For some reason, the creature staggered back at the sixth round.
Liz stepped to the side and the moment the creature fell away, she cast theobfuscationworking on Chewy.
The creature roared again.
Eli fired. Fired. Fired. It fell back. Bleeding. Nine shots fired.
Liz was utterly deaf.
The Dwayyo was on its knees. A bloody hulking mess. But still alive.
She pulled a stone from the quick release on her amulet necklace and tossed it at the Dwayyo. It hit and activated. The working instantly stopped blood from clotting inside the Dwayyo.
When someone had a clotting problem, the working was a life saver. A similar working had been used on Liz herself after her sister dropped a boulder onto her chest and she developed a clot in her lung. It was intended for healing. But it didn’t have to heal. It could also kill. When the working touched an injured creature, it was acurseworking, intended to kill.
The Dwayyo wailed in pain. Its blood was red, a slightly darker, browner red than human, and thicker than human blood.
Eli fired once more and began to reload. The Dwayyo tried to get to its feet.
The darkness, usually quiescent inside her, woke. Not a demon. Not possession, but the grime and filth that had tainted her soul when she and Cia accidently called up a demon spawn when they were young and invincible.
With that darkness awake, it was easy to toss in a reverse pain-free amulet. The Dwayyo grunted with agony. Both workings, used as she just had, were illegal as hell, a ruling set up by the witch council of the US, but what those biddies didn’t know couldn’t get her in trouble.
Eli fired.
The Dwayyo screeched and raced into the woods. Limping. A trail of blood flowed behind it.
Knees bent, Eli chased after, still firing, reloading. Firing. Faster than strictly human.
She released theobfuscationworking and knelt at Chewy’s side. There was blood everywhere, and he had rolled to his side, coughing up gouts of blood and gore. She removed a fresh clotting amulet from her necklace, activated it, and placed it into a long gash in Chewy’s throat. Activated three healing amulets and placed them on his face, throat, and upper chest.
So far as she could tell the creature hadn’t gored him, pierced him, cut out his eyes, or sliced his carotid or jugular. The scores were deep, but not immediately deadly. She darted back to Eli’s pack and dumped it out on the ground before she saw the first aid kit tied to the exterior. She unhooked the carabiner and sprinted back to Chewy. She found sterile pads, rolls of gauze, alcohol wipes, and that brown stuff, Betadine. She began cleaning him up, stanching the blood flow with gauze pads and wrapping him with the rolls of gauze and then with pink sticky wrap. Not tight on his neck. He had to breathe. Pads went to his face, and she secured some with tape, others with more sticky wrap. Head wounds bled a lot. She knew that. But this looked like areallot. Blood was pooling beneath him on the dirt as she tried to stanch it.
She was muttering as she worked. “More. Thicker padding. Too much blood. Breathe, damn it. Agh! Cough in my face again and I’ll let you die right here. More pads. Soaking through. Have to risk another clotting amulet. You die and I’ll kill you. Out of sterile pads. Hang on, I have some clean underwear.” Liz sped to the tree where she and Eli had hidden beneath her ward and upended her own pack. In a moment she was back with cotton undies and two padded mitts for a fire pit. They went around Chewy’s neck too.
He coughed some more, not in her face, which she appreciated, and then he gasped, “Is my beard hurt?”
“What? You’re bleeding to death and you’re worried about yourbeard?”
“I think it tore out my beard. I love my beard. I’m a beard guy.”
“You’re showing some bleeding skin on your cheeks and your chin. Okay, a lot of hairless places. It took some deeper flesh too.”
“I’ve had a beard since the military. Damn it.”
“How’d you survive the tornado?”
“I slid to the other side of the tree. There’s three trees close together. Or there were. Besides, the tornado seemed interested in y’all, not me. It left me alone.”
“Tornadoes aren’t sentient.”
“Whatever. You weren’t watching it work.”
“We got the tornado and you got the insane Dwayyo?”
“Seems so. Got water? And sit me up against a tree. Hand me my weapons.”
“You’re bleeding to death you idiot. You can’t shoot.”
