Bone Deep(56)

There was an outcropping of boulders that hung precariously to the side of the mountain they stood on. Above that was a sheer cliff face. Attached by a bevy of ropes crisscrossing her body to the cliff face was Bone. The moon was out, though clouds buffeted most of its light. She was nude and her head hung, chin touching her chest. Dmitry could not tell if she was awake or not. Alive or dead.

“Do not call her,” Dmitry warned. “She might startle and it could be the action that sends her to the river.”

Rand and Adam nodded.

Dmitry made his way to the top of the cliff, standing over her and looking down to the river some three hundred feet below. The clouds now completely covering the moon did nothing to hide the bruising on her body. The ropes holding her were dark in some places and Dmitry knew it was her blood.

“You cannot go down,” Rand warned. “Not with your hand and shoulder.”

“It will be me,” Dmitry told him. “If she falls, I will be with her.”

“No!” Adam whispered ruthlessly.

Dmitry looked at his friend. “You would do the same for your Arrow. Bone is mine. I may have waited too long. It will be me, Adam. No one but me.”

Adam’s face showed his struggle but in the end he ceded to Dmitry, nodding his head in understanding.

Rand unwound the rope Grant had brought with them making a harness of sorts which Dmitry stepped into, then he wrapped the rope around his waist. Rand and Adam wrapped the other end around their arms and Dmitry began to lower himself to Bone.

Rocks dislodged from the face of the cliff, falling to the river below. It would not be her. He would save her.

“Bone Breaker,” he called out softly when he had lowered to right in front of her. His feet were wedged in footholds cut into the rock. Joseph had planned this punishment so well it seemed. But what he had created for pain Dmitry would use for her salvation.

She did not stir. Dmitry reached for her hair, the long locks tangled and matted with blood and dirt. Her chest did not rise and fall and he panicked. Until he put his finger under her nose and felt the air of life moving.

“Bone Breaker, you will live,” he said firmly.

Her eyes darted to and fro behind her closed lids.

“Etzem, wake up,” he demanded gently.

Her eyes opened slowly, as if the weight of her burdens was too much to carry. She was so still, so calm, and it hurt him to see it. How long had she been here? How many times had Joseph done this to her that she was conditioned to barely even breathe?

“Dmitry,” she whispered from dry, cracked lips. “I have seen the blue-blue sky.” She smiled then and said, “I am shavur.”

“You are broken but I will piece you back together, Etzem. I will show you how to live and I will show you that even broken you are stronger than any I have known.”

“I am so cold, Dmitry. I am dying. Leave me here in this place where I was created,” she pleaded, eyes closed, lips barely moving. “Leave me with the others.”

“I cannot,” he admitted. “This place was never for you.”

She sighed and to Dmitry it was full of endings. “Ibadti et haderekh sheli.” Her voice held the tones of her homeland.

Dmitry cupped her cheek gently. “And I have found you.”

Her eyes opened then. “How?”

“Where you are, I will be also.”

She started to shake her head and fear crossed her face. Her movement was the catalyst that ended the ropes hold on her. They snapped and she fell into his arms. Then they were both falling for several feet until Rand and Adam gained control and pulled them up. She did not make a sound.

It was slow going but he did not let her go. She had passed out, was truly dead weight but Dmitry had seen the condition of her body and knew she would have been unable to help anyway.

“We have to hurry,” Rand bit out. “I hear hounds in the distance.”

Dmitry remembered the switch and as Adam took Bone from him, Dmitry flipped it. As soon as his thumb depressed the switch it seemed the entire forest behind them exploded. Dmitry grabbed Bone in his arms and took off heading west to the mountain summit.

Rand and Adam stayed behind him and they did not stop until they crossed just beneath the summit and hit another stretch of forest. They found a path and a few minutes later they found the Jeep Grant had promised them.

Dmitry had just put her in the Jeep when a single shot hit the dirt at his feet. He turned, pulling his Desert Eagle from his waistband and pointing in the direction the shot had come from.

“She will live,” a soft voice called out. “It is as it should be, nesti. Tell her I’ll be waiting.”

Bear. Dmitry froze. The accent was his homeland. Only one person had ever called him that nickname and she was buried in these mountains somewhere.

He searched the darkness, his heart thudding heavily because in the tones of that voice had been an unmistakable threat. His heart hardened. It wasn’t possible. There was no way.

“She is fading, Dmitry,” Adam called out.

Dmitry tried to see who hovered in the darkness, but he could not and the woman who’d stolen everything he was needed him.

“I will find you,” he called out.

It was all he could give the one who’d spoken to him from the shadows and it was a threat of his own. He turned to Bone, lifted her into his arms and left the voice from his past there. He was torn but so was Bone and she held him now. All of him.