Under Zenith Read online

  “No,” he managed to gasp, before falling to his knees right in front of me.

  He grimaced painfully, closing his eyes tight and resting his head against my stomach. It was a pretty vulnerable move for someone so bent on being perceived as tough, and the fact that it was Hayden made me extremely uncomfortable. I didn’t mind the actual physical contact of the situation, but seeing someone so strong suddenly become so exposed, frightened me. The situation must have been pretty grim.

  Not knowing what to do I placed my hands on his head, stroking his hair and trying to be soothing on the outside while I was completely freaking out on the inside. A million thoughts were passing through my head and Hayden wasn’t doing much to help the situation.

  I had to know if more arrows were coming. That would tell me if I should be trying to run and get Hayden out of there, or if I had time to sit and try to save him. I also needed to know just how serious his condition was. What did I do if my Guide died?

  “Hayden?” I asked, lifting his chin up to face me.

  I was instantly shocked by just how terrible he looked. His face was sweaty, his eyes clouded over, and his normally tan skin was now pale and splotched with yellow patches. It was much worse than being impaled by an arrow. There had to be some sort of poison on the tip. I’d seen Daddy hunt enough to know this wasn’t a normal reaction.

  “Hayden, you have to stay awake so I can help you. We need to get out of here in case they attack again,” I said slowly, holding his cheeks to force him to look at me.

  It wasn’t really doing much good since his eyes kept fluttering closed.

  “Hayden?” I said again, trying to get his attention.

  “Welcome to Task Three,” he breathed, his voice so weak that it frightened me.

  Before he passed out completely, he uttered one more sentence: “Reasoning under pressure.”

  Chapter 11

  “Hayden!” I shouted, but it was useless.

  His body had gone completely limp and he was now sitting on his knees, slumped up against my legs.

  “Reasoning under pressure,” I repeated. “I just have to get Hayden to safety. That’s easy. Not a big deal at all.”

  I wasn’t really buying the false logic that I was repeating aloud in the hopes that it would become true, but it didn’t hurt to try. I knew I needed to get Hayden to the safe house somehow. I just hoped we didn’t get shot by any more arrows and I could, by some means, heal him.

  There was probably medicine in the safe house, hence why it was called a ‘safe’ house. If I could just lug Hayden there in time, I could get him better and be done with the task.

  Really, minus the pressure of Hayden dying because I didn’t get him where he needed to be in time, this task was the least difficult of the ones I’d faced so far.

  Okay fine, the possibility of Hayden’s imminent death was pretty motivating, even if he’d always been horrible to me. In his defense he hadn’t been too rude to me yet since I’d seen him that morning. So he was making progress.

  Deciding I probably needed to get down to business, I hooked my arms under Hayden’s and lifted with all of my might, trying to get him back on his knees so I could remove the arrow. I propped him up, holding his head to my stomach once more to stabilize him while my free hand grasped the arrow tightly.

  Luckily the arrowhead was shaped more like a bullet than a triangle and didn’t have any jagged edges to cause damage on the way back out.

  “Sorry, Hayden,” I said, before closing my eyes and yanking the arrow out.

  In all honestly, it was probably better that he was completely out or he wouldn’t have been very happy with me for that.

  Blood began to ooze from his injury and I instantly had to wonder if removing the arrow had been a good move. I wasn’t a doctor by any means and though it had seemed like a good idea at the time, the liquid quickly staining his black shirt suggested otherwise.

  “I need to get you some medicine,” I said, looking at the safe house over my shoulder.

  I could get to the medicine faster if I left Hayden here and ran to and from the safe house without him. But he also might get attacked again, which would definitely be a bad thing. Or he might get worse and I wouldn’t be there to help him. I definitely couldn’t have that. As it was, while I stood there trying to figure out what I would do, his face had gotten paler and his skin colder.

  “Hang on, Hayden,” I said, trying to ignore the blood soaking his shirt.

  I rolled him over onto his back, hooked him under the arms, and dragged him backwards the best I could. It was slow going and we were leaving a path of broken and destroyed tulips in our wake, but we weren’t getting shot at anymore so that was a definite improvement.

  It had to take a good fifteen minutes to drag Hayden to the house and by the time we got there I was red in the face and sweaty. Go figure the day the sun would finally show through a bit was the day I had to do hard physical labor.

  I wiped the back of my hand across my forehead and dropped my cargo, accidentally hitting Hayden’s head on the ground in the process.

  “Sorry!” I said with a wince.

  Yeah, it was definitely a good thing he wasn’t awake for this. He’d murder me for manhandling him so much. In my defense, he had sat by and watched as the stupid zombie from the first task had dropped me on my head.

  I could still feel the bump there, even now.

  Opening the wooden door to the cottage, I lugged Hayden in with me and grabbed a pillow for him since the concrete floor probably wouldn’t be very easy on his already hurt head. Once I’d taken care of him, I searched the few cupboards of the only room in the building for medicine.

  “This can’t be happening,” I thought aloud, closing the last cupboard dejectedly. “How does the safe house not have medicine? What was the point of this task?”

  Shaking my head in confusion I walked back over to Hayden, who now looked as if he were gone completely. His skin was ashen and cold, his pulse was faint, and his breathing shallow. It wasn’t looking good and if I couldn’t figure something out quickly, he’d be dead and it would be all my fault.

  “Reasoning under pressure,” I said, hoping that by repeating Hayden’s words I’d know what to do. “If this all comes from my memory then I must know what to do in this situation. I just have to remember.”

  I knelt on the hard ground next to Hayden, placing my hand over his wound and closing my eyes. As much as I didn’t like him, I definitely couldn’t let him die.

  If the arrow really was poisoned, I probably should have tried to get the poison out of his blood stream a long time ago. Now the idea of sucking it out like a snake bite seemed almost futile, but I had to give it a shot anyway. I knew I’d never forgive myself if someone died because I hadn’t tried every possible method to save them.

  Leaning over Hayden, I ripped his black T-shirt from the neck, to the hole where the arrow had pierced it. There wasn’t as much blood as I had expected, but the wound didn’t look good.

  “Do I cut it or something?” I asked the empty room.

  I tried to remember seeing snake bites on movies. It seemed like the hero always cut a little “X” into the helpless woman’s skin before sucking the poison out, and if it was in a movie it had to be true, right?

  Kidding.

  But I had no other plan in mind, so listening to movies seemed like the best option.

  I knew I didn’t have a knife, but Hayden, with his bad boy façade, might very well carry one, and so I searched through his pockets, my tiny hands trying to find anything even remotely knifelike. Of course leave it to Hayden to frustrate me even when he was unconscious by not having the knife I needed.

  “Only one option then,” I said, looking down at the wound and knowing what I had to do.

  I may not have had a knife, but I could still try to suck the poison out, as much as I didn’t want to.

  “Just close your eyes and do it,” I told myself, knowing it would be slightly less than pleasant
to put my mouth over a bloody wound. But I wouldn’t go around fainting at the sight of blood. I’d be logical and resourceful and brave, even if I didn’t feel like being any of those things at the moment.

  Just like cleaning a snake bite, I poured some water from a pitcher over Hayden’s wound, then leaned over and tried to suck the poison out. The bitter taste in my mouth let me know I was at least doing something right, even if I had waited a bit too long to begin this process. Really, I was amazed there was still any poison this close to the wound. It should have made its way into the rest of his body by that point.

  Maybe I had just been granted a do-over from the Purgatory Task Committee…if such a thing existed.

  Before long, the taste of the poison was gone and I hoped more than I’d ever hoped for anything that it meant his blood was clear.

  Taking the small scrap of his shirt I’d ripped off, I soaked it in water and held it firmly over the now clean wound. I also washed my mouth out about fifty times, knowing I’d never be able to forget that awful memory.

  The wound looked pretty good and I tried to tell myself I’d done a good job, but Hayden was still out cold and the skin around the wound was still burning hot. Something wasn’t adding up there and so, I tried again to search my memory for any detail that might be helpful in this situation.

  I thought back to the painting in my grandma’s house. She’d told me all about her Dutch ancestors and the places she’d seen when she went back to her homeland. She told me about how she loved tulips and always had them in her house.

  I remembered how she’d tried to teach me to cook stroopwafels, but I’d burned myself on the pan.

  “I have a plant for that,” she’d said wisely.

  “Tulips?” I guessed.

  “Jewelweed,” she’d responded, reaching for the plant in question.

  My burn had healed so quickly once she’d crushed up the plant and smoothed it into my skin.

  It was an odd, roundabout connection to my current surroundings, but maybe, if my mind was creating the entire task to begin with, there might be some jewelweed just waiting to be used.

  “I’ll be right back, Hayden,” I said to my still Guide.

  I couldn’t let him die. I had to fix him.

  Running out to the front of the cottage, I wasn’t all that surprised to find a small garden plot with the exact plant I needed in it. Apparently it paid off to actually stay calm and logical in the face of this ridiculous task.

  Wasting no time, I grabbed a handful of the plant, ran back to Hayden, and quickly crushed it up to apply to his wound. The bleeding had stopped thankfully, but his breathing was still slow and shallow and I began to worry that I’d taken too long to treat him.

  I rubbed the poultice over the skin on his chest and back, hoping my memory had served me well; then I waited. I’m not quite sure what I was waiting for since it wasn’t likely that the plant would work instantaneously, but I still sat frozen in place, one hand on Hayden’s chest and the other resting in my lap.

  If this didn’t work, I wasn’t sure what else to do. I was pretty outdoorsy, but that didn’t mean I could cure someone’s wounds all of a sudden.

  The only sound in the quiet cottage was the sound of Hayden’s shallow breathing and my own heartbeat. After a moment, however, his shallow breathing stopped all together.

  “Hayden?” I said, my voice tentative as I looked down at him.

  His chest was no longer rising and falling and a cold dread crept through my veins.

  “Crap!” I exclaimed, getting to my knees and leaning over his lifeless body.

  Trying to recall any training I’d received from my hall advisor my freshman year in the dorms, I plugged his nose, tilted his head back, and pressed my lips to his.

  Had the situation not been so dire, it would have been a bit awkward being this intimately close to Hayden. As it was, I tried to ignore the fact that our lips were touching and focused on breathing air into his lungs.

  I alternated pumping his chest with my fists and blowing air into his mouth for a good few minutes with no result. No matter how little it seemed to be doing, however, I wouldn’t give up. What if a few more seconds would have saved him and I’d given up too soon? But I couldn’t deny that I was quickly growing more and more fatigued by the minute.

  I’d already spent my morning dragging Hayden’s lifeless body across a tulip field, and now my shaky arms were just moments from giving out.

  I tried to keep going for as long as I could, but after breathing life in to him one last time, my resolve weakened and I simply rested my forehead against his; our cheeks touching and tears beginning to pool in my eyes.

  I didn’t like Hayden, it was true. He bugged me and said more rude things than nice things, but that didn’t change the fact that I had gotten to know him over the last few days. Whether I wanted it to be the case or not, Hayden was sort of a friend now and he was dying right in front of me. There was no way I was heartless enough to not be affected by that.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered into his ear, lacing my arms around his neck and keeping my cheek pressed to his. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry,” Hayden whispered back, “You’re not that bad of a kisser.”

  Chapter 12

  I instantly pulled away from Hayden, startled by his sudden speech and delighted that he wasn’t dead.

  “You’re okay!” I practically shouted.

  “Well I had an arrow stuck in my shoulder just so you could complete a stupid task, so I wouldn’t say I’m okay, but I’m alive,” he replied, sounding much stronger already than he had before he’d passed out. “Although I am quite troubled to wake up with my shirt torn practically off and a woman draped across my chest.”

  “About that,” I began, realizing just how bad the situation probably looked to him. “I don’t think I ever wanted to admit this to you, but I was actually kind of sad when I thought you’d died.”

  “So you tore my shirt?” he asked, raising a thick eyebrow at me and slowly sitting up.

  “I had to clean out the wound,” I explained, motioning toward his shoulder that was currently covered in the plant poultice.

  “I can’t trust you with anything,” he complained.

  Hayden wiped the goop away, flicking it onto the ground and, much to my surprise, his wound was now nothing more than an angry red welt on his skin.

  “Okay, I knew I was good, but I didn’t think I was that good,” I said, letting my pride get the better of me just for a moment.

  Maybe now that I’d actually done something right, Hayden wouldn’t think I was such an idiot.

  “Don’t be so cocky. It wasn’t your hillbilly plant recipe that healed me so fast. You did the right thing, but the task is what sped the process up.”

  He always had to rain on my parade.

  The sky was rapidly darkening outside and I wondered how long I had until the snow began to fall. I didn’t feel like I had been in the cycle for very long, but it was quickly becoming evident to me that the cycle length was based on my progress through the task, not an actual assigned timeframe.

  “Your shoulder is still pretty red,” I pointed out.

  The room was darker now, though the orange tinted sky still shone through the open window and a fire I hadn’t noticed before was crackling in the stone fireplace. In this crazy place it was completely possible that the fire had started itself when we had our backs turned. I was quickly learning that the normal rules of life didn’t apply once you were dead.

  “It’ll be fine,” he said, shrugging off my concern uncomfortably.

  Heaven forbid someone be nice to him.

  “Let me see it,” I said, scooting closer to him on the floor and pressing my fingers against the shiny skin. “It feels burning hot still!” I exclaimed.

  “It’s not burning hot, your fingers are just freezing. You have the worst circulation ever,” he assessed, trying to play doctor.

  “You’re so difficult,�
� I said, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him even closer to me.

  “What are you doing?” he asked apprehensively.

  It was funny to hear him when he was caught off balance. In fact, it was nice to have the tables turned and be the one making him uncomfortable, since he made a point of making my life miserable on a daily basis.

  “My mama taught me that your lips don’t change temperature like your hands do, so this way I’ll be able to see if you’re actually burning up or if I’m just cold,” I explained, now pressing my lips against the skin on his shoulder.

  “Oh, I forgot that’s what they taught me in medical school. Kiss the patient’s shoulder to make sure they don’t have an infection,” he mocked, his voice a bit shaky.

  I could feel goose bumps spring up on Hayden’s arm that I held, but ignored it, trying not to be too proud of my victory. It wasn’t every day that you got to put a smug, overly confident man in his place with a few feminine wiles.

  Okay…feminine wiles was pretty generous. Mostly he was probably just uncomfortable if anyone touched him, but I was still happy to know that unshakeable Hayden could be made uncomfortable so easily.

  “Are you done yet?” he asked, heaving a deep sigh beneath my lips.

  I pulled away, satisfied that I had both taken his temperature, and made him significantly uncomfortable.

  “Yes I’m done, you big baby. And I think you’ll live. My hands are just cold.”

  “Like I said,” he answered smugly.

  I made a face at him, but didn’t say anything, standing from the floor and getting a better look at the small room now that I wasn’t panicked about Hayden dying.

  Just like the previous two safe houses, this room had a rocking chair, a bed, a few cupboards, and a fireplace. It seemed like there had to be a reason that every room looked exactly the same on the inside, despite how different each safe house looked externally. Maybe there was some long forgotten memory from my past that made me feel safe in a one room shack.

  I was sure Hayden could tell me exactly what memory had created these safe houses, but I wasn’t about to ask him and give him the satisfaction of knowing yet another thing that I didn’t know.