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But for all that, she could not help staring at the man who stood ten feet away, his face and body hidden by deep shadows, the katana held in his powerful hands

She stared in unco she said before blood loss and daed her down into the darkness was, "Tom?"

49

"Y’ALL READY?" ASKED RIOT SHE WAS CROUCHED BEHIND CHONG, HER fingers lightly touching the barbed head of the arrow

"No," he said through clenched teeth Then a moment later he croaked, "Go ahead"

"Take hold of that other end, and don’t you let it turn Othere’ll be doing nothing but rea the hole"

"Well," he said as conversationally as he could, "ouldn’t want that noould we?"

"Here," she said, handing hi 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 fro her left fist around it; then pinched the flat of the barb between thuers andturned

The whole arrow turned Blood suddenly welled fro’s shirt that Riot had used to pack the wound

The pain wasexquisite It was pain on a level Chong had never iined before, and in the last month he had been beaten, kicked, storown bounty hunters Memories of that other pain lined the shelves in his her shelf It orse than when he’d gotten shot by the arrow in the first place When the arrow hit his 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 screahtened and craned her neck to see hoas 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 re, 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 screa tears and sweat burst fro the heat of fresh blood on his storowled Riot needlessly She tried again And again

Chong could feel nausea washing around in his stoive in to it If he started vo worse

"Y’all wantdid 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 hie 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 ti wept unasha!"

Suddenly the pain and the aard, 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 ot up and ran to the fire She wrapped a piece of cloth around the knife and relowed yellohite She hurried back to Chong and knelt in front of hi could see that she, too, eating heavily, "here’s the fun part I got to pull this puppy out and then cauterize the wounds Both sides You’re bleeding, so we got to do it right quick You ready?"

"Stop asking me that," he mumbled around the leather strap "Just do it!"

Riot did so else first

She quickly bent forward and kissed Chong on the tip of his nose

"For luck," she said

Then she took the arrow in her left hand, took a breath, and pulled

It ca kneould never forget Blood welled hot and red from the wound

"Bite down," she ordered, and then she moved in with the white-hot blade

The pain went off the scale, but still Chong held on He screamed into the strap and bit the leather so hard he tasted blood in his ht the s flesh

That hen he passed out

50

BENNY CAME DOWN THE HILL AND WATCHED NIX CLIMB THEN, WITH A sigh and a certain knowledge that this was a bad idea, he took hold of one of the rents in the plastic and began clih it swayed with their weight, the clih holes to provide easy purchase for hands and feet Nix scrambled up ahead of him, nimble as a monkey

"Slon," Benny warned

"Catch up," she fired back, and gave him a second’s worth of a smile

Almost like the old Nix

Benny scrambled up after her, and they reached the open hatch shoulder-to-shoulder Very carefully, as if they were peering in through theof an old abandoned house froht peer back, they raised their heads above the deck and looked inside

There was a lot of debris Broken fittings and equip the crash, pieces of shattered pine branches, and last fall’s dried leaves And bones Lots of bones Leg and arm bones, the slender curves of ribs, and part of a skull

Benny heard Nix’s sharp intake of breath

"No," he said in a hushed voice, "I think it’s a monkey"

"Are you sure?"

Benny climbed the rest of the way up and crouched inside the hatch He lifted the skull fragment and examined it "Monkey," he said with relief, as much to himself as to her

"Any, um, people bones?"

"No"