Page 110 of A Land So Wide
Even from so far away, Greer could see his shivers. “Stupid coatless boy.”
She glanced up the road from where he’d come, waiting to see a flash of eye-shine as Elowen stalked after him. But Ellis staggered through the snowstorm all on his own. His labored breathing filled her ears. There was something terribly wrong about it, a heavy wetness that shouldn’t have been there.
He stumbled again, pitching forward to land hard on his knees, and Greer couldn’t take it any longer. She burst after him, already slipping free of Finn’s coat.
“Ellis!”
He looked up, squinting into the trees, frozen with fear. For a long moment, he stared at her, motionless and without response. Then she was beside him, putting the coat around his shoulders, cupping his face as she pressed her forehead to his. He blinked slowly, once, twice, as if wresting himself out of a dream, a trance, a nightmare. He gasped. “Greer?”
She laughed, throwing her arms around him.
It took him a moment to return her embrace. “What are you doing here? What are you—how are you—”
“We need to get you out of this cold,” she said, and ran her handsover his arms, trying to generate warmth. Tears of happiness welled in her eyes as she felt the tangible, solid heft of him.
“Are you really here?” he asked, his voice hushed with wonder.
“I really am,” she promised. “There’s more shelter in the trees. Let’s get off the road.”
“You’ve been here before,” he accused, protesting her lead. “You were, but it wasn’t you. They made me…Shemade me see all kinds of things that weren’t here.”
“Ellis, I promise you, it’s me. I’m real and I’m here and I’m getting you off this mountain.”
He released a rush of air that sounded like a sob. “It’s really you?”
Greer nodded and pressed a quick kiss to his forehead. “Come on.”
She hoisted him to his feet. He leaned heavily against her, and slowly, gently, Greer led him into the woods. Returning by way of the road left them too exposed, too vulnerable. They’d take cover in the trees, resting for a moment while she sorted Ellis and his injuries out, then they’d try to reach Laird by nightfall.
“Where’s Elowen?” she asked, once they’d found shelter under the boughs of a thick fir. “Why isn’t she coming after you?”
Ellis sighed, sounding impossibly exhausted. “She’s gone.”
“Gone?” she echoed and peered toward the road with disbelief.
He nodded. “I took care of her. I…I…” His sentence dissolved into a wretched cough that sounded as though his body was tearing apart.
“Ellis!” Greer exclaimed, drawing him to her. “Get this on all the way, fasten it up,” she chastised, helping him into Finn’s coat. She rubbed her hands along his body, trying to stir some sort of heat into his limbs. He felt cold, so cold, a block of ice, his body immobile and so…
Greer stopped her ministrations.
…bloodless.
“Ellis…” she began cautiously, unable to hold the concern from her tone. “Did she bite you?”
He frowned. “Bite me?”
“Did she”—she licked her lips, now noticing all the things about him that looked so terribly wrong—“did she feed on you?”
Ellis winced. “I don’t think so. I don’t…”
But he pawed at his side again, and Greer gently lifted the sweater. Horror stole her breath away.
The left side of his body was mottled with bruises, punctured with bites. She could read the violence across his skin as easily as lines on a map. There were so many different sets of teeth marks, some wide half-crescents, showing the impression of every tooth, some nothing but the pointed stab of incisors. Greer shuddered as she imagined these mouths roaming over Ellis, drawing out his blood, painting their lips red with it. Her hands balled into fists, and if Elowen had been beside her now, Greer could have cheerfully ripped her teeth out.
“It didn’t hurt,” Ellis said, an attempt to reassure her, but his voice was too high and breathless. He let out a laugh. “Much.”
Greer looked up just in time to see Ellis draw back his mouth into a smile, revealing his own teeth. They were long and needle-sharp, like those of a northern pike, like a set of daggers, like—
