Page 29 of Bryce

10

Iwas so tired, and I ached all over.

It would be nice to rest. To lie there on the ground and let darkness overtake me, to give in to the seductive pull of unconsciousness. I would feel nothing, I would see nothing. I would worry over—

Isla.

I couldn’t leave Isla unguarded.

My eyes snapped open, revealing nothing but the inky sky overhead. The acrid stench of smoke invaded my consciousness, along with an endless, high-pitched humming that filled my head and left me unable to hear anything else.

Inventory. I’d performed it a hundred times before, in situations not unlike this one. Moving my feet, my legs. My fingers. My arms. I could feel everything, fortunate, that, even if everything I felt was in some level of pain. The blast had thrown me straight back, away from the car which might have been nothing more than one large bomb. How much explosive material had they planted there?

And how in the world was the surrounding area not already peppered with corpses?

I shook my head, desperate to clear it. I needed to think straight even if I could hardly hear anything over the humming in my head. Another familiar situation. My hearing would return in time. It always had before.

Isla, however, didn’t know this. She sat there, dazed, hands clamped over her ears. The panic in her eyes spurred me to action, though when I moved, a sharp pain in the left side of my back made itself known.

No time for that now. I crawled to her instead of checking myself. She looked like so many others I’d seen in similar situations. Shell-shocked, unable to process what had just happened. Rather than trying to communicate with her, I checked her over.

The fact that she made not a move to stop me from running my hands over her arms, back, ribs, hips told me just how deeply she’d been affected. Everything seemed in one piece, and I offered up a quick note of thanks to anyone or anything which happened to be paying attention to us.

I tilted her chin upward, leveling her gaze with my own. “You’re all right,” I mouthed, taking my time. “Your hearing will return.”

Leslie was just coming to, nearby, and Logan was doing for her what I’d just done for Isla. They both seemed dazed, rumpled and filthy thanks to what seemed like the tons of dirt and debris thrown airborne in the explosion. But they would be all right.

That only left…

“Gate!” Isla cried, her voice little more than a whisper thanks to the ringing in my ears.

Gate. Yes. I looked about, straining my eyes to see him in the midst of so much destruction. The sight of his boots protruding from beneath one of the doors of the old car came as a relief and a stomach-churning horror. What would I find underneath?

Isla scrambled to him on her hands and knees, reaching for the metal.

“Wait!” I bellowed, using all the air in my lungs. It was enough to get her attention, and she looked over her shoulder before trying to lift the door.

I leaned in, my mouth against her ear. “We must be careful,” I warned as loudly as I could. He might be crushed under there. She might accidentally drop one end of the door on him, making his wounds worse.

She might find something she could never have expected, something that would scar her for life. I hoped not, but the chance was there.

Regardless, the door would have to be removed. “I’ll take the other side and count to three. Lift straight up.”

She nodded hard, understanding. The pain in my ribs turned to a screaming, white-hot agony when I took the opposite side of the heavy door in my hands. They certainly don’t make cars the way they used to, I thought with a dismayed laugh. Would that this one had been nothing but steel and fiberglass.

Isla looked to me for the signal. “One! Two! Three!” With my final cry, I lifted the door away with her help.

And found a broken, bleeding, almost unrecognizable mess beneath it.

“Oh, no!” Leslie had found us by then. She fell to her knees at his side, reaching for his face but holding herself back at the last moment. Afraid to touch him. It was the right instinct to follow, for there was no telling what his internal injuries might be.

A shifter could withstand a great deal of injury with little consequence. I’d sometimes joked that it would take a bomb blowing one of us to bits to kill us.

And here we were. And he was nearly blown to bits.

And Martina carried his child. And I’d promised her to watch out for him.

My lion took over before my mortal consciousness could slide into hopeless, useless despair. Every moment counted.

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