She nodded. “I believe so.”
Tyler still had a grip on Danny’s legs, but he stayed silent. We were all ready to spring if Danny started thrashing again.
Ray tripped over something and let out a string of curses. “Jesus, what’s in this? Lead bricks? I can barely lift it.”
“Just drag it over here,” I said impatiently. “Hurry. We have to rinse this stuff completely off Danny.” The yellow residue was now smoking where it lay on his skin. It was beyond nasty.
Ray toted the pack along the ground. “Here.” He set the pack by my leg and leaned over my shoulder to squint at Danny. “Jesus.”
The cross was still embedded in Danny’s chest. I didn’t know when we were supposed to get it out. “Do we take the cross out yet?” I asked.
“Non. It needs more time. I will keep holding him in case there is a reaction. Run the water over him,” Naomi ordered. “Once he is free of all the venom, he should come back to us on his own. After his wounds heal over, we will remove the cross.”
I let go of Danny and unzipped the pack. There was a big canteen sitting right on top. I unscrewed the top and doused the liquid slowly over his body. His clothes were shredded or had been eaten away, so it was easy to see his flesh. I handed the canteen to Tyler when I was half done, and he ran the rest over his legs. We were careful not to let the yellow crap touch us as it washed away.
Once the water rinsed away the last of the venom, Danny started to moan in earnest.
There was relief all around when his eyes blinked open. “What…?” He brought a bloodied hand up to his forehead. “… Happened? It feels like a lorry ran over my face and crushed my legs in the process.” He tried to sit up, but Naomi set a restraining hand on his chest.
“Take it easy there,” Tyler murmured. “One thing at a time, tough guy.”
“You must try to sleep,” Naomi said. “It will take time to heal all your wounds.”
“Sleep, my arse,” Danny growled, glancing from her to me for an explanation. “My body feels like it’s been shredded by a weed whacker. Sleep is the last thing on my mind. And can anyone tell me why I have a bloody chunk of silver lodged in my chest?” Before we could answer, he plucked out the cross and tossed it into the forest with one defiant flick of his wrist.
“No!” Naomi yelled as she jumped up and went to search for it.
“You just threw away your cure, buddy,” I told him. “That was a little ungrateful of you, but we will forgive you given the circumstances.”
“A cure?” Danny replied, a little bewildered. “How can that be a cure? It hurt.”
“It’s some kind of spelled cross of Naomi’s that magically rids the bearer of all the bad stuff, but won’t kill you. It must have cost her a fortune.”
“Well, then, I am indeed very ungrateful. I thank you kindly, Naomi,” Danny called. His body was healing extremely quickly now that all the gunk was gone.
Tyler stood as Naomi came back. His voice was carefully measured. “How did you know we were going to need that thing?” He pointed to the cross, now wrapped in the shreds of her shirt so it didn’t burn her skin. “Did your Queen know we were going to encounter something from the Underworld?” Tyler’s voice began to ring with tension. “So you just happened to have a cure-all in your pocket for just such an emergency?”
Naomi stared back at Tyler, her eyes defiant. They held a glint of a challenge. “I carry this with me always. It never leaves my sight.” Naomi bent over and picked up the bag it belonged in off the forest floor and carefully wrapped the cross back up, placing it in her pocket.
“It’s pretty handy you had the only thing in the world that could’ve saved him,” Tyler egged, pushing for a fight. “Without it, he would’ve died.”
“I earned this healing cross with the blood of my servitude,” she retorted, a steel edge lacing her normally lithe accent. “Selene would take it back from me if she was given the chance, but it’s mine now. I won it from her fairly.”
“The cross was the Lunar Goddess’s trinket?” I asked. No wonder it worked on the devil venom. It had been made for a goddess.
Naomi nodded slowly. “It was… yes.”
“See,” Tyler accused, pointing at Naomi. “This proves my point exactly. Naomi and Selene know each other personally. Did you know that?” He turned to me, his eyes blazing. “We can’t keep trusting them blindly, Jess! If we do, we’ll all end up dead. The Queen gave us two vamps who have a connection to the very Goddess we’re trying to kill. This isn’t an even game; it’s rigged.”
I ignored Tyler’s tirade for the moment and instead narrowed my eyes on Naomi, assessing. There was pain and some guilt in her expression before she finally glanced away. I ventured a guess. “You said you earned that cross with the blood of your servitude.” I pointed to her pocket. “You served Selene?”
“Oui,” Naomi said thinly, turning back to face me.
“Willingly?”
She hesitated for a few beats. “Oui.”
“Your Queen is very shrewd. I’ll give her that.” Sending two of her best, knowing they knew the enemy better than we did put us in a challenging position. “Did your Queen order you not to divulge this connection to us?” I asked.
“We were to give you the minimum assistance, as always. It is so for any duty. She needn’t have ordered us to keep quiet specifically; it would be expected of us.”
“Now that we know you’re connected to Selene, what happens next?” I asked. “If you served the Goddess, you have inside information, things that will make defeating her easier. Now that we know, what are you going to do about it?”
Tyler stood next to me, silent, his anger vibrating around us in waves.
A slow smile spread across Naomi’s features, making her appear both sweet and gruesome at the same time. She was still covered in dried blood, the white of her cheekbones standing out in bright contrast against the red. “Now that this information is out it seems the rules have changed.”
There was a gust of air and Eamon dropped beside her. “Naomi, you must keep your mouth shut. Our Queen will not tolerate anything more. We are almost to the boundary. That was our only duty. We will see them to the edge and leave—nothing more.”
Naomi uttered a single word in response. “Non.”