With that, she tugged her wrist free and started down the street again. I went to stop her but decided it was best to leave her alone. I had a feeling pushing Aisling would only end up with her digging her heels further in and becoming more stubborn. Her anger would ebb eventually—I hoped.
We turned a corner, and the clinic came into view. There were so many tents set up outside the building that they blocked the street. Cots full of the wounded packed the tents; their moans drowned out the beeping equipment and shouts of the medical staff. They didn’t bring any of the injured demons here; they were on the hill in what remained of the tents while their bodies repaired themselves.
“What are we doing here?” I asked.
“I’m looking for a friend,” she said as she ducked into the first tent.
A pen scratched against a clipboard as the nurse within marked something down while a man slept soundly. The nurse glanced up and stopped writing to stare disapprovingly at us. “You can’t be in here.”
“I’m trying to find my friend, Sandy Mayhew,” Aisling said.
The nurse’s irritated expression faded, and she stepped away from the bed to point at the doors of the clinic. “The list of injured is posted on the door.”
“Thank you.”
Aisling hurried out of the tent; she walked three steps before breaking into a run and racing for the door. I paused for a minute to watch her. She hadn’t seemed frantic, but I sensed her desperation when she dropped her backpack on the ground. She’d lost one friend today, I didn’t want her to lose another, but I had a bad feeling about this.
I trudged over to stand beside her as she ran her finger down the list of names. “This can’t be everyone,” she muttered when she got to the end. “They have to be missing some of them.”
“Aisling—”
She spun toward me. “There’s only fifty names on the list. There has to bemore.”
I rested my hand on her shoulder, and though her face remained pinched with annoyance, her tensed muscles relaxed a little.
“The craetons don’t leave survivors behind,” I said.
“But some people might not be able to give their names yet.”
I couldn’t give her false hope, but I couldn’t destroy it either. “True. Let’s go find out if there are more.”
Opening the door, I waited for her to put her backpack on and followed her inside. The stench of blood, death, and excrement assailed me as doctors and nurses rushed back and forth. With the rooms filled, more of the injured packed the hallway, and the sounds of their agony reverberated off the walls.
Aisling inspected their faces as she walked, but then she stopped so suddenly I nearly walked into her. Paler than the sheets draped over those around us, her lips compressed as she gazed at the wounded. “Their souls,” she whispered.
I frowned at her. “What about them?”
She grasped the straps of her backpack and pulled them forward as she whispered. “Some of them are so weak.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
But the look in her eyes said she was staring at death in a way I could never see it. Unable to resist, I rested my hand on her shoulder and drew her closer. She resisted for a minute, and then she placed her head on my chest and wrapped her arms around me. I inhaled her sweet scent as I rubbed her back to ease her sorrow. Then, she bowed her head and stepped away.
“Why don’t you go back outside,” I suggested. “And I’ll ask about your friend.”
“No. I can handle this.”
I suspected her determination to see this through was because of my hesitance to bring her into the Wilds. “This isn’t the same as the Wilds.”
She didn’t look at me as she turned away and marched up to the front desk. The harried-looking woman behind it didn’t look at her.
“Excuse me,” Aisling said. “I’m…”
The woman walked away before Aisling could say anything more. “I deserved that,” Aisling muttered as she turned to survey the stretchers. “I’m going to check the rooms. They’ll probably hate me for it, but I have to know what happened to Sandy.”
I gritted my teeth against pulling her away from this place; I doubted her friend was here, but she would fight me tooth and nail if I tried to get her to leave. I followed her around the desk and down the rest of the hallway as she checked the patients in the hall before moving on to the rooms.
