Dreamscape Adventures, Inc, page 14
He’d hurt her.
Well, she’d hurt him more, he thought savagely, as she disappeared over the side of the ravine.
When Charlotte reached bottom, Luke removed his anchor from the top.
“What are you doing?” came Charlotte’s voice from down below, watching him.
“Conserving rope,” Luke shouted back, and pointed at the crevice and the sixty-foot drop. “I’m going through there.”
“Don’t you dare!” Charlotte shouted, her voice shrill. “Luke, your shoulder! Leave the rope, it’s not worth it!”
She was referring to the gash left by the mountain lion, which had become swollen and leaked yellow pus.
“I don’t know how many more times we’ll have to descend between here and the bottom, and we can’t afford to leave any rope behind if it’s not absolutely necessary. We’re running short,” Luke shouted back. “I’d be using the shoulder either way, anyway.”
“Luke! Please!” Charlotte begged, as he zipped up the pack and positioned himself at the top of the slot, intentionally not looking straight down.
“Just don’t watch,” he shouted back.
“You stubborn bastard!” her voice cracked. Luke ignored this, focusing on the placement of his feet.
The truth was, Luke hadn’t done this kind of descent in more years than he’d care to count. His heart hammered in his chest. Getting started was the hard part. Once he’d shimmied down low enough to share some of the weight of his body between his forearms and not entirely from the outward pressure of his legs, the descent would be relatively easy. He heard Eli saying something to Charlotte, and he thought he saw a shadow move directly below him. For one wild second he imagined another mountain lion, waiting with an open mouth at the bottom of the crevice. But then he heard Billy whistle. The sound echoed through the canyon. He wanted to tell Billy to get out of the way, but this took all his concentration. His shoulder seared with burning pain as the muscles flexed to share a quarter to a third of his weight. All his limbs shook violently, but he inched down with painstaking slowness. It felt like an eternity.
Then his injured shoulder slipped. He let out a shout, and fell.
Shouts of his companions echoed all around the canyon, too. Luke thrust all his limbs out, but it was much harder to stop falling than it was to prevent it in the first place. He felt the skin of his knees and shins flaying off beneath his pants, and off of his forearms and hands with the friction. But at last, miraculously, he slowed his descent enough. He didn’t manage to stop the fall entirely, but at least he delayed it long enough for Eli to yank Billy out of the way. When he landed on the rock below with a hard thud, he was conscious and still breathing.
He lay there, panting, adrenaline pounding through him and dulling the pain. When he opened his eyes, he saw that his hands left two pools of blood on the rock where they lay.
“Luke!” Charlotte reached him first, frenzied, rolling him over onto his back. He felt her hands on his face, his chest, his arms and legs, assessing his injuries. He stared up at the sky as she did this, noticing the gathering clouds for the first time. Another storm was coming, he thought, without emotion.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Charlotte choked out. Luke didn’t think she didn’t meant physically. “I told you to just leave the rope! But you had to do it your way, didn’t you?”
Luke ignored this, testing his wrists, his ankles, his hands, and his feet. They all still moved at his command. He thought he might have cracked a rib, but now that he tested his ribcage with his elbows, he thought they might just be badly bruised. He moaned, trying to push himself up to a seated position.
“I think he’s done climbing for the day,” Eli observed over Charlotte’s shoulder.
Charlotte swore, and hissed at Luke, “You absolute, complete, and utter moron!” But tears tracked down her cheeks.
“Sorry,” Luke croaked, still trying to sit up. “Thought I could make it.”
She brushed her tears away angrily and stood up, walking away from him.
Eli glanced up at the sky. “We’d have probably been about done for today anyway,” he observed. “Looks like there’s another storm heading our way.” He pointed about half a mile ahead of them on the plateau where they had landed. “That might be another cave, I can’t quite tell from here. Think you’re up to walking, Luke?”
Luke sat with his arms about his knees, wincing as the pain subsided. He glanced up when Eli addressed him and nodded, trying to push to his feet. Charlotte stood a stone’s throw away, arms folded across her chest, teeth gritted against her still flowing angry tears.
Eli led the way, Charlotte after him and refusing to look back. Billy normally brought up the rear, but this time Luke limped along at about Billy’s pace. The boy didn’t seem to understand that Luke had been injured, and kept trying to run into Luke on purpose. After two such painful encounters, Luke started to watch out for it and ward him off with the blade of an outstretched hand, tilting them to the side to protect the ragged palms.
“Whoa there, little guy,” he panted. “I’m having a hard enough time as it is.”
“And whose fault is that?” Charlotte snapped, just as Eli turned around and called, “Billy! Come up here, buddy. Let’s let Luke walk without interference.”
Billy made a sudden loud noise that sounded like, “Looo!” They all stopped walking to look at him. Billy flapped, and made a sharp “ka” noise.
“I think he’s trying to say Luke!” Eli said, amazed, and glanced at Luke with a shake of his head. “You’ve definitely got a fan.”
“Looo-ke!”
Luke grinned at the boy, and reached out to ruffle his hair with the tips of his fingers. “That’s my name, kid. Don’t wear it out.”
“Oh my goodness, did you really just say that?” Charlotte muttered. But the corners of her mouth turned up just slightly.
“Sorry.” He shrugged, “My dad used to say that when I was little.” His smile faded as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Eli physically pulled Billy up to the front of the group by his shoulders. Charlotte watched Luke, her expression unreadable. But she trudged resentfully back to him.
“Here,” she muttered, looping an arm under his for support. He gratefully accepted, leaning on her.
“I have no idea how we’re going to get off the mountain now,” she muttered.
“With any luck, there won’t be any more steep drop-offs and we can all climb the rest of the way,” Luke grunted. “Billy seems better by the hour, at least.”
They hobbled together in silence for maybe another quarter of a mile, and Luke felt the tension growing thicker between them by the second. Suddenly they both spoke at once.
“Charlotte, I—”
“Are you ever going to—”
They both fell silent. Then Luke said, “You first,” and Charlotte said, “Go ahead.” Luke shook his head and gestured at her, saying, “No, please. Ladies first.”
She snorted. “Sure, pass that off as chivalry, why don’t you.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Not in this case!”
He sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. You were right.”
She eyed him warily. “About?”
He blinked. “The—crevice back there? Isn’t that what you’re mad about?”
“Oh, Luke, really?” She looked hurt now, and he was utterly confused.
“That’s—not what you’re mad about?” He said it like a question.
She sighed. “Nevermind.”
They hobbled in prickly silence for another several minutes, just as ahead of them, Eli and Billy arrived at their destination.
Finally Charlotte said, “You think if you just ignore the fact that I quit, that I’ll change my mind, don’t you?”
Luke didn’t answer right away. Finally he murmured, “I hoped you might.”
“Well, I won’t.”
“Charlotte,” he reached out his fingertips to her elbow, to stop her from trudging on to the cave without him. She turned to face him, his expression pleading. “Please don’t.”
“Why not, Luke?” she folded her arms over her chest. “Because half your clients are only with you because of me? Because you couldn’t even find two-thirds of your information or keep your calendar straight if I wasn’t there to keep you organized? Because—”
“Because I’d miss you.”
She blinked hard, and looked away for a minute before she could meet his gaze again. “As your assistant. You’d miss me as your assistant.”
“That’s not all, and you know it.”
Her chin trembled. “But you don’t, Luke. That’s the whole point. And I can’t—” she held up a hand, took a deep breath, and started again. “I can’t wait forever. I have to get on with my life.”
He caught hold of her wrist as she turned, and pulled her back. He opened his mouth and closed it again. Finally he said, “What do I have to say to make you stay?” He swallowed the unfamiliar lump in his throat. “Whatever it is, just tell me, and I’ll say it.”
She shook her head. “That’s not how it works, Luke. If you don’t know what to say without my having to tell you, then it doesn’t count anyway.”
Luke let out a growl of frustration as she pulled away from him again, and the first rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. “That’s so not fair! You can’t expect me to read your mind!”
“You’re a smart man, Luke,” she shot back over her shoulder. “You can figure this out, if you really want to!”
The first thunder grew louder and followed the lightning in closer succession. Unlike the first storm, this time they were all safely out of the rain. Billy cried out with every clap of thunder, but pressed himself against Luke’s uninjured side. They tried to build a fire to roast yet more mountain lion meat for dinner, but quickly discovered that with the wind, the smoke had nowhere to go and left them all coughing. They had to put it out before it had so much as browned the meat.
“Tomorrow,” Eli shouted cheerfully over the storm, “we’ll eat like kings tomorrow.”
But Luke felt too dour to share in his optimism. Charlotte sat as far from him as she could get, and would not return his glances, though he had the impression that she looked at him whenever he wasn’t watching her. He still had no coat, so he was grateful for Billy’s warmth, and even for his companionship. Why Billy seemed to like him, he had no idea, but it was funny how affection in one party seemed to stir it in another. Luke had never particularly cared for children before, and he hadn’t known Billy more than a couple of days. He was all about efficiency and productivity, and Billy slowed them down and hindered their progress tremendously. By all accounts, Luke should have found him annoying, at best. But he didn’t. In fact, Charlotte—who always understood Luke’s feelings better than he did himself—had accused him of coming back to save Billy, rather than her.
Maybe it is just that I see myself in him, Luke thought. This too seemed extraordinary, since he could scarcely imagine a child less like himself.
Luke’s thoughts strayed to Sam. The bitter tang of the thought of him was there still, but—blunted, somehow. He found himself wondering about his old mentor. Almost… missing him. He glanced at Charlotte, and thought of how he and Sam used to talk about girls, back when Luke was still prepubescent, and girls were a complete mystery to him. Sam had seemed so wise then. He’d always had the answers, always knew what to do.
How Luke had idolized him, once.
When Sam left his life, Luke had had no one. No one to teach him or guide him how to navigate the problems of life. What Luke lacked in wisdom, he made up in bravado. “Fake it until you make it” became his motto. And he did, in many ways: by most standards, he was successful. Wealthy, respected, accomplished, with a penthouse apartment in New York City and a different trophy would-be model on his arm anytime he wanted one. He’d set out to become exactly what he now was, and he’d done it all on his own, with no one to show him the way.
Yet here he sat, shivering and hungry in a cave. The one woman he cared about most in the world refused to so much as look at him now. And the little boy he barely knew whimpering at his side with every clap of thunder made him feel protective and wistful all at once.
Billy would go back to his family when this was all over. Charlotte would go… somewhere. He didn’t know where, but out of his life. That was all that mattered.
Suddenly he felt his own emptiness. But he had no idea what to do about it.
Chapter 16
Luke passed a cold, uncomfortable and rather sleepless night. He was on the end of their little four-pod sardine, and still without a coat. Charlotte put Billy between them that night, apparently deciding that it was less awkward to sleep spooning with Eli than with Luke. Billy, meanwhile, thrashed in his sleep and chattered mostly unintelligibly, though once or twice Luke thought he heard him say, “Adam,” and also “Luke.” His heart squeezed. Billy pressed against him, and Luke felt a coolness on his chest. He looked down to see that Billy was drooling on his shirt.
More than once Luke awoke with a start, thinking he saw a creature crouched and ready to pounce in the darkness. But each time it turned out to be a rock, cast in shadow in the moonlight. His shoulder throbbed where the mountain lion had ripped the flesh, his ribs ached where he’d fallen, and his muscles burned from sudden overuse. His stomach growled. He shifted on the cold, hard rock, occasionally sitting up to peer at Charlotte’s sleeping form in the moonlight. Eli had his arms wrapped around her from behind. Luke scowled at him.
They ate yet more mountain lion meat for breakfast that morning—better than having an empty belly, though Luke was grateful that this would, presumably, be the last they would have to see of it. He estimated that they had only another couple of hours or so to descend the rest of the way to the valley below, assuming there weren’t any other sheer descents. If there were, he supposed he’d just have to hunt for an alternate route.
“How are you feeling?” Eli asked Luke, catching up to him as he led the way.
Luke shrugged. “Well enough.” The truth was, he ached in places he didn’t even know he had, every breath produced sharp pain in his ribs, and he winced with every step. His skin also felt hypersensitive, which usually meant he was fighting a fever. Considering the chill of the night before, he wouldn’t be too surprised if that was the case. But he didn’t have the luxury of thinking about that right now.
“You look flushed.”
“I’m fine,” Luke told him shortly.
Eli frowned at him. “You either caught cold last night, or Billy gave you what he had. Or… let me see your shoulder.”
Luke huffed, exasperated, as Eli grabbed the back of his shirt to force him to stop walking.
“Show me,” Eli insisted.
“No.” Luke yanked his arm away.
“Why not?”
“Because what are you going to do about it anyway?” The real reason was because his shirt was sticking to the wound, and peeling it off sounded excruciating. Eli seemed to understand this, and crossed to Luke, gingerly coaxing the cloth away from the congealing wound. Luke hissed and gritted his teeth, and Eli’s mouth fell open in an o.
“What is it?” Charlotte asked as she caught up. Then she saw Eli’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“Red streaks,” Eli pronounced, his tone ominous.
“What’s that? What does that mean?” Luke looked wide-eyed from Eli to Charlotte. Their eyes were now locked on each other. Eli’s was unreadable, but Charlotte looked frightened.
“It… means you need antibiotics. Fast,” Charlotte finally met his gaze, closing the distance between them. She put a hand to his forehead and swore. “Dammit, Luke, you’re burning up. How are you still on your feet?”
“I don’t have a choice,” he muttered, “I’ve got to get us out of here.” Whether by coincidence or not, though, suddenly he felt much worse than he had before anyone had said anything. He felt the sweat beading on his forehead, and shivered.
“Looooke,” crooned Billy, oblivious, skipping up beside him. Eli caught him before he could head-butt Luke in his injured side.
Luke licked his lips, suddenly feeling parched. He started to stumble as he walked, and his knees wanted to buckle beneath him.
“Isn’t it weird,” he heard himself telling Charlotte, “the power of suggestion? A minute ago I was fine, and now, suddenly I can hardly put one foot in front of the other…”
“Luke!” Charlotte looped an arm under his bad shoulder just in time to support him. The throbbing pain took his breath away. “Sorry!” Charlotte gasped, moving to his other side.
“We’re almost down to the valley,” Charlotte murmured several minutes later. “Someone’s got to live at the base of the mountain. We can call for help. And even if they just have topical antibiotics for your arm at first, that might buy you some time…”
Luke still couldn’t reply right away. When the pain finally quieted down, he managed, “Why, do you think I’m dying?”
“Not if we get you antibiotics fast,” Charlotte answered bracingly.
Luke glanced at her pale face. “I was joking.”
She cast him a worried glance and looked away without a reply.
They hobbled like that for a mile or so along the bed of a stream, before they came to a steep descent. There was a waterfall on one side, and slippery rocks on the other. It wasn’t impossible to climb down by foot, but it was probably too much for Luke at this point, and certainly too treacherous for Billy. If Luke had been in top form, he could have belayed them down easily. But as it was…
Charlotte sucked in a breath as they stood looking down at the waterfall for a moment, and then turned back to Billy and Eli.
