Swallowing Darkness - Laurell K. Hamilton [132]
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
THERE WERE VOICES. SCREAMS, CRIES FOR HELP. I COULD SEE nothing, but I could hear them. There was something on top of me, something heavy. I found that I had hands, arms, and could push at the weight on top of me, but I could not move it. But the more I pushed at it, tried to turn my head against it, the more I began to realize what I was pushing at. Cloth, and under the cloth flesh; I was pushing at someone. Someone was on top of me, someone large and heavy, and…Jonty.
I whispered his name, still trapped in the darkness underneath him. His broad chest was so wide that I could see nothing but the dimness of his body. The ground underneath me was solid, and the frost on the grass was already beginning to melt, which meant that Jonty and I had lain here long enough for our body heat to begin to warm the ground. How long had we lain here? How much time had passed? Who was screaming for help? It wasn’t the Red Caps. They would not scream. The soldiers, the human soldiers, it had to be them. Oh, Goddess, help me help them. Don’t let them die like this. Don’t let them die for me. It seemed so unfair.
I braced against the ground, and pushed with all my might. Jonty’s weight moved a little higher, but that was it. I had a moment of hope, then the weight simply did not move anymore. But warm liquid ran down my hands, and began to soak into my sleeves. The blood was still warm. That was good. Either it was his blood, and he was still alive enough for it to be warm, or it was his magical blood from his hat, and the fact that it was flowing at all meant he was still alive. I could see a thin line of moonlight. It was still night. My arms began to tremble, then finally collapse. I tried to keep the weight from crushing me, but other than that, I was trapped. The blood began to trickle down the side of my face, like a warm creeping finger. The darkness seemed thicker for that bit of brightness I’d seen.
The blood trickled down the side of my neck. I fought the urge to wipe at it, since I couldn’t reach it anyway. It was just blood. Blood wasn’t bad, and it was warm, and that was good. I fought to calm my pulse; panicking would not help me. I used what little movement I had with my hands to search for Jonty’s heartbeat. I was much lower than his heart, though. I could not reach high enough to touch his heart. Was there another pulse point close to my hands? Was there any way for me to tell if he was still alive?
If I couldn’t reach higher, could I reach lower? There was a big pulse point on the inner groin. The femoral artery was as good as the carotid in the neck, it was just usually too intimate to use. But, under the circumstances, I didn’t think Jonty would mind.
I inched my hand down the side of my body until I found the joint of his hip, then I traced inward, fighting against the weight and the sheer bulk of him. Since I couldn’t see anything but the darkness of him above me, I closed my eyes and concentrated on my fingers, on what I was feeling.
My fingers found something softer than his thigh, which meant I was close to the artery. I moved my fingers down a little and to the side. As I pushed my way lower, his body reacted to my touch. What had been large and soft was becoming less soft. Did that mean that Jonty was alive? I tried to remember what I knew of the freshly dead. I knew that death sometimes made you have one last orgasm, but was this that, or was the quickening of his body against my wrist a sign that he was alive? I couldn’t remember if any professor or book in college had ever talked about it; probably not, too much information for most human classrooms. In fact, you got in trouble for asking things like that, or I had. That embarrassed silence, the mortified look on the teacher’s face.
My fingers slipped inside his thigh. I had to squirm my fingers just a little more into that warm, close place. His body continued to be happier against my arm. I was going to take it for