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Soot and ash flaked off Sophia's once-white dress, which hung in burnt tatters on her back, while the heels had snapped off her shoes. Her black hair was a singed, tangled mess, while blood had soaked through the white bandages that had been placed over the gunshot wounds on her left arm and thigh. But the worst part was her skin, which was red, raw, and blistered, from her fingertips all the way up her arms. Her throat and face were as bright and shiny as a ripe tomato, her cheeks puffed up from the burns so that they seemed like they would pop if you so much as looked at them too hard.
Every single part of her had to just hurt . But she was still standing, still breathing, still in one piece. Everything else could be fixed - on the outside, at least.
"Jo-Jo?" Sophia rasped in her broken voice.
"cooper healed her," I said. "At least, he tried to. I don't know how well he did. Maybe he'll know more about how she's doing when we get back to his place. "
Worry glimmered in Sophia's black eyes, but she nodded. Then the dwarf did something that she'd never done before in all the years that I'd known her: she threw her arms around me and hugged me tight.
"Thank you," she whispered in my ear.
I would have hugged her back if I didn't think that it would have caused her even more pain. "You are more than welcome. Now, come on. Let's get out of here. "
Sophia nodded and pulled back. She leaned down, grabbed her shovel, and used it as a sort of walking stick.
Together, with Owen, we headed toward the woods and our escape route.
Chapter Eighteen
Warren stepped out of the trees and met us at the edge of the forest, still clutching his rifle.
"Anything?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Not a peep so far. I don't think that anyone in camp heard what happened here, but it won't be too long before Grimes or some of his men come to check on the others. We need to disappear into the woods before they spot us - "
It was as if his words summoned up all the bad, capricious luck that I'd been expecting ever since we'd first set foot on Bone Mountain, because one of Grimes's men chose that exact moment to run into the clearing.
"Hey," he called out, still jogging forward and waving to someone behind him. "Go get Stewie, and come help me. Mr. Grimes changed his mind. He wants the woman brought back - "
He turned around and stopped short at the sight of Owen, Sophia, Warren, and me standing to one side of the clearing. His gaze zoomed in on the dead bodies of his buddies sprawled among the worn tombstones. The guy sucked in a breath, but he did the smart thing and didn't approach us. Instead, he did something far, far worse: he pulled his gun out of the holster on his belt and fired three quick shots up into the air.
I cursed and started forward, ready to kill him, but Warren beat me to it. The old man raised his rifle to his shoulder and put a bullet in the other man's forehead.
But the sharp, staccato sounds of the revolver and the rifle echoed around the clearing, then bellowed through the trees and rattled farther out into the main camp.
Shouts rose in the distance, indicating that Grimes, Hazel, and everyone else would descend on the area in minutes, if not sooner.
"What do you want to do, Gin?" Owen asked. "Make a stand here?"
I shook my head. "No. There are too many of them.
They can easily outflank us, and they have more weapons than we do. Now we run. "
Sophia hurried forward, but after a few yards she pu
lled up short and hissed in pain, despite the shovel that she'd been using to support herself. A bit of blood trickled down her bare leg.
"How bad is that gunshot wound in your thigh?" I asked.
"Just bandaged," she rasped. "Not healed. "
That's what I'd feared, but there was nothing to be done about it. So I put an arm under Sophia's shoulder, taking some of her weight. Together, we headed for the trees.
Crack!
Crack! Crack!
Crack!
