She threw a blast of energy at the tree ten feet up, severing the trunk and sending a ton of wood down to crush the demon’s backbone.
Now she didn’t have enough kinetic energy to snap a toothpick.
Tristan bellowed in agony.
She twisted around, clenching her teeth against the throbbing pain. The creature still had what was left of Tristan’s mauled arm locked in his jaws. He used the bloody stump to shake Tristan’s entire body back and forth.
No point in being quiet now, she yelled, “Where’s the dagger?”
“Right . . . boot,” he croaked out in a voice wrought with pain. Blood covered his arm, his body and the ground.
Dragging her bad leg, she crawled to his side and lurched for his boot, unable to stop a cry of anguish at banging her crushed knee.
She reached inside his boot and curled her fingers around the handle of her dagger.
Energy wicked up her arm.
With the last surge of strength in her body, she lunged for the demon’s head, driving the dagger between its eyes. That had worked on demons in the past and, hallelujah, this one burst into an explosion of light, then turned into gray powder.
Tristan fell back with a pitiful howl.
Nothing alive should sound like that.
She shoved the dagger into her boot and climbed over him. Flesh and muscle hung loose from his shoulder, his arm a mangled mess. He wouldn’t survive that any more than she was going to survive a crushed knee that was bleeding out.
“Have to . . . heal,” he rasped out in a pain-drenched voice.
She’d healed some wounds quicker than a human would be able to but not an injury like this. “Tristan, my knee is destroyed. I don’t have the ability to heal this kind of damage.”
She rolled off his body so he could move. He drew a couple of hard breaths and pushed up on his undamaged arm. His sun-kissed skin had turned a sickly gray.
He wheezed out, “Go to . . . the lake.”
Like water was going to fix their ravaged bodies? “How will that help?”
“Have to wash away . . . saliva . . . it’s attacking our blood.”
“That might stop the power loss, but—” She took a couple of breaths to keep from throwing up. “Unless that lake has majik in the water . . . not going to fix mangled bodies. It’s too late . . . saliva’s draining us.”
He gave her a look of confusion, then got to his feet with a great deal of grunting through clenched jaws. He extended his hand to her. “Too much . . . to explain.”
She couldn’t push him to say more when every word obviously took a toll on his waning energy. “Go ahead if you think you can do something. I can’t walk.”
“Up.” He kept his hand out.
Too exhausted to argue, she grabbed his hand with both of hers and let him pull her to her feet. She sucked in a sharp breath. Tears threatened at the surge of blistering pain. The minute she balanced herself on one leg he let go of her. “What the—”
Before she could fall, he scooped her fireman style over his good shoulder, then started walking. He was headed in the direction of the waterfall they’d passed earlier.
“Put me down. You’re in no shape to carry me.”
He said nothing, just plodded along like a man who had been beaten with a club.
Struggling would only hurt both of them, so she kept still.
Time in the universe of pain moved at an excruciating pace. Every misstep over the rugged terrain jarred her leg and brought tears to her eyes. There was no way she’d cry out or complain, when he had to be hurting just as much.
He muttered something and plowed on.
