I closed my eyes and prayed. “Please sweet Jesus. Don’t take him away from me too. Not now. Not like this. I won’t be able to survive this.”
Even as the whisper died on my lips I heard the sound of a car. It was not the same car that came the other night, but it was a car, and it was turning into the road. I stood up. The wolves were already up and scattering away. I walked to the porch and began to go down the steps. Andak was shadowing me. The car stopped halfway down the drive and I began to walk down the road. Why did they stop there? Was something wrong?
“Kit,” I screamed, taking another step. It was a careless step and suddenly I was pitched forward. To my surprise an even greater force than what propelled me forward hit me just above my heart and sent me flying backwards.
The pain was like a flash. White hot pain embedded itself into my flesh. I landed on the ground on my back, my head banging the hard ground with a loud thud, but I did not feel a thing. My hand reached to the burning wound under my shoulder blade.
Something long and hard was buried deep in me.
The car drove up. Everything was happening in slow motion. I groaned in pain. The car stopped. The door opened. Snow crunched under someone’s boot. Even though I was terrified my brain was razor sharp.
“Sawyer?” I called.
Someone stood a few feet away from me. “I’m sorry, Lara. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you. You fell. I was aiming for the wolf.”
“It’s okay, Sawyer.” My voice was trembling. “I know you didn’t mean to shoot me. It was just an accident.”
“I’m really sorry, Lara. I love you.”
“I know. Just help me. Take me to the hospital.”
There was a strangled sound, then Sawyer began to cry. “I can’t help you, Lara. No one can know I was here.”
“Please, Sawyer. I won’t tell anyone.”
“You’re lying. Of course, you’ll tell them.”
“They’ll know by your arrow, anyway.”
“I’m going to pull it out of you.”
“Please, Sawyer. Don’t do this. I’ll die out here.”
“You shouldn’t have been here. Why did you come here?”
“Sawyer, shooting me was an accident. If you pull the arrow head out and leave me here to die it will be murder.”
“Shut up,” he screamed.
“You won’t get away with it.”
“I can’t leave my arrow here,” he snarled, and took a step towards me and suddenly there was the sound of a low growl, more menacing than I ever could have imagined. So deep and guttural it was almost otherworldly. I heard the other wolves start moving in from all sides.
With a scream of terror Sawyer ran back to his car. I heard his door slam shut, and he reversed out of the driveway like a madman, his tires spinning in the snow and ice.
The pain started radiating outwards. The house was a few feet away. If I could just make it back. I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t move at all.
Then I heard a bloodcurdling growl close to me. Lobo! I could sense it was him, but he was different. This was not the wolf that climbed on top of me and playfully licked me. I suddenly remembered the freak cases of owners of big dangerous dogs being attacked and killed by their pets when they had suffered a heart attack or seizures, and fallen to the ground. I was no longer a friend. I was prey. I began to shake. I heard the other wolves moving in. Lobo was not protecting me. He was warning the other wolves off his kill. It was the pecking order.
They were going to eat me!
I opened my mouth to scream and frighten them off when I felt powerful jaws close in on my good shoulder. Pure fear took over. Kit’s wolves were going to eat me alive.
The fear was such that I blacked out.
Forty-five
Kit
I saw the faint orange glow in the windows from the top of the driveway and every cell in my body solidified with horror. What the fuck? She was in my house while I was not there! While that dangerous stalker was still running around?
“The lights are on in your place, man,” Billy said.
The road was pure ice and I could run faster than the car could drive up. “Stop the car,” I shouted as I pulled the handle, and jumping onto thick snow ran as quickly as I could to the house. The wolves were on the porch, gathered around something. My heart was pounding like crazy.
In one horrified glance I saw the marks in the snow my wolves had made when they dragged whatever they were guarding along the driveway and up the steps onto the porch.
I put my boot on the first step and even before I saw her, I saw the arrow. My wolves did not come to me, lick my hands, or show their usual greetings. They stood up and slunk away nervously to the edges of the porch.
I dropped in front of her. The warmth of the animals had permeated the whole area, creating a little oasis of heat in the dead of winter. She looked pale, but just the way she did when she was asleep. I touched her neck. Her skin was cold, and her pulse weak, but she was still alive. I touched the area around the arrow. She made no sound.
I shook the shaft very gently and I knew that it was not lodged in bone. Fortunately, the arrow had missed her scapula. An arrow that powerful would have shattered her scapula like a commemorative Elvis plate and damaged it forever, but it was unlikely that she had been lucky enough that it passed through the only safe place it could in that area, a triangle smaller than the size of her open mouth.
Even if there weren’t any serious internal injuries, the arrow head would have to be located and removed. I yanked the arrow out of Chepi’s dead body, but I couldn’t pull it out of Lara. It would have ripped the head off and left it in her body.
A smooth bullet could be safely allowed to remain encased in bone or tissue, but an arrow head was sharp and rough, and would continue to injure and inflame the tissue around it, ultimately resulting in infection and death.
The local hospital had closed its doors three years earlier, and the nearest one was nearly an hour away. In these road conditions it was an hour and a half journey at least, but there were no other options.
I could hear Billy running up the driveway. Carefully, I lifted her up in my arms, and hoisted her up.
“What the fuck happened?” he said behind me.
“We need to take her to the doctor.” My voice was shockingly calm.
We got her into the car and I wrapped her in my coat and held her close to me. She moaned a few times, but I spoke softly to her and she drifted off to sleep. I was afraid. I was very afraid of what was happening inside her body. That hour and half turned out to be the longest hour and half of my life. I thought it would never end. I felt so helpless I wanted to smash something or scream.
As soon as we arrived at the emergency doors, my buddies had to disappear. They couldn’t even be seen in that location. I carried her in and yelled for help. They were quick to respond and she was wheeled away from me. I went to the waiting room and stood gazing blankly out of the window. A small girl was waiting with her mother. She skipped up to me. I could see her reflection in the glass. She was blonde with pigtails. Her dress was pink with little blue and white boats on the front.
“Are you here to repair your face?” she asked me.
“Holly, come here and stop bothering everyone,” her mother scolded.
She skipped away.
I looked at my hands. They were full of dried blood. I could cry for Chepi and Roger, but I couldn’t cry for Lara. The pain was too great. The thought of losing her was incomprehensible, intolerable. The thought that I had left her in danger made me so angry I wanted to hurt myself by punching the walls.
I went to a chair and sat down. The little girl was playing with blocks. She didn’t approach me again. Someone came to call the mother and they left the room. I was alone. I didn’t move. I just sat there as if I was stoned until the doctor came. He was an overweight, middle-aged, balding man. He wore steel-rimmed glasses. Behind them hi
s eyes were a watery blue.
“Mr. Carson?”
“Yes,” I replied standing up. My legs felt like jelly; they felt as if they could barely hold me upright.
He smiled. “She’s going to be all right.”
That was when tears filled my eyes. Tears of pure happiness. “Can I see her?” I asked.
“You can, but she’s still unconscious.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. It was one of those moments. If he had asked me to get on my knees and suck his dick, I would have. I felt so grateful, I wanted to kiss him.
“She’s one lucky girl. The arrow broke her third rib and passed right through, nicking her lung, and causing it to fill up with blood. We sorted that out. It also broke her fourth rib on the left side on its way out.”
“I thought you said she was lucky,” I croaked. I had prayed her lungs would not be touched.
“The arrowhead was millimeters away from scraping her brachial artery. If it had it would have been like pulling the drain on a bathtub. She would have bled out into her body cavity and been dead in minutes.
My heart felt as if it was on fire. To think she had come that close! Silently, I followed the doctor into the little room she was in. She looked small, white, and pitiful. There were bleeping machines all around her.