“Can you lift your head for some water?”
She shook her head. “Not yet,” she slurred. “Don’t touch.”
“No. I know it hurts.” Sitting down cross-legged by her head with the billy and a mostly clean cloth, he soaked it, then twisted the end into a teat. “This is the way I used to water a dehydrated lamb.” He did have to slide a hand under her jaw to guide her face, and though she winced, it seemed bearable to her. Bringing the twisted cloth to her lips, he let some of the water dribble into her mouth, watched her swallow. “Christ, you’re a mess, love.”
“I’ll heal . . . fast. Just . . . little time.”
As he dipped the cloth several times, he studied the swelling of her tongue, the punctures. “You could have screamed, you know,” he said gruffly. “It was only me and a few birds about. Maybe a dingo or two. None of us would have minded.” Danny’s cracked mouth almost moved in a smile. “I’ll be . . . fine. Bushman rescued me.” He tightened his jaw. “You think they’ll come looking for that lot?”
He watched her consider it. The way thoughts moved behind her eyes told him she hadn’t lost her mental acuity, a considerable relief. Her lips moved at last. “Not for a while. He wouldn’t waste more men. He’ll assume”—she swallowed, forced the words to come out as clearly as she could manage—“successful. Remembers me younger, less sure.”
“So you know who sent them.”
She nodded, closed her eyes. “Later. More. Rest, Dev. Will need . . . your blood. You need rest.” Then her eyes reopened and she gave him a considering look. “If you . . . okay with that?”
“The lady only has to ask,” he said at last. He sensed it was significant, her asking him, though he wouldn’t have hesitated to give her what she needed, no matter what.
“Good. Lie down. Shut . . . up.”
With a forced half smile, he stretched out beside her on the rock, though not before he arranged the swag into more of a mattress, so she’d have something to shift upon if she chose to do so. He noticed then that her hair, which he’d swept off to the side, had trickled back along the slope of the rock to touch her shoulder, making the skin beneath twitch in an irritated way, reminding him of a horse with flies. Turning onto an elbow, he lifted the strands away from her flesh, gently scooping them forward to gather and braid them. Tying it off with a short cord from his pack, he wound it into a knot on the back of her skull, tucking it in. But he stroked his knuckles over it, wishing he could do the same to her temple, soothe her some. The pain was making her tremble, and he couldn’t touch or warm her.
But she was here, she was safe. Whatever she needed, he’d figure it out. A more complicated problem was what needed to be done about the dead men lying out around the burned-out Rovers. They were almost on the edge of Thieves’ Station property, though still about sixty miles from the actual homestead. The nearest place from here, if he remembered correctly, was about fifty more miles.
Fortunately, the Rovers had detonated in a relatively bare patch, and the wind had been down, so the fire had died out before it could become one of the devastating wildfires that could take out thousands of acres and attract too damn much attention. While the residual smoke might be seen by another station or settlement, her land was one of the rare sections that had a scattering of mountain ranges and rock formations amid the desert sections, so it might not prompt a radio call. However, if a mail plane or the Flying Doctor service passed overhead . . .
Cripes, eight dead men and here he was, trying to think of ways to conceal them. Maybe Elle was right. The kangaroos weren’t just loose in his top paddock. They’d soared over the fence and had gone walkabout.
“Danny,” he murmured quietly. “About the men.”
“Know.” Her eyes opened and they stared at each other. “We’ll send someone . . . clean up. After we get to station. Don’t like to think . . . dingoes. But might be for the best. The heat. No families.” Though she didn’t say it, he suspected that was a personnel requirement for her. His gut tightened. “How long do you think it’ll be before you’re ready to travel, love?”
“Bored with . . . babysitting. Already?”
Despite the words, he didn’t see much in her eyes except exhaustion, and that weariness wasn’t merely physical. She was fencing with him out of habit, not real spirit. Putting his hand next to hers on the rock, he overlapped her smallest finger with his.
“You’re a braw lassie, as my Scots granddad might have said, but I’m not seeing you as the bat-in-a-cave type of vampire.”
“No?” She arched a brow, a gesture reassuringly similar to the confidence she’d shown in his arms at the pub.
“Nope. You’re more the lady-of-the-manor type, ready to spear the help with your fangs over a chipped china dish.” Her eyes closed, her tongue coming out to lick her lips, which seemed to help with their movement. “Shows what you know. I’m . .
. pleasant boss . . . compared to other . . . vampires.” Her mouth thinned. “Except still . . . get killed . . . working for me.” He slid his hand completely over hers this time, though lightly, and her eyes opened again. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too. Good men . . . who deserved better.”
He knew when to keep silent and so he did, watching her as she appeared to drift off into a doze, tempered with the occasional jerk or painful shudder. Her lack of concern over authorities finding the bodies struck him as curious. But then, Thieves’ Station had been surrounded with dark rumors for some time. It suggested the landowners had a contingency plan for that—deep pockets or another manner of compelling law enforcement to overlook such things or downplay them, so they were treated as exaggerated local gossip, as he’d implied to Elle.
The current management is strongly opposed to me . . .
All these things should set off alarm bells, and they did. But when had the world—or his life—ever made any bloody sense, after all?
“Giant kangaroo.”
He saw her gaze was back on the wall. Twisting, he looked past the Rainbow Serpent done in white and red earth by a more recent aboriginal group, to a much older scratching that had used gold and blue as well. Lord, nothing wrong with her eyes. He had to leave her side to go make it out. It showed a group of stick figure men hunting a kangaroo that towered over them.
“Could be.” He ran his fingers over it. “Looks pretty old. They say kangaroos grew past ten feet, thousands of years ago.
Wombats were the size of that crispy Rover of yours.”
“Don’t believe it.” She studied the wall, obviously seeking things to distract her from the pain racking through her in short convulsions that had his own skin flinching in sympathy. “Things don’t survive . . . thousands years . . . by getting weaker . . .
smaller.”
“Depends, love.” He looked at the wasteland of her body, the beautiful face. Remembered how she’d commanded everyone’s attention just by existing, the second she’d stepped into Elle’s. “Sometimes seeming like less of a threat is the best survival technique of all. I suspect you were attacked because somebody decided you’re far more than a pretty face.”
“Dev. Dev. ”
He’d gone to sleep with his rifle and knife close to hand, so he had the latter tight in his grip when he came up out of a murky dream, responding to the urgency in her voice.
“Yeah.” He rubbed his eyes, turned to her. During the past six hours, after periodic awakenings where he’d told her stories about the bush and a variety of other nonsense to help her drift back into a doze, the open meat of her back had begun to scar over. But she was still shaking. Putting his hand on her forehead, he found she was burning up, literally so hot he had to remove his hand.
“What’s happening, love?”
“Sun poisoning . . . the vampire version of it.” She closed her eyes, apparently to manage a hard spasm that rocked her against the stone. It passed as if she’d been rolled by a wave and was bracing herself for the next one. “I need a little blood now, for strength to fight it. From your arm. Don’t . . . let me take too much.”
Her tongue was also healing, for her voice, though low and hoarse, was much clearer, and her lips looked less bee-stung. Nodding, he straightened up and leaned over her, taking his wrist toward her mouth.
“No.” She recoiled, her hands curling into claws. “Cut . . . drip it in my mouth. Don’t let me have your arm.” Frowning, he did as bade, making a shallow cut on his forearm and then positioning it over her mouth. It wasn’t as easy as letting her put her lips on him. The blood kept rolling down his elbow, but most dripped onto her tongue or splashed her lips, where she could lick it off.
After she’d had about half a cup, she nodded and turned her face back toward the rock. A couple of last drops hit her cheek, making her flinch. “I don’t like you seeing me this way,” she said. “My mouth open, like some gaping fish.” He hadn’t thought about it that way at all. He was humbled by it, how she turned her face up to him, golden lashes fanning her cheeks as she parted her lips, her delicate tongue twitching, waiting for the sustenance from him.
“Don’t be daft, love,” he said. Holding pressure on his wound to help it clot, he put his other finger to her cheek, collected the blood on it. Her gaze turned back to him. She might have been about to warn him again, but he put the bloodstained fingers to the corner of her mouth, teased her with it. Watching him in a curiously immobile manner, as if she were trapped in a suit of armor—
and perhaps that wasn’t inaccurate, hampered as she was by so many healing burns—she parted her lips. He stroked the bottom one, her fang so close it scraped his knuckle, causing a flicker in her eyes.
“This will get bad,” she whispered. “Worse before it gets better. You ever treat anyone in a fever delirium, Dev?”
“Once. My boy, Rob, he caught something. Tina and I took care of him. Thought we were going to lose him for a bit there.”