Page 57 of Hot Zone

She scrambled off of him and quickly ran her hands over his body, searching for mortal wounds. His limbs were intact. His rib cage was not collapsed. He seemed to be breathing normally, if she discounted the fact that he sounded as if he’d just sprinted a marathon with a bunch of broken ribs.

She found no bumps on his head, no gashes, nothing to indicate a serious injury there. He had the same minor cuts and scratches that she did from their pell-mell roll down this hill, but that seemed to be the extent of his visible wounds. Why then, did he look like hell? He must have some sort of internal trauma.

“Tell me where it hurts,” she urged him. She began pressing gently on various parts of his abdomen. He didn’t answer, but neither did he flinch at any of her pokes and prods. A brain injury, maybe?

Squinting in the dark to see his eyes, she made out his pupils. They were large and black—but then it was really dark out here. They should be fully dilated. She pulled out her fire-starting stones.

“Look at these.” She struck them together, throwing off a shower of bright sparks. Momentarily, his pupils contracted—quickly and symmetrically. Not a concussion, then. She leaned back on her heels and stared down at him. Then it hit her. She was looking at the wrong thing.

She gazed at the ground beside him, so that her peripheral vision encompassed him.

Dear Lord. His aura was practically nonexistent. It was a pale, shell-gray color, and paper-thin, barely clinging to him. Even as she watched, more of it faded, until she could barely make out any energy at all around him.

She lurched, laying her hands on him urgently. “Take my energy, Rustam. I don’t know how you do that, but it’s yours. Take all you need.”

She stared down at her own hands in shock. She saw nothing when she looked directly at them, and had to remind herself to turn her gaze away from where her palms lay on his chest. Only a thin layer of lavender clung to her hands. It wasn’t as depleted as Rustam’s aura, but her energy field wasn’t in a whole lot better shape than this.

He shook his head weakly.

“Don’t argue with me,” she snapped. “We’ll share whatever I’ve got. I don’t know a lot about all this energy stuff, but even I can tell you’re dying. Take some of mine, dammit!”

She slid her hands up, pressing her palms to either side of his head. Mimicking what he’d done with the horses earlier, she laid her forehead against his.

If that draining feeling, the sudden weakness, the abrupt fatigue weighing down her limbs was any indication, she’d successfully transferred some of her energy field to him. Too exhausted all of a sudden to stay upright another moment, she collapsed on top of him.

And slept.

Sometime later, something shifted beneath her, rousing her enough to crack one eye open. She was looking up at the stars. They had rotated almost a full night’s turn overhead. She tensed her muscles to sit up, when something warm and heavy landed across her shoulders.

“Stay,” Rustam murmured. “You need more rest, my brave little fool. Especially now that you’re carrying—”

He broke off. She murmured, “Now that I’m carrying what?”

“Nothing.”

“Are we safe?” she mumbled.

“For now.”

She closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

The next time she woke, it was because something warm and velvety nudged her cheek. Insistently. She reached up to push it away, and cracked one eye open.

“What do you want, Cygna?” she mumbled.

The mare nudged her again, this time on the shoulder. The sun was bright overhead. It had to be at least midmorning, if not later.

Cygna?Tessa sat up, startled. How had the horses found them? Rustam was still out cold on the ground beside her. Both Polaris and Cygna stood over them, providing welcome shade.

Tessa looked around. They were in a gentle valley, completely unlike the rugged landscape they’d spent the past two days traversing. Whereas the terrain at Thermopylae had been of gray-black rock, volcanic in origin, this valley was beige sandstone, and the silhouettes of the nearby peaks, and even the scree beneath, were worn smooth with time. Tufts of wiry grass grew here and there, and a few wildflowers poked up their cheerful heads. This was not the same place they’d looked down on last night from the top of that cliff.

Rustam woke up beside her. One moment his presence was quiet and subdued, and the next his vibrant mind was active and awake, as dynamic and forceful as always.

She glanced at him. “Feeling better?”

He squinted up at her. “I’m alive. Still feel like I’ve been through a gauntlet of barbarians with clubs, though.”

She nodded in commiseration. “So. Are you ready for a shock, or do you want to rest a little longer?”

---