Chapter 16
Fresh Wounds
Allie
Cam. Be careful, Cam.
Morrigan interrupted Allie’s thoughts. Idiotic, disobedient child. You were to tell the man, not go into that ambush alone.
I’m sorry, My Goddess.
Allie came back to consciousness through murky layers of comprehension.
Watery awareness, fiery pain, aching regret.
Then a replay of the Dream, that ageless monolith in shark form and the pilot fish surrounding it, tiny in comparison but shiny and energetic.
One of them seemed to notice her, and a bright flash of something exploded across her unconscious mind.
It was... curious. Friendly. Interested.
The pilot fish swam closer, and she realized it was as big as she was.
Her eyes opened and blinked against sunlight.
“Oh, hey.” An older white man with tanned skin, a thick salt-and-pepper beard, and the kindest, drowsiest green eyes she’d ever seen smiled at her. His teeth were clean but crooked. “Easy, there. You’re Allie. I’m Gray. We’re friends.”
Gray. She knew that name. She drew in a breath. Around an odd thickness in her throat, she managed to croak, “Cam?”
“He’s here,” Gray said, and he went back to cleaning the cut on her head.
She smelled what must be rubbing alcohol right before the burn of it made her wince.
“Sorry. I know that stings,” Gray said. “You’re in some kinda shape, kid.”
Cam. Where was Cam? She tried craning her neck to look around her.
“Hey. Don’t move, okay? We’re getting the bleeding under control, but you need stitches.”
Stitches? “Double-bladed knife,” she muttered.
The large man had tried to cut off her clothes and was going to... hurt her. He’d been angry that she’d killed his friend. He’d clearly taken savage pleasure in cutting her skin along with the cloth, making her blood flow.
“Yeah, that’d do it,” Gray said.
She coughed and closed her eyes. “Dry throat.”
“Water soon.” Gray’s voice was reassuring. “We’re going to give you something to make you feel better.”
He was going to drug her. Her eyes flew open, and she croaked, “No!” The man’s eyes might have been kind, but that was no guarantee of good intentions. “Cam!”
“I’ll get him, kid.” Gentle hands tried to hold her still. Gray looked to the side and raised his voice. “Cam, your girl’s awake. Get over here.”
Allie tried to move again, but then Cam was there, his face drawn tight with worry. No, he shouldn’t be worried. She’d stopped the guys who’d wanted to hurt them.
But he was upset. Probably because she hadn’t told him what was going on. Morrigan was upset about that too.
“Cam, I’m... I’m sorry.” And I’m sorry, Morrigan.
Before Cam could speak, she heard Gray’s voice, low-pitched and urgent. He was talking to someone else, someone Allie couldn’t see.
“We can’t wait.” A deeper female voice. “There’s no local anesthetic here anywhere, nothing useful. But there’s chloroform. Shouldn’t be, but these fucking animals...”
Other voices joined the discussion. Allie shifted, ignoring the pain, trying to see who was talking.
“Angel, you’ve got to hold still.” Cam’s voice sounded angry. Was he angry at her?
She stopped moving, mortified to find that tears were sliding from her eyes down into her hairline. “I tried to help.”
“I know, baby, and you did.” His words and tone soothed, but his eyes were turbulent. “But you’re hurt now, and we’ve got to get you patched up. So hold still, please. This is Gray. I told you about him, remember?”
A fog seemed to have covered her brain, making Cam’s familiar face go hazy. She struggled to think. “And Keyshawna?”
Cam tried to smile. Was it distorted because of him or the haze?
“She’s here too,” he said. “And we’re all really fucking worried about you right now.”
Another face appeared above her, that of a person with short black hair and mahogany skin, but Allie’s eyes wouldn’t focus. She tried to lift her head to get a better look, but it was too heavy.
“Allie, honey. We found you.” It was the voice from the radio—Key—but there was more fear than relief in the woman’s tone.
Hot tears flooded Allie’s eyes, blinding her fully. “I’m hurt. Worse than useless now. My fault.”
That other female voice came again, musical but impatient. “We need to do this now, Cameron.”
Allie knew they would have to leave her behind in order to survive.
Injured as she was, she was more of a liability than ever.
She couldn’t travel like this, like literal deadweight, and she couldn’t let herself hold them all back.
She couldn’t be the reason any of these people might die.
The reason Cam might die. It would be worse than what Laurel had done to him.
“Cam, it’s okay,” Allie whispered, her voice failing her. “Leave me with some weapons, maybe some food and water, and go.”
“We are not leaving you,” Cam snapped, anger back in his tone, before he gentled it again. “But you need stitches. Odette’s got all the supplies. But...” He paused. “It’s going to hurt, a lot, and you really need to be asleep for that so we can do it properly.”
When she blinked, her vision cleared enough to see him above her, but his face was contorted with pain.
“Gray,” Key murmured, probably thinking Allie couldn’t hear. “Can you chloroform someone who’s in shock?”
The older man’s voice was sad. “I don’t think we have a choice at this point.”
Nonononono. “Please, don’t,” Allie begged, throat raw, weeping again. “Don’t put me to sleep. I swear, I’ll hold still.” There was a song she’d sung, a song that soothed her. But she couldn’t remember...
Cam cupped her face with one hand. “Allie, I promise it will be okay. We’ll fix you up, and when you wake up, I’ll be here.”
“Please, no,” she sobbed, all the pain in her body rising back to the top of her consciousness. They would drug her. Leave her. Cam was leaving her.
She managed to moan, “At least let me keep my machete,” before a damp cloth was pressed to her mouth and nose. She tried to cry out, but her world faded to dull, dead black.
Cam
“Cam, honey. She’s going to be okay.”
Cam had stayed through the whole process.
Odette had stitched her up without any major complications, and he watched now as she slept.
His angel’s bandages were white and clean, and her face was relaxed, with no trace of the abject terror he’d seen there just before they’d put her out.
Odette promised that she would heal well and would probably be able to travel in Gray’s cart within a day or two.
“She really will be okay,” Key said, shifting to sit beside him.
Knowing Allie was going to survive had taken a huge weight off his chest—a weight that had been there since he’d seen the note she’d left him about the ambush, a weight that carried the certainty Allie was going to die.
That he was going to lose her forever, like Laurel.
And once again, there was nothing he could do about it.
That crushing, terrifying weight was gone.
The regret that racked him now, though, was terrible in its own way.
She’d begged him not to put her to sleep. They’d done it anyway.
Cam found his voice, finally. “Will she be able to forgive me?”
Key sighed. “She’s probably not going to remember much of what happened. She was traumatized, in shock. Dealing with blood loss. She was quite literally out of her head, baby.”
Key hadn’t called him “baby” in years, and the endearment made tears spring to his eyes. He leaned against her, breathing in her familiar scent. “I can’t lose her, too, Key.”
“You won’t,” she promised, putting one strong arm around him. “Did you know that she did what she did in order to keep you safe?”
“And to show me that she was useful.” That rankled. “She doesn’t trust me. Even after everything we’ve—”
With a harrumph he’d heard many times before, Key bumped him with her shoulder and jostled him into sitting up.
“Stop making this about you. Allie has been hurt, and badly, by someone she trusted. Then she was on her own for a damn year.” She frowned.
“I can’t imagine dealing with that, even with Sekhmet’s help. ”
Cam nodded. “I know.” He’d given Key and Odette a quick rundown of Allie’s life since the apocalypse hit, and it had only increased their concern for her.
Then Key raised her eyebrows at him. “And you show up, and it’s all ‘Come with me—I’ll change your life,’ and you end up having lots of sex...”
Gross. “Key, please,” he began.
She cut him off with one raised hand. “I knew what was going on in that bunker.” She paused. “And I hope you wrapped that rascal.”
Somehow, he laughed, just a little, as his cheeks warmed. “I did, Mama. I am.”
“Good,” she said, grinning. “And, honey, I love you.”
Cam swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. “I love you too.”
“You have a tendency to jump in with your whole self when you find something you care about. You like to take care of people—I love that about you, baby—and I know that your feelings for Allie are real, but you have to give her time to adjust.”
“But... what if she never adjusts?” It was one of his least examined, most terrifying fears about their relationship—what if Allie could never come to trust him?
What if she could only ever assume the worst?
What if she, like Laurel, could never really commit to him the way he would commit to her? “What can I do?”
“Cameron Alexander Hale. Son of my heart. Are you for real right now?” The utter bemused exasperation in her tone shocked him. “You’ve known this woman for like two weeks. And I know extreme situations breed relationships, but come the fuck on.”
Heat burned like acid in his stomach. “I lost Laurel.”
“Oh, honey.” She squeezed his shoulders. “You never had Laurel as anything but a friend with benefits, and it’s best you face up to that now.”
He knew it was the truth. Didn’t make hearing it sting any less. “I know. But I loved her.”
“And it sucks that she didn’t love you. How could she not? I don’t get it.” Her hand smoothed over his ragged, filthy hair, making his heart ache all over again. “But she didn’t. And she left us—not just you, baby—because she found something else she did want.”
“I couldn’t save her.”
“Laurel didn’t want to be saved. She wanted to stay with those Mother’s Hands people. I’m sorry as hell that she’s gone, but she died. She died where she wanted to be.”
In the silence that followed, Cam tried to think of something to say.
Before he could, Key took a deep breath that shuddered back out with some powerful emotion, her voice rising and shaking when she declared, “And I was so goddamned mad at you for staying there, Cameron. For telling us to go on without you, that you’d wait for her to come to her senses.
Just ‘go on without me,’ like it was nothing.
Like our family was nothing. You broke my heart.
” Her voice fractured on that last word.
Shame flooded his veins. “God, Key.”
But she wasn’t finished. “I thought we’d lost you forever.
That first night, I wanted to go back. Odette tried to tell me it was your choice—her crying the whole time.
Every time I dreamed, I begged to know where you were, if you were still alive.
” She shook her head, tears slipping down her cheeks.
“I tried not to give up hope, but it was so damn hard.”
“I’m sorry.” He put his arms around her. “Key.” He buried his face in her neck. “Mama. I’m so sorry.”
They cried together for a little while, Key rocking them both back and forth the way she had when he had nightmares after coming to live with her and Odette.
After the tears dried on their cheeks, they sat in silence for a bit. Cam knew the exhaustion of the last week was catching up to all of them—the rest of the camp was quiet. The shadows around Key’s eyes weren’t just from crying.
He looked back at Allie’s sleeping face. “I fucked up pretty bad.”
Key sighed again, but this one sounded affectionate. “I’ll forgive you, since you came back to me and brought us this one here. I like her.”
“I... I love her, Key.” Letting the words out felt good.
“I know,” Key said. “I knew it when you were still in that bunker. Odette said so too.”
He chuckled. Apparently, Allie was the only one who didn’t realize the depth of his feelings for her.
Key added, “If it helps, I’m pretty sure she’s got it just as bad for you.
I doubt she’d have followed you out of that bunker if she didn’t.
” Her certainty filled some of the hollow places inside him, warmed him.
“But, honey, I’m serious here. You have got to let this thing between you grow at a normal pace if it’s going to work. ”
He grimaced. “Which means not expecting her to drop all her baggage just because I care about her. Being patient.”
“Which you can do.” She hugged him hard. “I’ve seen you take care of so many people. It’s all you want to do. But this one... She’s been on a hard road, and it’s not necessarily going to get easier just because we’re all together now.” Her voice took on an edge at that last part.
Cam eased back from the hug to look in her whiskey-amber eyes, which were now shadowed. “What do you know, Key?”
“I don’t know anything. Yet.” Her mouth set in a grim line. “Mostly, Sekhmet—may She be praised and all, because She’s saved our asses more times than any of us probably even know—likes to keep me in the dark, give me just enough to keep me going.”
Cam absorbed that. “Morrigan talks to Allie kind of the same way, I think, although She was forthcoming about the map stuff. Really specific.”
“Yeah, Sekhmet was, too, in Her way.” However, that didn’t seem to make Key feel much better.
“It suited Their purpose, I think. Which is why us all coming together, meeting up with other people like us, with the true dreams and such?” Key shook her head.
“It’s good. I know. Strength in numbers.
But it makes me feel like we’re all kind of like chess pieces, you know? Being moved around, put in place.”
“For what?”
“Well.” She sighed and swiped a hand over her eyes then gave him a resigned, rueful look. “We’ll have to wait and see.”