Steel: The Transformation

Chapter 15

                 

Chapter 15

Alec POV

As I was walking along, holding on to Cleo I was internally calling myself every name under the sun for not sensing the Hunter. I wanted to tell her how sorry I was that I hadn't protected her, but my mouth was dry and not a word had passed between us. I could slowly feel the poison from the Hunter's throwing star make its way across my shoulder.

"Your house?" she breathed as we reached her garden.

"Yours is closer," my voice was raspy. She supported me as we headed to the back door, leading into her kitchen.

She swung up the door quickly and within a moment she had traded her support for a stool. Pushing me down on it, next to the kitchen counter.

"What do I do?" her voice was panic-stricken.

I looked at the wound that was not healing.

"It won't stop," she stared at it.

"Rose left something in your medicine cabinet. The downstairs bathroom," before I had even finished the sentence she had rushed off.

She returned a second later with a small jar of paste. She placed it on the counter and without speaking, she resolutely pulled my shirt over my head. Letting it drop to the floor as soon as I was free of it.

"Should I just smear it on?" she opened the jar and was looking at me for confirmation.

I nodded at her. She started to smear the paste across the red line in my shoulder, as her fingers danced across it I could feel the poison subsiding.

"When you're done, it would be good to wrap it with a bandage."

She nodded and turned on her heel once more, returning with a first aid box and went to work on my shoulder. As she was wrapping the bandage, she noticed a small line of scarlet forcing its way through the white gauze.

"Why is it not healing?"

"It's poison. The paste will help it heal, but the poison lasts for 24 hours. It's one of their tricks."

"The Hunters?" her voice told me that she didn't really need an answer to that.

"The poison disables our natural healing and it makes us weaker. But the paste helps to work against it. It's an antidote but it's not instant," I shifted my weight on the chair and grimaced at the pain.

"So what would happen if your injury had been more serious?"

"Then there would have been a very small chance for me to survive."

I watched her face bloom with worry.

"This is nothing Cleo. It'll be fine in a day or two."

She had, after an hour or so, agreed to my argument that I would be more comfortable lying on the couch. Her concern was both heart-warming and worrying. Would she be this fussy over me each time I got injured? Maybe it was just the first time shock of both facing a Hunter as well as seeing me be injured by one. She was sitting next to me, on the edge of the sofa, absently pushing at the edge of one of the cushions that she had propped up my head, neck and shoulders with.

"Staring at it is not going to make it heal faster," my voice has returned to its natural teasing tone and I could slowly feel the poison being broken down by my body.

"What would have happened if wound would have been somewhere else... like your lung?" her voice was filled with concern and I could sense the worry going through her.