Dragon's Bayne Read online

  Aleric glanced behind him for something he could use to clean his wounds. There was a pine tree near the shed; it reminded him of something he had seen the wood nymphs do when they were trying to save Sherian’s life. He grabbed a lid off one of the water jugs, selected one of the small knives, and limped to the tree. When he pressed the blade to the first small lump in the bark, sap ran out. A quick sniff told him it was the right kind of salve. He collected as much as he could in the lid and brought it back to the shed.

  Using what he had learned at the hospital, Aleric made a workspace on the table. He couldn’t remember when the dull rushing sound had started, but it was getting louder. Given the concentration it took to work with each item he found, Aleric was sure he didn’t have much time.

  He knew he needed something strong to sanitize the instruments he was planning on using. He opened the lid on the red container marked gasoline and smelled it. Within the chemical odors there was one he recognized. It would work to at least kill the bacteria on the items he needed to use.

  Aleric poured gasoline in a lid and set it on the table. Using the needle-nosed wire cutters, he cut a half-finger’s length of wire and curved it. He snipped off a foot of twine and pulled the strands into long, thin pieces. He placed all of these along with the wire cutters in the gasoline to soak while he shredded one of the burlap sacks into pieces. The rushing sound grew louder. Aleric’s fingers became clumsy. He glanced outside hoping to see that the sun was setting, but it was still high in the sky.

  Aleric pulled the pieces from the gasoline and rinsed them off with water. He pulled his shirt off over his head. When it stuck to the bullet wound in his arm, he eased it off muttering curses that would have made a Drake City merman wince.

  “Great, now it’s bleeding everywhere,” Aleric said. He took a piece of burlap and wrapped it around the wound. Digging out the bullet wasn’t going to be fun. He wanted to tend to the rest of the wounds before he tackled that one, though the throbbing in his arm demanded otherwise. “At least my shoulder doesn’t hurt,” he said dryly. He rotated his left arm to test it. The movement sent pain through his chest and back. “Or it does. Because why shouldn’t it? Everything else hurts.”

  He dipped one of the burlap pieces in the water and washed the wounds in his stomach, side, and the one on his leg.

  “I guess they won’t want these clothes back,” he said to himself as he prodded the hole where the scissors had stabbed him in the thigh. “Maybe they could consider it a new style. Drafty. Perhaps the hospitals will pick it up. They seem to like drafty clothes.”

  Aleric shook his head and the world spun. He put a hand to the shed wall to keep from falling over. Concern pressed at the edges of his mind. If he passed out before he cleaned the wounds or removed the bullet, he would certainly bleed out before night fell.

  “Keep talking,” he said aloud. “Focus.”

  He gritted his teeth at the pain that came with spreading the pine salve across the stab wounds.

  “Whoever armed that moss-crazed woman with a pair of scissors was sick.” He layered salve over his stomach and sides. “And knives. Why is it that crazy people carry knives? Enough sane people cut themselves by accident. There should be a law against the not-sane ones carrying them around. Someone’s going to get hurt.” He sucked in a breath at a particularly deep wound near his ribs. “See?” he said, his voice tight.

  Aleric’s head spun. He leaned against the table to keep from falling over. He glanced at his arm. The bullet wound had already bled through the burlap.

  “Nobody’s going to be happy if I get blood all over this place,” Aleric muttered. “I’d take a page from Dr. Worthen’s book and use a branding iron, but for some reason they don’t seem to use them in gardening. Maybe I’ll suggest that to the gardener. I’m sure he’d appreciate it.” He cleared his throat. “Sir, you should most definitely keep a branding iron in here in case some bleeding, miscreant werewolf stumbles into your shed in need of wound care.”

  Aleric was aware that he was stalling. Nausea made his stomach roll and the rushing sound was getting louder. A glance outside showed the sun still high overhead.

  “You could give me a break and descend a little faster,” he suggested to the bright orb. “I don’t suppose the gardener would appreciate anybody in this shed, let alone a dead body.”

  He knew he couldn’t put it off any longer. Given the state he was in, Aleric was sure it had been too long already. He pulled on the burlap strip and it fell from the bullet wound.

  The bullet had struck just below the curve of his deltoid. When Aleric probed around the wound, it felt as though the bullet was lodged against his humerus bone. He hoped it wasn’t broken. By the agony that flared up whenever he moved his arm, he wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Aleric rested his arm on the table and rinsed out the wound. The water ran red across his skin. Using one of the small knives spread with pine salve, he made small, painful incisions in the wound to lengthen it so he would at least have a chance.

  “This isn’t my favorite thing,” he said with a shaky breath as he watched his blood run down his elbow and drip on the floor. “And somehow I think it’s going to get a whole lot worse.”

  He picked up the sanitized wire cutters and glanced at the wound again. “This is going to hurt,” he muttered. He paused, then said, “Well, more than it already does.” He grabbed a leather strap from the wall near the pruning supplies and bit down on it. “Go,” he told himself.

  He shoved the needle-nosed wire cutters into the wound. The agony nearly sent him to the floor. The rushing sound cut out everything else, even his own gasp of pain. A high-pitched buzzing filled his mind.

  Aleric fought to stay conscious. Given the blood he had lost and the toll his body had taken, he was amazed his fingers responded. Yet they opened the wire cutters and he moved them around, fishing for the bullet inside the bloody mess.

  The high-pitched sound intensified when the cutters scraped across the bullet. Aleric leaned against the table, his eyes closed and tears on his cheeks. He willed the cutters to open and pushed them further into his arm. When he closed them, he felt them latch onto the bullet.

  With shaking fingers, Aleric pulled the slug free. He looked at the twisted metal with blurry eyes a moment before he dropped it on the table. He sloshed water into the wound the best he could to flush out any debris, then spread the inside with pine sap. His fingers came away bloody and trembling.

  Aleric picked up the curved piece of wire and looked at it with distaste. He glanced at the twine. He knew he needed to close the wound so he could keep whatever remained of his blood supply inside his body, but he couldn’t think past the haze of pain. There was only one option he could get his mind around, and that wouldn’t involve poking holes with the wire and then attempting to thread them with the twine. As much as that made better sense, he couldn’t reach the wound good enough because of his throbbing left shoulder, and his vision was too untrustworthy by that point to thread anything anyway.

  Aleric picked the strap back up and was about to put it between his teeth again when he realized he had nearly bitten it in half removing the bullet. He put what remained in his mouth, gritted his teeth against it, and shoved the wire through the near side of the wound. His legs gave out and he fell to his knees on the floor. Squinting against the tears in his eyes, Aleric shoved the wire through the other side of the wound.

  Knowing he was close to blacking out, Aleric hunched over as he bent the wires back so that they crossed each other over the wound. A quick glance showed the poor quality of his handiwork.

  “Dr. Worthen…would surely…fire me now if…he hadn’t already,” Aleric whispered in broken words through his gritted teeth.

  Need pressed against his mind. Aleric pushed up to his feet and limped toward the door of the shed. It was only a short distance away, but it felt like it took forever to cross the wooden floor and reach the sunshine outside. Gripping his arm, Aleric limped as far as he c
ould out into the garden.

  He meant to leave so that he wouldn’t be found. He wanted to duck under the fence and perhaps make his way to the grims’ alley so he could rest in their abandoned cardboard house, or curl up under a porch somewhere like a stray dog. His instincts demanded that he find a safe place away from any who would attack him while he was injured and unable to defend himself, yet his body had thoughts of its own.

  “I guess this is as far as I get,” Aleric said when his legs gave out again.

  He sank to his knees and then his back on a patch of grass beside the large pine tree. He was far enough from the branches that the sun warmed his skin. Just before he gave in to rushing and high-pitched demands of unconsciousness, Aleric heard the whistle of a bird. He looked up at the sky and a smile touched his lips at the thought that it looked very much like Blays. He imagined he was home playing in the garden and learning to braid strands of grass like his mother had taught him.

  Chapter Four

  The whistle of a bird awoke Aleric. A high note, a low note, and then a run between the two. It was beautiful, light, and full of joy. Another bird answered with the same melody. It reminded him how Sherian’s laugh had been, so carefree and happy despite the fact that they were orphans in the streets fighting to survive. She had never let their dirty, dismal surroundings get her down.

  Sherian would smile at the sight of a winged caterpillar crawling up the side of a building, and once she had been so delighted to find a thistle growing up between two slabs of sidewalk that she had brought the thistle water for weeks until the day they showed up to find that it had been eaten. By the looks of the blue saliva, a water horse had escaped the harbor and eaten the first plant it found. Sherian had shrugged it off, but Aleric caught glimpses of her searching for other plants, for something she could help. She would have loved the birds.

  Other sounds came to the forefront as the singing of the birds faded away. Aleric heard cars honking, sirens in the distance, people talking and walking, and close to his head, he heard the minute noises of bugs eating, crunching through grass and leaves with the relish of dining on a fine salad, which he supposed was actually the case.

  Aleric couldn’t remember where he was. The mixture of sounds was strange, and by the scent, he knew he lay on grass, which was a scarcity in Drake City unless he was in the forest. If he was in the forest, he was in trouble because the Drakathan would find him and torture him for sleeping instead of bringing back whatever victim they had sent him to fetch. Dread brought Aleric’s eyes open, and confusion made him shut them against the bright light of dawn that pierced his vision.

  He lifted a hand. The movement made his arm ache, and the pain brought it all back. Lilian was gone, the hospital was no longer his home, the Fervor were his new enemy, and he had been shot. What a great way to start a new day.

  Aleric pushed up to a sitting position. The sun had just reached high enough over the buildings to fill the hidden garden with light. He had slept through the night and into the next day. A quick check of the knife wounds and the scissor wound in his thigh revealed them to be mostly healed. The edges were clean and the skin around them looked healthy. A glance at the bullet wound showed otherwise. It was red, puffy, and trickled blood from the edges where the wire didn’t quite hold it together.

  Aleric rose to his feet. Minus his arm, he was surprised at how good he felt considering the shape he had been in the day before. If he didn’t move too quickly, he could almost pretend he was back to one hundred percent. When he entered the shed and reached for another piece of the burlap sack, the movement reminded him that between the persistent pain of the stab wound in his left shoulder and the bullet wound in his right arm, he would have to find a job that didn’t require any arm movement at all. Perhaps he could kick things.

  After cleaning his arm again the best he could and wrapping it in another piece of burlap, Aleric slipped the shirt back over his head. The dried blood made it stiff and gross feeling, but he couldn’t exactly walk through the streets without a shirt on. He was beginning to think the drafty hospital gowns weren’t that bad given how easy they were to put on, and that thought scared him. He tidied up the shed the best he could and left it with barely a trace of his having been there. He couldn’t wash away the blood that had soaked into the floorboards, but he hoped it could be mistaken for rust from the lawnmower he gingerly pushed over to cover it.

  Aleric ducked under the fence slats and walked down the road. He didn’t know where he was going until he found himself in front of Minnow’s. His stomach growled, reminding him why his feet had taken him there without a conscious decision. Aleric gingerly pulled open the door and stepped inside.

  Iris, the sweet waitress, led to him an empty booth with a smile.

  “Where did you sleep last night? A haystack?” she asked. She waited until he took a seat, then pulled a dried blade of grass from his hair.

  He smiled at her. “Pretty much.”

  She viewed him with closer scrutiny. “Are you alright?”

  He nodded and tried not to look as though he had nearly died the night before. “I’m fine. Any chance breakfast is still going?”

  “Not the usual?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “The smell of eggs is making my mouth water.”

  She gave him a kind smile. “I’ll tell Kolby to cook you up the special. Want coffee with that?”

  “Water would be amazing,” Aleric said. He realized as soon as the words left his mouth just how thirsty he was. “And I’ll be paying for it this time. I don’t work at the hospital anymore.”

  Iris’ expression became one of pity. “Things didn’t work out there? Problems with your vampire friend?”

  “No,” Aleric told her, keeping his tone light. “It just fell through. No big deal.”

  “A change of job is a change of life, right?” she replied. “I’m betting the change is for the good.”

  “I hope so,” Aleric replied.

  He watched her go with a feeling of regret. He was going to miss eating at Minnow’s. No wonder Dr. Worthen liked the café so much.

  Iris returned faster than Aleric had thought possible. Her black, non-slip shoes made a quick staccato along the tiled floor.

  “Here you are, sweetie.” She slid a plateful of cheesy scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage with a side of sourdough bread in front of him. She took a mug of water and a small bowl with a variety of individual jellies and put it on the table as well. “Enjoy,” she said, throwing him one last concerned smile before she went to tend a table six who had just sat down near the corner.

  Aleric drained the water in two gulps. He knew with the blood loss he had experienced that he should have been drinking water throughout the night, though he doubted given the situation in which he had fallen unconscious that nothing short of a raging minotaur could have wakened him.

  He had eaten two bites of his eggs, which were quickly vying for first place in his favorite foods, when Iris hurried back to him.

  Her eyes were wide as she handed over a telephone. “It’s for you.”

  Confused as to who would be calling him at the diner, Aleric put the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

  “Aleric? Thank goodness!” Dartan said. “I didn’t know where else to look. We need you here right away.”

  “I don’t work there anymore,” Aleric replied. The tension in the vampire’s voice put him on edge.

  “You do now if we want the hospital to be standing by nightfall.”

  “What’s going on?” Aleric asked in alarm.

  “An ifrit family apparently went through the Rift and were hit by a truck. They’re in bad shape and nobody knows what to do. It’s chaos.”

  The need to help surged through Aleric. He pushed it down with considerable effort. “Dr. Worthen doesn’t want me there.”

  “He begged me to find you,” Dartan replied. “This is bigger than whatever you two have going on. Get over here.”

  Aleric couldn’t deny the urgency
in the vampire’s voice. “I’ll be there.” He handed the phone back to Iris.

  She kept staring at him. “You’re Dr. Wolf.”

  Aleric nodded. “I thought you knew that.”

  She shook her head. “I knew you worked at the hospital, and that you’re friends with a vampire. I didn’t know the wound in your shoulder was from a stake when a demon tried to kill everyone inside the hospital and you stood in the way. I didn’t know you’re the one who saved people at the Capitol Building from those rock creatures, and that you’re tracking down whoever steals blood from the blood banks. I’ve donated, by the way. It makes me a concerned citizen.”

  Aleric took one last bite of eggs and swallowed it quickly. “I’ve got to go. How much is the meal?”

  Iris stared at him a moment longer before his question sank in. “Oh, uh, here.” She pulled the check from her apron and handed it to him. “You really don’t need to do that. I mean, you’re Dr. Wolf.” She said the title like it meant something far more than just the name Aleric had gone by since working at the hospital.

  It brought a chuckle from Aleric. “You’re sweet, but I’ve got….” His words faded away when he patted his pocket and realized he had left his cash at the hospital. “Any chance you need dishes washed? I could come back tonight.”

  “I’ll ask Reanna to comp this last one as a farewell gift,” Iris said. “Though I’m sad to see you go. We don’t get many handsome doctors in here who aren’t accompanied by a gaggle of nurses or orderlies. You’re nice to talk to.”

  “You are, too,” Aleric replied, rising. “Thank you again for this.”

  He rushed out the door with a pang of regret at leaving a perfectly good plate of breakfast on the table. He realized he could have asked Iris for a to-go container, but the thought of the ifrit family in trouble at the hospital made him push the hunger pangs aside and speed up his step.