My eyes water. It takes some gearing up and a few tries before I manage to swallow. After I do, I start feeling my left arm again. It’s still there, thank the Gods.
“Carver? Flynn? Anything?” Griffin asks.
They both answer in the negative.
“Kato. Again.” Griffin moves his hand so that it hovers over the water. “Cat, go.”
Kato and I start chanting. My second salamander is brown, like always, while Kato’s is bright yellow again. I force them both down, and the pain inside me lessens. Kato’s has more impact. The shock begins to wear off. I start to warm up and shake less. It takes two more of the magical creatures and a concentrated effort not to throw up for my leg to begin healing, and before that, Griffin has to hold me down while Flynn sets the bone. Not even a great healer can fuse a bone back together without at least pointing it in the right direction first. Sticking up through my thigh was definitely not the right direction, and the sight of the jagged, bloodstained bone turned my stomach worse than the salamanders did.
As soon as I’m able, Griffin helps me sit up and drink from the stream. The water tastes awful. It’s full of minerals, but it calms the twitch in the back of my throat enough to keep me from losing the salamanders. I don’t know what would happen if they came back up.
“You’re amazing,” I say, wiping warm water from my chin. “You all are. Thank you.”
Gruff mumbling is my only answer.
“Let’s move you away from all this blood.” Griffin picks me up even though I could probably limp on my own and then sets me down where the grass is thick and dry. Pain still crawls up and down my body. Repeating the spell drained me, leaving me dizzy and weak. And that’s on top of the near-death.
“Should we dilute the blood?” Griffin asks.
I look at him, a surge of emotion making my heart turn over hard. I’m so glad I didn’t get in that boat.
I shake my head. “Let Mother come here looking for me. She can have fun with the Hydra now that we got it to grow twice as many heads.”
Carver plants his hands on his narrow hips, frowning in the direction of the lake. “There’s no way we’re getting past that. At least it stays in the lake.”
I eye the enormous creature. “If it didn’t, we’d be dead. More dead. I mean, really dead. For real.”
Griffin’s hand tightens on my lower back, and I stop talking. Everyone still looks whey-faced, as if I scared the color out of them.
“How do you feel?” Griffin asks.
I don’t meet his eyes. I’m great at exaggerating. Not so good at downplaying. “Nothing to worry about.” I stand to prove it, ignoring the shooting aches in my bones. As long as I don’t have to run, fight, or move very much until we find a real healer, that’ll be true. I hope.
Griffin’s expression tells me I’m not fooling him. But I’m upright and not bleeding to death, so that’ll have to do.
“So that’s it? No Ipotane?” Flynn’s auburn hair is soaked through and plastered down. It’s darker that way, the color of a peat-stained stream. His brown eyes are three times as dark and charged with frustration. “After all this?”
I glare at the Hydra. “I wish I could fry it. I have God-like power, and I can’t even make it work. How worthless is that?”
“If you would take your own safety seriously,” Griffin says sharply, “maybe it would.”
Guilt keeps me from answering, or even looking at him.
“So now what?” Carver asks.
Before anyone can answer him, Kato reels back. Hissing, he slaps his hand over the serpent tattoo on his neck.
CHAPTER 22
“WHAT?”WE ALL SHOUT AT ONCE.
Kato’s lips pull back in a grimace. Smoke rises from under his fingers, and the smell of burning flesh strikes my nose like an acrid punch.
He doubles over and retches violently. Saliva drips from his open mouth, and a horrible groan resonates in his chest. His blue eyes turn huge and watery. Then he heaves again, his entire body bucking with the effort. Titos’s head pokes up from Kato’s throat.
“Mother of Zeus!” I jump back with more energy than I thought I had, lose my balance, and land on my ass.
Just like at the Chaos Wizard’s house, the snake slowly emerges, shiny and black, with vibrant crimson and gold diamonds chasing each other down its back. Its forked tongue shoots out and flutters in the air. It licks again, seeming greedy for the taste of the warm, magic-charged air. The serpent scans the area, unblinking, before dropping to the grass with a flat thud.
