Venom (Book I) ✓

Chapter Two

When Ruby was first brought to the little farming village at the edge of the great kingdom of Endora she had no home there. She had no memory of a family or of a past at all. The town's medicine man, a kindly and rotund man who went by Appa, took her in to treat her for various injuries, and she never left. The little shop that he owned had become her home, and for 10 years she had resided here comfortably. She had never felt anything but love and acceptance within these walls, but now she could feel nothing.

She sat before a cheerful fire and wept. Her entire body was shaking, and though Appa had wrapped a heavy cloak around her shoulders and pushed her chair close to the flames she was frozen. Every part of her throbbed with the knowledge that in the next room Edward lay dying. She had not seen him since she returned home, escorted by Thomas, one of the local farmhands. However, she knew as soon as Appa slipped from the room he kept patients in and closed the door behind him that the news was not good. His face had been grave, though he had insisted that he would not know anything more until he had spent more time treating the injuries.

However, it had been nearly two hours since then, and there had been no more word from behind the closed door of the small bedroom. Ruby had waited obediently and patiently in her chair, clinging to a cup of tea that Appa had made up for her. She knew that he had slipped something into it to calm her, but she couldn't bring herself to drink it. Even if she'd tried, though, she wonered if her roiling stomach could have settled enough to keep it down or if she would have just ended up throwing it all up. Even with an empty stomach she wasn't sure that she wasn't going to throw up in the near future.

It was nearing the first hour of the day when she finally raised a shaking hand to scrub some of the tears from her face, and it came away bloody. She stared at the coppery flakes, at first confused, and then distressed. She knew that this blood was not hers, and that made the silence coming from the next room even more frightening.

Ten years ago, she had been confined to the exact room Edward now occupied. It had seemed claustrophobic then, having come from the forest, never seeming to have slept between walls of any sort. She realized now that the room was not so bad, but she also knew how much of a prison it felt when you were forbidden from leaving the bed. She wondered if he had sat where she now did back then, scrubbing her blood from his hands, wondering if she would live or die. She had been in much better shape than him, but they'd been young, and there had been more blood than there should have been.

He had been no older than 10, and she remembered clearly the look of shock and terror that he'd worn when he found her running through the forest. She'd collapsed, and she remembered wondering if he was there to save her or kill her. She also remembered not caring which he did. She was just so tired of running. She wondered now if he had felt the same when he'd felt her pulling him into her lap in the fields, wondered if he was ready to die, or if he'd been clinging to life.

She doubted he would still be alive if he hadn't been.

In the next room, Edward was in pain. It coursed through him like it resided directly in his veins, and he clawed at his skin in an effort to get it out of him. If he could just dig it out from under his skin and bones and sinew then he would be okay. He would be okay. Hands caught at his wrists and pulled them to his sides, but he was desperate. He had to pull the pain from his veins, but the hands were insistent and he was so weak.

A soft voice was speaking to him, but he couldn't make out the words over the sound of rain falling, and the screaming that he couldn't stop from pounding against his skull. He wanted to drag that out of his body too, but the hands were still holding him down. The voice was very close, he knew, but he still couldn't hear it, and when the hands were withdrawn something heavy and warm covered his whole body. He tried to jerk away from it, but it swaddled him, and after a few seconds he realized that it was not hurting him. In fact, beneath its weight, he felt less exposed, and so he stilled as much as he could, though his muscles still contracted without his consent, and he found that no matter how hard he tried he couldn't keep his arms from straining against the weight upon him.