Chance of Stardust

Stardust (ch 15)

The other hirrient followed on Leiv’s heels. Cassie headed down, her heart pounding. Something was wrong. She knew it. Llyr met her at the bottom, his eyes wide and worried. He slid his hand into hers and she gripped it, suddenly worried.


“What’s going on?” she asked.


“I don’t know.”  That seemed to bother him more than anything. He tugged her hand and she followed.


They found the hirrient clustered outside a bedroom near the entry. Ari crouched by the door, his head hanging, his posture defeated. Beside him, Kyall stood, a hand on his shoulder.


“What’s wrong?” she asked as Llyr clutched at her hand.


Kyall shook his head. “It’s Davi. He tangled with something bigger than he is. Revelin found him a bit ago, but he’s in a bad way.”


Llyr tugged at her hand.  “Can you help him, Cassie? Please?”


“I’m not a doctor, Llyr,” she tried, panic rising. “I’m not even a nurse yet.”


“Will you look?” Ari’s pleading whisper cut through her and she looked down at him. Under the silky gold, his skin was pale. Davi was his partner, she recalled abruptly, his anchor.


“I’ll look.” The words were pulled from her but her heart sank. If Davi was hurt badly enough to scare Ari, what could she do? But she couldn’t walk away.


Giving Llyr a quick hug, she left him with Kyall and Ari and pushed her way between Leiv and Revelin. The Primes stepped aside and made room for her in the narrow space.


Davi lay sprawled across a narrow bed, the twin to one only feet away, crammed into the small space. Blood soaked through his clothes and into the blanket beneath him.  Taking a deep breath, Cassie shoved her nerves aside and tried to focus on the wounds, not the blood.


“Get his shirt off?” she asked.


Revelin moved to her shoulder as Leiv sliced through the metal plates of the shirt with his claws and tugged it off.


“What do you need?” Revelin murmured.


“I don’t know yet.” She sat beside wounded hirrient and touched the torn skin of his side and chest. The gashes were deep but, whatever he’d tangled with, it had missed his guts by bare inches. At least she didn’t have to worry about lethal infection. His pants were torn across his thighs and knees where he’d fallen but the flesh beneath, while scraped and bruised, wasn’t badly damaged.


“I need some clean cloths to wipe him up and I’ll need something to stitch the muscle back together, something that will dissolve if you’ve got it.”


While Revelin left to gather the items she asked for, Leiv shifted Davi more fully onto the bed and his head lolled to the side. A bruise covered his temple, running back to vanish under his hair. Cassie shifted closer, moving the long pale hair aside, trying to find a lump.


Nothing.


“What is it?” Revelin returned, dropping several items on the bed beside her.


“I think he may have a concussion,” she admitted, her heart in her throat.  “He’s bruised but there’s no lump. That often means the bruise went inward.” Where it would put pressure on his brain and possibly kill him. “I don’t know what to do for a concussion.”


“Fix what you can.”


Good advice and the only practical solution. Focusing on the torn skin, she gently cleaned the wounds. Revelin handed her a tool, showed her how to make small stitches that snapped through the thick muscle tissue without needing a needle. Once the deeper tears were sealed, she carefully closed up his skin as she had done for Revelin once.


Davi’s skin loosened as the battle form slowly worked out of his system, making it more difficult to work with and she swore as the skin slid out of her grasp a second time. No wonder the tube couldn’t work on them, she thought crossly. They couldn’t even stay in one form as they were healed.


The thought froze her fingers on the blood slick skin, possibilities cascading in a frantic rush. She finished closing the last wound with care, trying to find logic amid the push of instinct.


Under her hands, she felt his breathing stutter and he choked. His heartbeat thudded hard once, twice, and then fell into an erratic beat that matched the labored cadence of his breathing.  She was right. He had a concussion and the pressure was beginning to affect his nervous system. The pressure on his brain needed to be released and fast.


“We need to put him in the tube.”


“The tube doesn’t work on hirrient,” Leiv reminded her, the usual bite noticeably absent from the words.


“Put him in the tube.”


Revelin gazed down at her, his golden eyes questioning but there was no rejection there.


“Please? Put him in the tube. If the tube doesn’t work, he’ll be no worse off than he is right now.” She dragged a breath. “If we don’t do something, he’s going to die.”


Revelin bent and lifted the injured man. Oddly, Leiv didn’t argue but moved to help. Kyall and Ari scrambled out of the way and Cassie trailed in their wake to her room and the bed of the tube. They laid him on it, straightening his limbs so that all of him lay within the narrow demarcation of padding. Leiv stepped back, his expression doubting as Revelin worked the controls and a pale blue light sprang up around the battered hirrient.


She didn’t know what she expected to happen. The light wavered over Davi’s broad, muscled body, darker toward his head yet unstable as an aurora over the rest of him. He didn’t move, only the disjointed rise and fall of his chest showing he was still alive.  Disappointment coiled dark and nauseas in the pit of her stomach.  She backed toward the door.


“Ow.”


The soft rasping whisper stopped her in her tracks and Leiv and Revelin bent toward the tube with identical expressions of amazement.


“Davi?”


A harsh breath and some shifting and then the light went out.  Leiv turned to look at her.


Cassie turned and left, pushing through the small group at the door and headed back to the exercise room. In her chest, her heart surged in relief. She grabbed onto a dangling rope for support and found that her hands were shaking.


They were her kidnappers, for Christ’s sake. They were nice kidnappers but kidnappers nonetheless. When had she started to think of them as friends?


Footsteps sounded behind her.


“Cassie?”


Revelin. She turned into him, wrapping her arms around his waist and holding on as the shakes spread over her body, threatening to take her off her feet. He held her, one hand on the small of her back, the other buried in the hair she’d forgotten to rebraid.


No tears fell. She didn’t need to be comforted, just held as relief shook the moorings of her world. She cared about these people. More than friendship or curiosity, she cared about them as if they’d somehow become family. Emotions spinning, she leaned into him, soaking up the solid strength he exuded until her insides no longer felt like they were tearing themselves apart.


“Are you all right?”


The rumble under her ear wrapped around her as gentle and strong as his arms. She nodded, not taking her face out of his chest. The hand in her hair moved in a long caress, stoking the length of her spine before returning to her hair. In that moment, she felt safe. Cherished.


“How did you know?”


She pulled away with a sigh but he didn’t let her get far. His arms remained around her, his fingers threaded through her hair.


“I didn’t. Not really. It was a hunch, not knowledge.” She shook her head. “All I could think was that you guys must be real pains to heal since you keep shifting while someone’s trying to patch you up. But your head doesn’t change size when you shift. I thought maybe, if nothing else, the tube might work on his head since it’s probably the most stable part of him.”


She looked up to meet his solemn golden gaze and the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place. Of course. It was so simple. Her subconscious had known what she hadn’t wrapped her brain around yet.


“You have a Universal,” she said numbly.


“Yes.”


He didn’t understand. He didn’t see that detail for what her instincts had recognized it for.


“Universals are implanted by tubes.”


He nuzzled into her shoulder, the fingers in her hair tightening for a moment and then letting go as he wrapped both arms around her.


“We’ve always been told the tubes don’t work on us,” he murmured. “I never thought to challenge that.”


“The tubes don’t really work on you.” She rubbed her face against his chest, the plates of his shirt chill under her cheek. “You guys shift to fight and that’s when you get banged up. The tube tries to heal you but your body is still changing, coming down from the shift. The machine gets confused. I don’t understand why no one has tried to fix that.”


“Why should they bother? There are only five of us in existence.”


The stark acceptance in his tone shocked. Cassie pulled back, pushing against him when he would have argued. He didn’t let go but kept his arms looped around her. She gazed up at him, a fierce protectiveness rising in her.


“Because there are five of you in existence,” she said. “You guys risk your lives fighting for Llyr’s father. One would think he would do something to keep you healthy.”


“Arno has done what he can but he doesn’t own the technology and most healers focus on their own kind.”


“Then he needs to find one that doesn’t.”


Revelin’s mouth curved, the gold of his eyes deepening. “Are you certain you don’t want the position?”


“You deserve someone who actually knows what they’re doing.” She sighed and leaned back into him. “Not someone who’s terrified and just does a lot of lucky guessing.”


“You have good instincts.” He curled his fingers into her hair again to cradle the back of her head. “You should be a healer, not just a caretaker.”


The compliment sparked a warmth in her chest. She let him hold her, taking what comfort she could. It had been a long night and an eventful morning. She should be exhausted but she was too wound up to sleep.


“I need to go out.” Revelin eased away. “I need to collect the creature Davi killed before it goes to waste.”


“Can I go with you?” The words slipped out and she bit her lip. “Never mind.  I shouldn’t have said that.”


He studied her for a long moment. “It is dangerous for you to go outside.”


“I know.” She fidgeted for a moment. “It’s just there’s nowhere for me to run off to and I’m going a little stir crazy cooped up in here. Forget I said anything. I don’t want to cause any more problems for you.”


“You are feeling trapped.”


A soft breath of laughter escaped.


“You kidnapped me, Revelin. I am trapped.” She pushed against his chest with a sigh, laughter fading. “Forget I said anything. I’ll be fine. I’ll try to take a nap or something.”


“Davi currently occupies your bed.”


“I’ll curl up somewhere else,” she offered with a shrug.


Another long moment slid by as he watched her.


“Stay here.” One curt command and he was gone.


Curious, she did as instructed, wondering what he was up to. He couldn’t take her out with him. The reason he’d kidnapped her to begin with still remained. Her Universal would send a traceable signal to their enemies if she left the ship. He was probably figuring out a place for her to sleep until Davi was healed enough to be moved.


Revelin returned with a bundle of cloth and she eyed it curiously.


“Hold out your arms.”


She did so, wondering what he was up to. A moment later, she was being stuffed into a thin thermal coat that bagged around her and hung off over her hands by several inches. He began rolling the fabric up as if she were a small child and she chanced a look at his set expression.


“You don’t have to do this, Revelin. I’ll be fine.”


He ignored her. “Come with me. Stay close and, if I give you a command, you obey without question.”


He was worried about the Gurot.


“I promise.” She caught at the metal scales of his shirt.  “I’ve never promised to obey before but I do now.”


He didn’t pull away but his expression remained grim. “You did once and you kept your promise. I accept your word.”


The night at the museum, she remembered belatedly. She’d promised to stay on the ship and behave herself. She’d gotten banged up but she hadn’t left the ship or caused trouble.


“You don’t have to do this,” she insisted. “I don’t want anything to get hairy around here just because I was feeling a bit cooped up.”


He stroked the back of his fingers over her cheek, silencing her effectively. Her eyes locked with his.


“Come,” he said, his hand falling away as he turned and led the way from the room.