Page 3 of Property of Prophet

I stare.

It does it again, slower this time. A bow, an acknowledgment. The damn thing is bowing to him.

“Oh, fuck off.”

The wolves turn and disappear into the trees.

I sit back on my heels, rifle forgotten in my lap, staring at the place where unlikely animals have offered respect to an impossible man. Five years of silence have taught me to trust my instincts and recognize when something defies explanation. This all falls so far outside normal that normal doesn’t even occupy the same universe.

Fingers lock around my wrist. I nearly shoot him. His eyes stay closed, but his grip is brutal.

“Help.” One word, barely there.

Then again. “Please, help.” And his hand goes slack.

I stare at his hand lying limp in the snow.

Five years.

Five years building a life where nobody needs me. Nobody can ask anything of me, and this bastard falls out of the fucking sky and asks for help. I close my eyes.

I look up at Bear, who is watching from the crater’s edge with ears flat and tail tucked.

People don’t fall from the sky, a voice whispers in my head. And they sure as hell don’t survive impacts that create craters. People also don’t have light in their eyes or wolves that bow to them.

But this person, this Prophet, does.

And he asked for help.

“Dammit.” I stare up at the sky. “Dammit all to hell.”

The oath didn’t come with an expiration date.

I shrug out of my coat and wrap it around him, tucking it close against his body to preserve what little heat remains. Then I dig through my medical pack for the emergency bivvy, a silver space blanket that reflects body heat.

Getting him into it took longer than it should have. Every movement was cautious to avoid worsening injuries I can’t yet assess. My hands shake from the cold, adrenaline, and the sheer impossibility of what I am doing.

Moving him will be a nightmare. He outweighs me by at least one hundred pounds, all of it deadweight and unconscious. The cabin sits a quarter mile away, most of it downhill through thigh-deep snow. But downhill doesn’t mean easy, not with Alaska’s terrain. Ice waits beneath the snow in treacherous sheets. Roots and rocks lurk to catch unwary feet. And the temperature is dropping fast.

I am going to need rope from the cabin, branches to fashion a makeshift travois. Bear could help pull—the dog has dragged heavier loads when I hunted elk last winter. But that would mean leaving this man alone in the crater, exposed, while I made the trek down and back. Twenty minutes, maybe thirty if the snow has drifted badly. Thirty minutes for shock to deepen, for hypothermia to advance past the point of no return, for whatever internal bleeding exists to finish what the fall has started.

Medical triage says to stabilize first, move second. But out here, the rules change. Exposure kills faster than most injuries. I have seen it during my time in emergency medicine when patients survive horrific trauma only to die from hypothermia during transport. Alaska demands respect, and part of that respect means recognizing when the environment poses the greater threat.

My hands move automatically, checking what I can assess without moving him farther. Pulse still weak but steady. Breathing remains shallow but regular. With no obvious spinal damage, his fingers curl and grip my coat with purpose. That suggests nerve function is intact despite the impossible impact. Burns cover his hands and arms, the kind that come from touching something superheated. The vest he wears protected his torso, but the exposed skin shows angry red marks that will blister soon.

I pull gauze from my pack and wrap his hands as gently as speed will allow. The medical kit I keep isn’t designed for trauma this severe, and contains only antiseptic wipes, bandages, and basic wound care supplies. Enough to handle cuts and minor injuries, but not enough to deal with someone who has fallen from the sky. But it is what I have, and medical training has taught me to work with the resources available.

His eyes open.

I stop breathing.

Blue.

Not human blue. Light moves inside them, slow currents of lightning beneath glass.

He looks straight at me.

“You’re real.” His voice comes out rough, damaged by smoke or screaming, or both. “I thought... I thought I’d imagined you.”