Lena deactivated the collar and pulled it off.
Rose blinked. She sucked in a deep, cleansing breath to center herself. Had she been the newest addition? No wounds hid under her collar. Lena’s gaze dropped down, noting the bruises on her chest, and what appeared to be the semi-circular imprint of teeth, disappearing under the ‘V’ of her prison shirt.
Lena looked up, meeting Rose’s hard, angry eyes. “Do you have any wounds needing attention?”
Rose turned her lips down in a derisive snarl. “Nothing you can fix.”
Before Lena could explain, Rose stood and looked around. She found Roddric and went to him. They wrapped their arms around each other in silence.
Lena looked to Alex. “Do we have time for me to heal them? Some of their wounds are—”
The man closest to her grunted. A warm mist sprayed across her face. The little girl across from the man gasped wetly and slumped into the girl beside her.
The gunshot rang out and echoed off the cliffside.
Before Lena could catch her breath, a body forced her to the ground. She could hear shouts and shots.
“Where is he?” Alex demanded.
“The cliff, the cliff!” Unfamiliar voices.
“Where?”
It doesn’t matter. She desperately scrabbled at the man on top of her. It doesn’t matter to me. Jackson? “Jackson! Let me up!”
“No, Lena! Stay down!” His hand pushed on the back of her head, trying to force her down.
“Lena! Stay down, dammit!” Alex shouted at her. Then, to someone else, “Get those girls! Cover them!”
The hard squeals and whimpers of terrified girls finally did it. “Get off!”
Jackson flew back with a crackling pop. He thudded into the ground.
Lena pulled herself up to her hands and knees, spitting dirt from her mouth.
She flipped herself onto her back and crab-walked backward, scanning the cliff ahead of her. All she needed was a direction. Bolts and arrows arced up toward the right. Motion, a flicker behind a pocket of scrub leaning out from the edge.
Her hand, reaching beside her to pull herself back, landed on soft flesh. She glanced down. A thin arm, unmoving beneath her hand, led her up to a slack jaw, staring hazel eyes, wisps of rich chestnut hair being lifted by the gentle breeze still blowing across them. Lydie. A little girl who might have been ten beneath the grime and thinness of her captivity.
Breath hitched in Lena’s throat. She turned back to the cliff and shrieked wordless rage up at the bastard on the cliff.
“Lena, no!”
The wave pulsing up and out from her slammed into the cliff below the scrub. The cliff side exploded with a roar of dust and flying rock. Lena curled into a ball over Lydie. The tiny sharp blows of pebbles on her back were brief, but the pattering of rocks sliding down the cliff went on longer.
It was quiet. Nearby, one of the girls made a frightened mewl. Quick footsteps responded. She lifted her head.
Rose leaned down and lifted Marissa into her arms, wiping the dirt from the terrified girl’s eyes.
The other girls stirred.
Behind her, a man’s rough voice asked, “Is he down?”
“He’s in pieces,” came the grim reply. The Neo-barb leader’s voice. Roddric? “How about us?”
Lena counted small heads. All of the girls were moving. All but one.
She lifted herself to her knees and ran her hands down Lydie’s small face to her chest, where bright red bloomed across the front of her shirt. She spread her shaking hands over Lydie’s wound, trying. With a frustrated cry, she shoved one hand up to the girl’s forehead, smearing bloody dust, searching.
She couldn’t spark if there was nothing there. Death had come too fast.
Lena leaned over the girl until their foreheads met, her voice thick. “I’m sorry. I told you you’d be safe, and you weren’t. I’m sorry.”
A hand landed on her back. She refused to move.
“Lena.” Mere seconds, and then the hand slid to her shoulder and pulled her up. “Lena, you can’t help her. You can’t. But you can help him.” Alex leaned in, shook her slightly. “Lena. Look.” He turned her.
One of Roddric’s men splayed flat on the ground, coughing blood. His wound gaped high on his chest, blood bubbling. The bullet had gone through him and continued its trajectory down from the cliff into Lydie.
“We don’t have much time. You need to help him now.”
She wiped her cheeks with both hands, smearing Lydie’s blood into the tears and dust.
Roddric and another man were crouched beside the wounded Neo-barb. Wary, they watched her approach.
She knelt beside the man. “What’s his name?” she asked Roddric.
“Trevor.”
She nodded and leaned in. “This won’t hurt, Trevor, but you’ll feel heat.” She barely recognized her own voice. She didn’t know if the man even heard her.
He stared up at the sky and blinked slowly. Each breath sounded heavy and wet.