Page 81 of Flock Around and Find Out

I looked toward the pain, the stinging in my upper biceps, near my shoulder. It was only then I noticed a large wound.

How had I not felt it? It wasn’t deep, but rather long, like a scratch just deep enough to bleed.

Porter’s eyes went wide and he pulled me closer, holding my arm up to examine it. He didn’t touch it, instead inhaling deeply and frowning.

A loud crack echoed through the cave, drawing my focus for a moment to see Ruben drop the creature, its heavy body striking the floor in a still heap. Neon teal blood poured from the wounds Galen had inflicted, and clung to his fur.

“She was infected,” Porter said, his voice careful and flat.

“Are you sure?” Kelvin asked, rushing over to grasp my arm as well. He held it gently. “Maybe it was just from the fall? Or she was scratched by it?” Even I could tell that he was reaching for anything that might explain it, that he didn’t really believe it.

“I can smell the venom in the wound.”

“Can we disinfect it?” Ruben didn’t give me the chance to even tense before he poured water right onto the wound, the chill causing me to let out an entirely undignified yelp. “Maybe we can flush the venom out.”

“That won’t work,” Porter said. “I can smell it’s already mixed into her bloodstream.”

“So what’s it going to do? Am I going to get superpowers? Because I wouldn’t mind also having a bug form…” I laughed at the stupid joke because I wasn’t sure how to deal with any of this. The nerves hit me hard, the uncertainty. I did what I always did, just going with humor to cover it up.

“I don’t know,” Porter answered. “None of these are creatures I know of. This one is connected to Natures, but not part of that clan. I have no idea what its venom might do. It could do nothing, it could shut down all her systems in ten minutes.”

“That’s a pretty fucking big selection,” I pointed out. “You really can’t narrow that down at all?”

“No. I wish I could, but creatures have venom for a number of reasons—mostly to slow down prey and to be able to take down creatures larger than themselves. Because of that, it could do any number of things.”

“We should get her back,” Ruben said. “There are healers we can take her to.”

“How are we supposed to get back?” Kelvin pointed out. “The entire plan was that the Weres were always returned after they did whatever they were supposed to do. We don’t knowhowto get back on our own. Even her bay portals aren’t working.”

“I’m really not feeling too bad,” I said, though no one seemed to hear me.

They kept speaking like I wasn’t even there.

“So what? We just pretend it didn’t happen? We ignore it?” Ruben asked.

Galen growled, still in his other form, that serving as his addition to the conversation. I didn’t understand what it meant, but the others responded as though it made perfect sense.

“I know that,” Kelvin snapped back, “but we don’t have another choice.”

I yanked my arm away to make them pay attention to me. “There’s no reason to just keep arguing like this, is there? We’re stuck here until we deal with the problem at hand, so let’s get to it. The sooner we finish this up, the better. It isn’t doing anything right now, and maybe it won’t. I’m weird and different, so who knows? Maybe it won’t affect me at all.” I shrugged, the idea nice even if I didn’t really believe it.

I wasn’t lucky enough for me to be unaffected by the venom of some other weird creature. In fact, it’d be a fucking miracle if I didn’t end up in anaphylactic shock or something over this. Since I couldn’t guess what would happen, however, I figured it was best to just keep moving. The sooner we worked this all out, the sooner we fix this and go back home, the sooner we could deal with whatever was currently sashaying its way through my body.

The men exchanged loaded looks that implied they didn’t really believe that, that they didn’t think I was being realistic, but none of them spoke up. Why would they? What would the point of that be? They might not like my idea, but it was all we had.

So we went about packing up our things, the light having returned. It was still a long walk and we had just been reminded that this place was far from safe, that we needed to keep our minds on our surroundings. Porter had warned us, the weretiger had warned us, but it hadn’t really hit me that this place had the dangers it had.

Like huge fucking bugs that liked to inject unknown venom into people, for example, as just the first thing to fuck us over so far.

I left the sleeping bag—between the venom and the rips, it was pretty much useless now, and headed off again.

The aching in my shoulder continued, but I ignored it. I couldn’t think about it, couldn’t get bothered by it or the others would notice and worry. Sure, I saw their side-eyes, the concern, but that was fine. No doubt they’d do that the whole fucking way, but I couldn’t show any signs of pain.

We just had to get through this, but the increasing pain in my arm made me worry we might have already been screwed…

* * * *

Ruben

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