The sound it makes, somewhere between a scream and a yodel, makes my blood run cold, but I don’t stop. I lift my arm and I stab it again, and again, and again. Blood gushes up around my hand, as cold as its flesh, as I keep stabbing.
The Boiúna snaps out toward me, forgetting Locke is there while it focuses on the pain of my attack. The fangs slam into my chest again, adding new puncture wound, stealing what little breath I’ve been able to drag inside my lungs. I slump again, the pain too great, all but one arrow falling from my fist. I just manage to close it again around one of the arrows, the piece of wood solid in my fingers.
“Not today, motherfucker!” Locke shouts and rushes the snake while it’s focused on me. He slams his short sword against the Boiúna’s head. At first, it does nothing, but his rage seems to add to his strength. He screams as he hits again and again, chopping at the snake, bludgeoning it despite the sword not cutting. The snake screams and tries to face him, but each blow throws it more and more off balance, knocking its attention off kilter.
Locke’s next hit sends the snake’s head closer to me. It’s rattled, clearly confused after so many hits, and while I can barely breathe, I can act. I seize the only opportunity I’m going to have.
I’m weak, too weak to stab the arrow through the snake’s flesh, but there’s one part of its body that is soft.
Its eyes.
Without a sound, I jab the arrow into the great golden eye. It sinks inside as the creature screams, and when it tries to pull away, I manage to twist it and stab it deeper.
The coils still wrapped around me release me completely as the snake screams in agony, shaking its head from side to side. The river water begins to swirl and splashes over its banks as if the snake controls it. The cold water splashes over me, shocking my system enough to wake me up. I’m drenched in seconds, my body growing more and more cold by the second. I stumble after the Boiúna as it tries to get away, my legs not quite working like they should. I trip over small rocks, and my left arm still hangs at my side, but I can at least continue to stab the creature. Locke grabs one of the arrows I’d dropped and fists it. With a guttural, desperate scream, he stabs the arrow deep into the other eye of the Boiúna, completely blinding it. The creature gives one final terrifying scream as it jerks away from him, and then collapses with a massive thump.
I fall to my knees the second the threat is gone and then collapse entirely, my head using the slowly curling body of the snake as a pillow. It continues to writhe around me, it’s death scream still echoing in the cavern. I’m panting so hard, my heartbeat is in my ears, making it difficult to hear around the rushing of my blood and the rushing of the water. My lungs scream at me, demanding vengeance for the lack of air for so long before I’d been allowed to breathe more in. My body hurts all over, my skin tingling in a way I know I’ll be covered in bruises later. My shoulder is tender and sore, clearly dislocated badly enough I’ll have to have Locke help me pop it back into socket. The snake bites on my body burn like fire as they bleed. So many snake bites. I’m not sure I even remember them all.
Locke appears over me, his eyes wide and worried. “Hey, hey, hey! Are you alive? Fuck, you are. Are you dying?” His voice is so far away, like he’s shouting at me from the other end of a tunnel.
I try to speak, but my lungs scream at me and then my chest is screaming at me, too. Laughter bubbles out of my lips despite the pain.After all that, I’m still going to die, aren’t I?
“No,” Cipher answers my unspoken question. “You will not.”
Locke smears something across my chest and then my shoulder. I can’t look down to see what it is, my body buzzing with failing adrenaline. My vision starts to fail, blackness closing in from the corners before falling inward, tunneling my sight until I only see Locke.
When she arrives, tell Dox I tried, I think, collapsing fully.
My vision goes first. My body goes next.
Cipher . . .tell her . . .
CHAPTER12
LOCKE
“Don’t you pass out on me, Vesper! Vesper!” Her body slumps as I quickly smear the weak healing paste on her bite wounds. “Fuck!”
Purple bruises quickly begin to mark up her skin everywhere I can see them. She’s completely black and blue within minutes, appearing as if she’d been beaten within an inch of her life. Harrow, I don’t know how she survived as long as she did, not with that thing squeezing the fucking life out of her. If I can at least get her to heal, just a little, maybe I can save her. Maybe something I do can matter.
We don’t have to follow the Dross mentality here.
She’s right. We don’t. And somehow, I’ve started to enjoy her company. I can’t let her die, not when she’s the first person to ever watch my back.
“I don’t know what to do,” I mumble frantically. “I don’t know how to help.”
I check my inventory. Nothing. I haven’t been picking up anything, so all I have is my jacket, the blunt sword, and the three Harrow Coins Vesper had shared with me. Nothing to heal except the paste and it doesn’t seem to be working for internal injuries. She must have so many and I’m going to be forced to watch her die. I stare down at Vesper, panicking. Her shoulder looks wrong, like it’s popped out of socket. Her breathing is rough and ragged, her chest rising and falling in stutters. And then the bruising . . .
“She’s going to die,” Cipher says, suddenly popping into my mind.
“Now you show up?” I snarl. “I was screaming for you!”
“I’m not a dog to be called,” Cipher grunts.
“But I am?” I spit.
I wish there was a face I could look into for this. I’d been out cold. My head is still aching and there’s a bit of blood on the back of it where I’d hit the wall. But within the darkness, I’d heard Cipher yelling at me to get my ass up, to, “make myself useful for once.” He hadn’t been there when I’d woken up, retreating to let me beat at the snake like a fucking lunatic. He could have helped her some other way. Instead, he’d let her die.
“Yes,” Cipher answers. “You are nothing in this. A casualty of war.”
