I approached Xandros with the cutter in hand.
He raised his head to eye me warily. “What are you planning to do with that?” His voice was hardly more than a whisper.
“It can cauterize the wound,” I said.
“It is acutter,” he pointed out.
“It is a laser. At a low setting, it should work.”
“It is the ‘should’ in that comment that brings me worry.”
“You’re losing a lot of blood. We have to get that stopped.”
“I have a lot of blood. I will be good.”
“Xandros.” I let the faintest aura of command into my voice.
He sighed. “Do what you must. Just do not cut my wing off. We need it to get back.”
“Come closer to the fire, so I can see better.”
“Again, not reassuring.” He tried to stand, and failed on the first attempt.
I slid under his arm to help him. His entire body trembled, and I pushed back on my panic. “You’re not in any shape to fly.”
“The bones will not take long to heal,” he said. “In an hour, I can shift again.”
I figured an hour, Xandros time, was likely at least two in reality. And unless we got the bleeding stopped…
He leaned heavily on me as we staggered toward the fire. Everywhere I put my hands,he flinched.
“That’s one hell of a healing process you’ve got there,” I said.
“Agreed,” he groaned as I lowered him beside the fire. “Nothing hurts like, how do you say it,fuckingbone. I would rather stick hot pokers beneath my talons.” He spoke with an uneasy mixture of Primal and English. His trembling had started to resemble shivering, and his skin sizzled beneath my hands, like he had a fever.
“You’re so hot.”
He wrapped his arms around his body. “My body temperature rises as part of the healing. We don’t sweat, we just radiate heat—wings and talons, mostly, but when we’re hurt, skin too.”
I’d once broken a finger playing a silly ball game. The resetting of the bone had been excruciating. I couldn’t imagine how painful healing his ribs and wing had been.
I pushed the tree branch so that it would burn without jeopardizing anything else. The flames flared, and the blood from his wing gleamed in the firelight. I had him sit with his back to the heat as I leaned over him to examine the membrane. It was torn in the center, and a large vessel running through it bled like mad.
When I wrapped my fingers around the wing bone, a shudder ran through him.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Do it.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. The wings—they are sensitive.”
I lifted the cutter, and turned the dial to its lowest setting. Then I aimed with care, and ran the laser beam along the artery.
Smoke rose from the wound, and he hissed in pain, but the blood slowed as the laser sealed the vessel. It was working, just needed a minor tweak?—
It took a few minutes to ensure the wound was properly cauterized. By then, there was a substantial pool lying on the concrete, but I’d managed to stop the bleeding. Relief flooded through me—I felt almost giddy.
