifting her towards the end of the table so that her feet hung out into space and directly above his lap once he sat down, and damn near the perfect height for him to work on.

“Oh!” Pani had come back down the short hallway, a short stack of towels in her arms. She stopped well back from the table, out of everyone’s way, aghast at both the sight and smell.

“She needs a bath,” Bach commented, laying the medical kit on the table next to his nephew.

That was the understatement of the year.

“I’ll add that to the list,” Tral grumbled. He’d put it somewhere between saving her life and spanking the hell out of her for causing all this trouble in the first place. Shaking his head, he opened the kit and quickly unpacked what he needed. Antiseptic... antibiotic... bandages... surgical blade...He picked that up first, his hand shaking slightly as he looked from it to the bottoms of her feet. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“I could summon a doctor.”

“Please, God yes, do it.”

“She could easily be dead before he has time to reach us. Are you willing to risk waiting?”

Tral shot Bach an irritated glare, but he already knew he didn’t. Worse, his uncle seemed to know it too.

“Start cutting,” Bach gently directed.

His hands betrayed his tumultuous emotions. They shook even harder as Tral fit the surgical knife into his palm, fidgeting with it as he contemplated having to make that first, deliberate incision. He steeled himself and lay his left hand on the back of her shin. He stroked her as if seeking to comfort her, as if she weren’t drugged into completely unconsciousness, and then selected the worst of the infection pockets to attack first.

Sharp as it was, the knife sliced into her as easily as cutting pudding. Except that his ‘pudding’ groaned, a sickly breathy sound that startled him so badly he almost dropped the knife.

“Steady, boy,” Bach told him. He poured liquid antibiotic over the wound, helping to bathe and wash out the infection, leaving Tral free to cut again.

Bebe mewed, her toes twitching, and Tral lost his nerve. “I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can.”

“She’s waking up!”

“Yes, she is. So, unless you want her to suffer even more, you’d best hurry up before the tranquilizer wears off completely.”

Pani moved down the table, setting the towels aside to cup Bebe’s shoulders, stroking her hair and shoulders even as she helped to hold her down.

Tral’s palms were sweating. He rubbed her leg again, then clamped down on the back of her heel to hold her steady while he quickly and hurriedly lanced the deep pockets of blood and pus. He felt her muscles bunching under his restraining hand. Her toes flexed and curled and her mews turned high-pitched, warbling into a waking wail. The sound cut into him every bit as painfully as the knife. “Get me another tranquilizer.”

“There aren’t any more.” Bach moved down the table to help Pani keep Bebe still. He caught her wrists and pinned them behind her back in one experienced hand while his other pressed down between her small shoulders. “I only authorized three extra darts. She took one, and the big male took the other two before he finally went down. Hurry, you’re almost done. She might feel this now, but finish fast enough and she won’t remember any of it by tomorrow.”

“You hope,” Tral muttered, tiny beads of sweat breaking out all across his brow.

He honestly hoped so, too.

* * * * *

“Don’t move,” the woman over her said, softly petting Bebe’s dirty hair while iron brands lanced through the balls of her feet. “It’s almost done.”

Her whole body jumped as the heat and pain flared, hotter and hotter, scalding her flesh until every nerve in her body screamed with it. Bebe screamed too, wailing her hurt into the towel that Pani tried to wipe her sweat-dampened face with. Her belly writhed against the hard wood of the table beneath her. She tried to get up, but there were hands weighting her down, binding her wrists, gripping her legs just above her knees, and the woman above her all but cupped her face, trying to prevent her from looking around.

“Shh, shh,” she said, and wiped at Bebe’s face again. “One more.”

Bebe cringed in anticipation of it, but the knife cut fire right into her heel and there was no stopping the warbling high-pitched scream that tore out of her. The cry turned to wracking sobs, and they almost drowned out the deep baritone voice of a man behind her, saying, “You’re finished, boy. Well done.”

“I fucking hate you right now,” a strangled voice replied. It almost sounded like Tral.

“I know,” the baritone replied, cool and expressionless.

Bebe tried to roll over, but the hands did not immediately release her. Not until she felt that familiar wipe of cold antiseptic kissing the upper swell of her hip, followed by the sting of an injection. Then her wrists and back were released, and the pressing weight abandoned her.

“They’re done now,” the woman whispered, wiping her face with the cloth again. “You’ll be all right. They’re going to make you better.”

Shivering in pain, Bebe lay as the hands left her, so weak and tired that she didn’t want to move. Already the burning ache in her feet was abating, diminishing into something bearable, though it didn’t entirely fade away.

“You’re very lucky they found you,” the woman said, dipping the cloth into a shallow basin of cool water to wipe the sweat from her face again. “Everyone was worried.”

Taking her breaths in shallow pants, Bebe rolled her eyes to look up at her. “Who...?”

“I’m a friend.” She was older than Bebe, her freckled, age-lined face melting into a sympathetic smile when their gazes met. “Are you thirsty?” When Bebe managed a slight nod, she vanished out of sight, returning seconds later with a small glass of amber liquid. “Drink some of this. Little sips, or you’ll get sick. I haven’t personally ever been stuck by a
vouka
bush, but I once met a man who had. It was a miserable experience, but he said this stuff helped.”

Just raising her head off the table took monumental strength of will. The woman helped and held her head while she drank.

“My name’s Pani,” she said, as Bebe wilted back against the hard slats of wood.

“Bebe,” she whispered.

“I know.” Pani put the glass back on the table, then she sat back down beside her. One hand coming to rest on her shoulder, she stroked gentle comfort into Bebe’s back. As Bebe began to drowse, her smile widened and then, in a voice that sounded as though she were struggling not to laugh, Pani said, “I can’t believe you opened the door. Don’t get me wrong, a part of me completely understands. There was a time when I once would have done the exact same thing, but wow. If I had, and were I you, my feet wouldn’t be the only things in pain right now.”

Hearing movement beyond and behind her, Bebe started to lift her head, but Pani stopped her, pressing a hand to the side of her ear and pushing her cheek gently back down against the table.

“Trust me,” the older woman said. “The more feeble and wounded he thinks you are, the better off you are. Right now he’s so concerned about you, he’s all but beside himself with worry. And when they get like that, honey, over the years I've learned that it can be a really short slip from wanting to hold and protect you, to shaking you by your shoulders and tanning the bejesus out of your backside.”

Bebe struggled over Pani’s strange words, but only for a moment. Where was she? That was the more important question. Where, and with whom?

“Tral?” Had she really heard his voice? The house didn’t look at all familiar. It was bigger, with an arching doorway between where she lay on the table and what she could see of a real kitchen. There was part of a window beyond that arching doorway, just above the sink. It was still dark outside, still night, and the walls in the strange house around her danced with flickering orange shapes cast by an out-of-sight fire. Wherever she was, this house was definitely larger than Tral’s tiny two-room station. Cleaner, too. Much cleaner.

She panicked, knowing then that voice she'd heard couldn't possibly have been Tral's. She tried to sit up again. To roll over, afraid of who she might find behind her. Despite the house and the table, and what little she recalled after being stung by that shiny drug-filled barb, was she still with the humans, as Pani’s very presence suggested, or had she been rescued by strangers? A whole new family of big people with a whole new set of tumultuous change and rules to affect her?

“Uh oh,” Pani said. She tsked, not quite losing her smile as she pulled her hands from Bebe’s shoulders and stepped out of the way. “Now you’ve done it.”

As Bebe struggled to get her arms under her and heave herself over onto her other side, out of nowhere a claw-tipped finger suddenly came tapping down on top of her head. That not-so-gentle drumming was followed by a very cross-sounding, “You’ve been the cause of enough trouble for one day. Go to sleep.”

It was Tral! He had come for her, and she was home again. Well, maybe not his home, but anyplace that wasn’t a root-strewn cave seemed positively heavenly.

Bebe let the weariness of her body overcome her. She drooped obediently prone upon the table again. “Where...?” she whispered, her heavy eyelids already trying to drift closed.

“Where are we?” Pani guessed, once Tral had walked away again. She folded her arms upon the table, lowering herself to Bebe’s eye-level as she rested her cheek upon her hands, and whispered, “My man moved you to another house to make it harder for the humans to find you. But for a while, we’ll be safe here. And don’t worry about your human friends. My man had them moved back into their cave and we built the fire up to keep back the scavengers. They’ll be all right until they wake up.” Lifting her head, Pani stared at something beyond Bebe’s peripheral for a few minutes, then stroked Bebe’s hair and laid her cheek down upon her remaining hand. “My man’s gone to run you a bath.” Her freckled nose wrinkled, making the laugh-lines around her eyes deepen as she added, “No offense, sweetheart. You’re a little ripe.”

Sorry, Bebe’s mouth moved to say, but the heavy weariness pulling at her eyelids was too alluring, and she fell asleep again before she could.

* * * * *

Soft gasps in the near darkness roused Bebe from her sleep. She blinked blearily, utterly disoriented. She had no idea where she was. All she knew was, as she lay pillowed in softness and surrounded by warm blankets, for the first time in days the air was not tainted by the stink of her own unwashed self.

Another soft gasp refocused Bebe’s attention. What time was it? Still night, she thought, but only just. There was an amber tint of firelight splashing the far wall and rolling over the hills of blanket surrounding her face and shoulders. But there was also a paler glow of daylight slowly suffusing the remainder of the room, and that included Pani, sitting up on the bed opposite of Bebe’s, her back arched, her head thrown back, rocking in slow undulating motions upon the hips of the vaguely masculine shape below her. A large hand separated itself from the shadow-rumpled bedding, reaching up to cup her bare breast. Pani’s soft breath caught, and she bent forward, dipping her face into the darkness to share clandestine kisses with her unseen lover.

Tral?

Bebe started to rise but stopped as, with that jolt of surprise, came the added awareness that she was not in her bed alone. The sensation of slow, heavy breaths brushed across her nape. An even heavier arm lay across the small of her back, holding her gently pinned to the bed.