When he turned into Riley’s room, Sasha had tossed the bedding and pillows aside.
“I can help her.”
“Wait for Bran.” As if she were made of thin, fragile glass, Doyle laid her on the bed.
“I can help. If she comes to before . . . I don’t know how she could stand it.”
“She’s tough. She’ll hold up.” With great care, Doyle unzipped her hoodie, ignored the blood, removed her holster, her knife sheath. “Wait for Bran.”
Fighting tears, Sasha sat on the side of the bed, took Riley’s good hand. “How did you know?”
“I saw her go into the forest when I was taking in supplies. Saw her going in with you minutes before I went out for more, and you came down.”
“With me? With me?”
“Hold it together.” He issued the order with a snap. “You can’t help her if you don’t hold it together.”
“You’re right. I will. And if Bran’s not here in thirty seconds, I’m—”
“I’m here.” He came in with his kit and a satchel. “I needed to get some more things. Pour a half glass of that,” he told Sawyer when Sawyer came in. “I need to bring her around enough for her to swallow.”
“Not like this. Bran, not like this. Let me try to help first.”
He looked at Sasha. “She’s gravely injured. Understand that and go lightly. Just enough, do you understand, to ease the worst.”
“I’ll be careful.”
She laid a hand on Riley’s bruised and swollen cheek, held back a hiss as she felt the pain.
“Just enough,” Bran repeated.
She tried, tried to go lightly, to ease only, to skim over what she understood were critical injuries, internal as well as shattered and broken bones.
But love, and an ability she’d only just learned to use, overwhelmed.
She laid a hand over Riley’s crushed one, felt the vicious bootstrike, the agony as bones snapped and shattered. And, horrified, saw her own face looming over Riley’s prone body. Her own face filled with jubilant hate.
The pain, the overwhelming pain, struck her.
Bran cursed when Sasha melted to the floor.
“I’ve got her, I’ve got her.” Sawyer rushed to Sasha as Annika hurried in, towels under her arm, a kitchen pot of water in her hands.
“You can make it hot quicker than the stove. I remembered.”
“Of course I can. I wasn’t thinking. Set it down there,” Bran told Annika.
“I’m sorry.” Sasha rubbed hands over her face. “I went too deep. Let me try again.”
“You’ll wait. Doyle, Sawyer, I need you to hold Riley down.”
“No.” Sasha rocked herself. “Oh, no.”
“I’ll be quick, but she needs this in her now. Lift her head so she takes it in,” Bran told Doyle, “and hold her still.”
Sasha knelt beside the bed, took Riley’s good hand again. “Just to let her know we’re here. I can let her know we’re all here. It will help.”
“It will.” Bran shoved up his sleeves. “Annika. Eight drops from the blue bottle. Two from the red. Blue, then red.”
With Sawyer holding Riley’s legs, Doyle on the bed behind her propping her head up, holding her shoulders, Bran straddled her, gripped her purpling jaw in one hand.
His eyes, black as onyx, went deeper, went darker. Riley stirred, struggled. Howled.
“Damn it,” Sawyer muttered, forced to add weight to his grip. “Goddamn it.”
“Get it in her,” Doyle demanded, and lost control enough to lower his face in Riley’s hair. “Take your bloody medicine, Gwin, and don’t be a baby about it.”
And suffering, he murmured to her.
Bran took the glass from Annika, poured the contents ruthlessly down Riley’s throat.
Her eyes shot open, wheeled in her head. Her body arched, limbs trembling as they tried to drum. Then she collapsed, shuddering, shuddering, until she lay pale and still as death.
As he eased off the bed, Bran swiped sweat off his brow. “Now we can start.”
• • •
She woke in agony, she floated in dreams. She struggled in nightmares, she searched for peace.
She found peace now and then, hearing the voices of her friends. Sawyer . . . reading? Yes, reading Terry Pratchett, an old one, with the female cop—who happened to be a werewolf.
Just like her.
Annika singing—opera and Adele. Curled on the bed with her, softly crooning and smelling of spring rain.
The nightmares would close in, and the pain spike. And then Sasha would be there with her, telling her she wasn’t alone, and the pain would subside, a little.
Bran running his hands over her, sometimes chanting in Irish or Latin, sometimes talking to her or to someone else who talked back to him with an accent as Irish as his own.
And Doyle, so often Doyle. He read Shakespeare. Who knew he had a voice so suited to Shakespeare? And when the demons chased her, demons with the faces of friends, he held her close.
“Beat them back, ma faol,” he told her—demanded of her. “You know how. Fight!”
So she fought, and she drifted, and agony turned to grinding aches.
Doyle was there when the woman came, and urged the contents of some vial between her lips.
“No. I don’t want—”
“It’s what you need that counts. Swallow it down, there’s a good girl.”