Chapter 28 Mattie
MATTIE
"You're burning up." Mattie pressed her palm against Dimitri's forehead and winced at the heat radiating from his skin. "This is bad. This is really bad."
Dimitri's teeth chattered despite the blanket she'd pulled over him. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're the opposite of fine."
He'd started to develop a fever in the middle of the night, and she'd given him the one aspirin packet she'd found in the first aid kit, but it hadn't helped, and his fever had kept rising.
Remembering her grandma's remedies, Mattie had filled a pitcher with water from the sink and used a washcloth to cool Dimitri's head. The problem was that the water from the faucet wasn't cold, which was not surprising given that this was a tropical island.
"You need a doctor." She took the washcloth off his forehead, dunked it in the lukewarm water, wrung it out, and laid it across his forehead again.
"No doctors." He tried to push the cloth away, but his hand trembled too badly to make contact. "Get Petrov."
"He's not that kind of doctor."
"He will have to do. Others will ask too many questions."
Every instinct in her screamed that he needed medical attention and that whatever was happening to his body was beyond her ability to manage with wet cloths, but she also understood his fear.
Any unusual illness or injury would be reported and investigated, and an investigation would lead to Tarik, and Tarik would make sure neither of them survived to tell anyone what had really happened.
"Fine," she said. "I'll get your friend."
"Not yet. He's probably sleeping, and you don't want to wake a Russian bear for a minor emergency."
"I think that your condition is not minor."
"It is for a Russian." A ghost of a smile crossed his cracked lips. "I've been worse and came out fine. We're built to withstand harsh conditions."
Her chuckle came out closer to a sob, but Dimitri's smile widened at the sound.
"That's better," he said.
"You're delirious."
"Probably." He closed his eyes. "Stay."
"I'm not going anywhere."
Mattie had been saying that since she'd woken up and realized that he was running a fever. For hours now, she had lain curled on the narrow bed beside him, listening to his breathing and checking his temperature every time he stirred.
The fever had started as just warmth, then heat, then a raging fire that turned his skin to a furnace and made his whole body shake with chills that seemed to come from deep inside his bones.
This didn't look like a flu, a cold, or even pneumonia. Could it be the venom's effect?
A knock at the door made her jump, and she was on her feet before she consciously decided to move, positioning herself between Dimitri and whoever was on the other side.
"Who is it?" she asked.
"It's me. Petrov." The voice was gruff, accented, familiar. "Who are you?"
She opened the door. "Mattie. Dimitri didn't feel well last night, so I helped him get to his room and stayed to look after him."
Petrov stood in the hallway, looking rumpled but surprisingly alert. His eyes were clear, his stance steady. He wasn't drunk for a change, or at least not plastered.
"I see." He grinned, indicating that he didn't believe her and assumed that she had stayed the night for a different reason.
Heat rose in Mattie's cheeks.
"Let him in," Dimitri croaked from the bed.
Petrov's grin disappeared in an instant. "You were serious." He pushed past her. "You look terrible. What's wrong with you?"
"It's a long story."
Petrov looked down at Dimitri. "This doesn't look like a long story. This looks like a short story with very bad consequences."
"I'm too sick to tell it." Dimitri closed his eyes. "Ask Mattie."
Petrov turned to her and arched a brow. "Well?"
She took a deep breath and told him. Not everything, not the details of what Tarik had been doing to her when Dimitri arrived or the humiliation and terror of those moments, but enough.
She told him about Dimitri's brave attack, the syringe, and the bite.
She told him about the other immortals intervening before Tarik could finish the job and then convincing him that the incident needed to stay under wraps because Dimitri was important to Lord Navuh.
Petrov frowned. "Why didn't they thrall you to forget what happened?"
Mattie ran a hand over her mussed hair. "They told us not to tell anyone, but I assumed that they meant the authorities. You don't count."
Petrov regarded her with curious eyes. "If they were using compulsion, that would have made sense, but normal immortals can't do that.
They can only thrall, meaning they can enter your mind and alter your memories so you remember what they want you to remember.
But that hasn't happened to you. I wonder if that was because you were too distraught for your mind to accept the suggestion. "
Mattie wasn't sure that she understood the difference between compulsion and thralling, but he was right about her being too distraught.
"Obviously, I was very upset. I was scared, and I thought that Tarik would force me right then and there with his friends watching and maybe taking turns.
" She looked at Dimitri, who had cracked his eyes open.
"Dimitri saved me. He was so incredibly brave. "
"He was stupid, and they were idiots," Petrov said. "All of them. The one who attacked you is an animal, and the others should have known better than to let it get that far." He turned to Dimitri. "You could have been killed, you idiot. What the hell did you put in that syringe?"
Instead of answering, Dimitri closed his eyes again and drifted off.
"They stopped Tarik from killing Dimitri," Mattie said.
"Only because they were afraid of what would happen if Dimitri died." Petrov shook his head. "The enhancement project is too important. Navuh would have had them all executed if Dimitri had been killed in a bar brawl."
Mattie nodded. "That's what they said."
Petrov turned away from the bed. "He needs medicine, and you both need food. I'll get them."
"Thank you."
"Of course." He glanced at the bed. "Stay with him. I'll be back soon."
"I'm not going anywhere until I have to leave for my shift in the bar."
When Petrov left, Mattie pulled a chair up to the bed, sat, and took Dimitri's hand. His skin was dry and hot, and his pulse was rapid beneath her fingers.
She didn't know how to help this man who had risked his life to save her, but she could stay with him, hold his hand, and be there when he woke up.
Dimitri drifted in and out of fevered sleep, occasionally murmuring things in Russian that she couldn't understand. She caught a couple of names, and here and there she heard a word she knew, but that wasn't enough to figure out what he was dreaming about.
She was starting to doze off when the door opened again, and Petrov entered with a large bag slung over his shoulder.
He set the bag on the desk and began unpacking its contents.
There were other thick blankets, several bottles of water, a couple of packets of crackers, a large container of soup, two spoons, and several pill bottles.
"From the medical supply," he said, holding up one of the bottles. "Fever reducer. Strong stuff. Should bring his temperature down."
"How did you get it?" Mattie asked.
"I know people." He shook out the blanket and covered Dimitri with it. Then he reached for the pillbox and a bottle of water and handed them to her. "Wake him up and make him swallow two of these."
Dimitri was deep in the fever's grip and barely responsive, so it took some effort to rouse him enough to get the pills down. He swallowed obediently, too weak to question what he was taking, and then slipped back into sleep almost immediately.
"It'll take some time to work," Petrov said. "After that, the fever should start to break."
Mattie took a new bottle of water and sat on the bed next to Dimitri so Petrov could have the chair. "Thank you for the medicine and the food."
He sat down, stretching his legs out in front of him. "He's my assistant, and I'm responsible for him. I just hope this is not something serious." He looked at Dimitri's bandaged neck. "How bad is it under there?"
"I don't know," she admitted. "I didn't look since I applied it."
"It doesn't make sense for the venom to cause a fever, so it must be something else, but we can't take him to the island clinic while his neck still shows the evidence of the bite.
We need to avoid an investigation as much as those immortals do.
Dimitri attacked Tarik with a syringe. That's a big no-no unless it was in self-defense. "
"He was defending me."
Petrov smiled a sad smile. "Defending a woman is not a valid reason in this place. These barbarians have no respect for women."
Regrettably, he was right.
"He saved my life, Doctor Petrov."
He studied her for a moment. "Call me Konstantin."
"Matilda." She extended her hand. "Mattie to my friends."
He shook her hand with surprising gentleness. "What do you want me to call you?"
She smiled. "As coconspirators, we are friends, so you should call me Mattie."
"Very well." Petrov glanced at Dimitri. "Either the additional blanket is helping, or the medicine has started working. He's not shivering as violently, and his skin doesn't look like it's about to combust."
She leaned over and put her hand on Dimitri's forehead. It was clammy to the touch and still hot, but not as bad as before.
"I think the medicine is working. He's a little less hot."
"I wish I could get Anita here," Konstantin said.
"Who's Anita?"
"The lady I've been seeing. She used to be a nurse before the traffickers got her. She would know what to do."
Mattie didn't know what to say to that. She'd assumed that Petrov had been visiting the brothel to take advantage of the poor women who had been enslaved there, and maybe that had been his intention initially, but he seemed to care for Anita.
"I'm sorry," she said because she couldn't think of anything else to say.
"About my inability to get her here?"
"No, I meant about her situation. You obviously care for her."
"There is nothing for you to feel sorry about.
It's not your fault." Konstantin's gaze remained fixed on some point in the distance.
"She's a fine woman, and she shouldn't be in that place any more than any of the others, but it is what it is, and there is nothing I can do about it other than spend as much time with her as I can, so she won't be available to others.
" He smiled. "Being important to Lord Navuh comes with certain privileges.
I can partake as much as I want for as long as I want, free of charge. "
"Is that why you spend so much time in there?"
"You've noticed, eh?" He waved a dismissive hand. "I enjoy being with her. She's a lovely lady, and if I could bring her here, she could take care of him." He sighed. "Maybe I can ask for a favor. Get her out of there temporarily. Though that would raise questions I'd rather not answer."
Mattie didn't like the thought of another woman taking care of Dimitri, and her grip on his arm tightened involuntarily. Anita was probably a beautiful woman who didn't have any repulsive scar tissue.
It was selfish, but even though the woman was a nurse, she couldn't do more for Dimitri than Mattie was already doing. A nurse wasn't qualified to diagnose what was ailing him, especially if it was some allergic reaction to the venom.
"What time is it?" she asked, changing the subject.
Konstantin checked his watch. "Almost ten."
Ten o'clock. Today, her shift at the bar started at one.
"I will need to go soon," she said, though every part of her resisted the idea. "My shift starts at one."
"Stay," Petrov said.
"I want to, but I don't have a choice."
In fact, she was terrified of going back there by herself and encountering her tormentor again. Tarik might fear harming Dimitri, but she was free for the taking.
"I'll talk to your boss and tell him that you are in no state to work today." Konstantin rose to his feet. "What's the barman's name?"
"Anil."
"Oh yes, Anil. He can handle the bar on his own." A smile crossed his face. "After all, he was doing just fine before he got you to take orders and serve drinks. I should know, given how much time I spend at that place every day."
"Anil requested a waitress to help him because he was overwhelmed, and I was chosen for some reason." Mattie still didn't know why she'd been the one selected. Luck, maybe. Or fate. "He needed help, and he still needs it."
"Well, he'll have to manage without his waitress for one day. Dimitri needs you more than he does."
If Petrov could get her off her shift, that would be a huge relief. She wouldn't have to leave Dimitri, and she wouldn't have to face the bar and the possibility that Tarik and his friends might return.
"Thank you for doing this for me," she said.
He paused at the door, one hand on the frame. "I need a drink anyway. Might as well talk to your boss while I'm there." He winked at her, and then he was gone.