Page 109 of Shadow Blind

“What’s wrong?” She forced patience instead of racing for the snowmobile and rolling the door up. The toxin hadn’t fully hit him yet. He could still make it to the door, yell for help. She needed to distract him.

“My hand is tingling.”

“The spider—”

“I didn’t get bitten by a spider,” he snapped.

His gaze dropped to the ground and slid back. She hadn’t seen the lipstick tube land. How far back had she thrown it? Was it hidden from view?

Apparently not, judging by the hiss that broke from him and the way he staggered back.

“Wat…ya…ject…?” The words were slurred and slow. The venom was already at work.

He staggered again, caught himself, and turned toward the door. Stepping in front of him, she made a fist—thumb on the outside—and slammed it into his Adam’s apple. She didn’t have enough strength in her arm to collapse his trachea, but there was enough force in the blow to stun his larynx and keep him quiet until the poison silenced him.

He made a choking-huffing sound and teetered on his feet. All it took was a two-handed shove to push him over backwards. A dull crack sounded as the back of his head connected with the cement. For a moment, he simply laid there, then weakly struggled to get up. Since she had nothing to attack him with, she did the next best thing. She shoved him back down, turned around, and plopped her bum down on his face.

Muffin didn’t like being sloshed around in her pup pack. Her barking went ballistic. Eloise prayed to the universe that the soldiers outside didn’t hear the barking through the two layers of fabric and the metal shed. Or—if they did—they’d become immune to her barking and shrugged it off.

After a couple of weak attempts to throw her off, which she easily rode out, her guard went still beneath her. She eased to the side cautiously, ready to sit on him again if his stillness was a trick.

It wasn’t. He lay there, frozen, his pupils dilated.

Muffin was still barking like a maniac. She needed to get out of here before her kidnappers came to investigate. With her angel still double zipped below her coat, she collected the hand axe and raced to the roll-up door. Her fingers shook as she pressed the top button on the silver panel next to the roll-up door.

Please…please…let this be the button that raises the door.

The door grumbled, then slowly rose beneath the press of her thumb. Her heart slammed harder and harder as she waited for it to rise enough to get the snowmobile out. If those fuckers outside heard the door rising, if they caught her before she made it out the door, she was toast. Double toast once they discovered their dead mate.

Finally! The door was high enough. She lifted her thumb from the up button and raced to the snowmobile. Straddling the seat, she twisted the keys in the ignition and asked the universe for one last favor. To her immense relief, the machine instantly growled to life. Lightheaded with fear and adrenaline, she guided it out the door. Once clear of the building, with acres of snow stretching in front of her, and Muffy’s ferocious barking accompanying her, she gunned it and raced for the tree line.

She offered a victorious woop-woop, a fist pump, and a heartfelt thank you to the universe as she disappeared among the trees.

And just like that, her life was back on track.

Chapter forty-three

Day 19

Denali, Alaska

“I’m going to check on Livvy—” Her voice a dull, monotone, Kait broke off with an enormous yawn and a slow stretch before rising from the visitors’ chair beside Aiden’s bed.

“What you should do instead,” Demi offered quietly, her voice thick with concern, “is get some sleep. You’re exhausted. It won’t help Aiden or Olivia if you make yourself sick.”

Kait’s face was so white and tight it looked like bleached parchment. Grooves of tension and fatigue spiderwebbed out from the corners of her eyes and bracketed her nose and mouth. Even her hair had lost its golden shine and hung greasy and limp over her shoulder.

“Right,” Kait snorted, then rolled her neck. “And if that isn’t the perfect example of the pot calling the kettle black…” she sighed, scrubbing absently at her forehead. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep, anyway.”

“You might if you tried,” Demi retorted, although she had to admit she looked like death warmed over too. There were mirrors in the restrooms, after all. She knew exactly how tired and stressed she looked.

But she wasn’t spending her energy reserves on healing others. The constant healings that Kait had done since Aiden was released from isolation, and the Thunderbird crew returned to base, had driven her to the edge of collapse. Demi had tried to convince her to get some food and sleep—so had Cosky—but she still ignored her own health in favor of helping others. Demi held her tongue as Kait wobbled toward the door of Aiden’s room. Exhaustion had turned her normal athletic stride choppy and weak. But pointing that out would do no good. Her friend would simply ignore the observation.

On the tail of her own tired sigh, Demi turned back to the hospital bed beside her. Her shoulders relaxed as she studied Aiden.

At least he looked better. The tightness and furrows had vanished from his face. While his skin looked pale, it was no longer flushed from fever. And those horrible, rasping—almost gasping—breaths had faded into deep, even breathing. The doctors said he was responding well to the medicine they were giving him. And Kait’s healings over the past two days had helped, too. But he wasn’t out of the woods yet. They still didn’t know what his body was reacting to, or whether he’d crash again once the doctors weaned him off the meds.

Demi stretched and yawned, absently listening to the beep…beep…beep coming from the machines surrounding Aiden’s bed. The rhythmic beeps reinforced an ugly echo in her mind, one that stretched back six years. These same beeps had accompanied her vigil beside Donnie’s bed. They’d only ceased when he’d died.