Page 47 of Light the Fire

I wasn’t going back. They couldn’t have me.

I’d tasted freedom, and the flavor was delicious.

I was nobody’s lab rat. Nobody’s source. Nobody’s trained assassin.

He came at me, and I fought with everything I had. Channeled every scream that had ever burned my lungs as Moord tortured me, tested my body to see just how long I could ride the edge of life and death. He said I hung on longer than any other person or Hellcat he’d ever trained. He said it like he was proud of me for trying to live, even through all the pain, when deep down I’d wanted to die and for it all to end so many times, but my body just wouldn’t let me.

I’d heard them mutter “A cat really does have nine lives” more than once as the scientists and doctors fussed over my body after Moord had “pushed” me to the fringe of my limit. I didn’t know what they meant, but I took it to mean that no matter how hard you tried to kill a cat, they just kept coming back to life.

And since I was still alive, I was determined to live my life my way.

This super soldier wasn’t a slouch, though, and he deflected most my strikes. He must have just been dosed. His strength was intense, inhuman, and rivaled my own.

Where was Zane?

I blocked a hit and swung out my dagger, which the soldier knocked out of my hand and send flying into the inky water behind us.

I growled at him. “I liked that dagger!” I transferred my Yakku blade to my right hand. The Yakku blade was my favorite weapon. Infused with diamond particles and made of titanium and tungsten, it was incredibly sharp, with a wide base and a blade that curved and tapered delicately upward and a teardrop-shaped hole at the top. One side was serrated, the other side sharp enough to split a single human hair. The blade itself was a swirling and beautiful purple color, almost like the rainbow effect when oil mixes with water.

I’d started using the blade when I was three and rarely removed it from my body. It was like an extension of my own self. The handle was heavy and made of granite but polished smooth and wrapped with an ornate and decorative leather sheath.

The soldier’s mouth curled up into a sneer as he reached into the belt on his waist and pulled out his own Yakku blade, only this blade was a deep and beautiful swirling orange shade. He lunged at me with it, and I chuckled. “I thought you were supposed to keep me alive?”

“You’ve survived worse than a stab wound,” he said with a malicious smile.

He wasn’t wrong there.

He lunged for me again, but I blocked his blade with my own, saw my opening, and went in for the kill, leaping up and burying my blade in the side of his neck. His frosty blue eyes went wide with terror as blood gushed out around the blade like a geyser, covering my arms and face. I pulled the blade free, and since we were up against the railing, I just gave him a nudge and pushed him over the edge into the water to join his friends. I did the same with the other two dead guys on the boat, then went to find Zane.

He was on the bow with a deep cut on his thigh. He’d ripped his shirt and made himself a tourniquet to control the bleeding, but it wasn’t doing enough.

My eyes went wide as I took in his pale face and the way his eyes were closing and glazing over.

I had to stop the bleeding.

Peeling off my shirt, I pressed down on the wound, then tightened the tourniquet. “There should be a sewing kit or first aid kit in the cabin.” My hands shook with terror as I pressed down on the stab wound, the shirt I’d used to stop the bleeding already saturated. “Hold it down,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

Slick with blood, his and the soldiers’, I raced across the boat and down into the cabin, tearing open every cabinet and drawer until I found a red canvas bag with a white cross on it. I’d been trained in how to sew myself up using various vegetables as my practicing dummies, and then I “graduated” to dead bodies.

I was about to climb back up the ladder but then stopped, pulled up the cushion of the seat, and grabbed the black canvas bag of the remaining serum vials.

On the deck, I returned to Zane. I could feel his heart rate slowing down. His eyes were closed, and it took me tapping his face several times to get him to wake up. He’d stopped applying pressure and was now lying in a pool of his own blood.

“Zane,” I said, panic seeping through my tone, “you can’t die. Stay with me. You have to keep being a grumpy, confusing, intense ray of sunshine, okay? Come on. I can’t lose you. Rix and Jorik can’t lose you. We need you.” I used my Yakku blade to rip his pants from his knee down to use as more fabric to soak up the blood. Then I gently but firmly knelt on his thigh to apply more pressure while I got the sewing needle and surgical thread ready.

I’d never done anything like this before, since cadavers didn’t bleed, but I’d watched the doctors stitch me up enough to know what to do … sort of.

“This is going to hurt,” I said with a wince. “I’m sorry.” Using my Yakku blade, I cut away at his pants where his stab wound was, on the top of his thigh next to his groin, and gently lifted the sopping wet shirt and pants. More blood pooled beneath it immediately, dripping down his blood-soaked thigh.

“Need to … cauterize it,” he murmured, his head lolling back and forth on the deck. “If I die … they die.”

What the heck did that mean?

“Burn it,” he whispered. “Only way to stop the bleeding.”

I blinked at him a few times. How was I supposed to burn it?

A gasp filled my lungs. I piled the saturated fabric back onto the gushing wound, picked Zane up in my arms, and carried him to where the door and ladder led down into the cabin. I couldn’t take him below, but he was closer to the burner for the cookstove now. After getting the suture kit ready, I went below to the cookstove.