Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Drug Mule
The snapping of branches quickened Mal’s pace. So did the scream that followed, the way it stopped short being of particular concern.
He bolted through the dense tangle of green, branches whipping him in the face as his heart gave a sickening lurch. That must have been what it sounded like when Griff was stabbed in the Wood.
He couldn’t keep Griff safe, in the wilds or in a city, no matter what kind of wagers or bargains he made. He understood that now.
Still, he ran faster.
The scene that greeted him as he broke through the trees wasn’t nearly as lovely as any of Alys’s charcoal drawings.
The muscular black wyvern was sinking her claws into the equally black-clad Griff, a whirl of limbs and sharp points as they struggled—Griff, by some miracle, still conscious despite the abrupt way his scream had ended—making it difficult to tell where one ended and the other began.
In the thicket where the wyvern must have been hiding, something stirred. The shadow slipped out of sight, Rhun’s spirit apparently not sticking around for the bloodbath, just turning his back on the sight of Griff in distress.
But Mal didn’t have time to dwell on whatever part he might have played here, because the wyvern was holding Griff in place so that she could unhinge her jaw, venomous teeth sinking deep into Griff’s shoulder and tearing something that made a terrible sound as she thrashed her prey in a display of dominance.
This proved to be too much for Griff. His eyes rolled back as he slipped free of the pain.
The wyvern was already backing away, attempting to drag her catch farther from whatever might threaten her meal as Mal recovered from the shock of it all long enough to draw his sword and shout, “Alys! Help me!”
The still-healing cuts on his hands twinged in protest as Mal gripped his blade and charged.
He didn’t care about the wetness that signaled his dominant palm splitting open again; he simply shifted the blade to his other hand and continued to rush the wyvern.
At least these things didn’t breathe fire like their larger, recently extinct cousins.
He didn’t have a plan. Not unless he counted needling the beast like a bard who knew only one off-key tune.
He loved this Griff who looked at him like he was something special, and he didn’t ever want that to end.
He had a dragon’s heart, with his love of shiny things like the twin emeralds of Griff’s eyes, and he guarded his own treasures with his life. This beast was in for a fight.
As his blade slipped from his bloody grip and hit the grass, he swore and aimed an irate kick at the wyvern’s side, the dragon in him roaring up madder than ever. Desperate to do anything he could to save Griff.
He lashed out at the wyvern with his bloody fists as panic threatened to draw him deep into its blackened, unending maw.
He wanted to be someone Griff could count on too.
“Mal!” Alys screamed as she took in the scene from somewhere behind him—he wasn’t sure when she had gotten here, though she must have started running the second she heard his call. “Your sword! Why the hell did you drop your sword?”
He didn’t answer. He was breathless from continuing to beat and kick the creature’s scaly body, doing little more than making it as livid and panicked as he was.
The wyvern hissed and slashed at him with her claws, managing to land a few deep scratches before Alys finally charged forward with her blade raised.
She plunged Rhun’s sword in deep while Mal had the beast distracted. There came some telltale wet sounds as she pushed the blade down through scale and into the resistance of thick cords of muscle.
Her roar was louder than the wyvern’s as the creature rounded on her and bared its dripping teeth, glistening with Griff’s blood.
Mal, meanwhile, wasted little time in diving away from the next slash of Alys’s blade, his face flushed with exertion and his palm bleeding freely.
Alys jabbed her sword into the wyvern’s soft underbelly, earning a wrathful screech and a loosening of its jaws. Released from the creature’s grasp, Griff lay on the ground, limp as one of his nieces’ beloved rag dolls.
Seeming to realize she was outnumbered, the wyvern slunk away from Alys’s blade that bit deeper than venomous teeth—though it still showed off its own as it retreated, an effect made no less chilling by the crimson rivulets running down the creature’s flank and belly.
Mal grabbed his blade again, holding it up with both hands as the wyvern’s violet eyes narrowed. The arrogant creature still seemed to be assessing whether there might be some better angle from which to snatch up her quarry.
Rushing at the beast with a growl and a flash of steel, Mal finally convinced the creature to try her luck elsewhere. She slithered into the dappled late afternoon shadows with another hiss, painting a scarlet trail as she went.
Mal tossed his blade aside again and quickly knelt beside Griff, fingers and eyes searching for signs of life as Alys dropped down next to him and started to do the same.
“Griff? Griffin Sayer. Look at me,” she demanded of the bloodied, unconscious man as tears slid down her cheeks. “Open your eyes and look at me. I am not watching you die twice in the same year when I don’t know any necromancy, do you understand?”
Mal had managed to escape the wyvern’s claws with only a few slashes through his much-abused cloak, which was now stained a dark red. The cuts were burning and oozing, but he knew they were nothing compared to the punctures Griff had suffered in his shoulder, dangerously close to his neck.
Ignoring Alys’s quiet sobs, he leaned in close to Griff, listening for breath and finding, to his immense relief, a thready pulse.
He whisked off his tattered cloak, pressing it against Griff’s shoulder with the force of both hands as he said to Alys, “Where are our packs? We’ve got to stop this bleeding.
Griff has—he has bandages, and whatever else healers use.
” He was usually so calm in bloody situations.
What the hell was wrong with him? Griff needed him to think.
Griff needed him.
He had let him down that night in the Wyrmwood, not being there to stop the attack or to help, but he wouldn’t fail him now. Griff could still count on him.
“He’s got some kind of special elf medicine, something in a vial, he gives it to the dog—I think his pack is with Prancer,” he managed finally.
The cloak was already turning scarlet beneath his hands, the color spreading.
“I love you. Please don’t die,” Alys whispered to Griff before grabbing her sword and disappearing back the way she had come.
Mal didn’t know how long she was gone.
Holding a dying Griff in his arms was his worst nightmare.
Worse than failing to get the treasure in time and being torn apart by a host of revenants or having to work for Kage forever.
Every second of it was torturously slow, but also not nearly long enough when it might be the last they ever got to spend together.
“Mal—” Alys panted upon returning. “Mal, I—”
“I’m fine!” he snapped, though he was aware he wore the wild-eyed look of someone who was anything but. He scooted his knees under Griff’s shoulders, remembering something about elevating the wounded area from a lesson of Wynnie’s long ago.
Gazing down to where Griff’s head lolled peacefully against his thigh, Mal whispered darkly, “If you die on me now after all that talk about how you wouldn’t, I’m never fucking forgiving you. I’d take you as a sad elf over a happy phantom any day.”
He closed his eyes for a minute, pushing that cloak harder against the hot dampness of fresh blood seeping through its many folds, and when he opened them, he found Alys white faced and offering out a bunch of shirts to him.
“Thanks,” Mal muttered as he swapped his cloak for the shirts and tried not to think about how much blood Griff had already lost. “Alys, I need you to check his other wounds, and if any of them are bleeding, hold pressure with those shirts, okay?”
If he didn’t keep his composure, if he didn’t drink his flask to the bottom to steady his hands, it was all over for Griff.
“Okay,” Alys agreed, kneeling again and starting to inspect Griff’s other, shallower scratches. “But Mal, I was trying to tell you—the mule’s gone. All we’ve got is my pack.”
Mal’s voice was a quiet scrape of chisel on bone as he stared at his hands and the bloody stain once again spreading beneath them. “What do you mean?”
“I fed him a few mushrooms when you followed Griff, so he wouldn’t be so nervous,” Alys answered breathlessly, pressing a balled-up shirt to a gash on Griff’s thigh.
Mal’s curse shot birds from the trees, and Griff’s eyes fluttered open.
The dark-haired man seemed unable to speak, likely disoriented by the proximity of the ground, the position of the sky, and the terrible pain that was surely radiating from somewhere near his neck.
He even tried to close his eyes again, probably hoping to fall back into a dream, but he wasn’t so lucky this time.
He groaned softly as Alys pushed the shirt harder against one of his wounds. Then, blinking up at Mal, he said weakly, “The shadow tried to kill me, didn’t it? It brought me here. Looked like … like Rhun.”
Mal stared at the pale face beneath his and shook his head.
“I don’t know. I saw it, for a second, but it looked like a shadow, same as always.
It was a wyvern that attacked you, and too damn bad for them both, because you aren’t allowed to leave me yet.
” He used his bloody palm to sweep Griff’s hair back from his face, then let his hand fall onto Griff’s good shoulder.
“You’re probably poisoned. Not the magical kind.
We’re going to need you to tell us what to do. And the mule ran off with your kit.”