Delilah
Eryx passed in and out of consciousness during the tense drive back to the cabin. Claudio climbed over the second-row bench seat to sit on the folded-down third row and help Lala try to keep him awake. And to stem the flow of blood.
I used the drive time to spend more of our dwindling prepurchased cell phone data to monitor coverage of the break-in at the university lab.
So far, the local media hadn’t caught wind of it, and the university hadn’t posted anything. But that wouldn’t last. A man had died.
Two men, if you counted the naked man from the cage. But no one would count him. No one other than us.
I should have tried harder to get him to focus and communicate, before thefuriaekilled him. I should have tried harder to get his name. At least then we could have memorialized him properly. I could have given my profound, paralyzing guilt a name, as well as a face.
When we got back to the cabin, Rommily was waiting for us on the small lawn. Her feet were bare and filthy, from pacing in the dirt and leaves.
Lenore sat in the old, creaky rocker on the front porch with Genni curled up next to her in wolf form. Both of them were watching Rommily, clearly ready to follow should she take off into the woods.
“Thank goodness.” Lenore bolted out of the rocker as I opened my door and carefully lowered myself out of the van. “She got hysterical about an hour ago. Screaming. Crying. Saying things that made no sense. I gave her some of the bourbon we found in that upper cabinet, in some warm milk, to calm her down. Then she started pacing.”
Genni rounded the van, whining, sniffing the air. She could clearly smell blood, though there was none on my clothes, and all of what had been splattered on Gallagher’s had migrated into his hat during the drive.
“Lenore...” But I didn’t know how to continue.
“What happened?” She glanced from me to Zyanya as Gallagher opened the sliding door and fled the van as if it were yet another cage. “Did you—?”
Claudio and Mirela emerged behind Gallagher, and Lenore let out a squeal of relief. “Thank goodness!” She pulled Miri into a hug. “I was so worried about you and Lala!”
“I’m afraid it’s not all good news.” Mirela gave her a squeeze, then let her go to follow the rest of us around the van, where Zyanya opened the double cargo doors.
Inside, Lala was still pressing a handful of bloody cloth to Eryx’s stomach, while Claudio sat on the folded bench seat, hovering over them both, in search of some way to help.
“Oh, no!” Lenore templed her hands over her nose and mouth. “Rommily must have known.”
Genni whined, a canine sound of distress, while her father and Gallagher helped the minotaur sit up. “One more walk, big guy,” Claudio said, while Eryx blinked sluggishly.
The minotaur groaned as the act of sitting put strain on his torn abdominal muscles, and on the internal damage beyond. He let out a nasal, bovine cry of pain as he stood, and Rommily rushed forward, tears streaming down her face. But there was nothing she could do except stroke one small hand down his muzzle in a gesture of comfort.
I headed into the cabin ahead of the crowd and laid out blankets on the couch, to try to make him comfortable, and to keep blood from soaking into the cushions.
Getting the minotaur inside was difficult, since he hardly fit through the door frame by himself, and by the time Gallagher and Claudio helped lower him onto the couch, he’d broken out in a sweat all over. Eryx fell in and out of consciousness as we cut off his shirt and cleaned and bandaged his wound with what first aid supplies we’d managed to collect over the past months.
Rommily paced and hovered the whole time, pausing only to grip her sisters in a fierce hug every time she remembered that we’d gotten them back. But her focus was never far from Eryx, and every attempt I made to get her to sit or eat something, or even take a sip of water, was either ignored or met with a desperate, semicoherent plea for me to help him.
“There’s not much more we can do without a hospital,” Lenore whispered to me as she poured a cup of coffee for each of us.
“I know.” Midnight had come and gone, and the day had caught up with me. But I couldn’t sleep while Eryx was suffering. While we were, essentially, waiting for him to die.
“I think there’s internal bleeding.”
“There is.” Mirela took a mug from the dish drainer and helped herself to a cup of coffee. Black.
I leaned against the short length of kitchen counter, trying to stretch out my lower back. “How long have you known?”
“A couple of years,” she whispered. “Rommily told us, a lifetime ago, that the minotaur would die protecting Lala and me. That was before the menagerie coup. Before she and Eryx were a thing. Right after she got...hurt. But she didn’t seem to know when it would happen, and Lala and I didn’t recognize the circumstances until we were actually there, standing in the hall. With him shielding us from the gun.”
“I can’t imagine,” Lenore said. “It must be a terrible burden to know what’s going to happen and be unable to stop it.”
“Sometimes it is,” Miri admitted. “But you don’t always have to be a prophet to see something coming and be unable to stop it.”
Her words echoed my worst fears.
