Bo and the Beast (Book #1) (Completed)

43. Stay With Me

They passed through the mist, the orange world dissolving around them to be replaced with the green of trees and grass. Cool air rushed over Bo's skin and dew soaked into her pants as she stumbled to her knees. The night sky above them shone with starlight and the moon, illuminating the entire lawn. Bo despaired at the distance of the mansion. There was nothing stopping the wolves from following them into the Beast's domain, and she did not look forward to running across the long expanse of grass to reach the house. She doubted very much they'd be fast enough to get to safety when the wolves were so desperate for a meal.

As Bo pushed herself to her feet, cradling her bleeding arm, she saw the Beast out of the corner of her eye pull something from the pocket of his pants. It looked a bit like the display screens, but was small and thin. He pressed the screen a few times, his hands shaking and smearing the glass with blood. His breathing came out in harsh pants, and Bo surged forward when he began to sway.

Ducking under his arm, she propped him up as he worked on the screen. Behind them, Bo heard the sound of the wolves. The first were coming through. She glanced behind her at their glinting eyes, her heart flopping in her chest.

"We need to run!" Bo said, turning back to face the Beast.

He slumped against her, his eyelids drooping. She struggled under his weight, hissing out curses as she shook his chest. "Don't you dare pass out on me!" she gasped. "There's no way I can drag you—"

She didn't even finish before he sunk into a dead weight, forcing her to her knees from the sheer weight of his massive body. She growled, trying to twist around to see how close the wolves had gotten.

Instead of the snapping teeth and wiry gray fur that she expected to be overrun with once again, she saw a flash of metal and red lasers. From seemingly nowhere, the army of Service-Matons flooded in streams to their defense.

"Miss Bo!" Fil shouted, his young voice excited despite the wolves that leapt onto his fellow robots just a few feet away. "You came back!"

"That's not really what's important right now, Fil," Bo said, pushing against the Beast's dead weight.

"But we thought you'd never come back!" Fil said, his voice nearly to laughing.

"It probably would have been better if you didn't come back," Dent said, appearing at Bo's side. "You only create chaos." His clamp moved to highlight the scene of wolves chewing on Service-Matons, and Service-Matons grabbing wolves and hauling them back out through the invisible wall.

"Nice to see you again, too, Dent," Bo snarled, glaring at him as she struggled to get to her feet and still hold the Beast up.

Madame and Chan, hovering a few feet away, fought off wolves but still managed to chirp out greetings as if they were pulling weeds and not clamping down on wolves' tails and whipping them away from Bo and the Beast at the last second.

"Welcome back, Bo," Madame said.

"It wasn't the same without you," Chan added.

"Thanks, but can you guys help me get him inside before we all die?" Bo said, out of breath already without taking more than a few feet.

"Of course," Madame said, before beeping at the other Service-Matons. In an instant, they organized themselves in a semi-circle around Bo and the Beast. Madame, Chan, Dent, and Fil all grabbed a part of the Beast, picking him up between them and heading toward the mansion. Bo ran ahead of them, not even bothering to glance behind her at what was happening with the wolves. She reached the door first, and swung it open despite her bloody hand sliding on the metal of the handle.

They staggered into the interior, and from there the Service-Matons took him to his study. It was all still in ruins, splinters and shards, and now added to it was a blood trail dripping out of the varied gashes and punctures in the Beast's skin. His clothes were soaked through with his own blood and that of the wolves, and what upholstery on the sofa that had escaped the initial destruction was now completely ruined.

As the robots backed off, Bo leaned in and pulled the collar of his shirt open. His chest, just as blue as the rest of him, lay bare and bloody. His skin puckered in semi-circles of teeth marks, pulpy and weeping. Bo frowned at them, concerned that he might be made too weak if he continued to lose blood like this. She needed to stop it somehow.

Pulling the bandana from her neck, she pressed down hard on a particularly bad wound on his side. She tried to get him to do it, but his hand flopped uselessly when she picked it up. He was still unconscious, or at least so far gone that he wasn't aware of his surroundings. Though his eyes were slightly open now, they were glazed and feverish, and his head tilted uselessly backward. His mouth moved but she couldn't her a single thing he said.

Bo pushed herself to her feet and searched the debris of the room for more fabric. She found a jackpot of dresses buried under a broken shelf, and she carried them back to wind around the Beast's chest and arms. One of them glowed a familiar canary yellow in the moonlight filtering through un-curtained windows, and Bo couldn't feel sorry as she ripped it into long strips.

The Beast groaned in pain as she worked on his wounds, and his hand dropped into Bo's lap as she kneeled by his side. Her first thought was to push it to one side, but when she moved to nudge it away, she stopped and stared at the fingers that had just ripped apart a pack of wolves to save her. Blood still coated his fingernails, giving him a purple-ish hue through his blue illumination. She found she couldn't shove him away. His hand lay across her knee, warm and somehow comforting, as she tightened a strip around his side.

"Come on," she muttered, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. "Stay with me."