18. Dash #2
The van settles on its ruined shocks. Flour dust hangs in the air, suspended in shafts of amber light. She breathes beneath me, her body rising and falling against mine, her heartbeat wild and slowing.
My forehead drops against her shoulder. Vanilla. Sugar. Even under everything.
"You split my flour."
"Send me a bill."
The door is gone. I ripped it off its hinges three days ago on a dark highway to wrestle a griffin, and Magnolia never replaced it. Wind screams through the gap at sixty miles an hour, whipping flour dust off my tactical vest and scattering it across the slag road like snow.
I don't mind. The breeze helps. Keeps the venom burn cool.
Magnolia drives the way she bakes. Aggressive cornering, total spatial awareness, absolute refusal to slow down for anything that isn't a direct physical obstacle.
She takes the on-ramp to the interstate at forty-five and the van's rear tires break loose on the gravel transition and she corrects without blinking, one hand on the wheel, the other reaching back to grab a roll of gauze from the scattered first aid kit on the flour-dusted cargo floor.
She tosses it into my lap without looking.
"Start with the arm. The one that's turning purple."
"It's green."
"It's green AND purple, which is not a color combination that occurs naturally on living things."
I unroll the gauze with my teeth, hook the end around my bicep, and start wrapping.
The venom wound is ugly. Three parallel lacerations from the crawler's forelimb, each one swollen and weeping something translucent that smells like battery acid.
The flesh around the cuts has gone a deep eggplant shade that contrasts unpleasantly with my skin. She's right. Not a good color.
The gauze soaks through immediately. I wrap a second layer.
"Tighter."
"If I go tighter, the circulation—"
"Tighter. Venom moves through lymph, not blood. You want compression."
She cuts her eyes at me for exactly one second, then back to the road. "How do you know that?"
"I've been stung eleven times."
"Eleven."
"This is twelve."
She accelerates past a livestock transport hauling caged basilisks. The driver honks. She doesn't flinch.
"Twelve times. Twelve times you've let a giant venomous insect stab you."
"Rock crawlers are arachnids."
"Oh, well, that changes everything. Twelve times you've let a giant venomous ARACHNID stab you. My mistake."
I tighten the gauze with my teeth. Good pressure.
The purple fades half a shade. I move to the thigh, peeling the torn fabric of my cargo pants away from the gash where the crawler took its pound of flesh.
This one needs stitches. The edges are ragged, pulled apart by dried blood and movement, and I can see the dark red muscle beneath.
The sewing kit is in her baking bag. I pull out a curved upholstery needle and a spool of heavy-duty cotton thread she uses for piping bag repairs.
"Are you seriously about to suture yourself with my baking supplies?"
"Thread is thread."
"That thread is lavender scented."
I bite the end and push the needle through. The pain is clean and bright and entirely manageable compared to the memory of her face crumbling when she thought I was rejecting paragraph three. I yank the first stitch tight. Neat. Even. Six more and the wound closes in a tidy lavender-scented line.
"You should have been a surgeon."
"Surgeons don't get to punch things."
She laughs. The sound fills the van, bouncing off the dented panels, mixing with the highway wind and the rattle of loose sheet pans in the back. I tie off the thread, bite it clean, and move to the ribs.
Nothing to do for cracked ribs except wrap them.
I use the last of the gauze, circling my torso in tight loops, pulling each pass snug against the grinding protest of fractured bone.
The wrapping covers the nail marks she left on my back.
I leave one strip loose so the fabric doesn't seal against the scratches. Those I want to feel.
"Shoulder?"
"Dislocated. Need a wall."
She checks the mirror, takes the next exit, and pulls into an abandoned weigh station. Concrete barriers. Chain-link fence. A single dead streetlight coated in rust.
I climb out through the missing door, walk to the nearest concrete wall, position my shoulder, and slam myself sideways into it.
Pop.
White stars. Gone fast. The joint slides home with a meaty click and I rotate the arm twice, testing range. Eighty percent. Functional.
I climb back in. She's already accelerating before I'm fully seated.
"Done?"
I flex my hands. Roll my neck. Inventory complete. Twelve stitches, four feet of gauze, one field reduction, and a van that smells like lavender thread and split bread flour. I've walked away from worse with less.
"Done."
"Good." She merges onto the highway. The city skyline rises from the haze ahead, all glass and iron and the distant glow of the supernatural district's neon. "Because we need to talk logistics."
"Logistics."
"I need a delivery driver. My last one quit after the hellhound incident on Fifth Street.
The van needs a new door, a new windshield, and probably a new suspension after what we just did to it.
I can pay above market rate because my holiday cookie pre-orders just cleared six figures. You start Monday."
I settle back against the seat. The wind pulls at my bandages. The city grows closer.
"There's one thing."
"What thing?"
"Grimjaw."
Her knuckles go white on the wheel. She knows the name.
Everyone in the supernatural district knows the name.
Grimjaw the Collector. Guild Master of the Iron Fang Mercenary Company.
Seven feet two inches of scarred, ancient Orc muscle with a jaw like a bear trap and a policy written in actual blood.
No one retires from the Iron Fang.