Winter's Fury - Volume Two of The Saga of the Twelves (28 page)

“
Y-yes,” she retorted,
tears forming under the marshalled concentration in Anthony’s
eyes.

To Elena's surprise, the
teen did not break contact. She stared back with purpose, taking
his criticism, though it seemed to cut her to the bone.

“
I hope so, Kim. I hope
you are for real, because one day it might be my neck on the line
and you might be the only one who can save me. I will have to put
my trust in you to do the right thing, at exactly the right moment,
just like my sister did right here today to save Hyun.

“
Trust without question,
execution without delay, results without death. All those qualities
encompassing the sort of lives we now have to lead. The eight of us
have come to understand this. Now the three of you have to embrace
it as well. Because… because… well, because you have to… there is
no other choice,” finished Anthony. He looked away and bringing a
hand to face, rubbing at his own eyes.

Sophie went to him at once
and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder that he accepted at once.
She whispered something in his ear that seemed to make him
relax.

Elena turned to look at
Kimberly once again.

“
I am sorry,” she mouthed
at Elena and shrugged her shoulders, wiping at her eyes.

“
Hey, Joaquin,” began
Anthony, “why don’t I take your place there with Hyun. Let’s have
you and Kimberly and Derek kinda go and talk somewhere. You get
them up to speed with everything that’s going on. You know, give
them all the details. Yeah?”

Joaquin looked up at her
brother with a slight squint, though there was no glare in his
eyes.

Elena knew the larger boy
was not used to taking direct orders from anyone, except maybe his
coaches. But, he dismissed what he was feeling or was about to
utter.

“
Yeah
sure, man, no problem, I’ll get them
up to
speed
.” He stood up and beckoned the other
two to follow him as he walking off a ways. Almost immediately, the
three of them began to talk.

Elena copied her brother
and squatted at Hyun’s side, as did Mikalah and Sophie. Jason and
Louis stayed where they were. Andrew hung back with the animals.
The Familiars formed a five-pointed perimeter about the rest of the
group with adroit proficiency.

Both Kimberly and Derek
make startled noises and gestures when they realized the rest of
the Fist had joined them from the forest.

Joaquin placated their
fears at once, pointing out individual animals and giving the other
two the details of each. It still took them a few minutes to calm
them down. Even then, whenever they looked in the direction of the
animals, there was still great deal of anxiety about their
faces.

“
I guess I’m lucky you
were around when you were,” muttered Hyun through another grimace
of pain.

Elena’s concentration
broke.

She peered down at the
teenage girl before her on the snow-covered trail. “I’m not sure
how I did it this time. It was a little different than before…
stronger maybe. Up to now, I had only practiced with campfires and
light bulbs. I didn’t know I could pull the rays of the sun into me
and… and smash them together into a bundle so tight I could make
lightning.” She blinked, embarrassed. “I didn’t know I could do
that.”

Her brother squirmed
closer to the downed girl, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he
shuffled.

“
Well, it doesn’t matter
how you did it, right? It worked like a charm.” Hyun paused to
breathe in and out, in labored gulps. “Still, though, I owe you a
great deal of thanks just the same.”

“
You’re welcome,” said the
nine-year-old, enthusiastic as she rubbed at her bruised shoulder.
She was glad when it appeared the discomfort there was
subsiding.

At her side, her brother
repeated what Joaquin had done earlier with his hands, offering
them to Hyun. “You ready to try and sit up now?”

“
Yeah, might as well or
else I’ll end up freezing to death on this cold-ass trail,”
answered Hyun in jest. She grabbed Anthony’s hand and pulled. Her
brother supported the Asian girl, pushing against the small of her
back to lessen any strain.

Elena grinned, pleased to
see the other girl sit up without yelling out in agony.

She did frown though,
indicative of the pain in her body. Her forehead creased with the
effort. Hyun glanced around and then looked at Anthony with
searching eyes. “You think you could check my back, see what the
damage is?”

Elena watched her brother
glance over at Sophie, a stricken look on his face.

Sophie wasted no time and
walked around to Hyun’s other side. “I’ll help, is that
ok?”

Hyun nodded and put her
head in her knees, her arms folding around her head. “Go ahead,”
came her muffled voice.

They both leaned Hyun
forward a tiny bit more. When she made no yelp of pain, Sophie
hiked up her jacket and cashmere sweater.

Elena could see she was
wearing a white cotton undershirt below. Streaked with a good
amount of blood, the wounds seeped in three locations, where the
spider-bat’s claws had stabbed. To her relief, it was not drenched.
In fact, to the little girl, they appeared to have stopped bleeding
altogether.

Sophie pulled the
undershirt upward with care. She un-tucked it from the girl’s jeans
and exposed her skin and the waistband of her white cotton
underwear.

Elena almost giggled out
loud when she saw her brother blush bright crimson.

Sophie noticed and smiled
too, but it extinguished once she saw the extent of Hyun’s
injuries.

Elena gulped back her
aversion at seeing open wounds. Girding her courage, she saw Hyun
had three neat punctures in her back. They were about
three-quarters of an inch wide and about the same measurement in
depth. They had indeed stopped bleeding, and were oozing light
amounts of blood. They made small rivulets down her body, soaking
into her underwear and jeans.

“
Hey Andrew!” called
Anthony, not changing position.

“
Yeah, bro, what’s
up?”

“
Dude, go back to the
shopping carts and bring back the paper towels and something we can
use to bind Hyun’s wounds. We need something we can wrap completely
around her torso,” replied Anthony in a raised voice.

Andrew did not answer
back, but shot off into the forest behind them back to where they
had left the shopping carts. Their investigation of the noises in
the intersection had not required their presence. The bear-bogs had
shed them for added mobility.

“
How bad is it?” wondered
Hyun after a while, her words stunted, short.

Anthony looked from the
girls’ back to her face, which she kept sideways from him. He could
only see half of the uncomfortable cast of her expression. “How bad
does it feel?” he replied with a question of his own.

“
Not too bad. It just
stings a lot. When I move it feels like a jolt of pain at first,
but then it goes away,” described the teenage girl, still gazing at
the ground in front of her.

“
Well, then it’s not as
bad as if feels. For the most part, the wounds have stopped
bleeding, but they’re still kinda oozing. We need to apply pressure
on them to make them stop altogether. We’ll do it after we get them
cleaned. You know all the ‘better-safe-than-sorry’ crap our parents
drummed in our heads, right?” He ended on a light note, hoping she
would smile.

She did not. She just
nodded her head a few times, focusing on what lay before her
instead.

Andrew came back, running,
holding something that did not look like a roll of paper towels at
all. He held it out toward Anthony when he came nearer.

Anthony was about to get
frustrated with his friend when he saw the Red Cross marked plain
on the outside of the small container. He realized that someone had
been smart enough to pack a First Aid kit. “Oh, man, that’s even
better! Thanks Drew!”

Then to Hyun: “We’re in
luck, girl. Someone packed a First Aid kit, so we can bandage you
up the right way.”

“
Good,” was all Hyun
said.

Andrew fell back into the
position with the members of the Fist.

Elena wondered if the
sight of blood bothered him. He would not glance their way once he
settled back in the picket-line.
Figures
, she thought and returned
her attention back to the people before her.
Some people just can’t handle it.

Anthony looked over Hyun’s
back at Sophie and nodded to see if she was ready.

She nodded back in
affirmation.

Elena watched as her
brother opened the metal container with the big Red Cross inscribed
upon it. He began rummaging around within it. Within half a minute,
he had pulled out three large, square Band-Aids, a few q-tips, some
cotton balls and an ace bandage. Another quick search produced a
small vial of alcohol and a larger bottle of a generic version
of
iodine tincture
. He unstoppered the vial of alcohol and grabbed a cotton
ball and up-ended the vial to pour some of the liquid onto the
spongy material. He began to clean Hyun’s back of the blood that
had run down it and had stained her clothing below.

She flinched.

Anthony drew back with a
jerk, fearful he had hurt her even more.

She just giggled, resigned
at her over-reaction. “It’s cold. That’s all. You didn’t hurt me,”
she assuaged Anthony’s apprehension.

Sophie giggled
too.

Anthony bunched his
shoulders towards his ears. “Well, I wasn’t sure… better safe than
sorry, right?”

Sophie just smiled back at
him and he continued finishing up where he had left off.

Elena saw her brother hand
the ace bandage to Sophie immediately thereafter. He said, “Take
this, because once I clean and cover her wounds with the Band-Aids,
we’re going to have to wrap it around her body a few times. We can
apply pressure to staunch the bleeding. Ok?”

Sophie nodded she
understood, although she looked a little pale in Elena’s
eyes.

Anthony then dipped both
sides of three of the q-tips in the alcohol and leaned close to
Hyun’s ear. “I have to clean the wounds as much as possible. Since
we don’t know if that spider-thing was carrying diseases or if it
was dirty or whatever, I have to be thorough. We do know its’
tissue is foreign to us, so even if it was germ-free you could
still get an infection. We have to make sure you don’t. So, umm…
brace yourself, because it’ll most likely hurt like a
bitch.”

Hyun nodded.

Elena could see her
brother do a slow three-count for Hyun’s benefit. Then, with a
tender touch, he put one of the q-tips into the topmost puncture
wound. He rubbed it, tentative, along the torn edge of the girl’s
flesh in a circular motion. He twisted the q-tip between two
fingers, so there was a continuous “fresh” edge glided along the
inside of the wound as it went.

Hyun started to scream,
but clamped her hands over her mouth. Tears streamed from her eyes,
falling to the ground, melting the snow below her.

All their companions
turned to look. But most of them turned away with only a cursory
glance, giving them a degree of privacy.

Only Garfield and Derek
went on watching. The cat appeared angry. Derek’s face filled with
almost as much pain as Hyun’s.

Elena looked over at
Mikalah, who stood behind Sophie with tears in her own eyes. She
looked sick to her stomach, but for some reason she did not glance
away.

Anthony wiped at the now
clean hole in the girls’ back with another cotton ball. Then he
dabbed at it with another. This one soaked in the iodine tincture.
He moved fast, covering the wound with one of the over-sized,
square Band-Aids. He leaned forward once more and whispered into
Hyun’s ear, so low this time Elena could not hear.

Hyun nodded again still
weeping with the pain.

Against his will, Anthony
repeated the entire process with the second, and later, the third
puncture.

In both instances, Hyun’s
screamed, but into her hands, stifling most of the sound. She could
not keep herself from crying. By the time Anthony had the third one
cleaned and covered, she was sobbing without a care against her
knees. She would not look up. She would not let any of them see the
full extent of what she was feeling. She accepted no comfort or
succor. Rather, it was a stoic weeping, a delving into personal
solitude. With determined promptness, she mustered her will and
forgot about them and the angry forest that dominated the
landscape.

Anthony glanced at Sophie.
Elena heard him say, “Ok, since the wounds are not spread far
apart, I think the one Ace bandage will be enough to bind all three
of them. Maybe we can stop the bleeding altogether.” Then to Hyun:
“We’re going to need for you to sit up straighter now, Hyun, so we
can wind the bandage around the middle section of your
body.”

She cried for a second or
two longer, and then through a pair of great inhalations, said,
“Can it wait for a minute?”