Skeever growled and yipped.
Something small scurried past.
A faded American flag moved in the breeze as Skeever chased the rodent into the left-hand side of the room. The tattered cloth hung over half a dozen upturned coffins.
Coffins? In a church? Lynn frowned. “What is this place?”
“Cemetery.” Dani jiggled a chair leg jammed behind the handles of a set of secondary entrance doors on the right. She pushed then pulled at it until she seemed satisfied the door was properly barred. “This was the place where they held the uh… services, I guess.” She motioned to the coffins. “Busy day.”
Lynn snorted despite herself.
Dani smiled fleetingly. “I’ll stand guard so you can…” She nodded toward Lynn’s arm, then busied herself by standing sentry at the main entrance.
Despite Dani’s outward hardening, Lynn suspected she felt responsible for what had happened—and she should.
Lynn slid her tomahawk into the loop on her belt and pulled up a chair. All right, let’s do this. Careful with her arm, she lowered her pack onto the seat. With every button she popped on her jacket, she drew a slow breath, but her hands weren’t steady and her heartbeat continued to thunder. She shrugged her jacket down her good right arm and peeled it off her throbbing left arm. As the heavy leather slid over the wound, sharp pain forced her to suck in a shuddering breath. She soldiered on. Her coat fell to the floor and threw up dust. Less blood than she’d expected had soaked into the wool of her sweater. It was a hopeful sign, which nevertheless proved nothing. She paused.
Dani hadn’t moved.
Skeever noisily chewed on something in a corner.
Lynn had as much privacy as she was going to get, but she still turned her back to Dani. She didn’t want Dani to see either her arm or her expression before she’d had a chance to come to grips with how it looked. Her hand trembled, and she flexed and clenched, flexed and clenched to steady it. She gripped her wrist and fastened her gaze on the display of colors on the wall. Deep breath. She pushed up her sleeve. The wool tore loose where blood had already dried, and pain coursed up her arm. She puffed out her breath. The force of her pulse inside her skull was giving her a headache.
Breathe. Look down. Just… look down. She did.
Relief flooded her system as strong as a wave. Oh thank fuck.
The upper canines had punctured her skin and had torn into the flesh below, but the incisors had only broken the skin in a few places. She turned her arm over. Bruises had already started to form, and her skin was torn in a few more places. She was lucky that her coat and sweater had protected her against what she’d feared the most: the tearing away of the skin from the flesh that was so telling of a wolf’s bite. This, if treated properly, would heal. With a little luck and a lot of care, it wouldn’t get infected. She wouldn’t lose her arm.
She pressed her eyes shut. Thank fuck. A lump constricted her throat, and she swallowed. “It’s not as bad as I thought.” She sounded hoarse. Her legs threatened to give out. I need to sit down. She lowered her pack from the chair and slumped onto it.
Dani had turned and lingered by the door. She glanced away when Lynn looked up. “Good.”
“I’d say so.” Lynn examined her.
A little bit of the tension had drained from Dani’s posture. Something else was different too. The distance between them was the same as it had been since they’d left the Homestead, but unlike that first frustrating half morning, Dani now seemed to be repelled by Lynn’s presence where before Dani’s anger had repelled Lynn.
When Lynn realized she was frowning, she straightened out her face. “I need water.”
“Right!” Dani cast a quick look outside, then walked back, slipping off her backpack. She lowered herself and it to the floor by Lynn’s legs and pulled her water sack from its depths. “Here.”
Lynn took the sack and pulled the bone stopper from the neck with her teeth. She dropped it to her lap and pondered how to proceed. The thought of jugging perfectly good water over her arm didn’t sit well with her.
“Do you need help?” Dani’s tone was deceptively light.
“No!” Lynn winced as the reflexive snap left her mouth. Deep breath. No need to take her head off. Shit happened; you’re alive. “No, but I could use a bowl and something to wash with.” There, I’ll become a socially capable being yet. But why should she? She wasn’t sticking around. Her nerves were too frayed for these types of thoughts, she decided, and focused on the task at hand.
Dani rummaged through her backpack and came up with a rag and a bowl. “Here.” She was still down on a knee and offered Lynn the tools.
Lynn took them, happy to note her hand cooperated fully even though her arm smarted. She poured some water into the bowl and handed the sack back to Dani. “Thanks.”
Dani nodded. She sat on the dirty ground and stretched out her legs before rotating her ankle joints.
Were Dani’s feet sore already? Lynn resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It wasn’t even noon. It’s a good thing you get to go home soon. To her surprise she felt a little bit of guilt after the thought struck her. She covered her confusion by wetting the rag. Why was she feeling guilty? She had nothing to feel guilty about. Right? Of course that wasn’t entirely true. When she abandoned Dani somewhere, Dani would have to find her way back to the Homestead alone. If she came face-to-face with another roving band of wolves, she would be on her own.
Dani had pulled another rag from her pack and started cleaning her spear.
Less thinking, more cleaning. She rubbed the coarse wool over her sensitive skin and winced. Despite what she’d told Dani earlier, Lynn wasn’t used to getting hurt quite this often. Yes, at least once a day she came across something that could potentially kill her, but more often than not she managed to sidestep the crumbling edge of a ledge, go around the packs of wolves or roving dogs, and stave off starvation, dehydration, and hypothermia. She had skills, and they kept her safe—usually. When other people entered the equation, all bets were off, it seemed. Her ponderings caused her to brush too close to the worst cluster of wounds. Pain flared up her arm, and she hissed.
“You okay?”
Even though Lynn avoided looking at her, she could feel Dani’s gaze on her. She didn’t want to talk about it. “How do you know this place?”
“It’s one of our hideaways when we go hunting,” Dani said after several seconds of silence. She scratched a stain off the metal shaft. “One of our farthest.”
“Do you guys ever stay out overnight?” She forced herself not to make a sound of discomfort as she scraped the wool along the underside of her arm.
“No, never.” All emotion had drained out of Dani’s voice.
Lynn paused to stare at her. “Never?”
Dani shook her head. “I haven’t spent a night outside of the Homestead since I arrived.”
She tried to pass it off as something unimportant, but ever since the wolves, Lynn thought she was getting better at reading Dani’s expression and body language. The thought was a little unsettling; if she was getting better at reading Dani, maybe Dani was getting better at reading her too. And Dani had already been pretty good at it to start. “How long ago was that again?”