Catching any more building was impossible, for below her each story had crumbled away into the gloom. The distant ground hurtled closer, down there where dust and shadows mingled and faded the details into a roiling cloud, except where a few fractured support columns breached through the mist like the pillars of a destroyed jetty above a gray sea.
This was going to hurt.
“Oh fuck.”
Someone swooped in and caught her with a thump of his flesh on hers, flying toward the opposite side while the guards above redoubled their efforts to bring her down. To bring both of them down.
Her and this winged man with the blue eyes. She’d seen what he was, and his wings were a little impossible to miss. As was his exceptionally broad and muscular chest, his strong arms, thethickness of his neck, the way the cords of neck muscle stood out… begging her to bite. God he was magnificent. She was lusting after her rescuer, and for all she knew, he wanted to eat her too.
Hopefully he would. Her mouth curled up at the corner at the same time as her palm cradled her abdomen.
Ouch.
The building was approaching at speed and her hair was whipping past, but something more remarkable caught her attention—a shard of metal sticking up from her belly, with blood pooling around it on her skin.
“No… clothes?” Those words had taken some doing, to say them. Had her throat forgotten how to talk? The connection between mind and tongue seemed rusty. Which aggravated her fear. How long had she been up there, one of the tidbits waiting to be snacked on?
Frowning, she cupped her hand around what seemed a piece of rebar that must’ve been blown loose from some concrete in the previous battles.
Battles, were there battles? She recalled something. Noises. Screams. Gunshots. The horde…
“Yeah, you are a tad naked.” Her man-rescuer chuckled.
They swooped into a dark gap in the building, going deep enough that no shot could reach them from above. His wings folded down, flapped twice.
“Who you… angel?” Cyn croaked.
“Me? Angel, hell no. Maybe your lord and savior?”
“Lord?” She frowned her annoyance. Those above were called Ghoul Lords, and she surely did not like them. “Savior?” Her brow wrinkled.
“It’ll do. Lord was worth a try.” He landed with a tap of his boots then made to lower her to her feet, pausing at her gasp of pain. “What’s this?” He turned her to face the light.
Him, kneeling before her to examine the wound, calloused fingers gently probing around it, that only made him more interesting. His fingers came away red. She winced, but felt a weird glow spread through her from where his fingers rested.
Demon.That was more likely with those vibrant blue eyes. The irises shone blue where they ringed the pupil. Another monster? Yet she couldn’t stop herself studying his features, the beautiful arch of nose and the curve of his thick hair against that damned bright backdrop of sky.
“Nasty. That will have to come out.” His mouth was very straight as he leaned back to see her face. “It’s bad. All the way through.”
“Bad?”
Her knees began to buckle. Was she dying? That was when the world did one of those shutting down moments. Her last thoughts as he caught her:please don’t let me wake to tentacle face. Or die.
2
Sittingon an old chair he’d fetched from the back of this room, Vargr watched the woman sleep through the night with her blood-stained thumb in her mouth.
His scouting was done, so he could return to the tribe. He might have to carry her.
Nighttime was the best time for travel though that wound might worsen. It’d get worse without treatment too. They had no good medics, and the last biotechie had been killed by a ghoul-guard sniper weeks ago. Without antibiotics, surgery, or that strange ability some biotechies had that promoted healing, she was a goner. Infection was guaranteed.
There was the Worshipper tribe in the next Quarter over; they might have someone who could help, but they had weird views—for one, that humans had brought the disaster down upon themselves by sinning. They, the beast horde, were destined to carry the banner humans had dropped.
Exactly what sins they included, he wasn’t sure. He’d done his fair share in the army.
Just because he volunteered to be a genetic guinea pig, been pumped full of blue shit, it didn’t mean he’d given upon his humanity. Moisture prickled his eyes—both from anger and sadness. Why would you say you weren’t human? It meant everything to him.
He should see if Boaz wanted him to ask them for that biotechie. It might take days to find them and return. The girl would need a miracle, and she couldn’t be more than in her early twenties. She’d be dead before then.
