Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
What the fuck was he doing?
There was a monster sitting by his fire waiting for him to sew up his wing. Cole paced around the cabin, stalling in the same way he had paced around his truck before getting the first aid kit. This couldn’t be for real. It couldn’t be happening. It made absolutely no sense.
Yet, it made perfect sense because he had seen the wolf and the monster before. He hadn’t imagined it then, and he wasn’t imagining it now.
“Fuck.” Never in his wildest imagination had he considered that the monster had been the one watching him. Because who thought that?
He grabbed the whiskey out of the cupboard, filled a bottle with water, and grabbed a clean tea towel. Was that all he needed? It wasn’t as though he had a whole lot of supplies. He shook his head. It would have to do.
He half expected Akai to be gone, but just like before, he was still waiting. It was because of him that Akai couldn’t go anywhere. His stomach turned. He’d shot someone. Not a person or an animal but a monster.
Was it rude to call him a monster?
That seemed like a problem for daylight. He grabbed the big flashlight as he walked out the door. It was fully dark now, and the meteor shower would be happening soon.
Akai was staring up at the sky. The firelight made his gray fur gleam, and when he turned his head, the flames reflected in his large red eyes. Everything about him was big. He was tall, with big hands and eyes, yet weighed less than he did.
If Akai was going to attack him, he would’ve done so already, wouldn’t he?
Perhaps he was telling the truth, and he had wanted to watch the sky with him. It was kind of sad that the monster stalking him had realized how alone he was. Could he be more pathetic?
“I think I have everything.” He handed over the bottle of whiskey and painkillers. “Do you want to take them while I have a look at the wing and pretend I know what I’m doing?”
Akai smiled, revealing small, pointed teeth. “Take a photo of the wound with your phone, and I will tell you how best to approach it.”
Cole’s eyebrows lifted, but of course Akai knew about phones. He pulled it out of his pocket. “Let me get the flashlight on.” He turned it on and rested it on the ground, angling the light at the dark stain on Akai’s wing. “You’re going to need to open it a bit.”
He touched the wing again. He thought they were small feathers covering the wing, but they weren’t. The same way he thought Akai was covered in gray fur. It looked like fur, but didn’t feel like any fur he was familiar with, not that he was an expert.
Akai put two tablets in his mouth and washed them down with the whiskey. He grunted as he opened his wing. “I can’t even support it with my hand because my arm hurts.”
“It’s a fucking scratch. Stop being a baby.” But he moved his leg so Akai could rest his open wing against it. He understood how much some injuries hurt and saw no point in making his wing worse. “Can you open your wing a little bit further, or is that as far as it goes?”
Akai grunted but obeyed.
Fully open, it was obvious where the bullet had ripped through. His fur or feathers or whatever were stained with blood, and there was a hole he could put his fist through. “I’ll take a photo so you can see.”
“Thanks.” He didn’t sound particularly grateful, though, and Cole didn’t blame him.
“You’re not like them.”
Cole was silent as he fiddled with his phone to get the best picture. He took a couple, not sure what Akai needed to see.
Akai continued, “Your cousins. When they shot my sister, they didn’t care if she was dead or injured. They just wanted to get into the workshop.”
Cole held out his phone, and Akai swiped through the photos like he knew exactly what he was doing, which was more than a little jarring.
“My cousins enjoyed hunting. I didn’t mind that going out into the woods part, but I never liked killing. What do you mean workshop?” But he remembered the bag and the jewelry they’d shown him.
“We… I have workshops in or near abandoned mines. I make jewelry out of what we find. There’s one near here, which is why I stop by. It’s why I was interested in your cabin.”
“You thought I was going to steal your work?”
Akai shrugged and hissed.
“What’s the verdict, Doc?” Cole asked, figuring it was safer to talk about the wound than murder.
Akai zoomed in on the wound, and Cole noticed that his fingers were tipped with small pale claws. “You need to pull the edges together and sew.” He turned his head to look at Cole. “The skin, not my hair.”
“Hair?”
Akai glanced over his shoulder. “Does it look like feathers?”
“No…but it’s not fur either, is it?”
“It’s hair, or hair-like.”
Cole touched the hair on his wings again, lifting a strand with a finger. It looked wider and flatter than his hair, and it was soft. Akai was a mothman—why would he have feathers like a bird or fur like a wolf? “I’ll do my best…but what if the edges don’t meet?”
Akai slumped. “Pull them together as best as possible. At least none of the bones were damaged.”
“Yeah.” He looked at the first aid kit, then back at the wing. “I need to find something to support your wing other than my leg.”
Akai closed it, and Cole stepped back. He glanced around the clearing, and his gaze landed on the chair, the rifle still lying across it. “I’m going to get the chair, not the rifle.”
Akai nodded and watched him. It took a little maneuvering to get the chair into a suitable position so that the wing had support and he could still reach the hole. Then he set the first aid kit up on the chair, cleaned his hands, pulled on gloves, and sprayed the wound.
Akai flinched. “A little warning would be nice.”
Cole unwrapped the needle and tried to ignore the way his stomach was rolling. I shot him, so I need to fix him. Is Akai a him?
It didn’t matter. He’d sew him up and send him on his way. And then what? He went back to his normal life, knowing that monsters were real?
Or had he known that for the last seven years, which was why he found it so hard to fit into the life he’d been allotted?
“Ready?” Cole wasn’t ready.
Akai sighed. “No.”
“Same.”
“Could you at least sound a little more confident?”
Cole forced a smile. “It’s going to be just like sewing on buttons. How was that?”
“Terrible. Please stop talking.”
Cole wanted to tell him he should be more polite to the person stitching him up, but pain did funny things to a person.
He remembered snapping at the people helping him simply because he was hurting.
He poked around as gently as he could, trying to figure out the best place to start. “Can I trim some of your hair?”
Akai sighed. “If you must.”
Did he need to? He didn’t want to accidentally cut any skin, but he also didn’t want to sew hair into the wound. “Only a little.”
It wasn’t that the hair was long, only a couple of inches, but it was in the way. He started where it wasn’t in the way on the lower edge. There were also a few easy tears to fix. “I’m going to start around the bottom.”
Akai gave a single nod, his feathery antennae bobbing.
Cole drew in a breath and pushed aside all of his doubts. He needed to focus.