“The others—you need to help them,” I pleaded.
His brows lowered. “Where they be? Take me to them.”
I turned, and staggered. Matt caught my elbow, and in an instant, Sebastian was at my other side, muttering something unintelligible.
His long fingers supported me beneath my arm. All I felt was warmth, but my heart did a backflip. It felt sorightto be strung between the two of them as I managed to stagger around the next bend.
The guards lay motionless on the path. One had managed to crawl to prop himself up on a tree trunk, although he now looked unconscious.
Sebastian let go of my arm. His eyes flashed silver in the dim light. “How many darts did they get?”
Matt answered, pointing to the one against the tree. “That guard only got one. But there were two in this bloke.”
Apparently, Unicorns also bared their teeth. There was nothing of the pastoral pacifist in this Bellati. Sebastian crouched over the guard that had received two and trailed his hands over the man.
“Can you heal him?” I asked.
He glanced up at me. “I am Bellati,” he said.
Was that supposed to mean something to me? I stared at him.
He shook his head. “I be born to fight, not heal.”
He couldn’t heal? I filed that fact away for the future and crouched near the guard. “Maybe I can do it. I helped the other two.”
“You’re stonkered, Angel,” Matt said. “Not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Your energy is very low.” Sebastian agreed. His pale eyes drifted to Matt. “His is worse.” The long mouth straightened. “I cannot heal, but I can help. Lay your hands on him.”
I opened the armor, and swallowed before I flattened my hand against his skin. His chest barely moved.
Sebastian grabbed his horn in one hand, and laid the other over mine—warmth, and a surge of pure electricity that made it hard to breathe.
“Take my energy,” the Bellati said, “and heal him.”
It flooded into me, and I struggled to focus on the guard. To let it flow through me and into who most needed it.
Then Sebastian placed his other hand—the one with the glowing horn—over top. In the wild surge of power, I became aware of the blood flowing through the guard’s veins and the strange, six-chambered heart that moved it. It sped up as I pumped the energy in, accelerating the body’s processing of the drug, pushing it through and into the organ that filtered it into waste product.
The guard’s chest rose hard beneath my hands, and he coughed. I kept going, shoving the energy into him, until his eyes fluttered.
Sebastian removed both the horn—now dull—and his hands. Caught up in the push and pull of bodily functions, I was only dimly aware of it.
“That’s enough,” he said.
“No, I can do more...”
“You’ve done plenty.” Matt grabbed my hand, and pulled it away.
It yanked me free from the guard, snapping the connection. I swayed. Matt’s concerned face wavered, the forest beyond him blurred as though covered in fog.
When had it gotten so dark?
A deep voice rumbled from the shadows. Talakai, in human form. How long had he been there?
“Look out,” he said. “She’s going to...”
42
