Total Eclipse

four. I didn’t think it was quite bad enough to be classed as a five, which would have put my odds way, way down.

I knew enough about snakebites to know that ice wouldn’t work, and neither would the old Western cliché of cutting open the wound and sucking out the poison. What would work was antivenin. Which I didn’t have.

Well, the good news was that this bite probably wouldn’t kill me. It would just make me very, very sick. And I could lose the arm. I licked my lips, hoping that there wouldn’t be any major symptoms, such as tingling, just yet. There weren’t. That was a good sign, I thought.

We were closing the distance fast to the perimeter, and I realized that this was, in fact, perfect. “David,” I panted, finally settling down enough to put something into words. “Don’t try to hide us. Take me right to the main gate, dump me off, drive away.”

“I can’t do that! Dammit, Jo, stay still. I’m turning the car around and taking you to a hospital.”

“No. You can stabilize me for now, right? I don’t need to be healed. Just do enough to make me functional.”

I was wrong about the lip-tingling. It started, and increased, and it felt like someone was sticking pins in my mouth. Very unpleasant. I felt dizzy, too.

The Djinn’s hand flashed out and closed around the arm with the bite, and I screamed at the flash of agony that ripped through the nerves . . . but then it calmed to a dull, fiery ache, and I could breathe again. Tears stung my eyes from the intensity of the discomfort, but the torturous prickling of my lips and mouth receded, and the dizziness steadied. “Keep the swelling,” I panted. “I need proof. Just get me ambulatory.”

“This is insane!”

“No, this is a plan,” I said. “I’m a snakebite victim. They have to take me inside for medical treatment. I need you to take down their external communication systems, so they can’t call out an ambulance. They’ll have antivenin in stock, in a place like this. I’ll be fine.”

I didn’t feel fine, not at all. David didn’t like my brilliant plan, but then again, he didn’t know the extent of it, either. He really wouldn’t like the rest of it, and I wasn’t planning on enlightening him. Not yet.

“Once I’m in, you can bring the car in however you can manage it,” I said. “Including blipping it in there. I’ll find you.” I wouldn’t need the car, because of course the plan was that probably I would never leave. But it would be nice to have the option, in case things changed somehow for the better. Not that I had a single hope they would, but you know hope: it springs eternal.

And having David close—even virtual David, talking through a radio—would make me feel braver. I hoped I’d get to tell him, before the end, why I was doing this. I hoped I’d get to say good- bye.

“I don’t like this,” David’s voice said, coming now out of the Djinn’s mouth. We were coming up fast on the turnoff to the plant, which was protected by a guardhouse and pretty serious fencing. The compound—I didn’t know what else to call it—stretched on in a sprawl within the fence boundaries. The guardhouse was manned by two men, both armed, and there were more armed men in sight, watching with pointed vigilance as the Mustang coasted to a stop just beyond the guardhouse. Both guards stepped out, hands on their sidearms, watching us with cold, professional intensity.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” David said.

“I’m sure,” I said, and then, impulsively, “I love you, sweetheart.”

I opened the door before he could respond, and bailed out in a heap. It wasn’t hard, with the torn calf and the venom coursing through me. I felt generally pretty wretched.

The Mustang backed up in a shriek of tires, and the passenger-side door slammed shut as he braked, did a perfect sliding turn, and accelerated off down the road in a blur of dust and smoke. That was probably Whitney. David wouldn’t have been as prompt in executing the hell-out-of-Dodge part of the plan.

The guards were shouting, and one of them ducked back into the shack. I heard alarms sounding, and thudding boots. Nobody touched me, so I slowly flipped myself over on my side. My head was pounding, I was too dizzy to sit up, and, with a sudden spasm, I threw up. Mostly the water that I’d been drinking, but disgustingly convincing that I wasn’t faking anything. The swelling on my arm was bad, and getting worse.

They patted me down for explosives, yelled for medical assistance, and finally, one of them leaned down and barked, “Name!”

“Jo,” I whispered. “Joanne Baldwin. Security clearance. Check—check with—military.” I wasn’t lying. Wardens had security clearances. Mine was as good as his, I’d be willing to bet. I hadn’t endured all those questions and poking around in my personal life to fail to cash in my chips now. “Rattlesnake.”

“I can see that,” he said. Some of the ferocity left his voice. “Stay still. Help’s on the way.”

The other man, I was sure, would be running my name back through channels. That was fine. I was fairly sure that nobody would turn away the help of a Warden, even an injured one, at a sensitive installation—not in times like these. Hell, I was security.

I felt filthy, doing it, but they were making their own logical assumptions. I wasn’t lying to them, not one bit. I lay there on the pavement, retching helplessly, feeling miserable and in severe pain, but David had done as I asked—I wasn’t getting worse. Not yet, anyway.

There were conversations, hurried and clipped ones, with people who I assumed were higher up in the organization. Phones were used. Pictures were taken. A medical team arrived with a gurney, evaluated me, not surprisingly came up with a diagnosis of snakebite and some kind of animal attack, and loaded me up with a pile of hospital-approved blankets on top.

The gates parted, and I was wheeled inside the compound, past neatly lettered signs that warned of criminal prosecution to the fullest extent of the law for any violations of security protocols. More guards accompanied the medical team. I supposed I would have been handcuffed to the gurney, except for the snakebite, which made that impossible.

The first building we came to was obviously some kind of administration complex—big, blocky, heavily secure. Lots of locks, key cards, biometric scans just to get me into a hallway. A security officer was there, and he clipped a badge on my shirt, neon red, that proclaimed I was a supervised visitor. I didn’t feel like a visitor. I felt like a prisoner. It probably had tracking devices built in, so I could be found and caught in seconds if I managed to totter up off the bed.

I didn’t think I was going to bump the terror alert level any, given how I felt right now.

A doctor took over, clearly the Head Medical Cheese, and he did some unsympathetic probing of the snakebite wound. “It’s genuine,” he said to a guard standing next to him. “Probably a stage four bite. She’s very sick, and she needs antivenin urgently.” He bent over to look into my pale, sweating face. “What’s your name?”

“Joanne Baldwin.”

“How’d you get here, Joanne?”

“I was walking,” I said. “Snake bit me. Car picked me up but he dropped me here.”

All completely true. The doctor frowned, clearly not thinking much of someone who’d dump me and drive away, but he shook it off. “Looks like a prairie rattler bite,” he said. “Let’s get some CroFab in her, stat.”

In a gratifyingly short time—although every heartbeat felt like it lasted a year, thanks to the unbelievable and escalating pain—a nurse hustled back in with a vial and a hypodermic. He checked the label—thorough, I liked that in a doctor—and filled the hypo with the straw-colored liquid. I hadn’t really noticed, but someone had already put in a central line—and they must have been good at it, because I didn’t like IVs, not at all. The doctor added the antivenin to the flow, then reached for another vial. There were six on the table. I wondered if that was some kind of a record.

“Okay, this is going to take about an hour to get into your system,” the doctor said, after emptying the last vial. “If you start having trouble breathing, let us know immediately. Anaphylaxis is a possibility with this antivenin, but it isn’t common. You’re not allergic to sheep, are you?”

I gave him a blank look. “Sheep? Really?”

“Really.”

“How the hell would I know?”

“Good point,” he said, and grinned. “Lie back and relax. Keep your heart rate down. I know it’s miserable,