The ocean was. That mélange of scents soothed him, too, with its familiarity and timeless indifference. He hadn’t noticed it the first time he woke, but only the wolf had roused then. Good thing Madame Yu had been with him. He might have killed himself trying to kill Gan or to escape. Lupi had been known to wake up in the operating room with unfortunate results for their would-be surgeon. To an injured wolf, almost everyone was an enemy.
That, of course, assumed he could have moved, which might be laughably optimistic. He was badly hurt this time. It wasn’t just the pain that told him this, though that spoke convincingly, but the weakness, the woozy, out-of-control feeling . . . from blood loss? Probably, though his aching head suggested a concussion might be contributing. The pain in his head didn’t worry him, though. Neither did that in his leg—a deep wound, he thought, but he hadn’t bled out, so it would heal if he lived to heal it.
He might not. The worst pain came from his gut.
Rule had taken a bullet in the stomach not long ago. He’d needed surgery, an IV, a few units of blood, even antibiotics. Lupi normally didn’t bother with antibiotics, given how easily their healing shrugged off unfriendly microbes, but gut wounds dump a nasty stew of bacteria into the system. His healing had been stretched enough, Nettie had told him, without having to fight off peritonitis, too.
This wounding was worse. The level of pain told him that. The location—below his stomach—suggested the reason, or part of it. And antibiotics, surgery, replacement blood, and IVs did not seem to be available here. Wherever “here” was.
Earth? The sky he’d seen earlier had been bright, sunny blue. Had he somehow been returned to Earth? What had happened to him?
With the question, a jumble of memory poured in. Fire. His brother’s body, bloody and motionless. Lily on the other side of the cavern, nearly hidden in the smoke. No sign of Toby or the other children, and Cullen either unconscious or dead. Cynna trying to rescue Cullen. A mountain of pink flesh looming over Rule, giggling. Rule gripping his knife firmly as he faced Xitil, who had turned out to be insufficiently dead. She’d been about to kill him when . . . what? He couldn’t think, couldn’t remember anything beyond that moment when he’d faced off against the demon prince. But he remembered enough of what had happened before then to know that the only medical supplies he’d had were a roll of gauze and a tube of superglue.
No, just superglue. He’d used the gauze on Daniel.
Daniel, Mason, Max. Carlos, whom they’d left alone and wounded in the dark of a demon-infested tunnel. Jude. Gan. Benedict, Cullen, and Cynna. The names of those he was responsible for, those who’d come with him to retrieve the children, tolled through his head, adding to the ache of uncertainty about Lily . . . who was alive, but so far away. What had happened to everyone?
Troubled out of the privacy of his pain, he opened his eyes. Directly overhead was rock, but he was not underground, he saw with relief. Beyond the rock was sky tinted lavender by approaching dusk. He turned his head and saw a campfire and a naked woman.
She squatted by the fire, her back to him. A black-and-silver braid hung down the lovely curve of her spine, tied at the end with a scrap of cloth. She was not young, though he saw muscle in her slim shoulders; her skin held hints of the crepe of age.
Perhaps she felt him looking. She looked over her shoulder and spoke crisply. “You’re awake. Good.”
He blinked. The naked woman was Madame Yu. This should, of course, have been obvious. His brain wasn’t working well.
“You need water,” she said, and set something down—a stick with what might have been half a rabbit impaled on it. The source of the cooking-meat smell.
Rule lacked the human prejudice against nudity, but for Madame Yu to be unclothed . . . that was just wrong. But she’d been a tiger before, hadn’t she? She didn’t have her clothes with her, hadn’t been able to bring them along when they . . . came here? Were brought here? “Where?” he croaked, meaning where are we. “The others. What—”
“Water now, then explaining.” She unscrewed the cap on a collapsible canteen. It looked familiar. Probably it was. Probably it was the one he’d stuck in his belt after emptying it back in Dis. “I will lift your head. Do not try to help.”
He was thirsty. Horribly thirsty, a truth that had been obscured until this moment by his other hurts. He pictured the water sliding down his throat only to spill out onto the ground when it reached the hole where his guts should be. “I’ll leak.”
“I have glued you back together. Gan held you in sleep with one of the charms while I worked.” She slid one hand beneath his head and lifted.
She’d superglued his gut? Did she know what to attach to what?
“You will not leak. Drink.” She held the plastic bladder to his lips, giving him little choice.
The water was warm and tasted of dirt. He gulped it down eagerly.
She moved the canteen away before he was ready. “Not too fast, I think.”
“How bad . . . am I hurt?” Enough that a little talking was painful.
“Most of the damage was to the ropy part of your intestines. I removed the worst mess and glued together what remained. I trust your healing can regrow what was lost.” The last sounded like a parent’s no-nonsense instruction: brush your teeth, wash your face, regrow your intestines. “There was also damage to the . . . bah. What is the word? The knobby intestine. Jiécháng. It was not severed, however. I glued it closed. I did not see damage to your other organs, but I was in a hurry. We were in the open. Drink again.”
He did. The knobby intestine . . . the colon? Rule knew a little anatomy, enough for the kind of rough battlefield medicine he might have to use on one of his men. By “the ropy part,” she must mean his small intestine. It sounded like he would have to regrow a lot of that.
“You also have a deep wound in your thigh. I used the last of the glue there, after Gan and I moved you to this spot. I did not have enough glue to seal it fully, but it is not bleeding anymore.” She withdrew the canteen again. “I have been using a healing cantrip on you, also, but I am no healer. I cannot tell how much it is helping.”
He licked his lips, dizzy. “Gan?”
“She has gone to steal some things. She can go dashtu here, so this should not be difficult.”
“Steal from . . . who?”
“There is a village.”
“Humans?”
“Yes. This is not one of the sidhe realms.”
Was that good or bad? He couldn’t think. “How did we get here?”
“Gan brought me and also Cynna and Lily. You, I believe, were brought here by Lily.”
He started to shake his head and winced. Definitely a concussion. “Lily can’t do that. And she is . . . far away.” Much too far for his piece of mind or for her to have somehow brought him here, wherever “here” was. Madame still hadn’t answered that one. Maybe she didn’t know, either.
“You did not arrive in the same place as Lily because you did not leave from the same place in Dis.”
“Lily can’t cross realms.” Much less bring him along with her.