Brightly (Flicker #2) (42 page)

Lee could hear Henry cursing under his breath as the bear whirled after her. She turned toward it, eyeing it as she backed away. It was close enough that she could smell it: a blend of blood and earth.

She gathered magic in her shaking hands, hot enough that it prickled uncomfortably against her skin. She lobbed one handful of bright green energy at the bear, then the other. Both struck the beast’s face, but it shrugged them off like poorly-packed snowballs.

Henry appeared behind the bear, his mouth pressed into a hard line.

“Henry, don’t—” she heard Filo say.

Then she felt another faint crackle of Henry’s magic in the air, this one even weaker than the first. This time, when the spell failed, Henry’s eyes rolled back and he collapsed.

The bear swiped at Lee with one paw, catching her across the ribs and flinging her down the slope. She tumbled to the bottom of the bank, bumping painfully over the rocks, landing face first in the cold, ruby water. With difficulty, she pushed herself up, coughing and spitting. Her pack felt too light.

The first time Lee tried to get up, she stumbled and fell back into the river. The second time, she crawled out of the shallow water and onto the muddy bank on her hands and knees. She could hear the bear snarling all the while.

When she dragged herself back up the slope and into the clearing, the bear had reared up again; Filo and Nasser stood in its shadow, watching it maul the air. Filo was bleeding from a cut along the side of his face. She didn’t know if he’d been snagged by a claw or if he’d fallen and hit his face against a rock. Henry lay where he’d fallen.

“Filo,” Nasser said, his voice tense and low. With one hand, he tried to push Filo behind him. His eyes never left the bear. “Back up.”

Shaking his head, Filo clenched and unclenched his fists, trying to draw his magic, but there was nothing left to draw. He was gray-faced from the effort, breathing hard, but no energy flared around his hands. He was spent.

The bear dropped back onto all fours with a solid
thump
. As it charged, Nasser spun, grabbed Filo by the shoulders and threw them both to the ground, pinning Filo beneath him. A heartbeat later, the bear was on them, opening long, red slashes across Nasser’s shoulder with one swipe of its claws.

Its next strike dragged Nasser off of Filo, flipping him onto his back. Immediately, Nasser scrambled sideways, trying to stay between Filo and the bear. He kicked at the beast when it lunged forward; his boot glanced off its nose. Snarling, the bear caught Nasser’s leg in its teeth and clamped its jaws shut. The bear wrenched his leg to the side, so hard that Lee heard a sickening
crack
.

Nasser screamed, and a kind of madness took Lee. The light of the glowing fruit trees spun and blurred around her as she fumbled for something, anything, she could use as a weapon.

As she closed her hand around a jagged rock—a poor weapon, but she hardly cared—Filo clambered to his feet and rushed the bear. He seized a fistful of the red flowers sprouting from the bear’s back and ripped them out. Pale roots, like a tangle of veins, came up with the flowers. Roaring like a thunderclap, the bear released Nasser’s leg and whirled toward Filo.

Across the clearing, Henry stirred and started to struggle to his feet. Filo backed up, circling away from Nasser, as Lee nearly tripped in her haste to reach him.

He tried to push himself upright, but she held him down. “Hold still,” she whispered, pressing her hands to his chest. “Let me see.”

His right pant leg was torn and bloodstained. She could see the blood darkening his shoulder, where claws had raked him. The low, pained noises crawling up his throat made her eyes water.

Behind her, she could hear the bear snapping its jaws and huffing as it pressed toward Filo. It didn’t see Henry, who approached it from behind on unsteady legs.

“
Get out of here!”
Henry bellowed. This time, she felt the magic rise around him, disjointedly, like it had been dragged out against its will. For a moment, his magic shimmered in the air, falling over the bear like a net—and the bear stopped advancing.

When the bear rounded on Henry, he closed the distance between them and swatted the bear’s bloodstained snout, hard, his eyes dark and wild, his chest heaving. The bear didn’t even growl at him. It just stared at him in silence.

“Go!” Henry shouted again, another pulse of magic thickening the air. Blood trickled from his nose, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Get out of here!”

He took a short, aggressive step toward the bear, and the beast recoiled. Slowly, it backed away from Henry, until it finally turned and lumbered off into the trees.

The moment it was gone, Henry let out a long breath. Then he swayed, stumbled and fell forward without even throwing his arms out to catch himself. Filo rushed to him. It took Henry a moment to sit up; his limbs moved clumsily, like he couldn’t quite control them. Filo had to haul Henry to his feet and half-carry him to where Lee knelt beside Nasser.

Carefully, she helped Nasser sit up. Every movement looked like it pained him.

“I felt it break,” he panted, his voice tight and trembling. “My leg. How bad?”

The moment she peeled back the ripped fabric, she wished she hadn’t. The flesh below his knee was a red mess, torn by the bear’s teeth. More than an inch of broken bone stuck out of his shin at a disturbing angle, terrible and white. Blood streamed from the wounds.

Struggling to keep her expression neutral, Lee said, “It’s an open fracture.”

Nasser leaned forward so he could see, and all the color drained from his face. “Oh, hell.”

“You’re bleeding all over the place,” Lee said. “We need to take care of that first. Filo, I think Davis packed some painkillers. They should be in your pack.”

“No,” Nasser said immediately. “Not yet.”

“I know you’re in pain,” she insisted. “Filo, will you just—”

“If I take anything,” he said tightly, “I’ll be completely out of it and you’ll have to drag me out of here. I can wait. Just deal with the bleeding first. Please.”

For a moment, she considered arguing with him. Then she grabbed Filo’s pack and rooted through it for different supplies. Somehow, she kept her hands from shaking as she gathered rolls of gauze, a bottle of some kind of antiseptic that Davis swore by, and a tin of Nasser’s healing salve, the same one he’d applied to her bruises not so long ago.

Filo went to work on Nasser’s shoulder. His shirt was already torn and bloodied, so Filo took the easiest approach and cut the shirt the rest of the way off. Four parallel slashes ran across his left shoulder blade, red and glistening.

“These aren’t too deep,” Filo said. “I’m just going to wipe them and wrap them, okay?”

Nasser nodded once, his eyes squeezed shut. When Filo started cleaning the slashes, Nasser’s whole body went rigid, but he didn’t make a sound.

Turning her attention to his leg, Lee mopped up as much of the blood as she could, then began to splash antiseptic onto the wounds and swab them with salve. She tried to be gentle, but she knew that the slightest pressure had to be excruciating. Nasser managed to keep his leg still, though he pounded his fist against the ground, over and over, until she was finished.

“I don’t know what to do with a break like this,” Lee confessed.

“You can’t set it,” Nasser said, through gritted teeth. He was leaning back slightly, braced against Filo, who had finished wrapping his shoulder. “That’ll do more harm than good. Just wrap it. Pad the bone with some gauze. That’s the best you can do.”

“Okay. Can you lift your leg a little?”

Nasser’s face went white, but he managed it. Lee wrapped his leg quickly. As she helped him pull on a shirt, she looked at Henry. “Your nose is bleeding.”

Frowning, Henry reached up and touched his face. When his fingers came away red and wet, he looked surprised. “Oh,” he said faintly. “That’s weird.”

“No, it’s not,” Filo snapped. “You forced that spell when you knew you didn’t have the energy for it. You’re lucky it’s just a nosebleed. If you pushed yourself much harder, you could’ve ruptured an organ. I know you’re not that stupid.”

Henry looked abashed, but all he said was, “We need to move. Other animals will want to get at that carcass, and we don’t want to be here when they come.”

“Nasser can’t walk on that leg,” Lee frowned.

“Not by myself,” Nasser said. “Filo, give me a hand.”

Even with Filo’s help, it took Nasser a minute to gather his good leg beneath him and stand. He was breathing hard. Sweat stood out on his face. He took one step, then shifted the wrong way, putting weight on his broken leg. Nasser bit down on a scream. His knees buckled; he would’ve collapsed if Filo hadn’t held him up.

Adjusting his grip on Nasser, Filo said, as gently as she’d ever heard him, “We just need to get clear of this carcass, and then we can give you something for the pain, okay?”

“Yeah,” Nasser said weakly. He looked like he was going to be sick.

“Henry,” Filo said, glancing up. “Can you—?”

Though he didn’t look all that great himself, Henry slipped one of his arms under Nasser’s. Lee would’ve taken his place, but Nasser was so much taller than her that he would’ve had to bend down quite a way just to lean against her.

Full night had fallen. All around, the forest gleamed. The temperature had dropped again, and the sky visible through the hole in the cavern roof was perfectly black. Clusters of strange blue stars burned in the darkness. Painstakingly, they made their way into the trees.

Chapter Twenty-Three:

“This isn’t going to work,” Filo whispered to Lee. “Once Henry and I are up to it, we need to reopen that passage and get back to Siren. Nasser can’t get far on that leg, and I don’t like the idea of us splitting up to look for those crystals.”

They had camped less than a hundred yards from the clearing. It was as far as Nasser could go. As soon as they stopped, Lee began work on a warding big enough for them all to fit inside, about ten feet across.

The spell was simple, yet sturdy: a single circle laid down with a knife, ringed with runes and sealed with a few drops of her blood and a pulse of her magic. This kind of circle was easy to raise and hard to crack. Anything inside could leave easily, but nothing could enter without permission—or breaking the ward. Even if something tried to break through the magical barrier while they slept, they’d have plenty of warning.

While Henry built a small fire to combat the dropping temperature, Filo found the painkillers Davis had packed—chalky, round, pale green tablets he’d made himself—and a plastic baggie filled with Davis’ indigo sleeping powder.

Nasser didn’t want to take the powder, but Lee convinced him to accept half the regular dose, enough that he would sleep for a few hours, but they could still rouse him if they needed to move in a hurry. Within minutes of chewing a tablet and drinking the powder Lee had mixed with some water, he fell asleep. He hadn’t stirred since.

Henry crawled into his own sleeping bag and followed suit not long after. Lee didn’t blame him. He looked exhausted. He certainly needed the rest.

She and Filo were awake. Lee was zipped up inside her sleeping bag, propped up on one elbow. Filo sat cross-legged on the ground next to her. He never seemed to mind the cold as much as she did.

“One or two of us could go ahead a little way and keep looking, if someone stayed with Nasser,” Lee suggested quietly. “I mean, for all we know, the crystals are half an hour’s walk from here. We can’t stop searching completely.”

“That’s not a bad idea, as long as nobody wanders off too far,” Filo said. “I just think we should stay together as much as possible until we can get back to Siren.”

“We’ll have to come back here, though,” Lee said. “Soon.”

He nodded. “As soon as we’re able. At least we’ll have a better idea of what to expect.”

“Do you think Henry will be mad?”

“Henry will understand.” Filo said it with finality. “He wants to find those crystals as much as anybody, but I think he wants to get back to Clementine, too. It’s eating at him.”

Lee shivered. “Do you think she’s all right?”

“I meant what I said to Henry. She’s crazy. I wouldn’t want to fight with her.”

“You know,” she mused, “I sort of thought you two would get along better, since you’re so alike.”

“What do you mean?”

“People say the same thing about you. I’ve heard the talk, when I run deliveries around town. ‘That Seer boy from Flicker is crazy. He knows things. Don’t get on his bad side—he was Neman and Morgan’s.’”

At that, Filo frowned. “They say that?”

“Yeah. I thought you knew.”

“I… I never heard that.”

“Oh. Well, I guess they wouldn’t talk about that kind of thing around you.” She paused, wishing she hadn’t said anything. “When do you think you’ll be strong enough for the spell?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know about Henry, but I’ll be two or three days. Even that might be cutting it a little close for me.”