“Lynn!” Dani yanked at her arm.
She dropped the bloody shard and fell back on her ass, trembling. Lynn fought for breath, for control. Focus! She tore her gaze away from the wolf’s ruined neck and stared up at Dani. It was only then that she fully registered Dani was there.
“Oh shit, shit, shit. Lynn? Are you okay?” Dani kept her hands in the air above Lynn’s arm as if she was afraid to touch her. “I couldn’t find my spear. The axe stuck. Shit, are you okay? Does it hurt?”
The barrage of high-pitched questions made Lynn’s head scream in agony. “Shhhh,” she rasped. “S-Shut up. Are there m-more?” Her entire body went cold all at once, and she could barely focus her thoughts.
Dani seemed reluctant to look away, but after a few seconds, she seemed to get a grip on the panic that had dominated her features. She stood, then hesitantly stepped away from Lynn and climbed onto a car, spear in hand.
The sight brought back bad memories, but Lynn couldn’t worry about Dani’s actions right now. With effort she drew her legs under her and stood. Pain flared in her hip and shoulder, but mostly in her arm. Blood seeped up through the bite marks in her coat. She looked down at the wolf again.
Skeever had torn away much of its throat and chewed noisily on its flesh. The dog looked a mess—blood everywhere, tufts of hair missing—and he trembled.
“It looks clear.” Dani jumped down. “Can you—do you want to move?”
Lynn nodded. She felt cold and numb. Shock. This was shock; it must be.
“Let me get the—” Dani yanked repeatedly at Lynn’s tomahawk until it came free.
Lynn watched her without really registering anything about the scene. Fatigue crept in as silently as the wolves had. She needed a place to collapse, to gather her wits and tend to her wounds. Her gaze slid down to Skeever. His left hip was covered in blood, and he drew the leg up whenever it lowered to the ground. She needed to inspect his wounds as well. A deeper sense of lethargy blanketed her. Now if only she could will her feet into motion.
“Do you…?” Dani hesitated. “Do you want me to carry your pack?”
Lynn lifted her head and stared. A bitter and somewhat manic laugh bubbled up inside of her so fiercely that Lynn thought she might explode if she didn’t let it out. “Y-You nearly got me killed, and now you want to carry my pack?” She didn’t recognize the high pitch to her voice.
Dani’s eyes widened before she looked away. “I just thought you might be hurting.” Her voice was no more than a whisper.
The laugh welled up again like a living entity, even harder to suppress this time. “Of course I’m hurting!” She felt ragged and raw inside and out. The chaotic tumble inside her skull intensified, and she struggled to keep her train of thought. As the wind picked up, the smell of death invaded her senses. Blood and piss and shit: that was what life was about out here in the Wilds. “You just don’t get what it’s like out here, do you?”
Dani opened her mouth to speak.
Lynn cut her off with a wave of her bloody hand. Now that the floodgates were open, Lynn couldn’t stop her raging emotions from bursting out. “It’s not like hunting!” She pointed to the mangled form of the nearest wolf, imposing even in death. “We’re not in control; they are.”
Dani followed the motion of her hand and stared at the cadaver. Her gaze lingered on the wolf when Lynn pressed on.
“It’s not like… like hunting an elephant; it’s not planned out. Out here, you don’t get to go home and pull a gate shut!” She was being loud—too loud—but she couldn’t quiet herself. A tremor started in her injured arm and spread to her entire body within seconds.
Dani folded her arms across her chest and scuffed the ground with the tip of her boot. “I saw only one, and I took it out.”
“Gah!” Lynn kicked a car. “You need to get it through your skull that life out in the Wilds isn’t just taking out one threat! Everything is a threat!” She crouched down and fumbled her knife out from under the car where it had slid. Her head buzzed as if it were filled with angry bees. She stood shakily and pointed the blade at Dani’s chest. “The second you drop your guard in the Wilds, you die.”
Dani stepped back. Her gaze slid down, eyes wide. Her spear came up with a jolt.
Lynn’s barely noticed. Her head pounded in tune with the throbbing pain in her mangled arm. “So if you’re going to keep charging wolves and putting me in harm’s way, I’d rather fight it out now, because I’m not going to let you kill me without a fight.”
Dani stared at the knife. Her eyes watered, and she blinked to clear them even as she looked away. She swallowed with difficulty, then swallowed again. “I think we should go.” Her voice cracked.
After a few more seconds of pressing the point, Lynn cradled her arm again. “Damn right we should.”
CHAPTER 6
DANI TURNED AWAY FROM THE road. “We’re here.” Relief was evident in her tone.
Lynn came to a halt and inspected the meandering cement path. It was cracked and overgrown, and led to a sprawling brick building almost entirely hidden from view by a curtain of trees and brush. The promised shelter appeared structurally sound save for the glass entrance doors, which had been shattered. Much of the copper lettering on the overhang was gone, but Lynn could piece together the word chapel.
When Dani had said she knew a place nearby that was usually secure, Lynn had agreed to wait before she inspected the damage to her arm. Since then, there had been no reprieve from her chilling thoughts about the damage the wolf’s teeth might have caused. They had traveled in complete silence. Her fingers had gone cold and stiff. Her coat sleeve was bloody. Several times she’d been on the verge of telling Dani to stop out in the open or to find a hole in the wall to use as temporary refuge, but every time the promise of safety had won out over her barely suppressed panic. She hurried after Dani.
Skeever shot ahead.
Dani only just managed to grab the dog by his collar before he could blunder in.
He sniffed busily within the bounds she allowed.
Lynn scanned Skeever’s raised tail, his scraping front paw, and his eagerly extended head. It was his hunting pose, not his attacking pose. He still favored his left leg, but it didn’t hinder him as he clambered over the bramble. “Well, he smells something in there.” She hoisted her arm higher up against her chest and gripped her shoulder with her numb fingers. Hopefully, she had remembered her father’s words correctly, and the arm elevated like this would stop the bleeding.
“Rats, probably.” Dani took a step forward to balance herself as Skeever pulled against her hold. She frowned. “But something bigger could have wandered in. The last time I was here, the doors were still intact.”
“Let him go. He’s good at sensing danger. If he’s gearing up to hunt rats, it’s probably clear.” From what Lynn could see of the chapel beyond, it wasn’t that big anyway; not much room for anything to hide.
Skeever sprang forward with a crisp bark.
Dani entered more slowly with her spear raised, but only a few seconds later she lifted the shaft so it rested against her shoulder. “All clear.”
Lynn swallowed. Now that they had arrived, a mixture of relief and dread filled her. She couldn’t help feeling as if she were walking toward her sentencing. Had the incisors ripped her skin from flesh and flesh from bone? How much blood had she lost? How much grime had gotten into the wounds? If they got infected, would she lose her arm—or her life? Her chest seemed to compress and prevented air from getting into her lungs. She attempted to distract herself by looking around.
The chapel consisted of a single carpeted room probably twenty by fifteen paces across. It was filled with rows of dust-caked and partially destroyed chairs. The high ceiling sloped up to a point at the center and was covered with slim wooden boards, many of them on the verge of falling down. A kaleidoscope of colors spread across the wall opposite the door. Their source was a stained-glass window that Lynn only glanced at in favor of further inspection of her unfamiliar surroundings.