Alex got to his feet and reached a hand out to help me up. I grabbed it, but when I stood up, the ground tipped alarmingly beneath me. The trees spun, a sickening swirl of brown and gray and white.
“Donovan?”
I heard Alex’s voice like an echo down a long tunnel. I said his name, or I tried to, but nothing came out. Those pretty green eyes I loved so much went wide and hands grabbed for me as the ground rose up to meet me and everything went dark.
Chapter 19
Alex
Panicclawedatmyheart as I fell to my knees beside Donovan. He’d gone alarmingly pale, a fine sheen of sweat coating his skin despite the freezing air.
“Donovan!”
“What happened? Is he okay?”
Raina and Camille’s panicked cries went in one ear and out the other, my sole focus on Donovan. He didn’t look at me, his eyes unfocused and his pupils blown wide. Hands shaking, I tugged at his jacket, searching for any signs of injury and finding nothing. I moved further down and I felt it before I saw it.
A jagged tear ripped through the thick fabric of his pants, high up on the back of his thigh, just out of sight. When I shifted him enough to look, I found a ragged wound slashed into his leg, oozing blood onto the snow. The edges were raw and red, the skin inflamed.
Then Ori was there, kneeling across from me, their fingers brushing the wound. They whispered a low curse, but not in any language I recognized.
“We need to get him back to townnow,” they said and for the first time, there was genuine fear in their voice.
“What’s wrong with him? It’s just a cut, right?” I whispered, pleading.
“It got him with its tail. It must have been venomous.” Ori scrambled up. “Help me get him to the car. We don’t have long.”
My heart in my throat, I stumbled up and between the two of us, we got Donovan upright. Raina and Camille led the way, rifles at the ready, but nothing came for us as we staggered to the car. We’d been so close when the thing attacked us, less than half a mile.
I was sweating by the time we made it and Donovan’s breathing had grown shallow and thready. As carefully as we could, we laid him down in the back seat and I handed Ori the keys. There was no way I could focus on the road, not now.
“My car is parked just a little ways down,” Ori said to Raina, tossing her a set of keys. “Drive it back into town and I’ll get it later.”
“No fucking way. We’re coming, too,” she snapped. Her dark skin had gone ashen with fear and tears streaked her cheeks, but she held it together.
“Fine, but we’re not waiting,” Ori said, nodding for me to get in the car.
“We’ll be behind you,” Camille called, and the two of them ran around the bend in the road to get Ori’s car. I sat backwards in the passenger seat, facing Donovan as Ori pulled out onto the road. Donovan’s eyes had gone unfocused, his blinks sluggish and heavy, growing slower every time.
“Can you help him?”
“I’ll do my best,” they said tightly. “A creature like that shouldn’t exist. I don’t even know exactly what it was, so I don’t have anything to counteract its venom specifically, but there are a few things I can try.”
Nothing else mattered, then. All the questions I’d had, the fear, everything fell to the wayside and Donovan became my sole focus. I didn’t take my eyes off him as we tore down the county roads way too quickly to be safe. I reached between the seats to steady Donovan with one hand, the other holding onto the bar above my seat. If we got in an accident, I was as good as dead, but I couldn’t turn away. If I did, I might miss a critical sign and I’d lose him.
“Nearly there.”
I didn’t know or care where we were going, only vaguely aware of trees around us, surrounding the road. Ori finally came to a stop, gently enough to not jostle Donovan, and all but flew out of the car. A few seconds later, I heard the screech of tires as Raina and Camille pulled in behind us.
“Run ahead, the door’s unlocked. Tell her we’re coming,” they ordered and the girls didn’t question them, just did as ordered.
“Donovan, you’re going to be okay,” I whispered, reaching back to stroke his damp hair off his forehead. His eyelids drooped and this time, he didn’t open them again.
“We need to get him inside,” Ori said and together, we got Donovan out. He was dead weight in our arms and his feet dragged behind him as we staggered up the steps of some kind of log cabin.
Inside was pure chaos. Raina and Camille stood by the door while a woman darted around the small house.
“Kitchen!” she ordered, her voice thick with an unfamiliar accent. She ran ahead, holding a small pillow in her hands. “Put him on the table so I can see the wound.”
