He just stares at me blankly.
My hands tighten around his face. “You are not fucking dying on me, you bastard,” I snarl at him. “I don’t care that you’re bleeding. I don’t care that you’re in pain. You get the fuck up and you get in that car.”
He looks at me again, not saying anything. His lips tremble.
Then he tries to get up. It’s painstaking and horrible to watch. Two steps forward, one step back, again and again as he tries to overcome the pain, loses, redoubles his effort, tries again.
As he wins another inch. And another. And another.
I’m doing everything I can to help. I’m pulling his shoulders from the front and pushing against them from the back. I’m whispering under my breath, “Yes, yes, a little more, a little more,” like a goddamn lunatic.
And eventually, somehow, he gets to all fours. From there, he uses me like a crutch to push up to half-kneeling. And then two feet on the ground.
And then he rises, still leaning almost all his weight on me, but that’s fine, that’s okay, we’re going to make it.
I almost stumble over, but the adrenaline is coursing through me.
Somehow, I manage to support his weight as we stumble to the car together.
His blood soaks my clothes. The strips of my nightgown are flapping in the night breeze, crusted red. Artem’s groan in my ear is low and constant. He’s muttering nonsense syllables and his eyes keep falling closed.
But we move forward.
One step at a time.
Until at last we make it to the car. Artem falls against the side of the vehicle, his head knocking the roof. He crumples listlessly into the back seat. I have to heave his legs inside.
Once the door is closed, I let myself breathe for a moment. But only a moment. I don’t have any longer than that.
I open the front door and start to climb inside. Just before I’m all the way in, though, something catches my eye.
Something sparkling golden in the moonlight.
Frowning, I go look at it. It’s something caught on the spiked leaf of one of the bushes. My heart starts pounding as I get closer and closer.
Until I’m close enough to see and my chest seizes up entirely.
It’s a lock of blond hair.
One end stained red with blood.
My body aches like I’ve been punched in the gut. Cillian is somewhere out there. With the bad men or alone, I can’t be sure.
But he’s hurt, it seems. Maybe dead.
I look around and scan the forest one more time, hoping against hope for another sign that he’s okay.
“Where are you, Cillian?” I whisper into the night.
No response.
I can’t wait around for him. Artem is dying too fast for that. We have to go, now.
I offer up a silent prayer for the sad-eyed Irishman. Then I get back in the car and start the long journey into town.
I hope to God we make it in time.
9
Esme
The tires crunch over rocks and dirt. The car breathes exhaust into the night. And little by little, we wind down the mountain.
I feel like I’m sleepwalking. As if this is all just another night terror.
But this time, Artem can’t save me from it.
Who can?
I don’t make the conscious decision to go to Aracelia’s house. I don’t even realize that’s where I’m going until I’m parked outside her home, staring up at it as though it has all the answers.
Bringing Artem here might be a mistake. But it’s the only option I have.
I run up to her front door and pound the door as hard as I can. I keep ringing until she opens the door.
She looks calm. Serene. Not sleep-addled in the least—as if she’d been awake and expecting me.
I shake that thought aside. I’m just panicked, that’s all.
“Hola, Esmeralda,” she murmurs in that weird, whimsical way of hers.
Not that it even matters, but relief floods through me when she remembers my name. Her eyes run along my body as she takes in the bloodstains on my ripped nightgown.
“What the fuck happened?”
The calm aura that had engulfed her the first time we’d met is still there, but as she takes stock of the situation, it changes somehow. Intensifies. Sharpens.
“I’m sorry,” I say desperately. “I couldn’t go anywhere else.”
“Someone is hurt,” she guesses.
“My husband. Please, Aracelia, I need your help. He’s dying.”
She glances towards the car that’s parked behind me. “He’s in the car?”
I nod. “Will you help me?” I ask. “I have no one else to go to.”
For a moment, I think she’s going to turn me away. But then I see her jaw set with determination.
“Venga,” she says. “I’ll help you.”
I’m so overwhelmed with gratitude that I almost hug her. But she pushes past me and hurries toward the car.
It’s dark now. A cloud over the moon blots out all the light from the sky, and her house is far from any other building.
Still, there’s no telling who might be out in the night. Watching. Waiting to finish what they started.
We go to the car and I throw open the back door.
Aracelia takes one look at Artem and purses her lips up with a professionalism that ER doctors would envy. “He’s a big man,” she says. “How did you manage to get him in here on your own?”
“He helped.”
He doesn’t look like he’ll be repeating that, though. The back seat is soaked with blood and Artem is groaning softly. His eyes are pinwheeling wildly beneath his eyelids.
“Stay there,” Aracelia orders. Before I can answer, she turns and strides behind the house.
While she’s gone, I lean forward and mop the cold sweat from Artem’s forehead.
“Stay with me,” I whisper to him. “We came this far. I can’t lose you now.”
A tinny squeak invades the night. A moment later, Aracelia rounds the corner of the house again—this time, pushing a wheelbarrow.
She brings it over and parks it as close to the car as she can manage.
“You grab his head,” Aracelia tells me. “I’ll take his legs. We need to
