Page 28 of Beauty and the Alien Beast
Fuck! He got wounded protecting me.
I was relieved to see that most of the dark stains on his clothes—and mine, in spots—were a greenish sap. His purplish-red blood mixed with it here and there, and he grunted with pain now and again. I wondered about the effects of getting that stuff inside his wounds. I wanted to ask, but nagging him with my concerns while we were still fleeing didn’t seem like the right thing to do.
The trees started to thin, and the ground sloped upward. Up ahead, silhouetted against the lightening sky, I saw a gigantic stone outcropping the size of a row of skyscrapers.
“Holy crap, what is that?”
Teken groaned in response and muttered a few orders to the dog in his language, his head drooping over me. I looked over and saw his eyes glazing. I couldn’t confirm it in the dim light, but something about his skin looked off—almost paler.
Fat raindrops began spattering us as we made our way up the hill, washing the green crap off us as Brax ran out into the open. This time when Teken groaned, it sounded almost like relief. I looked at him and saw the green stuff had washed from his skin—but as for the blood, every time the rain washed it away, more ran out to stain his skin again.
Oh God. This is bad.
“You’re still bleeding!” I called out, alarmed.
He let out a grunt and shook his head to clear it, then straightened. “We stop soon,” he rasped, sounding exhausted. Either he had misheard me or misunderstood or hadn’t yet picked up enough of the right words in English to reassure me about his injuries.
A massive mound of boulders lay at the foot of the outcrop. Brax started bounding up them, making the steep climb as if he had done it a dozen times before. I had to close my eyes and hang on with both hands, heart pounding, and I prayed Teken would not lose consciousness.
I didn’t know where we were headed until we were almost upon it—the black maw of a cave dug deep into the rock beneath an overhang hung with silvery moss. Brax came to a stop inside and bellied down immediately. Teken collapsed sideways out of the saddle.
I didn’t know how I managed to jump down ahead of him to break his fall, but I suddenly found myself barely propping up his mostly limp, massive body. “Oh shit. Teken? Don’t faint…”
I punctuated my gasped-out words with grunts of effort as I got him laid down next to Brax. I could barely see anything in the dimness of the cave, but I at least managed to get him onto his side in the recovery position. Thankfully, it was dry in here, even as the rain pitter-pattered down outside.
He shook himself awake a minute later, groaning softly. “Ella.”
I moved to his side at once. “What… I do?” I stumbled out in his language, figuring he didn’t have energy to spare to try his new bits of English.
“Plant… frees… blood.” His voice was slurred as he pointed at the wounds still refusing to clot.
I felt a creeping horror as I started to sort out what he was talking about.
The vine sap is an anticoagulant. No wonder he’s still bleeding even though all the scratches I can see look shallow.
I stood and started digging into the saddlebags for anything that looked remotely like a medical kit. I found a small light source—a headband that had a bead on it that glowed to life when poked. I put it on and kept digging. Finally, just as I was starting to get frustrated, Teken let out a grunt and pointed at a flat silver case I’d just pulled out.
Dropping to my knees, I opened it to offer him the contents. His hand wavered hazily over a series of clear tubes inside, each one tipped with flat disks of silver on each end and filled with something that looked like mercury. He grabbed two and then almost dropped them.
I snatched them from him. “Show me.” I put my hand around his and let him weakly guide my hand toward the side of his massive neck.
I pressed one against the skin and heard a faint hiss. A moment later, the entire cylinder started draining its contents into him in little bursts in time with his pulse. He sighed and closed his eyes, leaning back against the dog.
The second one he guided to his thigh where the largest gash in his armor exposed a patch of skin so smooth that, for a moment, distracted me from how bad off he was. I emptied the second cylinder into him and watched as, slowly, the edges of his wounds started to gleam silver and pull together.
I stared as each cut and gash closed, voids and patches of missing skin filling in silver. The labored note left his breathing, and after a little while longer, he sighed, some of the color coming back into his face.
“You all right?” I asked, and after staring at me for a few moments, he seemed to at least register the concern in my voice and just smiled.
He stood and said, “Danger gone.” Then he followed up with a few unfamiliar words and mentioned Brax before removing the saddlebags from Brax’s body. He said something to the dog in a sharp voice. Obediently, Brax trotted over to the far side of the cave, lay down, yawned, and promptly started to fall asleep.
My eyes widened as Teken started to strip off his shredded armor.
My jaw dropped.Holy shit.
He was still a damn alien, and the muscles in his massive back were complex and layered, lending strength to both sets of arms. But aside from that and the bluish tinge to his skin, he looked like such a perfect specimen of good old-fashioned masculinity, and all I could do was stand there and stare at him.
In the faint light, I gawked at his massive shoulders, heavily muscled back, and amazingly sculpted ass barely covered by a clinging loincloth.
