CHAPTER 17

“Russel!” Lola ran the rest of the way to him, a spike of fear jabbing her in the back of her mind when she saw him suddenly collapse. When she got there, she looked him all over, trying to make sure he was still alive and breathing. “Talk to me.” She made sure to keep him as still as possible while she checked him over. The ghouls had done a number on him. Several long and deep gashes were all over his chest, arms, legs, and most likely his back too. That was also where the ghoul had stuck its talon-claw in so she knew of at least one horrendous wound. His eyes fluttered weakly. His breathing was shallow. Heal, damnit! Lola’s mind screamed. “Why aren’t you healing?” she asked out loud. The cuts and slashes he sustained actually did look like they were closing but the edges were a nasty, dark color and a viscous, slime-like substance was mixed in with the blood coming from them. It wasn’t hard for her to guess what that was. Poison. How do you get poison out? What should I do? I don’t know. I don’t know how to help him. These were the thoughts whirling through her head, seizing up her ability to function and do anything at all. She needed to be decisive. She needed to be quick. Being stuck in a perpetual loop of asking herself what to do would only assure his death. She looked around, trying to find something that might help. Her eyes landed on the small creek Serk had drank from. Water. Surely that would help. She could flush out each of his wounds and get rid of the poison. Then his ability to heal should take over, right? She had no real idea that would actually work but it felt like something solid to grasp on to so she went with it. She got up, raced over to the packs they had left on the ground, and scrambled through hers for the water skin she had inside. It was less than half full so she ran to the creek and dipped it in, letting more of the precious liquid race inside. When the skin was full and bloated, she ran to Russel and started flushing out each of his wounds. The poison was thick and stubbornly refused to leave but she didn’t give up. She pressed on the skin a bit harder and a more forceful stream shot out. That did the trick. The poison started to flow off his skin and out of the wounds. She repeated the process with each one, racing back and forth between Russel and the creek several times before she managed to clean them all. Everything else in those dire moments fell away. Her surroundings. The corpses of the ghouls. Their putrid stink. All the sounds of animal life inside the forest. All of it. Nothing else remained except for Russel and her need to help him. It took her well over twenty minutes until she was sure all of the poison was gone. She was sure some had made its way into his bloodstream but she also thought his natural werewolf nature would take care of that without her aid. Already she could see wounds closing much faster than before. It gave her hope. It gave her a reason to believe he would pull out of it. So she waited. As she did, she applied more water and even forced him to drink some. It overflowed and poured down the sides of his face at first and then he instinctively started to gulp it down. His eyes moved rapidly underneath their closed lids. She hoped he would come out of it soon. Her heart was beating so fast she could barely breathe. “Russel,” she whispered. He still wasn’t responding. “Russel,” she said, a bit louder. She picked up his head and pillowed it on top of her thighs. One hand gently cupped the side of his face and she felt tears slide down her cheeks. “I’ve already lost everyone else in my life, I can’t lose you too. Come back to me, please.” He was still unconscious but he was breathing, which was good. His color started to improve as well. A rosy flush spread through his cheeks. She kept a watchful eye on as many of his wounds as she could. Most had pretty much closed up all the way. The one on his back shoulder was getting smaller and smaller but she could still feel the blood coming from it soaking her pants. During all of this, and in her blind haste to help him, she never noticed that the cuts she’d gotten from the ghouls didn’t have the same effect on her. They stung and bothered her but other than a possible, irritating itching sensation, she was completely fine. Even now, she didn’t really notice them. Her focus was centered too heavily on Russel and making sure he would be fine. His breathing continued to improve and the wounds kept healing over. The gory wound in his shoulder had stopped bleeding completely and had closed almost all the way now. The fears and worries over his safety started to ease. His body relaxed and his rest seemed more peaceful. The rapid movement of his eyes slowed and then stopped altogether. She bent forward, relief surging through her, and kissed his forehead. She gently laid him down on the ground and went over to the creek to wash off some of the blood and gunk off her skin. Once properly cleaned, she bound them with bandages she pulled out of her pack. The itching sensation to the cuts from the ghouls were intense and she had to force herself not to actively scratch at them. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how one looked at it, her concern for Russel still overpowered the sensation for the most part. She found herself scratching at the bandages absentmindedly. She finished up at the creek and made her way back to Russel. He was beginning to stir now. When she got to him, his eyes were just starting to open again. He groaned. “Well n-now…this is just emb-embarassing.” He chuckled a little but it quickly turned into a harsh cough. “Shut up,” she said. “Quit talking. You’re going to hurt yourself.” “I f-forgot…the…pp-poison.” He coughed a little more and then stopped. “Fu-fucking gh-ghouls.” Then his eyes widened and filled with concern. Despite the pain, he got up and looked at her. His hands went to her bandages. “You okay?” he asked. He was starting to sound better but his voice was still a little hoarse. “You g-got…cut too.” Concern gave way to outright confusion. “How are you still…aliv-alive?” “Here, this will help,” she said and handed him the water skin and he took a deep pull from it. “And I honestly don’t know. You got cut a bunch. I only got hit twice. Maybe that’s the reason.” He was already shaking his head no. He grunted as he moved but eventually he got to a sitting position. The only wound at this point that was still open on him was the hideous one to his back shoulder. “Ghoul poison is potent. The poison paralyzes you first and then, the longer it is in your body, the more fatal it becomes,” he said. He rubbed the still injured shoulder a bit. “You didn’t have any reaction at all?” “No, nothing like that,” she told him. She looked down at the bandages and wondered why she wouldn’t be affected by the ghoul’s poison. Then again, why would a werewolf from the Harvenk Kingdom want her dead? “Good thing, I guess,” he told her. “I would’ve been fine given enough time, even with the amount of poison in my system, but you shouldn’t be. I haven’t heard of any human with a natural immunity to ghoul poison before.” He looked at her, his thoughts spinning around and around each other. Each time though, his thoughts seem to centralize around a single question. Who was this human girl?