Page 238 of Fangs
Wolf glanced up at him and then back at me. “We’ll find him,” Wolf repeated, taking one of my hands and squeezing it. “It’s okay. We’ll find him.”
“Wolf.”
All three of us looked up to see Kai and Scar. Their grim faces darkened even further as they scanned me.
“We found the Voiceless camp.”
“How many?” Wolf growled.
“Hard to tell. They’re all dead, but, uh, there’s no bodies,” Kai answered, his eyes darting to me for a moment.
I closed my eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve… never seen anythin’ like it.” Scar’s voice was low. “Just… bits and pieces of bodies and… other things.”
“How far?”
“About thirteen miles northeast.”
“We’ve got another missing person,” Wolf said, quickly relaying my description of Roe. “We need to retrace their route. We gotta get her back to the Vault, though.”
My eyes flew open. “No! No, I’m not going back without him. He’s just a kid.”
There was a brief silence as I held my brother’s conflicted gaze.
“Okay.” Wolf finally conceded. “We’ll stay together.”
“They had horses at the camp,” Kai said.
Their voices blurred together into noise as I stared at the trees. At some point, someone handed me a water bottle, and I drank some, moving on autopilot. Then Wolf’s hand gently touched my arm, getting my attention.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
I nodded, trying to convince myself I could. I got my feet under me, stood with Wolf’s help, and immediately pitched forward into darkness.
39
The dark, shadowy shapes of trees looked ominous in the flickering firelight, but above the trees, stars filled the night sky like a million shards of broken glass. I lay there, admiring them, when everything suddenly came crashing back to me. I bolted upright with a gasp that turned into a hiss as my muscles seized at the pain in my chest. I curled inward, trying to breathe. Fuck, I’d forgotten how much it hurt.
A hand landed on my shoulder, holding me in place as I tried to scramble away. Sucking in a breath to scream, I twisted and met Wolf’s wide eyes.
“It’s me! It’s just me, Em,” he was saying, quiet and urgent. “Sorry, it’s just me.”
It was dark, and I had been lying in a bedroll on the ground. I couldn’t see anyone else around the campfire, just me and my brother. I relaxed, trying to slow my breaths and pounding heart.
“The others are out lookin’ for Roe,” he said. “We’re workin’ in shifts.”
Both my hands were bandaged up past my wrists. I held them up, staring at the tips of my fingers sticking out.
“Sable had to pick a lot of gravel out of your palms,” Wolf explained.
“I fell,” I mumbled.
“That was our guess.” He paused. “Your wrists looked better, though.”
That moment he left me tied up in the clinic felt like it was years ago instead of days. I gingerly touched my chest and realized they’d bandaged that, too. I dropped my hand back to my lap.
