“What?” She looked startled.
“I’m going to take care of your face and arm. You’ll get an infection if we leave it. I won’t be in any shape to do it after, so get me the tweezers now.”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“I don’t joke.” His voice was grim and he swayed, reaching for the wall to steady himself. “I mean it. You’re not touching me until I fix you up. And if I pass out and someone comes, you get the hell out of here. Go through the window, up to the rooftops, not the alley, they’ll trap you in the alley. Use the rooftops as long as you can and head back to the forest. You can hide out there.”
“Do you boss everyone around?” She pulled the tweezers from her medical kit and handed them to him. “I feel like an idiot having you get splinters out of me when you’re sliced to pieces.”
He caught her chin and began to pull the largest splinters from her skin. “You saved my life. Thanks. I don’t owe very many people, but I’d be dead if it weren’t for you.” He cleaned her chin with the antiseptic and held out his hand for the antibiotic ointment.
“I don’t want to talk about that.” Her stomach lurched uncomfortably. She closed her eyes against the memory of the man lying dead in the forest.
“He would have killed me.”
“I know. Are you finished?”
“I don’t like the way your arm looks. It was fairly deep. Keep putting the cream on it.” He handed her the tweezers. “Yes, I boss everyone. It works better for me that way.”
“I see. And does everyone do what you say?”
“The smart ones.”
She couldn’t help but look at his ravaged body, sliced into pieces. His obviously muscled belly, his thick chest and broad shoulders and arms had taken the brunt of the torture. He had two odd tattoos. She realized she wasn’t seeing them with her normal vision, but rather with enhanced vision, as if seeing them under a UV light. She touched one. “These aren’t normal. The ink is different.”
“No one can see them other than one of us.”
She wanted to know more, but instead of questioning him, she knelt down on the floor in front of him. Cleaning his wounds was imperative if he was going to survive. “This is going to hurt.”
“Just get it done.”
“You want to put down the rifle?”
Jack blinked down at her, surprised that he still had the rifle slung around his neck. He placed it beside his hand on the mattress and added the handgun and two knives alongside of it before taking another drink. He leaned back until his head was resting against the wall. “Go ahead.”
Briony braced herself. She didn’t like hurting anyone, and washing the wounds with antiseptic was going to torture Jack all over again, but it couldn’t be helped. “I could get one of my brothers if you’d be more comfortable.”
“Briony.” He said her name with a slight note of exasperation.
She just heard the weariness. His eyes were glazed with fever and he desperately needed to lie down. Pressing her lips together, she began the arduous task of cleaning him up. The knife wounds in his chest were hideous, blackened and crusted with bugs and infection. His body shuddered and broke out into a sweat, as she washed and applied topical antibiotics, but he stoically took it, occasionally drinking from the bottle of water.
“Ken. My brother.”
Startled, she looked up. His body continually shook, but his expression didn’t change, no matter how many times she had to wash the various cuts. “What about your brother?” Someone had rubbed a mixture of salt, leaves, and a paste into the open wounds, and getting it out wasn’t easy.
“I boss him, but he doesn’t always listen.”
She flashed him a tight smile. “Good for him.”
He swallowed several times as she scrubbed the deepest cuts, the ones so infected she wasn’t sure even the potent antibiotics she had would help.
“Jack.” Briony took the empty bottle of water from him and gently applied pressure to his shoulder. “Lie down for a while. You’re safe for the moment. Go to sleep if you can while I do this. It’s going to take some time.”
In spite of his desire to remain alert, Jack found his body stretching out on his side without his permission. “I’m just going to rest for a minute.”
Briony noted that his fingertips touched the handgun, as if he needed the reassurance that it was there, but his eyes closed. He didn’t look softer or boyish in repose. He still looked as hard and dangerous as when he watched her with his restless gaze. She continued washing his chest, taking her time, wanting to do a thorough job the first time. The wounds were deep and ugly, a name carved into his chest. There were burns and tiny slices as if someone had taken a razor-sharp knife and made cuts every inch in perfect symmetry up and down his body, in long rows of ugly wounds.
She had no idea that she was crying as she began the job of sewing the wounds closed. On some she could use butterfly bandages, but most were deep enough to require stitching. She gave him a shot of antibiotics before coaxing him to turn over. His back was terrible, with long strips of flesh missing. It was no wonder the man was running a raging fever. Insects had swarmed to the feast. Sweat beaded on his body and the shaking continued, but he never uttered a single sound.
It took her long into the night to clean him up, eventually managing to get him to help her remove his boots and the filthy pants he wore. There were more signs of torture, the tiny slices cut into his legs and bu**ocks, even around his groin, as if they’d teased him with the idea of what would come later. Under other circumstances, she might have been too shy to clean a man in such intimate places, but the damage was so severe and, although at times she knew he was aware, he didn’t open his eyes. Briony tried to be impersonal, but she felt sick at the idea that one human could do such things to another. By the time she finished, she felt protective and maybe a little possessive over him.
She pulled a light sheet over his body and brought him more water with antibiotic pills, bullying him enough awake to take them as well. Briony slipped her arm around his head to support his neck while he drank.
He hesitated before taking the pills, his eyes boring into her with suspicion. “Nothing to knock me out. I heal fast and I can take the pain.”
“No, of course not, although now that you say that, it wouldn’t be a bad idea.” She pushed her fingers through the close-cropped hair, raking leaves and twigs from it. “Just antibiotics. We have to hit the infection hard. You need a doctor.”