At a particularly hard jolt, pain stunned him. Couldn’t help it. His stomach pumped. Acid bile filled his mouth, clogged the back of his nose. He coughed and coughed, each wracking of his body beyond endurance.

“Stop! In the name of God, just kill me,” he heard some dissociated part of him plead. “I can’t stand this.”

“Hey, Dek,” her voice came from somewhere beyond the pain. “You’ll make it. It’s the gotcha vine. The thorns shoot poison into you. Paralyzes the local critters, just burns like liquid fire in humans. Let me get you back to camp. I’ve got something that will make you better.”

Each breath broke into a whimper.

Falling.

Falling into pain.

The blur around him darkened, softened. Until . . .

5

A faint sensation of impacts hammered through Dek’s sternum.

Air was being blown into his lungs, inflating his chest.

Something on his mouth. Movement on his lips. More air.

A taste of overpowering and bitter peppermint.

Dek gasped, jerked.

He blinked his eyes open. Stared into Talina’s anxious gaze, her face hovering close over his as her lips left his mouth.

Starved for air, he gasped a lungful, almost gagging at the overwhelming peppermint that filled his mouth, his lungs.

“You back with us?” Talina asked. “That was quite a scare you gave me.”

“I . . . ?” He blinked some more; mouth filling with saliva, he swallowed the bitter taste.

“You stopped breathing. Couldn’t find any heartbeat. Thought I’d lost you.” Talina shone a penlight into Dek’s eyes, watching him critically for a few moments, and straightened.

How long had he been gone?

Dek felt like he rose in the gray haze. Floated.

His left leg throbbed. Distant. Dull.

A crackling. He knew that sound.

Yes, fire.

The flicker of it teased the backs of his eyelids, and he blinked. Fixed glassily on the fire. He was back in his camp, and lay supine atop his bedroll. Behind him, his airplane glowed whitely in the firelight. The night sky above was frosted with a million stars; opaque blots of dark matter and alternating swirls of nebulae interspersed with patterns of cloud.

He gasped, glanced down. Talina was bent over his left leg. Her hair pulled back over her shoulder.

He remembered her hair. How soft it was. Her lips on his, blowing life into his empty lungs.

She’d carried him. Tossed him up over her shoulder like a sack of flour. That, too, was the quetzal in her. The woman was as strong as two men.

The slight breeze chilled his bare legs. What had happened to his pants? His boots were missing.

If he could just think.

Why the hell did his left leg ache so? What was Talina doing? Why was she here?

“Tal?” Damn. Why couldn’t he find words? His whole fricking body was floating.

Couldn’t think.