Help from the OtherSide

22. Partner gets on my nerves

Deccan's POV

The winds were changing with every second. It began howling into my ears as we increased our velocity, not to forget the altitude we were at.

My chest tightened seeing Yumiko race towards the ominous creature; that spoilt my five seconds of peace. Dora squatted in her werewolf, on her horse which was slightly bigger in size than ours. 

If there's one way to describe the creature, it is dirty, coal black torn-up-near-the-edges towel like. A bulge on the top indicated a head. Apparently hollow. 

I assure you, this was not cowardice on my part. Our horse was working overtime carrying three grown men, while flying at the same speed of Dora's horse. One wrong move, and all of us plummet to our deaths taking the poor animal with us. Liam lay on his stomach in front of me, just below the neck ending of the horse. I clutched the back of his shirt for safety and he enveloped his hand on my right leg.

Yumiko leaned ahead going against the wind, and rammed into the creature. 

SKREEEEEEE

I covered my ears at the 'scratching a fork on a plate' shriek emitted from the towel creature before dissipating into air.

"YAH!" Dora commanded and all the horses changed the horizontal flight course, to falling to our deaths path.

 Liam screamed as we plummeted below, because of his awkward position on the horse. I leaned back as the horses angled their wings, dropping us vertically below. I could barely keep my eye's open with the wind piercing right into it. I just prayed that the horses don't break their legs with the impact.

But Gray was smarter than I gave him credit for. He rocketed down sharp, racing all the others to the ground and bucked us off his back the minute before we contacted with the forest floor.
I lost my grip on Liam and whatever else I was holding and got thrown into a nearby fallen log.

I dived head first into the log.

 Bad decision.

My head thrummed with the impact and felt like hot needles were sewn into my forehead and eyeballs.

I clutched my head and winced at my own touch. But I had to search for my friends anyway. I stood up a little to fast, bringing TV static like vision in my eyes. Nevertheless, I groped my way around the log clearing my head a little. 

Leopard print stirred nearby gripping his shoulders and at a short distance away from him, lay Liam. Not moving at all.

"Liam!" I sprinted towards him and turned him so that I could see his face. I could hear his strained breathing but nothing else indicated whether he was conscious or not.

I called out his name a couple of times but received no response. Scarlet red flooded his clothes.

This is not good.

 I frantically dug my hands into whatever buttons I could get hold of and removed wet, thin blood-soaked shirt, and found a deep gash of flesh torn across his abdomen. 

Oh no.

Blood was slowly oozing out of his body and I had nothing to treat him with. In desperate attempts, I shrugged off my jacket and rolled my shirt length-wise making a poor band aid to wrap around his abdomen. My shirt wasn't any cleaner but that's all I had at the moment.

I tightened the arms of my Henley around him and heard him wince at the pressure. I carried him from the ground and rested his head on a relatively high boulder and rushed to pluck some wild leaves from the trees I could find and made a pillow for his head.