Matt Archer: Redemption Part 21

Half-paddling, half-walking, it chased me toward the middle of the lake. The cold water quickly chilled me to the bone and it got harder to stay afloat, let alone make headway. I was fully dressed, wearing all my gear, and tiring fast.

Where the h.e.l.l was Will?

"T-tink?" I said, my teeth chattering. "This isn't g-going to work. F-fly me out of here."

I'll refrain from the "I told you so" lecture until later.

Life tingled in my limbs and I rose out of the water, dripping. I pulled my knife free of its sheath, thinking I'd land on the creature and be done with it-Will's kill or not. Then it rose to meet me, its giant bat's wings pelting me with cold air and water droplets.

c.r.a.p, I'd forgotten it could fly.

Worse-now it was on fire again.

I zoomed back toward the trees, hoping to get lost in the copse where it couldn't follow. Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that it could fly faster than me, and a searing heat clamped onto my left ankle. I screamed and tried to yank my leg back, but it held on with flaming claws. My wet pants smoldered and I could feel my skin cooking underneath.

The monster dragged me to the ground just short of the trees. Without letting go of my leg, it said in a voice like loose gravel, "So weak. Too easy, no matter what the Dark One said."

I shuddered as the heat from its body blasted mine. The only reason I hadn't caught fire was because I was wet, but not even that would protect me for long. I struggled to lift my knife, but it pressed its other foot to my right shoulder and I screamed again as the cloth melted against my skin.

Then, out of nowhere, a black dart slammed into its eye. The monster roared and let me go. I curled into a tiny ball of distant pain as Will stalked by, his face like death. He slipped my knife from my hand, growling, "Need to borrow this."

The creature had stumbled back toward the water and I fought to stay conscious to watch Will drive it far enough into the lake to extinguish its fire. Without the flame, it looked vulnerable, tired. Overmatched.

With one swipe, Will slashed my knife's blade through its throat and red-orange blood sizzled on the water's surface.

Then I pa.s.sed out.

Chapter Twenty-Five.

"Sir ... Take him back?"

"Where? He's ... Get the captain ... "

I panted in shallow breaths, agony lacing every cell in my body. My world had been reduced to the burns on my ankle and shoulder, a universe of pain, and I went in and out of consciousness. Each time I came to, I silently begged to black out again.

"Tink?" I whispered. She would help.

No answer.

Had she abandoned me? I squeezed my eyes closed and tried to let the darkness take me.

"Go for Kelly ... Cut them off ..."

"What happened out there!" Johnson, shouting. "Why didn't he have cover?"

"False trail ... Got turned around ... Swear the forest moved, sir." Will, sounding hoa.r.s.e and near to his breaking point. "I don't know how."

Hands pa.s.sed over my face, light as a feather and cool. Muddled, I wondered if Ella had found me. Even though moving was a lesson in torture, I reached into my pants pocket to touch the St. Christopher medal, needing its grace and hers.

It was gone.

I'd been forsaken by everything.

"Hold on, son," a soft voice said. "I know it hurts."

My eyes fluttered open and there was Dad, his face gray and pinched. I blinked back tears. "Burned."

"I know. I know you are," he said. "It's going to be okay. They're second degree, but we can treat them out here."

From the way my skin screamed, I thought the beast had seared me to the bone. "Hurts."

"Kelly," Dad barked, turning into scary Officer Archer in an instant. "Morphine. Now."

"He'll lose consciousness again," Kelly said, a shadow in my peripheral vision.

Dad rested a hand on my head. "That's the idea."

A pinp.r.i.c.k later, I went under for good.

"So, you like fire?" The Dark One asks, his voice so frostbitten it burns.

Despite his coldness, despite a blinding dark, I can feel heat. "Do what you want to me. Just let my sister go."

He laughs. "There had to be three, Matthew. And so there are."

Mamie screams, each sob timed to the throbbing ache from my burns. I strain and pull, but my body isn't my own in this place, and I'm left stuck, listening to my sister beg for death.

And this time I couldn't wake up.

I came to, groggy and aching all over, sometime after nightfall. I had no idea if one day had pa.s.sed, or multiple days. Gingerly, I moved my ankle and found it sore but not excruciating. The same with my shoulder. The skin was tight and itchy, but I'd take that over what I'd felt before As I stretched, my hand b.u.mped something: my knife's handle. Instantly, a long sigh of relief filled my skull.

I thought those idiots would never get the hint! Tink huffed. William was so upset he let that blowhard spirit of his talk over me.

"I'm a little out of it." I swallowed; my throat was desert dry and scratchy. "What?"

William took your knife to finish the fire creature then he forgot to give it back! Tink sounded p.i.s.sed. It wasn't until I gave him the headache to end all headaches that he realized what was wrong. I mean, really, how can I heal you when I'm tied to him?

So many questions coming out of that statement, I didn't know where to start. "Tied to him?"

I didn't think another wielder could handle me, and it was probably only because of the situation. Well, and I was compliant about it-at first-but he stripped you of your blade while you were down. If I'd been able to help sooner, I wouldn't have let you suffer so long. Sometimes these men vex me to no end.

She rattled off a long string of words in her own language, cursing based on the tone, and I finally understood a little better. Every time I'd been hurt-starting with the time I'd accidentally sliced myself open in Peru-Tink had sped up my healing process. Today was no exception, and I was tremendously thankful, but I also felt guilty. I'd done the same thing to Will in Australia; I'd taken his knife to fight while he was badly injured. We'd have to remember how this worked in the future.

"What day is it?"

"Tomorrow," a tired voice answered. "A little after midnight."

I tried to sit up, but Dad appeared at my side and pushed me back down gently. "Not yet," he said. "You need to rest a while."

"How long was I out?"

"Nearly sixteen hours." He pulled a chair closer to my bed.

Wait where was I? "We're not in a tent."

He shook his head. "The people in the village are putting us up for the night. We're in Xing Li's house. I didn't think he'd mind."

I relaxed. A demon had lived here once, but somehow I knew she'd been the only one. The house was clean. No smell of smoke or death, just incense and quiet. Soft lantern light kept the room dim, which was exactly what I wanted after one of my nightmares-enough light to drive away the fear without being too bright.

Out of reflex, I reached into my pocket for Ella's medal and found nothing. The confused moments at the edge of the lake came rushing back, along with a profound sense of loss. It was like a piece of my soul had been taken away, a hole in the middle of my chest that couldn't be filled by anything else.

"You okay?" Dad asked, his face lined with concern. Gone was the take charge super-spy, leaving a worried father behind. "Kelly said your burns are healing unnaturally fast, but if you're hurting-"

I shot him a stricken look. "My medal, it's gone. I lost it out there somewhere."

"Do you want me to go hunt for it?"

I didn't know why it shocked me that he'd offer, but he hadn't given me many clues about what kind of "Dad things" he'd do to make me happy, other than sniper duty. Once I got over my shock, though, grat.i.tude took its place. He understood, better than anyone else I knew, what that kind of talisman meant. He had his own.

"It's dark out, but thanks. Maybe it'll turn up in the morning." Or maybe it was at the bottom of the lake, being drawn into the river's current, never to be found again.

I closed my eyes and clenched my fists against a rush of regret so strong it nearly sent me over the edge.

I'm sorry, Tink whispered. I know what it meant to you, too. This was a colossal mess.

Yeah, it had been. And I bet a particular person was making himself sick with guilt over it. "Where's Will?"

Dad's smile was rueful. "Probably pacing his room. He took your injuries badly. After you blacked out that last time, he got a little out of hand. Stomping around, kicking trees, refusing to let the medic look at his injuries. Captain Johnson had to chicken-wing him and drag him back here."

In the face of a lot of darkness and pain, the mental image of Johnson frog-marching Will through the woods made me crack a smile. Not because I was glad Will had freaked out, but because the very thought was pretty funny. And I needed a little funny, no matter where it came from.

"Can you go find him? I think if I talk to him, he'll settle down."

Dad nodded and ghosted out of the room. If I hadn't watched him leave, I never would've known he'd even moved. The man was quieter than a mouse's fart.

I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. We'd taken out the last of the four elemental beasts in Zenka's sketchbook: Gators, for water; the winged fallen-G.o.d for air; slimy, misshapen Ga-Gorib for earth, and now fire. The only point left was mine.

And the Shadow Man's.

We'd found the final shaman, too. What he'd told me was significant, and led me to believe we were coming to the end. The thought should've filled me with dread. It didn't. I was so beat up, so tired, that it seemed like a relief. My only real concern, no matter what happened to me, was making sure my family was safe. Jie's words-and the Dark Master's-kept echoing in my head: there had to be three. Once I was well enough to travel, I was going home. Period.

There was a knock at the door, and Will's large frame filled up the doorway. His shoulders were slumped and he wore an expression mirroring the one he'd had when he accidentally broke a window at my house when we were ten, leading me to cut my hand bad enough to need fourteen st.i.tches.

I'm guilty, his face said. Punish me.

I had no intention of doing that. I planned to absolve him of his non-existent sin, and fast, because I needed to know everything that happened today. "Whatever you're thinking, it's not true. You never would've left me hanging out there on purpose, so stop blaming yourself right now."

"I can't believe I lost you, though. That thing was the size of a Volkswagen minibus, and it left a trail a mile wide. Or so I thought." He ran a hand over his hair and I could tell he agitated again. "The trail branched-burnt vegetation in both directions. I took the left fork and somehow ended up in the middle of the woods. When I doubled back, I heard you scream, and ... "

He stopped talking and punched the doorjamb.

"Yeah, so the self-mutilation needs to stop, a.s.shat. If I had to guess, there was a little dark magic at work out there, leading you the wrong way. It happened to me, too, so you're not imagining that part," I said, forcing myself to sit up. My shoulder throbbed in protest, but I ignored it. "I won't let you hurt yourself because the monster hurt me. I understand how you feel-you've been hurt on my watch before-and it sucks, but we need you focused, okay? I need you to tell me everything that happened after I left the house this morning."

My tone got through and he looked startled. It worked, though, because he came into the room and took Dad's chair. "We were set up."

I knew that much. "By a demon who looked a lot like a Chinese girl."

"Ah, so that's what the 'Jie wasn't human' comment meant. We wondered where you went, but when Xing Li died, that freaky mist surrounded the house, and we couldn't hear you. All we could hear was screaming."

I nodded. "I heard it too, but I was being kept out of the way."

"That makes sense now," he said. "You wouldn't just not show up. Anyway, the rest of the Pandas were running amok, dragging villagers into the trees. It was chaos, because I couldn't see anything until I was right up on them. We drove them deeper into the woods, picking them off one by one. Too late for the villagers, though, and two got past us."

"I took care of those," I told him.

"Yeah, we saw their bodies on the way back here."

"Did any of the monsters say anything to you?" I asked. "The fire monster mentioned the Dark Master, but did the others?"

"No, they were out for blood, pure and simple."

So, nothing like the Bears in Billings, the ones who'd developed a conscience along with their intellect. Thing was, I didn't understand why. If Nocturna Maura hadn't given the Dark Master a boost last eclipse, why were these Pandas merely killers? This was a question for my sister-who I needed to call as soon as I could. "Well, they're gone now."

"They're gone," Will murmured. "Matt, I'm really sorry. I should've been there. At the very least I should've given your knife back sooner. I just didn't think. I was so wrecked, nothing made any sense for a while."

Even now, after being a wielder for the better part of a year, Will still cared about watching my back. That kind of support couldn't be bought, not for his weight in gold. "I don't blame you, not for anything. c.r.a.ptastic s.h.i.t happens out here. You did everything you could and so did I. Why don't you get some sleep? We'll figure out what's next in the morning."

Will stood slowly, but he seemed better. "Good idea. And thanks."

He lumbered out of the room and as soon as he was gone, Dad slipped in. "You were right-he needed to hear it from you to believe it."

"I've been there." Only my mistakes had cost lives. "I'm glad you're here, by the way."

His surprised smile lit up his face. "Wasn't sure I'd ever hear you say that."

"And I should've said it before now." I bunched up my pillow so I could lean back against the wall. "Dad, I'm worried about Mamie and Brent. Mom, too, but especially them. If I asked, would you go home?"