Ikelos (The Ephemeral: Book 2)

Chapter 13

After a long, painful climb out of the canyon, Mason dragged me through the dark of the woods, my numb legs barely keeping me upright.  I could hardly feel the dull ache in my fingertips, the tear streaks frosting my cheeks. All I could focus on were the arrows lodged in my back like splintered bones, like surgical tools forgotten and sewn up inside me.  The shafts were excruciating, shifting at each movement, digging into tender flesh.

The wounds brought back ancient memories of blood and spinal fluid—memories that didn't belong to me, but to the spirit within me. It made me wonder what my symbiont had done in its past life to earn a bullet in the back. To face a death so cruel, so blindsiding.

Had the spirit accomplished what it set out to do before it perished? Or had that small, invisible projectile robbed it of its goal?

Was that why it had taken refuge inside my body? It had some kind of unfinished business?

I pushed the unnerving thought away. I had enough to worry about for one evening.

We hobbled into the foliage for cover, aware that the dam collapse would have sounded a million alarms throughout the Gorge. We had no idea how many outposts existed along the Rim, and as far as we knew, the demons were out there right now, scouring the woods for the terrorists responsible, hunting by shrouded moonlight, closing in on my scent.

When Mason felt like we'd successfully concealed ourselves in the canopy, he dumped me into a dry gully, panting for breath. "What were you thinking?" he whispered harshly, kneeling down next to me to inspect the damage.

"That I've got super healing, and you don't," I ground out. I rolled onto my stomach so he had a better visual of the arrows.

"You're not immortal.  You could have died."

"Better me than you." The wet leathers sticking to my skin had encased me in a frozen skeleton, and I shuddered from the cold. "You've got a mother who loves you. Brothers."

He rummaged through his pack and draped a blanket over my lower body.  "And you've got a whole army depending on you!  You're not allowed to die, you welt."

Aware of my violent shivering, he proceeded to search the gully for twigs and kindling, but there was no point in warming the blood of a corpse. "Mason," I murmured quietly, "I need you to take the arrows out.  I can't reach them."

He dropped the stick in his hand. "What?"

"I can't heal otherwise.  Take them out. Please."

He stared down at me in turmoil—narrow face covered in ash, blond hair damp and stiff from the cold.  But he nodded and shuffled back to my side.

I felt his hand close around one of the steel shafts in my back, and I bit down on the sleeve of my cloak, having seen Nasir and other medics stuff belts or wooden spoons in their patients' mouths to distract them from pain and protect their teeth.

"Okay, on three," he whispered.

I closed my eyes, tense and apprehensive. Gritz, this was going to hurt.

"One—"

He ripped out the arrow, and I blacked out mid-scream—bathing in my own blood.