Wild Country (The World of the Others #2)- Anne Bishop Page 0,203
be all right. So will you.”
“Her family lives in Lakeside. Someone should tell them.”
“Tolya will take care of that.”
They heard Virgil snarl, a sound ramped up several times from his usual unfriendly greeting. And they heard someone say, “It’s time for her pain medicine, so move your furry rump.”
Jana looked at Tobias. Tobias looked at her. They both looked toward the door as Sarah Gott walked into the room.
“Honestly,” Sarah said as she approached the bed. “He won’t come in, he won’t stay out. He just blocks the doorway and scares everyone.”
Jana drifted in and out for the rest of the day and night. Whenever she surfaced, Tobias was there to talk, to hold her hand, to read to her until she drifted back to sleep. And Virgil was there, blocking the doorway and making a nuisance of himself.
But when she woke shortly before dawn, she felt something under her hand and realized Virgil must have come into the room at some point. And at some point, someone must have explained to him about germs and keeping things clean in a hospital, because what she found under her hand was Cowboy Bob carefully wrapped in a plastic bag.
CHAPTER 37
Earthday, Frais 2
Jesse tapped on the doorframe of the mayor’s office.
“Jesse Walker,” Tolya said, his voice cold and precise. “Come in.”
“I guess I started this by pushing you to let Bennett be a viable town again. I’m sorry for that.”
“Those humans, the outlaws, would have come sooner or later.”
“Yes, they would have.” But you would have killed them the moment they arrived instead of leaving yourself open to a threat. “How is Nicolai? Does he need blood? Do you?”
“No.” Sharp. Almost cutting.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
Softer now. “No. Thank you. A Sanguinati bodywalker is coming to assess what can be done for Nicolai. Until then …” He left it unsaid.
“And you?” Jesse asked.
He held up his right hand, showing her that the first joint of the ring finger was missing. “A small but valuable lesson.”
She wondered how humans were going to survive that lesson. She saw the predator, devoid of any feelings for anything but his own kind. But she had a feeling that, given time, some measure of friendship might be accepted again.
“I’m going to talk to Kelley. I heard Dina’s body was found.”
“Yes. She was killed by a human.”
More than killed. Tortured. Raped.
There was nothing more to say, so she turned to leave.
“Jesse.”
She looked back.
Tolya studied her with those cold, inhuman eyes that maybe—maybe—held the tiniest bit of remembered warmth. “Fire told me what you did to help us.”
“To help all of us. My people and yours.”
“That choice will have weight in whatever we decide to do about Bennett.”
Jesse nodded and left. She had been shaped by the wild country just as much as the terra indigene who lived in the Elder Hills, and she could be just as fierce and as ruthless when it came to protecting her own.
Nothing she could do about the dead—not Dina or the men who’d burned—so she would do what she could for the living.
* * *
* * *
Tolya stood behind his desk in the mayor’s office and faced Yuri, Isobel, and Anya. “We are the keystone form of terra indigene here. We’re the form most adapted to human places.” Urban places, not places like this. “If we leave, no other form wants to take over the leadership of this town. If we leave, most of the terra indigene will abandon the town as well.”
“Will Scythe leave?” Yuri asked.
“This will become her hunting ground.”
“You’re deciding this without asking Grandfather Erebus?” Isobel asked.
“I was given the task of securing the town so that the railroad station wouldn’t be taken over by humans who were enemies of the terra indigene. The only way to do that was to bring in more Sanguinati and other forms of terra indigene—and particular humans. But I was too indulgent, allowed too many humans to come in too quickly. And I waited instead of killing Parlan Blackstone when he first arrived. We paid dearly for my mistakes.”
They didn’t disagree with him. They’d lost Stazia. They would never know what had compelled her to partially take on a form vulnerable to human weapons, but she hadn’t been able to shift fully to smoke before being struck by a bullet and damaged beyond saving.
They had taken her into the Elder Hills and buried her in a secret place—and had agreed that they would not acknowledge to any human that a