Shadowed Ground (13 page)

She slid them slowly under him, locking her arms around his chest. She pulled backwards, and he pushed with his feet. Somehow, she got him standing, and he leaned heavily on her, the two of them moving slowly to the room.

She fumbled with the doorknob, and they were in. She dragged him across the threshold and secured the door behind them. They stood there together, swaying. Across the room, a mirrored vanity reflected their image back at them. Bloodstained and white, Eliot leaned on her, his left arm holding onto her as if his life depended on it. His right arm hung limply at his side. His clothes were torn and bloodstained; his eyes blazed in an otherwise pallid face. She gripped him around the waist as if he might blow away in a strong wind, her own eyes wild, frightened. “Well,” he said, swaying against her. He let out a short, bitter sound that might have been a laugh. “Don’t we look like hell.”

She helped him to the bed. She crawled on it behind him and pulled him up. His head rested in her lap. She brushed his hair back from his forehead. His eyes, his amazing eyes, were open and looking up at her. “We look alive,” she told him softly, touching his cheekbones, his jaw line, his lips. “We’re alive,” she repeated.

He grimaced. “Are you hurt?” He tried to shift away from her, tried to roll on his side, but she forced him back into her lap. It was a testament to his injuries that she was able to.

“Nothing worth mentioning,” she told him. She forced his head straight, forced him so that he had no other place to look but at her. “You are in very bad shape, though, and you will have to help me fix you because I don’t know how, and you told me not to take you to the hospital.” Her words came out in a rush, her hands fluttering around him like nervous birds.

“Since when do you listen to me?”

“Since now. Since you almost died.”

“Hey,” he said weakly. She felt his fingers brushing her face now, wiping tears from her cheek, brushing her wet eyelashes. “None of that, now. You did great.” She bit her lip and nodded. He looked around the room, then back at her. “Only one bed?” he asked. She nodded.

“It was all they had. Besides, I’m supposed to be traveling alone, so why would I need two?” He nodded.

“There’s a med kit in the back of the car. In the green duffel.” He shifted in her lap and made an awful face. “You’re about to get a crash course in field medicine.”

She wiped her wet face with the back of one hand. “Can I do it? Can we fix you?” she whispered, unable to keep the begging tone out of her voice.

He touched her face again. “Of course we can, Chloe. We can do anything, if we just stick together.” He made a wry face. “It would help if you learned to listen to me. Especially since I don’t seem to be Guardian enough to make any of my commands stick.”

“Oh, they stick,” she assured him, moving his head from her lap as if it were the most fragile porcelain. “I just thought of a loophole.” She propped his head on a pile of thin, cheap pillows.

“Loopholes,” he sighed. “If it were only that easy.” She bolted for the car and the med kit as his face, sharp with pain, relaxed into sleep again.

Chapter Fourteen: Field Medicine

Her hands shook like leaves, holding the scissors. She was new at this. She jerked when she moved the needle sometimes. She slipped when she should hold steady, and each time she did, she bit her lip in anger at herself and shook even more. He tried to force his grimaces of pain into blankness, but it wasn’t always possible.

“Chloe,” he breathed out slowly. “It’s ok. Take a deep breath. Let’s stop for a minute.”

“But you’re hurt, and there’s no one else.” She was an intriguing mixture of stubborn and vulnerable, hovering over him with a pair of scissors.

“Ssshh,” he tried, again, to soothe her. “You tied the bandage tightly enough across my leg to hold it for a little while. I’m not going to bleed to death in the next five minutes. Take a little break. Come here.” Closing his eyes, he patted the space beside him. She hesitated, torn. “Come on,” he coaxed, eyes still closed. Touching seemed to calm them both.

She trapped her lower lip between her teeth before scooting up to fold herself into his uninjured side. She curled into him, resting one hand lightly on his stomach. For a few moments they just lay there, taking strength from the fact that they were both warm and living. Her fingers began to move almost of their own accord, tracing circles and other patterns across his bare stomach. She seemed incapable of stillness. He knew it was a mix of fear and guilt, and something else he couldn’t quite make out. He could feel it radiating off her in waves. Her fingers moved, and he struggled to stay still under her touch.

“If it weren’t for the pain meds you gave me, I’d be writhing right now,” he told her sleepily. “I bet you didn’t know I was ticklish. It’s my Achilles’ Heel.”

“Don’t you dare fall asleep, Eliot Gray,” she ordered sharply, stopping her fingers, lifting her head far enough up to fix him with a sharp glare. “I can’t do this by myself.”

“Ssshh,” he said, pulling her back against his side with his free arm. If he was hurt, she was traumatized. “Mm just medicated,” he tried to reassure her. He knotted his fingers in her hair. “It’s ok, Chloe. They can’t get us here.”

He hoped it wasn’t a lie.

He felt her nod into his side, then felt a suspicious wetness followed by shaking shoulders. Damn, he thought. She had this incredible talent of crying silently. Sometimes he didn’t even notice until after it had been going on for a while. He sighed, moving his hand down to rub the back of her neck.

She moved against his body. “I have to sew up your leg.” She looked up at him, her dark eyes brilliant in their wetness. “We’ve put it off way too long.”

He exhaled sharply. This is going to suck, he thought, examining her sharply. “You’re right,” he agreed. “But it will go easier if you’re relaxed.” He grimaced. “It’s the worst one.”

“I know,” she said, sitting up. Her shirt was bloodstained and her hair was a tangled mess. Her eyes, red from weeping, met his own. “You’ll have to help me.”

“Prop me up,” he said through gritted teeth.

From his nest of pillows and rolled up blankets, he watched as she cut through his jeans. The cut there was the deepest. She stared at the mess that was his thigh, horrified. “Oh my god,” she whispered. “What the hell are we going to do?” She ripped her eyes away from his thigh and stared at him, horrified. “We have to call a doctor, Eliot. We just have to.”

He steadied his voice, made it deeper. “No. Listen. It missed any major arteries. It looks worse than it is.” He reached up and captured her hand. “You can do this. You have to do this. It’s easy.”

She nodded doubtfully, but he watched as she mastered her fear and nausea and turned her focus, laser-like, onto the task at hand. She listened intently as he told her how to clean the wound, how to spray it, where to move the needle. In his head, he sent a part of himself, the part that was screaming with pain, into lockdown, into the cold white space where his deepest rage lived. He added the pain to that place, knowing it would be fuel, strength, some other time when he needed it. The pain meds helped, as did the topical anesthetics. She was lousy with a needle. Sweat beaded her forehead as she worked. He silently thanked his uncle, yet again, for teaching him basic field medicine and stocking a kit with everything from prescription painkillers and antibiotics to surgical supplies.

The last stitch finished, she collapsed across the foot of the bed. “I swear to god I would rather die than do that again,” she said fervently.

“That’s the worst of it,” he managed to say, his teeth gritted tightly together. “I can manage the binding.”

“Good, because I’m going to go throw up now.”

He looked at her in concern. “Really?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I am going to strip off these clothes and hopefully burn them later.” He chuckled. He leaned back against the nest of pillows. Shirtless, wearing jeans with only one leg and a mess of bandages, he shivered in the air-conditioned room. She sat up in an instant. “You’re not feverish, are you?” she demanded, on him instantly. She ran both hands around his face, resting on his forehead and the back of his neck. She frowned.

“No, I don’t think so. Just cold.” She nodded and pulled a blanket up over him. “We’re going to have to destroy these sheets, too, I think,” he murmured. The pain medicine was really kicking now. “I’m just going to rest. You shower. Food, soon.”

She made a face. “I don’t think I can ever eat again.”

He chuckled. “Speak for yourself.” He let the soft darkness claim him.

When he woke, she was sitting cross-legged on the foot of the bed, desultorily clicking through channels in a new t-shirt and the socks he’d given her. “Thank god,” she breathed, dropping the remote. She crawled over to his side, kneeling over him. She’d washed and dried her long dark hair. It hung, a sleek curtain, between him and half the room. He found himself reaching out a hand to touch it, but then let it drop. He realized he could still feel the pain meds.

“I think your socks look great,” he said before he could stop himself.

“You’re all drugged up,” she accused, narrowing her eyes.

“Maybe,” he admitted. “But it’s still true.” She shook her head sadly.

“I ordered pizza while you were sleeping,” she said, hopping off the bed to grab a paper plate from the dresser. “Hope you like supreme. I figured you could pick off anything… Eliot?” She looked at the pizza, then at herself. “What?”

It was all he could do to keep from yelling. “You ordered pizza.”

“You said you were hungry,” she countered, the familiar vertical crease appearing between her eyes. “I had a flyer, from the office. It was all I knew to do.” Her eyes got narrower and angrier. “What did you want me to do? Leave you here?”

He struggled to prop himself against the pillows. “I slept through a stranger entering this room?” he snapped.

She just shook her head in disgust and deposited the plate on his stomach. “Thank you, Chloe, for obtaining food,” she said, doing a very bad imitation of his voice.

He groaned and slid back against the pillows. “That can’t happen again.”

“Well, that’s too bad, because you’re obviously grumpy and in pain. You need more medicine as soon as you eat.” She pulled a cheap boxy chair up to the bed and plopped down into it. “Eat,” she growled, pulling her knees to her chest. She glared as he chewed pizza.

He smiled, nodding at her feet. “Apology socks.”

She blushed. “Yeah, about that. Thanks. I was kind of a jerk.”

He shrugged, then winced in pain, dropping his pizza. He’d forgotten about the other cut, the one across his sword arm. It had been easier to deal with, requiring only bandaging. But it was still painful.

“Oh, hell,” she muttered, jumping up. She rooted through a bag of medicine that came in the med kit. She held two bottles out to him, her hands shaking, her eyes again filled with pain and fear. “Take these. Antibiotics and pain stuff.”

He slipped his hand around her wrist. “Chloe,” he said. “Ssshh. I’m ok. Everything’s fine.” Although she nodded, he could tell she didn’t believe him. He dropped the paper plate on the floor and scooted over a little. “Seriously. Lay down. You’re exhausted, and highly freaked. I can tell. You should take one or two of those yourself.”

“I’m fine,” she all but snapped, perching gingerly on the edge of the bed.

“You were in a fight too, you know,” he reminded her gently. She hid her face behind her curtain of glossy dark hair.

“Not like you,” she whispered.

“But still.” He pulled her down, back into the curve of his side. “I’m glad you’re ok. You might not have been, you know. And I’m your Guardian. It’s my job to be injured, instead of you.”

“I don’t like that rule,” she insisted, burrowing into the curve of his side. She slipped her hand across his stomach. “I don’t like a lot of the rules,” she murmured.

“Take these,” he insisted, shaking two mild pain killers out of the bottle. “They’ll relax you.”

“Mm already relaxed,” she told him. “You relax me.”

They lay like that, her dark head curled against him, for a long time. Drowsy, he fought sleep. The weight of her, her shape, felt perfectly right against his side. Her knees nudged against his leg. “Are you asleep?” he whispered, after what seemed like a forever of her warm weight against him.

“No,” she whispered back. “Are you?” He laughed at her, then. She joined him. Then she sat up, propping herself on one elbow. She looked at him, her eyes raking him from head to toe. It was all he could do not to squirm under her gaze. She inched the blanket down, baring his chest. A dim warning bell tried to penetrate his comfortable fog.

“What are you doing?” he asked. Her fingers found his scars, new and old, and traced them.

“Looking at you,” she said, matter-of-factly. “You have so many scars.” She found a very old one beneath his collarbone. “How did you get this one?”

“Fell out a tree. I was six, maybe?”

“It must have been a bad fall,” she said, her fingers moving on to other scars, tracing their contours lightly, teasingly.

“It was,” he affirmed. He squirmed a bit, under her fingers. “In Annwyn, in the forest. I was trying to get an apple for a particularly troublesome little girl.”

Her eyes, unexpectedly, filled with tears. Her fingers did not stop their light, soothing movements. “In Annwyn,” she echoed. “A troublesome little girl?”

“The worst,” he agreed, obviously squirming now.

She grinned. “You didn’t tell me just how ticklish you are.”

“Tremendously. But don’t tell. It’s most un-Guardian of me.”

“Your secret’s safe with me.” She stopped her fingers and moved them to his face, her own serious now. “I thought I’d lost you.” He hardly dared speak. Her fingers brushed his lips again. “It made me think about… things. Pretty hard.”

“What things?” he asked softly.

“Nothing,” she whispered, her fingers tracing his lips. “Nothing at all.” Her fingers moved to his eyelids, brushing them gently closed.

He felt her hair all around him, smelled its scent of cheap motel shampoo. He felt her warm breath inches from his face.