The Shadow Reader
Page 27

I throw an elbow toward his gut. He blocks it, pulls me across his lap, and nearly throws me out of the car. I drop the keys to grab the oh-shit handle above the door with both hands as Aren rises out of the car, keeping his arm around me.
“Let go of the handle.”
“Let go of me!” I yell back. He pulls harder, lifting my feet off the ground. The handle is my only anchor to the car, but my grip is weakening. I kick, but he’s holding both my legs now.
“McKenzie.” He gives a final jerk and my hands slip. My teeth slice through my bottom lip when I land face-first on the damp roadside.
Aren flips me over and pins me to the ground. I buck and twist and try to shimmy out from under him.
“Relax,” he orders.
My left arm slips free. He recaptures it.
“Enough, McKenzie. Enough!”
I let my body go limp beneath him and force myself not to react when edarratae scramble from his hands into my arms. I fail miserably in the no-reaction department. I don’t move, but chaos lusters pulse under my skin, and the longer he touches me, the hotter they become. They’re not painful; they’re stirring and addictive.
“I hate you,” I whisper. His silver eyes follow a luster as it tickles over my shoulder, up my neck, and across my cheek.
“You’re bleeding,” he says, and then he gently presses his thumb to my bottom lip. I suck in a breath when he flares his magic to heal the small cut there, and it feels as if a thousand chaos lusters crash together in my stomach.
I fight back my frustration, turning my head to the side so I don’t have to look at him. “Will you let me up now?”
“Will you try to run?” When I don’t respond, he breathes out a warm sigh on my neck. “Stupid question. Of course you’ll try.”
Aren rises and pulls me to my feet. When he turns to open the car’s back door, I swoop down, grab the keys lying forgotten on the ground, and shove them into my pocket.
He searches the backseat a moment and then straightens. “This is a . . .”
I peek around his shoulder at the metal box in his hand. “It’s a first-aid kit.”
He nods, opens it up, and stares at its contents.
“You can’t heal yourself, can you?” I ask.
“No.” He sits on the edge of the seat, facing me. “Do you sew?”
I still, and a hint of nausea churns in my stomach. “No. I don’t.”
“My shoulder needs to be cleaned and closed.”
“No.” I look away, into the forest. He’s hurt, but I don’t think I can outrun him. Maybe he’ll grow weaker on the way to the gate? Then I can sprint back here and escape.
“McKenzie,” Aren says, a plea in his voice.
“I’m not sticking a needle into you,” I say, refocusing on him. Stitching a wound shut is a little too much for me. I can clean it, though. I look into the open kit on his lap. The vigilantes must have brought it with them. Everything is labeled in English. I spot a few butterfly bandages and pick them up. “I can use these to hold the wound together.”
“I’m bleeding too much for that.”
“Well, it’s that or nothing.”
His expression hardens. “Is this your new escape strategy? To let me bleed to death?”
“It’s not a bad idea.” In fact, that’ll be my backup plan if I can’t lure him away from the car.
“Fine.” He peers into the kit. “Which one of these will disinfect the wound?”
“The antiseptic wipes.”
“Which ones?” He takes off the ripped-up shirt he wrapped around himself no more than ten minutes ago. It’s dyed completely red now.
“They’re on the left.”
He tosses the shirt to the ground and pins me with a frustrated glare. “I can speak your language, McKenzie, but I can’t read it.”
I huff out a breath and grab one of the white packets. “It’s this one.” I rip the top off and take out the wipe. “You’re going to need more of these than we have.” He’s covered with dirt, sweat, and blood.
“Just clean it as well as you can.”
I run the towelette across the hole in his shoulder and down over his incredibly firm chest. God, he’s in shape. He’s thinner than Kyol, but has the same mouthwateringly toned physique. I try to ignore the hard muscles beneath my hand as I clean his wound. Mostly, the towelettes only smear the blood around. This isn’t going to prevent an infection. “You need a doctor.”
“I’ll be fine once we rejoin the others.”
“So fissure out. We’re not driving anymore. You can send someone back to this location in two minutes.” Two minutes would be enough time for me to jump into the driver’s seat and speed off.
He shakes his head. “I’ll be fine.”
I stop cleaning his shoulder to frown suspiciously into his eyes. “You can’t fissure, can you?”
“I can.” His jaw clenches. “I just can’t fissure very far, right now. The tech’s poison will fade by the time we reach the gate.”
“In your condition, you won’t make it to the gate.”
“It’s not far.”
“You can’t judge distances when you’re in a car.” Kyol can’t, at least. “We might be miles away from the river.”
“I’ll make it.”
“You’ll bleed to death.”
A smile breaks through his fatigued expression, and damn it if those chaos lusters don’t spring to life again in my stomach. You’d think my awareness of the whole Stockholm syndrome thing would make me immune to its effects, but no. It’s worse than ever.
“Your concern for my well-being is heartwarming,” he says. He oomphs when I slap a new wet wipe against his wound.
Sosch drapes himself across the ledge behind the backseat. His blue eyes blink, watching me work. I clean Aren off as well as I can, but don’t feel like I’m making any progress. Every time I put pressure on his shoulder, a new river of blood pours out. When I’m down to my last two towelettes, I decide it’s time to do what I can for the exit wound. The exit wound’s on his back, though, and short of sitting in his lap, there’s no easy way to get to it.
“Get out of the car.” I move so he can stand.
He grips the edge of the BMW’s roof, hefts himself to his feet, then turns and leans his forearms on the trunk. Damn, he has a beautiful back—minus the bullet wound and blood, of course. His shoulders are broad and the muscles to either side of his spine ripple when he adjusts his position. A chaos luster zigzags down his right rib cage and disappears beneath the waistband of his pants. The urge to trace its path with my hands is despicably strong, but I force myself to focus on the hole in his shoulder.
When I toss the last blood-soaked wipe into the backseat, Aren dips back into the car. He rummages through the first-aid kit for a needle and a spindle of something that looks more like floss than thread. He holds both up to me.
“I didn’t volunteer for that,” I say, keeping my eyes on his face.
He watches me a moment, then says softly, “You didn’t volunteer for any of this, did you?” He strings the thread through the needle himself, then, without hesitation, sticks it through the flesh beside his bullet wound. I grimace and look away.