Page 8 of Bloody Bargain
“Damnit,” I whispered, rattled that I’d forgotten about his tail.
“Bia,”he said meaningfully. When I didn’t understand, his brow knit together with effort.“Ferrum…Isarnom. Iren?Ire… Iron.” He looked up at the hook where his chains hung above us, then gazed longingly out at a patch of rather gross-looking mud.
“You want to move?”
He blinked once.
Ah, so he wasn’t a fan of iron either. Maybe he wasn’t a fiend, but something similar. A genetic cousin. I looked at the tops of my hands, scraped to hell, red and swollen. They were nothing compared to the black infection in his veins.
“That crossbeam isn’t going anywhere,” I said, motioning to the floating keystone he’d been looking at. “And I don’t think I can move you and the mattress together. Which means this is going to hurt. A lot.”
Exhausted, he dropped his head.
“Understonden.”
I walked around to his back and gently fisted the binds of his wrists. The bone and tendons were visible, blackened and angry. Slowly, carefully, I eased his arms over his head and walked backwards. Knees bent, back taut, I pulled to little avail. His breath caught, a delicate hitch that he hid beneath the matted veil of his hair. I pulled again, engaging every muscle. I didn’t want to yank for fear of ripping an arm out of its rotting socket.
He slid into the wet grass and soil several slow, careful tugs later. I fell next to him, staring at the back of his head as I caught my breath in the muggy, chilly breeze.
And the worldgroaned.Deep and long, like the hull of a ship. The ground pressed up against me like I was in an elevator or a storm at sea, leaving my sense of balance warped and strange. If I’d been standing, I would have stumbled. As it was, I felt a little like vomiting.
“What was that?”
“Thanken,”he sighed with relief, rolling his head towards the clouds. He closed his eyes without so much as a flutter. I bared my teeth and shook his shoulder, not caring how much it might hurt, but he didn’t respond.
So still, so calm. I put my fingers over his nose to make sure he was still breathing, then looked up too. Spots of blue dotted the clouds. So much for days of gloom. A touch of warmth beat my cheeks. Gashes of blinding white and yellow lanced the clouds, throwing shapes over the craggy hills as the sun won over the afternoon.
I eyed the crossbeam suspiciously. The groaning had stopped, though, and no little creatures were fleeing over the hillside. If he wasn’t bothered, then maybe I didn’t need to be worried either.
I dragged the water to me and lay in the mud until I couldn’t feel my butt or thighs. I finished it off, then hauled myself to my feet. The creature would sleep however long he needed, and I would prepare to leave.
Maybe he would still die. What did I know about fiends and fiends-adjacent other than how to kill them?
With one more suspicious glance at his tail, unsure of how I felt about the possibility that he wouldn’t wake up, I trudged back to the cottage. Life and death would have to sort itself out, with or without me as its witness.
Because my nerves were fried and I really,reallyneeded a bath.
04
I set a tarp over a portion of the cottage’s roof and laid my coat and socks there to get the most exposure to the sun. It was by no means a Boston September, hot and sticky, full of steamy days and cool nights. None of my clothes would be warm by the time I decided to leave, but they’d be a little drier. September was a wet month in Wales. Every ounce of sun counted for something.
The space heater had only half a tank left and was busy drying out the insides of my boots. They were propped up against the potato crate with their laces discarded and the tongues pulled down. The insoles were balanced between them so the boot itself dried out. They’d be stiff and uncomfortable, but at least my feet would be warm.
I stood on the porch in my shower flip flops, hands in the pockets of another pair of Matthew’s pajama pants. I’d brushed out my hair and washed it at a red well pump fully clothed, watching cream lumps of sheep roam across the Snowdonian mountains. I wasn’t clean anywhere else, but at least my head didn’t itch anymore. I brushed an alcohol-soaked cotton pad over the cuts on my hands and forearms, leaning around the corner to stare obsessively at the shed.
The creature hadn’t moved since I pulled him out of the makeshift iron maiden. A gust of wind rolled over the drying grass hills, shaking their blades like rattlesnakes. It ruffled his black hair, but the stone crossbeam with its chains remained frozen.
As if it wasn’t reallyhere.
Too complicated. I didn’t want to think about that just yet.
I sniffed and wiped the cold drizzle off my nose onto the shoulder of another Matthew sweater. The baggie of cotton pads and the little bottle of isopropyl alcohol that I kept in my duffel were curled in my reddened fingers. It wouldn’t be enough to actually help the creature heal, but a caring gesturewouldhelp me. The more gratitude he felt, the higher my chances of surviving this crossroads of fate.
I picked my way through the puddles to keep my feet dry and squatted beside him, snapping on a pair of vinyl gloves. He was still breathing, unfortunately. I poured some alcohol on a new cotton pad and pressed it to a particularly nasty wound on the bulge of his shoulder. His eyes flew open with a hiss. His tail flailed weakly, but as soon as he put pressure on his bound wrists, he groaned, instantly sedated.
I pressed around the rotary cuff delicately.
“Stop, please,” he begged with a strange upward lilt, breath catching in a deep but ragged voice.
