Page 42 of Shadow Master
He pulled an ax from his back and slammed it down on the padlock. The door sprang open, and I pushed past him and fell to the ground by Hyde.
He was silent.
Pale.
Not breathing.
Dead.
“NO!” I pressed my hands to his bloody torso. “No. You can’t go. I won’t let you. I won’t.”
I felt it then, the flicker of life, the thready beat of a dying pulse. He was still alive. There was still hope. I had to do something. I needed to close the wound. My hands heated with power and shadows rushed to meet me; they wound around my arms and then shot down to my hands before spreading across Hyde’s abdomen. My head pulsed, and my body vibrated. Idiot. Damn fool. I should have called them sooner. I should have …
Focus. Channel.
That voice again.
Focus.
I channeled my will into my hands and further into Hyde. “Live, you have to live.”
“What is this? What is she?”
“Watch … look at his face. The color is returning.”
“You’re doing it,” Harmon called. “Indie, you’re doing it.”
“What is that?” someone else asked.
But my focus was on Hyde, on holding on to the thread of life, of pushing it back into his body.
His chest moved beneath me in a breath, and then his eyes snapped open. His gaze fixed on me.
“Don’t look …”
His eyelids fluttered closed, and the shadows slid off his body. He was bloody, wounded, but the wounds were shallower. Partially healed.
“I need medicine.” I looked up at the man with the kind brown eyes. “Bandages.”
Darkness licked at the edges of my vision.
“He needs to …” The world swayed.
Hands grabbed me. “We need to get out of here,” the man said. “We can help, but you must come with us.”
They’d killed the fomorians who’d captured us. They’d got here in the nick of time. That was all the information I had to go on, but what choice did we have? Hyde was injured …
“We’ll come with you.”
* * *
We setup camp by an outcrop of rocks several miles from the fomorian camp. The journey had been an hour’s trek with Athos carrying Hyde. We’d strapped him onto the hound’s back using rope provided by our saviors. It was obvious now that there were factions even on this side of the mist. These fomorians were different from the ones who’d hurt Hyde, the ones who’d wanted to violate me.
They were smaller in stature for a start, more Hyde’s size than Harmon’s, but like the larger fomorians, they also dressed in furs and leather boots.
Where did they get the furs? I hadn’t seen a single animal on our journey. So many questions but, as of yet, no answers.
The leader of the group had vanished with some men a few minutes after we’d stopped to camp, but not before ordering the others to watch us. The others had been helpful but had refused to answer my questions. In fact, they’d seemed almost wary of us.
