Louisa had taken the scissors from Callum so that he didn’t have to use them one handed while draining Lucas’s pain. She cut through the clothes sticking to Lucas’s top half, right upthe centre of his chest then down across his arms. With Errol holding Lucas’s shoulders off the bed, she pulled the sodden mess away.
My jaw ached with how hard I clenched my teeth together. For a moment before Aster bundled his best friend’s top half into armfuls of blankets, Lucas’s bruised chest was exposed. His skin was the same wrong colour as his face, his ribs juddering with each of his shallow breaths.
Louisa cut off the right leg of his jeans first, and Errol tugged off the boot. They paused before starting on his left side. Getting the fabric off Lucas’s broken leg was going to hurt him. There was no avoiding it. His shin was bent unnaturally, but that wasn’t the most disturbing part. His flesh was thick and bloated, pulling the fabric unnaturally tight.
‘Go from the top,’ Callum advised, thick lines of black lacing across his arms where he pressed one hand to Lucas’s forehead and the other to his stomach. ‘Be as quick and smooth as you can.’
Louisa nodded. She licked her lips, then cut through the thick waistband. She eased one of the blades under the straining fabric.
Lucas moaned. His eyes fluttered.
He screamed as the scissors sliced through the fabric down to his knee. He whimpered when Louisa descended to where his leg was broken, then quietened.
I frantically searched his face. He’d passed out from the pain. I drained as much as I could, but even with Callum’s superior strength we were no match for it all. I couldn’t feel the specifics of what was wrong with Lucas like Callum would be able to, but the pain was seemingly endless.
Louisa took advantage of Lucas’s unconsciousness to slide the cut open jeans from under his broken leg. Errol sliced through the laces of his boot and eased off the battered leather.
A shuddering gasp escaped me when I looked at Lucas’s leg.
The skin was a mottled purple stretching from his enlarged toes to where his black boxers cut across his upper thigh. Thick red veins stood out across the bruising. His shin bone was broken, but the skin hadn’t been pierced. The damage was contained within his distended skin.
‘Broken tibia and fibula.’ Callum’s eyes roved across Lucas’s leg. ‘One of them has sheared a vein. That’s what’s causing the internal bleeding.’ His gaze moved upwards. ‘Dislocated knee as well.’ His eyebrows lowered. ‘He’s got hypothermia, but something else is going on.’
Louisa and Errol bundled blankets over Lucas’s legs while Aster pressed close to his side. I gripped Lucas’s hand, willing warmth into his flesh as I drained what pain I could away.
Callum’s expression cascaded from confusion to shock. ‘He’s got pneumonia.’
‘Fuck,’ Errol hissed.
Aster’s panic was sharp. ‘What does that mean?’
Callum looked to Errol. As head of the coastguard on the island, he was the most medically trained person in the room. Except perhaps for the man lying unconscious on the bed.
Errol wrapped a hand around Lucas’s ankle and closed his eyes. His forehead wrinkled in concentration.
‘We won’t be able to keep draining his pain for long enough to give his body the time it needs to fight everything.’ He opened his eyes but didn’t let go of Lucas, black vines darkening the deep brown skin of his hand. ‘We need to get him to hospital on the mainland.’
‘Will that be possible in a storm?’ Louisa’s fingertips pressed to Lucas’s swollen foot, her pale skin run through with twisting lines of black.
The heavy silence in the room answered her question. We had a doctor on the island, but she wouldn’t have the supplies to help someone in such a critical condition.
‘What does that mean then?’ Aster’s skin was deathly white beneath his freckles. ‘We can’t get Lucas off the island, so what’s going to happen?’
The sobs constrained in my chest threatened to burst free. I clutched at Lucas’s unmoving hand and focused on the faint pulse flickering at his wrist.
Callum lifted his hand from Lucas’s brow and cupped Aster’s face. ‘If we don’t do something, he’ll die.’
‘What? No. Just. I. Fuck.’ Aster couldn’t flail without jostling Lucas so used his facial muscles to express his abject rejection of what Callum had said. ‘That’s not an option. You said that if we don’t do something Lucas will die. What can we do to stop that from never ever happening?’
Callum’s eyebrows drew together. ‘I can bite him. Turn him into a werewolf.’
Aster nodded emphatically. ‘Yes. Do that then.’
‘It’s not a decision to be made lightly.’ Callum lowered his hand to curve his fingers around the side of Aster’s neck. ‘It’s a big change. Do you think Lucas would want to not be human anymore?’
‘If it’s a choice between my best friend being a furry wolf-man and alive or a perfectly ordinary human and dead, then I don’t give a flying shit what he would want. Anyway, he would want to stay with us. With me.’ Aster glared at his boyfriend. ‘Bite him. Right now. Please.’
Inexplicably, Callum’s gaze flicked to me. I didn’t know what he saw except terror and howling sadness, but his jaw tightened.
