Page 9 of Bloody Bargain
“Shh,” I scolded softly, poking and prodding. Healing was rarely a comfortable experience, no matter how fast it happened. His shoulders were shredded to pieces, every tendon frayed like old ropes. Most of the definition was swelling, not incredibly dreamy deltoids. “If you were a man, you’d be paralyzed from the hips down due to vertebral dysplasia.” I snorted absently. “Actually, you’d bedead.”I shook my head, having no filter after months of keeping myself company. “Shame.”
“Iama man.”
The wind blew through the grass again, rattling that same warning. The creature stared at me, resolute and clear-eyed. I paused, my eyes watering, trying to understand what I was looking at.
He had two pupils in each of his eyes. One set held my stare captive, but two smaller irises were set back on the eyeball, as if he was looking over his shoulder in both directions. They were still difficult to parse, mired in black gunk and swollen capillaries. They might have been red like pomegranate seeds…
I looked away first, clearing my throat. Unnerved, I decided inflicting pain–yes, yes, that he wouldappreciatelater–was a good diversion from the oddity.
“If you’re not a fiend, what are you?”
“B’adruokh,”he said.
When he didn’t try to translate it like he had before, I assumed that was his answer. “What’s that?” I glanced at his tail and thought about his curved, needle teeth as I pressed the cotton pad around the wound’s edges, cleaning some of the gunk away. “A snake man?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Yes.God chois.Good choice… Good word.”
“What languages are you speaking?”
“Er en Kemet. L’shana d’eilan. Hellenik?… Anglisc?”
“The last one was definitely not English, but Middle English? Old Germanic? ‘Helleneekee’ sounds like Greek…”
“Yes.Er en Kemetandl’shana d’eilanare, ah… Hot.Sande.”
“Sand.” I licked my lips, brow creased. “Egypt?” I sat back, amazed. The languages he was speaking were thousands of years dead. “So you’ve met humans before.”
“Yes. Some.”
So he was more familiar with me than I was with him. Andthousandsof years old. People in Egypt didn’t speak Egyptian anymore. They spoke Arabic. Fear of the unknown gripped me as reality crashed down on my head. I was an insignificant bug compared to the thing bound at my feet. He’d seen billions of me live and die like sparks flying from a piece of flint.
“What isthu nam?Your name.”
I swallowed hard, tossing the gross pad and dousing a new one in alcohol.
“It isn't important,” I bit out. He wouldn’t care to remember it if he was older than the Pyramids.
“Unlikely.”
“It’s true.”
“Not to me,” he rumbled.
Dangerous. So dangerous. I’d liked him much more before he could speak.
I pressed the cotton into the chains around his wrists, perhaps too hard. The creature seized, his fingers twitching. I leaned into the cuffs, exploring the exposed metacarpals and veins amidst the black goo without remorse.
I tossed the cotton pads and bottle to the ground with a frustrated sigh. All I was doing was torturing him more. My human first aid kit wasn’t built for such heinous wounds. I’d stocked it for stitches and infections, not necrosis.
“This is stupid,” I told myself, biting my own lip with derision. It was unlike me to be so indecisive.
“I wile helen…Will be whole.Ne fret noht,my lady.”
“I’m not fretting, and I don’t want you to call me lady.”
A deep breath slithered through his chest, as if a serpent could growl. His multi-pupil eyes, still blackened and warped, watched me as if they didn’t pain him at all.
“You kill theauf?”he asked slowly as if he thought he’d imagined me saying so.
