Chapter 14 #2
After that, everything seemed to move at double speed.
He was climbing up, swinging his body over the edge of the cliff face and onto the scraggly purple grass at my feet.
I shot a last climber down from the wall with a well-aimed arrow and the horde of remaining creatures seemed satisfied with the flesh of their fallen, rather than to continue after us.
I dropped to my knees at Iave’s side where he’d collapsed.
He’d rolled to his side, awkwardly lying with the backpack with supplies still on his back.
His tail was a bloody mess but his upper body seemed to be unharmed, he was just breathing hard, staring at me while he caught his breath.
“How bad is it?” I asked, “Do we need the Shaman? Do you know how to get there from here?”
I gazed around me in a hurry, trying to figure out if I recognized any of the mountains that rose up around us. Did any of them look the same? I was pretty sure they did not. How far had we traveled underground? This could mean that we were days away from Artek. Was there another Shaman closer by?
He grunted in response, sliding his injured tail across the purple grass to tap the tip against my hip.
Oh right, he hadn’t understood a word I said because we hadn’t been touching.
That was starting to be so inconvenient.
I really hated that I couldn’t simply speak to him whenever I wanted, or that I couldn’t understand him when he decided to talk, which wasn’t all that often so I didn’t want to keep missing it.
Dark was also rapidly descending, taking the last of the violet light so it was becoming harder to see where he was wounded and where I was just looking at his midnight-colored scales.
“I’m fine. Now we have matching claw holes,” Iave grunted, his mouth tilting into a wry grin.
I didn’t think that was funny, especially not considering how badly my ankle was throbbing.
His had been made by an adult too, going all the way through him.
My bleeding cuts had been made by a baby one and weren’t nearly as big or deep.
When I shot him a glare, his grin widened.
He rose to a sitting position, shrugging his shoulders and then nimbly tucking his ax back into its belt loop.
“Let’s get some distance between us and those freaks.
I can taste a source of fresh water in the air not too far off.
I bet that after a good washing, we’ll both feel much better. ”
That did sound good, and a belly full of food was definitely going to improve my mood as well.
I should be looking on the bright side. We weren’t badly injured and now we were out of the caves and away from those horrible alien zombie things.
Then my mind flashed to Naomi’s fate and I cringed, did I have any right to feel happy right now when she’d perished?
The two of us rose, Iave curling his arm around my shoulders to keep me close. I think he would have offered to carry me but he knew I would refuse. Right now, even if my ankle was aching, I was going to damn well walk. It would be my penance for not keeping my promise to Naomi.
Thankfully Iave wasn’t taking me very far.
Just a couple hundred feet at a soft downward slope until we reached a verdant copse of trees with a clear little spring at the center, fed by a crystalline stream coming from higher up the mountain.
At the spring, the air was clean and pleasant, but go a little up hill and it started to smell vaguely like something close to a newly laid road.
We worked well together as we set up our camp beside the water, and I liked that, it was companionable.
By unspoken agreement, we hung all the flashlights we had, five in total, around our nest of furs.
It made sure the place was lit up as bright as day which would hopefully keep us safe if any of those zombies decided to try and climb out of that hole again.
Then I made Iave go first as he washed off the blood in the small pond while I picked up dry wood around the perimeter of our camp.
He stared at me for the longest time with a fierce expression on his face before he finally turned to the water.
I was still tingling from it as I piled the wood together with some kindling to light the fire.
He had considered insisting I go first, he’d been this close to doing it, but then he’d backed down.
It was making my blood sing that he’d done that, it meant he wasn’t trying to coddle me; he saw me as his equal.
Just as tough as him, and not nearly as injured so my suggestion had made sense.
Once I had the fire going, I looked over my shoulder to see if Iave needed any help and lost my breath.
Geez, he was sexy with the water dripping from his scales like that.
He glistened in the brightly lit clearing like a sapphire with all kinds of deep hues of blue.
They shimmered along his arms like an oil slick.
Each scar was a paler blue line along his scales, his muscles making lovely dips and valleys curve along his trim belly.
I lowered my eyes from his magnificent upper body to check his long tail.
It had been soaked with blood earlier but the water had washed all that away to show that most of the damage was superficial.
Scratches and cuts, only a few appearing to me like they might need stitches.
The puncture marks were four circular raw spots about three feet from the tip.
Those were the only spots that were still bleeding a little.
He reached out a hand to me and I rose to take it.
“Do you see any bite marks?” he grumbled, peering along his own tail while he twisted it this way and that to better inspect it.
I looked with him but I couldn’t pick out anything that looked like fang marks, just scratches from their nasty claws.
I realized that I semi-jokingly told him not to get bit because that’s what always turned people into zombies in the movies.
Of course, with these creatures, I had no clue if what they were was even transmittable.
I tried to explain that to him but he just kept frowning, a frown that likely hid a bit of worry.
So I kicked off my boots and shimmied out of my pants.
That instantly had all his attention but he didn’t move from where he was, just stared at me with his avid gray eyes.
I felt that look like a caress, stroking along my legs to linger on the spot between my thighs, still hidden by my panties.
Wading into the cold stream made my ankle burn like a bitch but then it went numb from the icy water.
I walked all the way along his long tail, making it obvious that I was inspecting every inch for him.
When I reached the tip, I was pleased to note that the narrow, tapered end had remained relatively unscathed.
Most scratches were slightly higher up, starting with the puncture marks.
It had probably happened that way from how he’d curled his tail for purchase against the rock wall; the tip had curled up so a section of coil had been lower.
Bending down, I curled my fingers around the last few inches and pulled it up, out of the water.
“You’re all good. No bites.” He nodded, his eyes lingering on the spot where our flesh touched.
His agile tail tip curled around my fingers, his grip growing tighter.
I liked how that felt, how strong his grip was around my fingers.
“Good, how’s your ankle?” he said, and before I could really answer I was suddenly coiled in several loops of his tail and pulled in close.
He picked up my foot to inspect it but all he did was grunt and shrug before he let it go again.
It just needed a good wrapping to keep it clean when I got out of the water, I was sure it would heal fine, even if it might scar.
Didn’t mean that I wouldn’t gladly take another health check-up from the Shaman when we found our way back to him.
In his coils, the water didn’t feel nearly as cold when his tail kept me warm. It was also nice to take the weight off my sore leg while I bathed the rest of me. Certainly didn’t hurt either that Iave watched everything I did with avid interest, and assisted me whenever the urge struck.
Not much later I was drying up next to the fire beneath the soft furs with some of the packaged foods that Artek had gifted us in my lap.
Iave was carefully wrapping my ankle with a soft strip of leather and some of those big purple leaves that grew nearby.
“Wards off infection,” was the only explanation I got.
Knowing that I returned the favor as soon as my food was done.