Chapter 13
Kyan ignored Melanie Wallace for most of the afternoon as he guided the boat down the river. She seemed content to sit on the deck and sun herself, alternately thumbing through her economics text and scribbling notes. That she chose to lie on her belly just in front of the helm where he couldn't help but see her was a minor annoyance. He concentrated on the scents coming off the water, avoiding shallows and navigating through dense patches of water lilies.
Occasionally he watched her as well. He justified it by reasoning that his observations of an American-raised female could prove helpful when it came to dealing with his target.
"Hey."
Kyan looked at the girl, who was peering at him. "What is it?"
"I have this assignment for my philosophy class." Melanie sat up and stretched. She had unbuttoned her shirt, and the movement made it gape open even more. "This dude Albert Einstein said, 'We must learn to see the world anew.' I have to write an essay on that."
Kyan caught a glimpse of a black mark on the inside curve of her left breast, like the edge of a tattoo. "So?"
She dropped her arms. "So what do you see in the world that could be called new?"
"Nothing."
"Dude, this counts as, like, sixty percent of my grade," she advised him. "If I turn in a one-word essay, I'm, like, totally flunking the semester."
She had the typical American attitude of seeking answers only to serve ambition. "The world is nothing new," he told her. "Everything is as it was at the dawn of creation."
She made a show of looking around. "So where are dinosaurs, and the cavemen, and shit like that?"
"They are still here. You build your cities on top of them. You dig up their bones and display them for the amusement of schoolchildren." He looked out at the river. "You burn them in your gas tanks and fight wars to control the land they once walked. They have not gone; they have only changed." His voice went rough. "Everything changes, but everything is the same. Nothing new."
Melanie gave him her full attention, her blue eyes solemn. "That is seriously fucked-up, dude."
Kyan felt amused. "Do you mean to put that in your paper?"
She muttered something uncomplimentary to native Chinese, and reclined as she returned to her reading.
An official stopped the boat once in the late afternoon to check its contents and to question Kyan. The young man, a reed-thin youth whose new uniform sat stiffly on his scrawny frame, seemed more interested in Melanie's breasts than Kyan's intentions.
The girl smiled and talked with the young official as he made some sort of awkward overture. She gave his arms and shoulders coy little touches and laughed a great deal. Kyan couldn't follow most of their conversation, but it seemed to satisfy the official, who returned to his own diminutive craft and continued down the river.
"Do you think you could have frowned a little more at that guy?" Melanie asked as she came to retrieve a bottle of water out of her bag.
"Did I not frown enough?"
"Way you were acting, he thought you were a dope smuggler." She took a drink from the water bottle before holding it out to him. "Don't look like that. It's not like I have cooties."
He didn't understand the last word she uttered, until she sighed and translated it in Chinese. "I would not have hired you if you were carrying body lice."
"I am so glad Granny came over here to marry a white guy," Melanie said, before she put the bottle back in her bag and returned to her spot on the deck.
Kyan watched her as he took the bottle from her bag, uncapped it, and let the water inside touch his lips. Her mouth had left traces of her taste on the water. The girl had a sweet, simple taste, like candy. He closed the bottle and replaced it, licking her from his lips.
At that moment she looked up from her book and her eyes narrowed. "You're staring at me again."
He shrugged.
"It's too hot out here." She got up and came back to the helm, shimmying her shoulders as she went past him and down into the cabin. "If you want to see more, come in here."
Kyan assumed she went to use the head, until he heard the sound of water splashing and frowned. He hadn't stocked enough water for her to waste it.
"Melanie, what are you doing?" She didn't answer. He shut off the motor and went down into the cabin. "What are you…"
Melanie stood in the doorway of the head, dripping wet and naked to the waist. "I'm cooling off. Is that, like, a problem?"
Kyan took three seconds to admire her too-large, perfectly round, pink-tipped breasts before he turned his back on her. "Put on your clothes."
"I'm hot." She walked up behind him, and before he could move slid her hand around his hip, spreading her fingers over the ridge of his erection. "Dude." She fondled him right through his pants. "So are you."
"Stop touching me."
"Make me." Melanie giggled and unzipped his trousers, inserting her hand in his fly. "Very nice. I thought Chinese guys were supposed to be, you know, small."
"You should not be doing this." Kyan gritted his teeth as he felt her fingers curl around him. "You are just a child."
"No, I'm not." She made a fist and began pumping him gently. "You should know; you've been staring at my boobs all day. Don't you want to touch them? They're real, you know."
Kyan removed her hand from his penis and turned to face her. Her breasts brushed his chest. "You know nothing about me. You mean nothing to me. Do you give yourself to any man?"
"Come on, it'll be fun." Melanie took his hands and brought them up to her breasts. She had a tattoo of a black rose with long, wicked thorns drawn to look as if they were piercing her breast. Realistic drops of red blood had been inked in a long trail across her belly. "There. Don't they feel nice?"
Kyan shoved her back against the nearest flat surface, which happened to be a wall. He pulled down her pants, lifted her up until he could suck on her breasts, and pushed her thighs apart. He drove his shaft into her, pushing a cry from her mouth, and began to pump.
Her breasts were soft and sensitive, and she climaxed the first time he used his teeth. It took him a little longer, as he had a great deal of frustration to expend. She didn't seem to mind that his thrusts into her body lacked finesse and were hard enough to keep her head thumping against the wall.
Kyan pinned her in place and buried his mouth between her breasts as he came, shuddering and jerking.
"Rude, crude, thank you, dude." She sounded breathless, and draped her arms around his neck as she slid down the length of his body until her feet touched the floor. "Was that, like, so awful?"
Kyan looked down at his pants and hers, both in a tangled heap around their ankles. "No. That was good."
She grinned. "Told you."
He straightened his clothes and went back up on deck. A short time later she emerged and retrieved her text, and sat quietly reading beside the helm.
Kyan glanced at her a few times, puzzled by how freely she'd given herself to him, and how little she had to say about it. Perhaps that was the way it was done in this country.
"Why do you have a black rose and drops of blood tattooed on your front?"
She didn't look up at him. "Because a flaming skull and little swastikas would have freaked out my mom."
The boat's fuel was running low by the time the sun set, and Kyan docked at a fishing pier with a sign that read. SCULLERVILLE MARINA. The few boats moored at the dock looked patched and well used; some of the outboard motors were cobbled together out of salvaged parts. Beyond the pier a road led toward a well-lit building surrounded by pickup trucks, motorcycles, and old-model cars.
"I'm hungry," Melanie said, looking up from her text. "When are you going to feed me?"
Kyan thought of the fish, vegetables, and rice he had stored in his bags. He had enough for himself, but he had not allowed enough supplies for her. Still, he could buy more farther down the river. "I will prepare a meal when we stop for the night."
She rested her chin on her hand. "We're stopped now."
"Only for petrol."
"But I'm thirsty and my stomach is growling." She stood up and peered at the well-lit building. "Let's go get something over there at that roadhouse. I'll teach you how to play pool."
Kyan had another three or four hours before he would need to eat and rest. He didn't want to spend them in a road-house, whatever that was. "I do not play."
"Come on," she begged. "You might actually enjoy yourself without having to get naked with me. Unless you want to again."
Kyan considered knocking her out and tossing her in the cabin, but that might attract attention. He had not picked up the girl's trail, and he had to assume she had not yet arrived in Florida. He had to focus on his target, not on having sex with the American.
"Please?" Melanie wheedled.
"I will buy the fuel first."
The boat rocked as she jumped up and down and clapped her hands. Kyan noted the way her large breasts bounced, and remembered how they felt under his mouth. He decided that as soon as he finished his work and returned to Taiwan, he would buy himself a concubine for his bed. Perhaps two.
Both would have to have large breasts, but no tattoos.
After filling the boat's fuel tanks. Kyan followed the girl across the pier to the dirt road. The feel of land under his feet again made his mouth dry and his knees unsteady, but the sensation soon passed. His pace slowed as he steadied himself and found his center.
Melanie had walked ahead of him, and now glanced back over her shoulder. "You okay, boss? You look a little green."
"I am well." He caught up to her, shortening his long strides to match hers. "Do not call me 'boss.' "
She gave him her impish smile. "How about 'Sugar Buns'?"
"I am not a cake," he said, offended.
"Okay, but you're definitely a stud muffin." She made her eyebrows go up and down.
She seemed determined to provoke him. "My name is Kyan." He climbed up the steps to the roadhouse's main entrance. "Use it."
"Kyan. Right." She cocked her head. "When did they outlaw having a good time in China, anyway? Same time as sex?"
The roadhouse seemed more like a madhouse inside, with hundreds of people crowded around a long bar and dozens of tiny tables. At one end of the building, couples danced in front of a five-man band playing primitive-sounding music. One of the men sang into a microphone about doing impossible things to a heart.
Women dressed in fewer garments than working whores would wear flirted with men in old leather, denim, and plaid work clothes. Those who were not wearing bent-brimmed hats covered their hair with caps stitched with the brand names of Farm equipment or NASCAR drivers.
Melanie looked around, apparently delighted.
Kyan closed himself to the sweat, saliva, perfume, and alcohol that saturated the air, and saw two men preparing to vacate stools at one end of the long bar. He took Melanie's arm and pushed her toward them.
"Hey, I thought we could get a table near the band," she protested.
"I prefer to keep my hearing intact." He edged past the two men and claimed one stool, pushing her toward another. He lifted his hand and made a curt gesture at the fat bald man serving the patrons at the bar.
The bartender leaned over to make a remark to several men sitting near the taps before he casually moved down to Kyan and Melanie. "Ain't got no sake here for you, boy."
Kyan was often mistaken for a Japanese, so he didn't comment. "Menu."
"Ain't got none of them neither." The heavy chin jerked toward a blackboard covered with white dust and some chalked words. "Wings, skins, nachos, and my mama's homemade chili. Mama's pit bull went missing last week, so I can't really recommend the chili." He eyed Kyan. "Less'n you one of them kind like to eat dogs."
The men at the center of the bar, who were eavesdropping, started chuckling and elbowing one another.
Melanie leaned over so that the bottoms of her breasts rested on the bar. "We'll have two Buds, a basket of wings, and double order of celery and blue cheese."
"No beer," Kyan told her. "Mineral water."
To the bartender, she said. "Make that a Bud and a bottle of water. Please."
The bartender peered at her face, spit on the floor, and went over to the open kitchen window.
"Not a candidate for president of my fan club. Tragic." Melanie sat down on the stool and spun around on it to face the band.
Kyan glanced sideways. "It doesn't bother you?" he asked her in Chinese. "The way they treat Asians?"
"I'm not Asian. I'm a multiracial American." She swayed in time with the music. "They would treat me the same way in China. Probably worse."
"You said you have never been to China."
"I don't have to go there to know how Asians feel about kids with mixed blood. I get all that crap every time I go for Chinese takeout." She propped her elbows back against the bar. "Don't act so huffy, boss. You might be okay with screwing me, but you don't like me any more than that bartender does."
"I would not look at you and spit on the ground." His gaze drifted up to the television set hanging over the bar, and the news story being broadcast. "What are they saying?" he asked her, pointing to the screen.
She watched for a moment. "A bunch of people reported seeing a UFO go down over the Ocala National Forest. The authorities are refusing to investigate because no planes are missing, and they'd have to search an area that's, like, the size of Rhode Island. Weird."
Kyan removed the girl's pamphlet from his pocket and showed it to Melanie, pointing to the map. "The UFO went down here?"
"No, that's way west of here." She hopped off the stool and stepped in front of him. Before he could grab her hands, she hooked her fingers in the bell loops of his trousers. "Come on and dance with me."
"I do not dance."
"Do you do anything besides drive a boat, frown, slaughter English, and stare at my boobs?" she inquired sweetly.
"Yes. But I do not dance."
"Oh, God." She seized the beer bottle the bartender handed her and carried it with her to stand by the place where the patrons were dancing.
"Don't you Jap fellas beat your women?" the fat man asked as he thumped a basket of fried bird parts, celery stalks, and two cups of some white lumpy sauce in front of Kyan.
"We not have to," Kyan told him in English he was careful not to mangle. "She American. Multiracial."
"No shit, Sherlock." The bartender scowled and stalked off.
Kyan did not touch the food, which looked as repulsive as it smelled, but drank from the bottle of water. It had been purified, so it contained no trace of anything but the machines at the bottling factory.
Melanie went out amid the dancing couples and began shaking her body by herself. Several men came to join her. Kyan watched for the next hour as the American girl danced, drank many bottles of beer that the men bought for her, laughed, and generally acted like an intoxicated child.
When she climbed onto one of the tables to dance for six grinning men crowding around it, Kyan decided she had had enough of a good time, and left his stool.
Melanie undulated as much to the calls of the excited men as to the music, and began unbuttoning her flimsy shirt, revealing the tops of her breasts. Kyan reached up before she could expose herself, clamped his hands around her waist, and lifted her down to the floor.
"We are leaving," he told her. "Now."
"I didn't get to eat my wings yet," she whined, tottering toward the bar.
He turned her around to face the exit. "I will make you food after you are finished puking."
"I'm not going to puke." She leered at him. "I know. You just want to have sex with me while I'm drunk."
It was easier to agree with her. "Yes. That is why we must go to the boat. To have sex again."
"Hold on, there, Bruce." One of the men from the bar approached them. "This little lady hasn't finished her dance."
Kyan watched as the men who had supplied Melanie with beer and the other men from the bar gathered in a loose circle around them. "She finished."
"I say she's not," a hulking boy said in a low, nervous voice. "What chew gonna do about it?" He giggled like a girl.
"Aw, he's just her boss," another man said. "Not her boyfriend. She said so."
"I don't care what the little slant-eyed bastard is," a fourth man growled. "He ain't drinking, and he ain't white, so he got no business coming in here in the first place."
"You rednecks are such pussies," Melanie said suddenly, weaving as she jabbed a finger toward the last man who had spoken. "Kyan could wipe up the floor with you. With all of you. One hand tied behind his back."
Kyan felt the mood of the men around them change from unpleasant to ugly. "Melanie, be quiet."
"I'd like to see him do that," the fat man called from behind the bar.
Kyan looked down at the floor, which was wet and sticky with spilled beer. He slipped his foot out of his deck shoe and stepped in one of the larger puddles. A crackle of blue light flashed across the floor, leaping from puddle to puddle until it disappeared under the stools.
Beer taps began popping off and soaring into the air as fountains of beer erupted. Women screamed and men shouted. The foaming ale sprayed wildly, coming down like a rain shower on the heads of the patrons. Some ran up, laughing as they tried to catch some of the beer with their mouths. The men around Kyan and Melanie scattered.
Kyan bent down and put his shoulder to Melanie's belly and lifted her up onto his shoulder. She shrieked and pounded his back with her small fists as he strode out of the bar with her.
"What are you doing? Put me down."
Kyan carried her back to the pier and set her down on her feet by the boat. He released the mooring ropes.
"You're not going to have sex with me again," she said, following him to the bowline. "Are you?"
"Not now."
"Well, I don't want to hang out with you anymore. You're mean." She whirled around and stumbled down the pier.
Kyan caught her arm from behind. "Melanie, get on the boat."
"Fuck you." She repeated it in Chinese.
"Later." He reached into his jacket and took out his weapon. "Get on the boat now."
Valentin left Liling sleeping restlessly and pulled on his damp clothes. He needed to inspect the rest of the cabin and find water. The cabin's owner had not left any fresh food in the refrigerator, as with the generator off it would have spoiled, but had stocked cans and boxes of nonperishable items in a large kitchen pantry.
The generator, Valentin discovered, provided ample power to the house and to a well with an electric pump. He ran the taps in the kitchen and tasted the water, which was cold and clear.
Unfortunately, he confirmed that there were no telephones, radios, or anything else he could use to send a message to the outside world.
Valentin abandoned the idea of summoning help and turned his attention to what he could do for Liling with what he had. He knew she needed fluids; humans who lost too much blood quickly became dehydrated. He vaguely remembered Sacher giving his grandson sugary tea when the boy had broken his arm falling off his bicycle. After searching the pantry, he found a container of orange-flavored sports-drink mix and made a glass of that for her.
In the front room he knelt by the couch, held her upright, and coaxed her into swallowing some of the drink. She coughed, and then began to choke. He rolled her on her side as she immediately regurgitated what she had drunk from the glass. He tried two other drink mixes with the same results. Finally he gave her plain water, and that she kept down.
"I know you like tea," he told her as he gently wiped her face clean. "If I find some. I will make you as much as you can drink." He smoothed the damp hair away from her face. "Not too hot this time. With a little practice. I will find the perfect temperature."
The sound of his voice seemed to help as much as the water, and she fell into a deeper sleep.
Valentin reluctantly left her to check on the generator and bring into the cabin some of the wood that had already been split and stacked in the shed. Using the fireplace would conserve the electricity, which would run out as soon as the petrol for the generator did. When he stacked the short logs beside the hearth, he noticed that what he assumed was a wood rack was in fact a curious metal device with dials and a button.
Valentin pushed the button and smelled propane gas just before a light flickered and the gas ignited. The dials, he discovered, controlled the amount of gas supplied to the device.
A fireplace that burned gas in the middle of a forest of perfectly good trees. He shook his head in wonder.
He thoroughly searched the rest of the cabin, finding a locker-style trunk filled with old clothes and shoes, and boxes of rifle ammunition but no rifles. A fish made of resin hanging on one wall began to twitch and sing to him as he passed it. He took it down, found the battery switch on the back, and shut it off.
After looking in on Liling, Valentin felt sticky and looked down. The sugared drinks she had coughed up had saturated his clothes and were drying on his hands. He took some of the clean clothing from the locker and went into the cabin's small bathroom to wash up.
As he stripped and stepped into the small shower stall, he realized that he was using both arms without hesitation, accepting the unthinkable without question. His damaged arm felt so improved it seemed no different than it had before the duel.
I'm sorry, Val. Alexandra Keller had told him after he had healed from the surgery, and they had discovered that his reattached arm wouldn't work. I've done what I can, but even Kyn can't heal from everything.
He had heard that some of the patients at the Lighthouse had claimed that Liling's touch healed them. He could attribute his own miracle only to her touch. But if she could heal with her hands, why was she working as a gardener? Why hide what she could do?
She hides it for the same reason we Kyn hide our existence, he thought. Humanity fears what it does not understand.
If the public knew about a woman who could heal with a touch. Liling would be hounded unmercifully. The world was filled with the sick and dying, and everyone would expect her to use her ability to heal them. The wealthy and powerful would want to control her gift for their own benefit. The zealots would condemn her. Governments might even go to war over possession of her.
At best she would end up imprisoned: at worst she would be murdered.
Liling had wanted to deny that she had done anything. In that moment when Valentin had taken her into his arms, he had felt her panic. He could compel her to tell him the truth about her gift, and exactly how she had healed his arm. She could not resist his talent. But she must have a reason for not volunteering the information, something that had made her a target of the Brethren. All he would do by forcing the truth out of her was satisfy his own curiosity. He could allow her to keep her secrets until she trusted him enough to share them.
He would give her that time, but he already knew he could not let her go.
When they escaped this place. Valentin decided, he would take her back to Chicago with him. The pilot had been a Brethren operative, and willing to crash the plane in order to kill her. Jaus could not fathom why the Brethren would want to murder a woman who could heal with her hands, unless they assumed she had the talent because she was Kyn. They would pursue her without cessation if that were the case. It might also explain why she had changed jobs and locations so often: surely she had known she was being hunted.
Liling could not run from the order forever; they had found her this time and they would find her again. She needed the protection of the Kyn.
The plastic shower curtain jerked to one side, and the subject of his thoughts stood there weaving slightly on her feet, a strange look in her black eyes.
"Liling." He reached for her.
She moved before he could touch her, and grabbed the shower curtain, ripping it from its rings. Scarlet sparks swirled in the night depths of her eyes, and she didn't seem to know who he was, for her gaze had an empty, mindless quality to it.
"You take away the sins of the world." She braced her hands against the tile walls. "See how you like it."
The cold water of the shower suddenly turned hot, and steam filled the small room.
Valentin swore as he climbed out of the shower to avoid the now-scalding spray. "Get back before you are burned."
Her gaze shifted from his face to the water and back again, and recognition dawned in her eyes, along with terrible fear.
"Forgive me. I didn't mean to shout at you." He reached in and managed to shut off the shower's taps, the scalding water making his skin turn faintly red for a moment before the light burns healed. "Are you feeling a little better?"
"Not him." She brought her hands up to her head and held it, her eyes shut tightly. "I didn't do anything. Stop shouting at me." She said something in Chinese, and then she screamed the words. "I won't."
Valentin had to lunge to grab her as her knees buckled.
Her eyes had rolled back in her head, he saw as he lifted her up. She was babbling to herself in Chinese.
"Liling." He held her carefully. "What are you saying to me? Tell me in English."
"Take, not give." She whimpered, cringing, clutching her hair as if she wanted to tear it from her scalp. "He's coming. I can feel him. I can hear him. Take not give take not give—"
"Nothing will harm you." He caressed her cheek, and the touch seemed to soothe her. "I won't allow it. I swear this to you."
"He is coming." She groped at him, her hands clawing. "You have to kill me. Promise me. Before he finds us. Before it's too late."
Fever was making her delirious, but the fear in her eyes was genuine. Was this the reason she had run away from Chicago? "Who is this man? Why are you afraid of him? Liling. I am here. I will protect you."
She shook her head. Hinging the tears from her eyes. "You can't. Not from him." She covered her mouth with her hands, and then dropped them away as her eyes filled. "He is the sea and the river and the lake," she said, almost chanting the words. "He is the rain and the snow and the hail."
She spoke of him as if she loved him, this man who terrorized her. "Who is he?" he demanded.
She frowned at him, as if she had expected him to understand. "He is the tsunami. No one can stop him. We will die. Everyone around us will die."
He held her as she wept against his chest. "Tell me of whom you speak, Geliebte."
"He's not a man," she whispered, sagging. "He's a monster." Tear-drowned eyes closed. "Like me."
As Lili collapsed against him. Valentin felt a burning sensation against his skin, and put his hand between them. The skin over her rib cage was red-hot in one area, over a small, unnatural bulge on one bone.
He remembered again the sensation of warmth wrapping around him when she had used her healing touch on his arm. Her body was trying to heal itself, he guessed, but the bullet inside her was somehow hindering the process. It might even be poisoning her, as copper did the Kyn. He would have to take It out.
Valentin had almost no medical knowledge, and his own ignorance frustrated him. He would kill to have Alexandra Keller here now.
He carried Liling out of the bathroom, but the couch was too low for his purpose. He picked up the quilt from it and carried her into the kitchen. The table there was small but supported her weight. He put the quilt over it and laid her down gently.
The flesh where the bullet wound had been looked flushed. Upon closer inspection he saw that the tiny veins under her skin had ruptured. He might know nothing about doctoring, but it was obvious from the pattern of broken veins that the bullet was responsible. They were in the shape of a slug.
Liling was still semiconscious, and Valentin had no drugs with which to sedate her. He feared that using l'attrait to compel her to sleep would only make matters worse, but he couldn't remove the slug while she was still conscious.
He would have to risk it.
Valentin placed his hand on her slender throat and shed as much scent as he dared.
"Camellias." Her lips curved and her eyelids drifted down.
"That's it; go to sleep, Liebling," he said softly, stroking the delicate arch of her throat. "I will care for you until you wake."
Her lips moved to frame a word, and then parted over a sigh. He waited, but she didn't stir again.
Valentin went to the counter and took the thinnest blade out of the knife block. The edge had dulled, so he took a saucer from the cabinet, flipped it over, and used the porcelain rim of the base to hone the blade.
He remembered cutting into Alexandra Keller's back to remove a copper bolt. Alex had Kyn healing ability, however, and Liling was human. He would have to cut fast and not too deep.
He went to the table and bowed his head for a moment. He could no longer trouble deaf heaven for himself, but surely his entreaty for this innocent life would be heard.
"Guide my hand, Father," he said to the God he had not addressed in centuries. "Make her well and whole again."
Valentin prodded the flesh over her ribs and located the small bulge he had felt before. The blade trembled slightly as he brought the knife to her body, but steadied as he gripped the handle tighter and plunged the tip into her skin.
He did not have to cut far; the flattened slug lay just beneath the tissue, lodged partway into the surface of a bone. It did not pop loose, and he was obliged to work the tip of the blade under it before it moved. Blood welled from the incision as he bore down, trying to remove it from the bone in which it had buried itself. Finally it came out like a rotted tooth, emerging from the tissue with an ugly, familiar red-brown gleam.
The slug was made of pure copper.
Valentin pried the slug out of the incision, barely feeling the burn to his own skin as he tossed it aside. He had to close the incision, and he had only one way to do that: with his own blood.
This too was dangerous: too much could potentially poison her. He lifted his wrist to his mouth, biting into his own flesh and turning the wound to drip over hers. The few drops of his Kyn blood were not enough to harm her, and they quickly sealed the wound.
Once he had tended to her, he looked at his hands, which were wet with the blood from her wound. He hated using it for himself, but until he could get them back to civilization, he could not afford to waste a drop. He cleaned the blood from his hands with his mouth, allowing himself a brief moment to savor her taste before gathering her up in the quilt and carrying her back to the bedroom.
Dawn shimmered in the distance.
He put Liling on the bed and closed the window blinds before he joined her. The bed had no linens, but her temperature seemed normal, so the quilt would be enough for now. Valentin pulled her body close and held her, her head tucked under his chin. Only then did he release the tight hold he had kept over his emotions, and pressed his lips to her hair.
"Come back to me, mein Mädchen," he murmured to her. "I will never ask anything more of you. Only come back."