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“Cause I’m not young,” he said, reading my mind again. “I got four hundred years under my belt, okay? So how about you stop treating me like some kid you need to protect?”
“I would never do that,” I told him seriously. Disrespecting a warrior who had fought at my side was unthinkable. “But if the choice is between one of us getting away, and neither—”
“Okay, how about you listen, for once?” he said, cutting me off with a furious whisper. “It’s always me listening and following orders, but you know what? I ain’t some flunky, some errand boy. I’m a master vamp and I’m your Second. And you know what a Second does when his master is injured and exhausted and talking crazy?”
“I am not—”
“If you’re talking about me leaving you to those murderous things, then yeah, you’re talking crazy!” His voice had gotten a little loud, so I put a hand over his mouth. He left it there for a moment, his eyes glimmering at me angrily over the top. Then he removed it, hesitated, and then kissed the back of it defiantly. “This is me taking over, all right?”
I blinked at him, more than a little nonplussed. But the truth was, I had no other ideas. I did not know how to get us out of this.
I nodded.
“Good.” Ray went back to fussing with the bandages.
I did not know if the fey had bad aim, or if a few of them had still been trying to wound instead of kill. But no major arteries had been severed in my legs. That was good in the sense that I would not bleed to death, but it did not help with the fact that I remained paralyzed. I concentrated everything I had on trying to move something, even just a toe, for a long moment.
It did not work.
I felt frustration and fear rising in my throat, and tried to tamp them down. But it was not easy. When I became angry, I tended to lash out at whatever was hurting me, but I could not do that here. As weak as I was, even had I been able to manifest my spirit form, I could not have held it for long. I could not do anything!
Meanwhile, Ray’s plan seemed to be to wait our enemies out, but I did not think that the fey were going anywhere. Whatever they wanted from me, it seemed important to them. They had the reckless yet tenacious attitudes of men who had been told to return with their shields or on them.
I did not think that going home without me was an option.
“Okay, that’s about as good as I can do with a crappy blanket,” Ray said. “Now, you stay here—”
“Where are you going?” I caught his arm.
He pried it off. “I’m gonna go check out this cliff face.”
“They’ll see you!”
“I used to be a smuggler,” he reminded me. “I know how to slip around all subtle like. They won’t see me.”
“But . . . what do you hope to find?”
“Another way out.” It was grim. He glanced at the fey lights, now less like the running variety and more like search lights, that were strobing the cavern. “These guys don’t look like they plan on leaving anytime soon. We need a back door, and water erodes. There could be a passage to another chamber or even to the outside hidden in these rocks. And if there is, I’m gonna find it.”
With that he was gone, before I had a chance to protest. I stared after him, feeling off balance again. I was not used to being the one left behind, the weak one, the one with nothing to do. It was disconcerting and highly unpleasant. I sat there for a moment, frowning at nothing.
Then I started searching the cabin, looking for anything useful.
The bench seats opened up to allow storage underneath, but there wasn’t much there. And what I did find reinforced my impression that this capsule had been used recently, despite its initial appearance. There were no weapons, but there was dried food—still edible—a container of what I assumed to be water, and another blanket.
I pulled the latter over myself, not that it helped much. The depression we were in was shallow, to the point that we’d basically become part of the falls. The entire interior of the craft was wet and I had water beading on my skin and dripping off of my nose.
After a moment, I took the blanket back off and used it as a bag instead, loading it down with the rest of the supplies. I emptied the two bench seats closest to me, then crawled awkwardly around to the other side of the pole to see what else I could find. I was hoping for a map, as our side in the war had allies in Faerie as well as enemies. If we knew where we were, perhaps we could reach some of them.
But there was no map. One of the remaining seats had nothing underneath it, and the last had a coil of rope, some fire making supplies, and a mirror. I took the mirror, which was small and probably also intended for use in making fire. It was a little larger than my palm, and showed me back a face that was pale, splattered with blood, and tired looking. I frowned and turned it on my body instead.
I wanted to see the injury to my spine, but it was difficult, and not just because of the location. But because it was so dark in here. I twisted this way and that, but the shadows were too deep. I needed better light—
And, suddenly, I had it.
A light lit up on the floor beside me, splashing my face with pale blue luminescence. It caused me to suck in a breath and throw the blanket and then my body over it. I froze in place, waiting to see if I had been spotted.
And waited.
