Chapter 22 Bleeding Out
Chapter twenty-two
Bleeding Out
“Jenna!” Lynnette exclaimed almost before Lance finished wrapping the gauze around her thigh. The wrap was mostly to hold the larger padding in place, but it also helped to protect against infection. Lynnette didn’t heal like he did.
She shoved to her feet the moment he turned to tuck things back into the med kit. “We can’t linger here. Jenna is—”
Lance latched onto her hips to hold her in place, tossed the kit in Billy’s direction, and rocked to his feet. “Jenna is fine,” he said, forcing his words to be calm. Calm was close to the last thing he felt.
He’d seen terrible injuries. He’d watched men die in an instant.
He’d taken gruesome injuries that would have rendered most men lame or worse.
To say nothing for the other unpleasant shit he’d endured.
A little blood on a small, barely finger-width gash shouldn’t mean a damn thing to him.
But it was her blood. The gash marred her flesh.
And he wasn’t well-equipped enough to keep it from scarring when it healed.
All because he hadn’t caught up to her in time.
Lynnette shook her head, one hand pushing at his chest. “No,” she said. “I left her alone, by the creek, so I could draw these assholes away—”
Lance lifted his hands to cup her face. “Lynn,” he said, more firmly, “Jenna’s fine.
Jon will have caught up to her by now.” He waited a beat for the words to process in her mind.
“You left her by water? Then I promise you, she was safe before you were. You can take a breath, sweetheart. Think about your own needs.”
Her mouth opened and her fingers curled over his shirt. Then she gave her head a tight shake. “If I do that, I think I’ll collapse.”
Well, at least she was honest.
A chirp, bright and crisp and practically overhead, drew his attention up.
Lance was more than a little disconcerted when he locked eyes with a goddamn osprey on a lower-hanging branch of the nearest tree, not more than two feet above Lynnette’s head. The conversation he’d had with Foxe a few days prior, and his own half-baked theory, rushed through his mind.
They didn’t have a lot to go on, but what they did have indicated that PJ likely had some ability connected to birds. Whether it was a manipulation-type or something else they might never learn. It made Lance’s skin crawl to think he had to worry about ducking from fucking birds.
Lynnette tensed and slid closer, her voice lowering to the softest whisper as she turned her head. “This might be nuts, but I’m pretty sure Quetzal has some sort of influence over birds. And that osprey’s not … behaving right.”
Lance tugged her fully into his chest and flicked a volt of electricity at the bird. Whatever the answer, it flew off in vocal displeasure. Then, without unlocking his grip, he asked, “Who the fuck is Quetzal?”
Lynnette tipped her head to meet his gaze. “Your Pretty Bird, I think.”
Lance frowned. Jon had given them an idea of what they were running into, eventually, and among other things he’d definitely mentioned PJ probably being on-scene.
He’d called the guy “Q.” Said Q had been at Jenna’s bakery that first day, but Lance had been preoccupied making sure the older gentleman wasn’t trying to hide a heart attack and so hadn’t seen the man.
“Hm? Quetzal?” Herb asked, serving also to remind Lance of their audience.
Lance turned them bodily around, keeping one hand on Lynnette’s hip, and let himself cut his eyes briefly over the bound and unconscious figures of the bastards he’d caught trying to chase her down.
The three not on the brink of death, anyway.
The other guy was still a few paces ahead and bleeding into the dirt like he fucking deserved.
“Yeah,” Lynn replied. “Real pretentious douchebag. Definitely in charge, at least of these assholes.”
Herb made a face. “But that’s just too on the nose.”
Lance arched a brow and looked over at the others to see if they followed.
Billy shrugged and Foxe shook his head.
“Well, whatever it is, it’s only obvious to you,” Lance said. “Could you clue in our ignorant asses?” He’d have blamed it on their being white, but, well, Foxe was black.
Herb sighed and planted his hands on his hips. “It’s an insult to Aztec history is what it is. ‘Quetzal’ is obviously derived from ‘Quetzalcoatl’, an ancient god of the Aztecs. Known as the feathered-serpent.” His face contorted as he spoke and his eyes rolled up to the sky.
The group was quiet a moment before Foxe asked, “You don’t think he could be … descended, right? Like, this bird trick he does isn’t the real deal or anything?”
Both of Lance’s brows went up and Herb lit into him, ranting in Spanish about the absolute impossibility of such a horror. In many more words, with much more flare. Lance tuned most of it out and attempted to mull over the information that mattered.
Knowing some history was interesting, and never hurt—one never knew when random details might come in handy—but at the moment, the man’s true identity was the clincher.
That would help tremendously with tying leads together, possibly on both sides of the border.
Yet even that helpful information paled in comparison to the simple fact that he might still be in the area. And if he wasn’t, he had been recently.
Lance glanced back up into the trees. They were onto something with this bird trick theory.
He could feel it. What they needed to know was what the trick was, specifically, and what was its range.
For what use it might be, he pulled out his phone and typed in a quick text to Dietz.
If all the message did was help guide the hunt on the other side, he was good with that.
The non-argument in front of him had died down by the time he’d tucked his phone away again.
Lance tightened his grip around Lynnette to remind himself she was there, she was all right, and like it or not, the safest place for her for the time being was beside him.
Which was good, because she’d probably have argued if he tried shooing her off like some fragile damsel, anyway.
“Jon and Alex will have rendezvoused with Jenna by now,” Lance said.
“We should assume they met with hostiles, same as us. We should assume Quetzal is still active and close enough to be a threat. We don’t have a lot of hard evidence on what his ability might be, so for the time being, if something acts out of the norm, put it down.
If one bullet doesn’t do the job, give it three.
” He cut another sidelong glare at the unconscious bastards.
One was barely wounded. One bled from a decent shot to the shoulder. The other’s face had been swollen from a recent run-in with bear spray, apparently, before being slammed into the dirt. None of them were comfy, but none of them were so out they couldn’t become a problem if left as they were.
“Sweetheart,” he said, reaching behind him again for his handgun as he spoke. “Turn your head and cover your ears.” He’d rather she not experience any of this, but they both understood life didn’t always go the way a person wanted.
Lynn stiffened. “Are you really going to shoot them? They’re unconscious, and bound.”
“Yes.” He could argue his reasonings, but the answer was what she needed to hear. He met her stare, needing her to see him despite that a part of him feared what he might see in her eyes.
Her brow furrowed and she looked between him and the men she’d been fleeing from.
The argument built on her face, plain as day.
Her lips thinned. Her jaw trembled. Her shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath.
She met his stare again. The hardness looking back at him in her eyes wasn’t what he’d feared—it wasn’t a wall blocking him out.
Though she was less than pleased, she was also resolved.
“I don’t like it,” she said, as if there was any doubt, “and I can’t pretend otherwise.
But if there’s one thing I like less than what you’re suggesting, it’s what these scumbags have been doing with their lives.
So, because we don’t have a lot of good options right now, and because I see how lives will actually be spared your way, I’ll swallow the foul taste this time. ”
Lance smiled, just a little. “Understood.” He’d kiss her for that later and tell her quietly how much he actually appreciated both her honesty and her compromise. But it wasn’t the time.
“I’m also not a child,” she added. “I don’t need to hide away. Just get it done with.”
He arched a brow, then glanced over at his silently smirking and snickering comrades.
Foxe had the decency to shrug.
Since both his hands were occupied, Lance couldn’t flip them off. So instead, he adjusted to aim at the asshole Lynn had had to mace. He noted the guys moving in his peripheral, taking aim. He felt Lynn curl her fingers into his shirt. And he squeezed the trigger.
She’d never been to war, never seen or felt it the way her father had before she was born.
The way Lance had before they’d met. Still, Lynnette told herself that if she thought of the events unfolding in the forest that day as a war—however small-scale, however spontaneous—and not like an arguably illegal skirmish between armed criminals and highly trained, concerningly armed civilians, she could swallow it.
Sort of. She damn well had to, regardless.
She meant what she’d said to Lance before he and his friends had executed her pursuers.
Those men weren’t just cold-blooded murderers.
They helped to abduct, terrorize, torture, and sell their fellow humans for profit.
Women, specifically. Which meant not only were their victims subjected to unimaginable torture, assigned hideous tasks or broken for show and tossed aside, they were also sexually assaulted. Likely repeatedly.