Page 24 of Zeke
The questions could wait. Michelle couldn’t.
Her breathing had grown more labored, and sweat poured down her face despite the cool air. The infection was winning.
He moved toward the door, then stopped. Leaving her alone, even for the few minutes it would take to gather herbs, felt like abandonment. The ferals had taken her once already when she was vulnerable. What if more were out there, waiting?
But the plants were less than twenty yards away. He could see them from the window, and he’d be back before she knew he was gone.
Zeke pulled on his pants and boots, then cracked the door. Cold air rushed in, carrying the scent of damp earth and growing things. The clearing was silent except for the drip of melting snow from the eaves.
He moved fast, Legion knowledge guiding his hands as he gathered what he needed. The ketara root came up easily, its thick taproot still damp from the storm. Velix leaves grew in abundance near the water source, their distinctive serrated edges exactly as the borrowed memories had shown him.
Back inside, he set water to boil over the cabin’s small fire while he prepared the herbs. His hands moved with the ease of long practice, slicing the root into thin slices and crushing the leaves until they released their bitter sap.
The ketara tea steeped to a dark amber color. He cooled it with cold water, then returned to Michelle’s side.
“This will help,” he rumbled, lifting her head and supporting her weight as he brought the cup to her lips. “Drink.”
She swallowed reflexively, though most of the liquid ran down her chin. The taste was bitter enough to make her grimace, but she managed to get some down.
Now for the hard part.
He unwrapped the infected bandages completely, revealing the full extent of the damage. The wound was worse than he’d thought—edges black with necrosis, pus oozing from multiple points along the cut. Red streaks had spread halfway up her thigh.
He cleaned the wound with the remaining ketara tea, watching pus and debris wash away in pink-tinged rivulets. Michelle moaned in her sleep but didn’t wake, lost in fever dreams.
The crushed velix leaves came next, packed directly into the cleaned wound. The plant’s natural antibiotics would fight the infection from inside while promoting healing. But it wouldn’t be enough. Not with the infection this advanced.
The legion whispered in his mind, showing him what came next.
He drew the knife from his boot and pressed the blade against his forearm. The cut opened easily, blood welling dark red in the dim light. He held his arm over her leg, letting crimson drops fall onto the velix-packed wound.
The first drop hit her skin and spread like liquid metal. The second joined it, and the third, until a thin film of blood covered the entire injury. Then something extraordinary happened.
The blood began to harden.
It wasn’t clotting… this was something else entirely. The liquid transformed into a substance that looked like black glass, smooth and seamless. Within minutes, a rigid shell encased Michelle’s lower leg from ankle to knee.
Adapts to need, the legion whispered. Flexible armor for combat. Rigid casting for healing.
The cast was perfect. It immobilized the break completely while allowing the infection-fighting herbs to do their work. And it was made from his blood, his essence. Something primal and possessive stirred in his chest at the sight of it.
He cleaned his arm off, but the wound he’d inflicted was already closing so he settled back to wait. The fever would break soon… the herbs were already working, drawing poison from her system. But he needed to monitor her temperature, watch for signs of complications.
Michelle’s thrashing had stopped. Her breathing deepened, becoming the steady rhythm of actual sleep rather than delirium. Color was already returning to her cheeks as the ketara root did its work.
He touched her forehead again. Still warm, but not the dangerous heat of before. The crisis had passed.
He leaned back against the cabin wall, exhaustion hitting him. When was the last time he’d slept deeply? Really slept, without nightmares or the constant vigilance that kept him alive?
Last night. Holding Michelle against his chest, her body warm and trusting in his arms. For those few hours, the world had been quiet. Peaceful. The Legion presence in his blood had been content, satisfied in ways he didn’t fully understand.
He’d never experienced anything like it. The closest comparison was meditation, but even that fell short. This had been... rightness. Like every restless part of his nature had finally found what it was searching for.
When she wakes, will she be terrified of me?
Her nightmare had been draanthing brutal… he’d caught fragments of it in her fevered mumbling. Violence. Blood. The sound of bone breaking. She’d watched him tear apart ferals with his bare hands, had seen the predator that lived beneath his careful control.
What female wouldn’t be terrified after witnessing that?
