Bebe (11 page)

First thing upon waking, he reached out to touch her and found her little body as hot as a furnace. And not just that, but her eyes, ears and nose were streaked by smeared trickles of blood. Sometime during the night, they had started bleeding. So had her belly button. There were even pockets of black-red blood trapped in pools under her finger and toenails. She rasped with every breath, dragging them into her lungs in short, shallow pants. And when she opened her eyes, the whites of her sclera had been completely replaced. Glazed and unfocused, she gazed up at him from behind striking blue pupils that were floating in a sea of deep, crimson red.

Tral jerked back so suddenly he fell out of bed. He looked at his hands, his bare chest, the beige sleeping trousers he wore, but the only blood he could find on him was around the hems of his pants’ legs.

He tore the blankets back to find her feet. She whined, a feeble sound. Both sweating and shivering, she tried to reclaim them, instigating a weak tug of war to which he quickly capitulated. Working his way to her feet from the bottom of the bed instead, he stopped when he saw how blood-soaked her bandages were. He scraped his fingers through his black hair, horrified and backing away from a bed that looked as if he’d been slaughtering small animals in his sleep.

When she moaned, curling onto her side and trying to pull her feet back up under the covers, he made himself move closer. Catching her ankles, he unwrapped the bandages. While the cuts remained red and raw, he was relieved to see they didn’t look horribly infected. They didn’t smell foul either, which might have signified a worse problem hidden deep under her skin. But there was still the fever to contend with and it was growing worse by the hour.

Fetching the thermometer and lube, it was another tug of war to peel the blankets back and roll her onto her stomach. He persevered and won that minor battle, prying her buttocks apart to dab on a bit of lubricant. She let out a snuffling cry when he inserted the tip of the thermometer into her, but it died away and she fell asleep even before it took an accurate reading. 103.8.

The antitoxin was having no effect on the
vouka
poison. A careful search of her wounds revealed two pricks at least that looked already to be festering. Covering her with the blankets, Tral sat down beside her. It was nearly a full minute of aimless staring and scrambling thoughts before he finally embraced the realization that there truly was nothing he could do for her. Nothing. Not a thing. She was dying, and from what he knew of
vouka
infections and human immune systems, he knew this death wasn’t going to be quick or gentle.

He should end it now in a way that would be.

Frowning, Tral stared at his hands. He didn’t want to do this, but there was really no point in putting it off while she grew steadily worse, and worse, and worse. There were already beads of sweat popping out upon her brow. By noon, she’d likely be delirious if she wasn’t already. If he lived closer to town, this would be a whole different scenario. In the hands of a capable vet, the effects of the poison might be effectively countered. But not without that medical care, not in the heart of the Preserve.

He briefly considered calling his uncle, but just as quickly he shied from that idea. He could already hear that cool, disapproving tone asking, “I’m sorry, did you think this was a human taxi service?”

She moaned again. Reaching over her shoulder, Tral gently rubbed her back to comfort her and then got up and went outside. He found his axe in the adjacent woodshed and grimly located his cutting block under the snow. He cleared off the surface of that old and weathered stump, scarred by six years of chopping wood for the fireplace. Laying the axe a short distance from it, he went back into the station to get his little female stray.

He couldn’t believe he was doing this. He’d hunted once or twice, but he’d never killed anything that he didn’t later intend to eat and this was not sitting well with him. Not at all.

Bending, he bundled her in the bloody blanket, making her as comfortable as possible for that short trip out into the cold. When he lifted her in his arms, she didn’t open her eyes, but she did turn into his embrace, laying her head and one hand upon his chest, her small fingers fisting into the excess cloth.

He walked out to the stump, feeling like a monster. It was beginning to snow again, a light sprinkling of flakes that settled upon her face, dusting her blonde eyelashes as he lay her on her back in the snow with her head arranged upon the well-worn surface of the cutting block. As thick as the snow was, it helped to boost her high enough for him to lay her head and shoulders across the wood. She made only the softest, muffled whimper of protest when he adjusted the blanket around her, tugging it down past her shoulders to expose the pale stretch of her neck. Gathering her hair in his hands, he gently stretched it across the block above her head, a golden flow of soft curls that stood out brightly against the wood and snow.

Without looking at her face, he turned to fetch his axe. His footsteps crunching in the snow, he walked all the way around her to find the best angle—he wanted to do this right the first time—before sidling up to her right side. Raising one foot, he stepped on the length of her hair, just in case she tried to move at the very last second.

His hands were starting to shake as he adjusted his grip on the handle and took careful aim, lowering the sharp blade until it hovered only a few inches above her vulnerable throat.

Yeah, he was a monster all right.

He hefted the axe, trying to gauge how much strength he’d need, hoping the axe was sharp enough to do the job without—dear God—bouncing off the bone halfway through and leaving her alive, aware, probably screaming...

“Steady,” he told himself, banishing that gory image before it unnerved him completely. “One quick cut and it’s done.”

He could do this. Just one powerful stroke. He could do one stroke.

Tral breathed in deeply, adjusting his hands on the handle again and bracing himself to take a life. A dying animal’s life, yes. An animal who was suffering in the process and who would suffer all the more once her flesh started rotting out from under her. But it was still a life and he was the one about to prematurely end it.

“Don’t think about it,” he told himself, a hard edge of annoyance creeping into his voice. “Just swing.”

One quick chop. His uncle could have done it. Of course, his uncle also had the money and the means (although it was anyone’s guess regarding inclination) to take her to a decent medical facility.

“Chop her damn head off already!” he snapped, growing steadily angrier at his own reluctant nature, right up until she opened her eyes and looked up at him.

She could probably see the axe; his hands wavered even more.

“Mm.” She tried weakly once to lift her head, but since he was standing on her hair, she only managed a few inches before letting her head drop back onto the block. One small hand drifted out of the blanket to touch his boot and she tried to crane her head to look at that now too.

“Fuck,” he said as she blinked up at him again, her eyebrows drawing close together, as if trying to puzzle out what he was doing. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Chop, damn it all!

He ripped the axe back, his muscles bunching as he threw all his strength into that backwards swing, but that was as far as he got. He couldn’t make himself bring the heavy blade forward. He couldn’t make himself aim for the bare expanse of her throat and just end it. For either of them.

“Fuck!” he bellowed, flinging the axe as hard as he could. It hit a tree and ricocheted into the woods.

Bending over, Tral braced his shaking hands upon his thighs, eyes squeezed tightly shut as he silently berated himself for being such a weak-willed, sentimental idiot. Small wonder he was stationed out here in the middle of nowhere. By himself. Thank heaven he wasn’t responsible for handling the important decisions; he couldn’t even cut the head off one half-dead human!

Something touched his leg.

Opening his eyes, he looked down. His little female stray was weakly caressing his pants leg, petting him. She only had enough strength to manage two or three shaky strokes, before it became too much and she retreated back into her blanket. Her eyes drifted closed and, with her head pillowed on the chopping block, she went back to sleep.

Here he was, striving to end her life, and all she could do was offer him comfort with what little strength she had left when he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Leaving the axe wherever it lay, Tral bent to gather her into his arms once more and carried her back inside. He lay her on the bed, covered her with a second blanket and retreated to his work table to mix up another high dose of antitoxin.

The muscles spasms began just before noon, followed by the vomiting which lasted all night long. For the next two days, Tral alternated between changing his bed, running continuous loads of laundry through the machine, and trying to get her to take fluids. He made pot after pot of tea, and held her sitting up against him while he tried to get it into her. She would drink, throw up, and drink again, moaning and crying, sweating and blazing with fever. When it hit 104.7, he stopped keeping track. He also carried her outside and rolled her in the snow. She cried, kicking and shaking the whole time, but he packed the snow in around her anyway and held her down, staring into those surreal blue and crimson eyes and guiltily wishing he’d had the strength to kill her.

His eyes burned he was so tired, but every chance he got, he made another pot of tea and tried to get her to take it.

On the third day, she stopped throwing up and she stopped bleeding. Her face was both flushed and sweat-soaked, and yet so pale that she seemed almost waxen and gray. He made her a thin vegetable soup, straining the vegetables out of it to give her the broth. That she kept it down became a minor cause for celebration. He gave her another bath, washing away the cloying smell of sickness and changed the bed (hopefully) one last time.

On day four, her fever finally broke. He made her eggs for breakfast—a body couldn’t get more bland than eggs—and had to spoon feed her because by then she was so weak that she couldn’t feed herself. She did, however, keep her red-rimmed eyes open, watching him from her first bite until he gave her the last and she kept it all down.

“I can’t believe you’re still alive,” he told her wearily.

She blinked at him, and never said a word. Not that he expected her to. And when her eyes eventually drifted closed again, Tral celebrated that too by lying down on the bed behind her, pulling her small body into the cradle of his own, and falling asleep along with her. It was the first time in days that he felt he could without fear that she would either throw up in the night or quietly die while he slumbered on unaware. That deserved to be celebrated too. Tral did all of his with his eyes closed, and by God, he slept the hell out of that bed.

CHAPTER SIX

Home is where the heart is.

A cold rush of air washed over the top of him. Tral opened his eyes slowly, blinked twice at the rumpled stretch of empty bed beside him, but was having trouble getting his burning, tired eyes to focus. How long had he been asleep, he wondered. It was daylight and the fire was still flickering, albeit barely more than smoldering coals on a bed of ash. Tired at he was, it wasn’t until he heard the soft bump of the breeze blowing the open door into the wall that he suddenly realized where all this cold air was coming from.

He snapped over onto his back, struggling to sit up and staring in open-mouthed shock at that stretch of snowy yard beyond his porch. “Oh shit!”

Tangled in blankets, he struggled to sit up and fell out of bed entirely. Clambering to his feet, he tripped on the blankets and very nearly cracked his head against the threshold before he caught himself against the door.

Where was the wild pack? That was his first thought. That he hadn’t woke up with a spear stuck in him probably meant they hadn’t been the ones to breech his meager defenses and enter the station house. But there were footprints in the snow. One small set of human-sized prints that stepped off the front porch and staggered unevenly off into the North, disappearing into the woods. It was snowing—again or still?—but only just, and the tracks although still visible had been made long enough ago that the new falling precipitation was starting to fill them in by a scant quarter of an inch.

Where was his human?

Tral jerked around, eyes wide and wildly searching his small house. He ran the few steps that separated him from the bathroom, but it was empty.

“Oh shit!” he cried again, louder this time. He raked his fingers through his hair. The fever must have returned. She was still sick, possibly delirious. And in her delirium, she had wandered right out into the snowy woods. Where she had found the strength, he had no idea, but Tral grabbed his coat and ransacked the shelves for a working light. The day was overcast and gray, but from the look of the sky, the sun seemed to be setting. He estimated he had an hour, maybe two before it grew dark. Before the temperature dropped again. Before the snow picked up and buried her footprints beyond what he could track, and before the dreadfall wolves picked up on her scent. Or even, heaven forbid, she stumbled across the hunting wild pack. Any number of dangers tumbled through his mind, each of them worse than the last, but that nagging certainty in the pit of his gut never changed. He had to find her and he had to find her fast, or he knew he never would.

* * * * *

Staggering every few steps, on shaky legs Bebe made herself keep going.

It was cold and growing dark. Dressed in a shirt she had stolen from the Big Man, she hugged her arms, the sleeves hanging off the ends of her hands by a good foot, and kept walking. She had to find the fence; she had to wait by the road in case Sir came back for her. She couldn’t not be there if Sir did come back, because then he really would leave her and she’d never go home again!