Page 66 of Kingdom of Chaos
She nods. “It’s just a sedative. A strong one, but it will eventually wear off. She just needs to sleep it off.”
She’d better be telling the truth or I’ll figure out a way to make her and the others pay.
Imogen gets in the back next to Titus and Ensley, her hand putting pressure on her bloody wound, and I jump into the passenger seat next to Talon. He casts me a look out of the side of his eye that I can’t interpret and then cranks the engine.
Violet backs up to get out of our way, and within seconds Talon has the car turned around and we are heading away from her. The sky has already started to lighten, and when we reach the end of the driveway and turn onto the road, the first ray of light peeks over the horizon.
I take a deep breath, my body heavy as it starts to come down from the adrenaline high.
That was close.Too close.
“Why didn’t you use your powers?” Imogen snaps at her cousin from the back seat.
He glances at her in the rearview mirror with a hard look. “I wasn’t trying to kill them.”
Her mouth drops open. “Why the heck not? They were trying to kill us.”
“We don’t know that,” he says, and Imogen gestures to the makeshift bandage wrapped around her bicep.
Talon winces, but doesn’t comment. It’s then I notice he has his hand pressed against his side again, and in the dim morning light I can now see that his dark T-shirt is wet under his palm. I lean over, getting a better look, and then gasp when I realize there’s blood on his hand.
“Talon, you’re bleeding!”
Imogen leans between the seats
“What happened?” she asks.
“It’s nothing. I’m fine,” Talon says, brushing it off. But when I look closer, I see the tightness in his expression and the way the color has drained from his face.
I twist in my seat, looking back at Titus. “Can you heal him?”
Titus shakes his head. “My healing power doesn’t work like that. It’s fae magic, so I can help cleanse the body so that it runs better. That’s why I could help him during the trials and also lessen some of the sedative effects in Ensley. But I can’t knit wounds back together.”
I turn back to Talon and I can tell he’s annoyed. What did he expect? That we’d just let him bleed out?
“Pull over so I can look at the wound.”
Talon shakes his head.
“Talon. I said pull over,” I say, trying to take a tone that leaves no room for argument.
By now, we’re on the expressway heading north. Talon flicks one of his incisors with his tongue, the gesture sharp with irritation, before letting out a sigh and taking the next exit. He pulls over about half a mile off the expressway, the truck rolling to a stop on the shoulder of a quiet rural road. There isn’t another vehicle in sight.
Opening his door, Talon gets out and heads around back toward the bed, where all our bags are. Everyone else stays put as I scramble out and meet up with him. I find him digging through his backpack. The bag is ripped from the monster attack in the swamp, but amazingly the zipper still works and a lot of the items inside are still intact.
The sun is fully up now, and my stomach clenches when I see how much of his T-shirt is soaked through. After grabbing a few supplies from his pack, he reaches down and pulls the shirt over his head with a pained grunt.
I gasp when I see his injury. There’s a hole leaking blood on the left side of his torso right above his hip. It’s on the opposite side of his body as the slashed bitemarks he got from the Komodo dragon shifter the night before—or was that two nights ago? It feels like both an eternity and the blink of an eye since we landed in the human world.
The gashes from the Komodo dragon still haven’t fully healed. The skin around them is red and inflamed, raw and tender-looking. A knot tightens in my chest. Wounds like that should be healing faster.
I try to tamp down my concern, reminding myself that Talon said the poison in the bite was slowing his ability to recover. Even so, it’s the gunshot wound that draws my focus. Blood still leaks steadily from it. It’s clearly far worse.
Talon twists, craning his neck to see behind him, and I realize there’s a matching wound on the other side of him. I look up at him sharply, alarm shooting through me.
“It must have gone through me. What did she call it? A bullet,” he says calmly.
“Talon, you have a hole in your abdomen. We have to get you help. Do you think they have hospitals here?”
