Wounded: Book 8 (A Rylee Adamson Novel) by Shannon Mayer

there wouldn’t have been much I could have done. We were half buried in the hay, the insulating factor keeping the winter cold at bay. “ Charlie ? How did you know I was here?”
    “Everyone’s looking for ya … what happened to yous hands?” He gasped as he limped toward me, his wooden leg obviously giving him grief. He held out his hands to me, but I couldn’t do the same. My skin had toughened, already to the point where moving anything made it crack and bleed.
    “I need a healer. And food and clothes for this guy.” I awkwardly held up the bundle of baby wrapped in my jacket.
    “Sweet mother of the gods, Rylee, that be a baby.” Charlie’s eyes were wide. “Is it yours?”
    I barked out a bitter, pain-filled laugh. “No. Milly’s. We got him away from Orion.”
    He stared at me, sadness and pain filling his eyes. More than any of my friends perhaps, he knew the loss of loved ones.
    “Ah, lass, I see it in you. She’s gone, isn’t she?”
    I nodded, my lip trembling as I fought the tears. Charlie made a face. “I’ll gets Pamela. She’ll heal you up right.”
    He ran back toward the door and slipped through. I tipped my head back and watched the light filter in through the barn slats. We were only an hour or so from sunset, and then Frank would be trying to send Berget across the veil to me. How the hell was I going to take her head when my hands were so royally fucked up? Never mind the emotional toll I was looking at for finally becoming my sister’s murderer.
    My family, adoptive mother in particular would finally be right. I would finally be the one to kill Berget. I wanted to vomit.
    The how of it, with my hands as they were, weighed on me as I waited for Charlie. How was I going to fight Orion with messed up hands? Was Liam still alive? What was going on at Jack’s that things had fallen apart so fast?
    Ten minutes, and a thousand questions in my head, later, Charlie was back with a bundle of cloth, a bottle, and a heavy wool blanket. Without asking, he took the baby from me, dressed him in the clothes that the bundle of cloth turned out to be, and popped the bottle into his mouth. The little guy latched on and sucked hard, and noisily.
    It was easy for me to forget that Charlie had a family at one point, that they’d been killed. He rocked the little boy with a practiced ease while the kid sucked at the bottle greedily.
    “Pamela be on hers way. I found thems already on their ways here. Shouldn’t be long now. You sleeps, I’ll be watching over yous both,” Charlie said and, feeling a little guilty, I Tracked him, Tracked demons and evil spirits just to be sure.
    Charlie was clean, and there was nothing close by. I Tracked Pamela and felt her moving toward me at a good clip. “She’ll be here soon. No point in sleeping.”
    The violet skinned book poked me in the thigh as I sat up. “So much death, Charlie. Is it worth it?” I stared at the book, unable to not see my hands. They looked like something from a horror movie, like a prop made to scare little kids. Blackened and charred, nausea rolled through me at the thought that perhaps I couldn’t be healed. Perhaps this was part of my destiny.
    “The world might not be worth it,” he said as he rocked the little boy. “But there is enough good in the world that I thinks yous has to keep fighting.” Charlie handed the baby back to me, setting him carefully into my arms above the burns. “Whats yous going to be calling this little tyke?”
    That was a good question. He needed a name, one strong enough to carry him through his whole life, however long it would be. I thought of those who’d passed, my friends who’d given their lives for the fight against Orion. Jack and Dox were at the top of the list. But Milly wouldn’t want her baby named for either of those two.
    Dark lashes rested against milky skin as his lips puckered and he started to suck in his sleep. “Milly had a brother who died when she was very young. His name