“Well,” he said as conversationally as he could, “we wouldn’t want that now, would we?”
“Here,” she said, handing him a thick piece of leather strapping she’d cut from her belt, “take this. Put it between your teeth.”
“I don’t need that.”
“Yeah,” she said, “you do.”
Chong took it with great trepidation and placed it between his strong white teeth. Then he reached down and wrapped his fingers around the shaft just below the dark feathers. “O-okay.”
Riot took a deep breath; so did Chong.
“Here goes.”
She gripped the end that protruded from his back, closing her left fist around it; then pinched the flat of the barb between thumb and fingers and . . . turned.
The whole arrow turned. Blood suddenly welled from both sides of the wound, darkening the strips of Chong’s shirt that Riot had used to pack the wound.
The pain was . . . exquisite. It was pain on a level Chong had never imagined before, and in the last month he had been beaten, kicked, stomped, and punched by full-grown bounty hunters. Memories of that other pain lined the shelves in his mind. This pain was on a much higher shelf. It was worse than when he’d gotten shot by the arrow in the first place. When the arrow hit him, the shock of it blunted his nerve endings and slammed his mind and body into a weird kind of traumatic numbness.
That was then, this was now.
He could feel every single nerve ending as the arrow turned despite their grips.
As it turned out, he did indeed need that leather strap. Instead of throwing his mouth wide to scream, he bit down on the pain, and the scream echoed around within his body. He could feel his scream burning through him.
Riot straightened and craned her neck to see how he was holding the arrow.
“Dang it, son, don’t grab the shaft, grab the feathers. You need friction to hold it steady. Hold it tight.” She chuckled and added, “Pretend you’re holding the Lost Girl’s hand.”
Several biting remarks occurred to Chong, but he did not have the breath to speak them. Instead he shifted his hand position, clamped down harder on the leather strap, and waited for her to try again.
She gritted her teeth and channeled her strength into her fingers.
The arrowhead did not turn. The whole shaft shifted inside the tunnel of flesh. The pain was every bit as bad. Chong screamed a muffled scream of torment, sucking in the sound, feeling tears and sweat burst from him. Feeling the heat of fresh blood on his stomach and back.
“It’s stuck like a boot in mud,” growled Riot needlessly. She tried again. And again.
Chong could feel nausea washing around in his stomach, but he did not dare give in to it. If he started vomiting now, it would make everything worse.
“Y’all want me to stop?” asked Riot.
Chong did. He really did. He wanted to tell her that. Maybe beg for her to stop. Stopping was the only sane choice.
“N-no . . . ,” he wheezed, forcing the word past the leather strap.
Riot leaned over and looked at him for a moment, studying his eyes. There was a strange expression on her face that Chong could not interpret. She gave him the smallest of smiles and a tiny nod, then bent back to her work.
Riot tried again. And again. Over and over, and each time it was worse than the time before. Chong wept unashamedly.
Then . . .
“It’s turning!”
Suddenly the pain and the awkward, terrible shifting of the arrow in his body changed. The arrow became almost still except for a faint tremor as the arrowhead turned and turned on its threads.
“Got ’er done!” cried Riot.
Chong closed his eyes and collapsed back, soaked with sweat and exhausted. The arrowhead was one step.
It was the easy step.
There were two more.