I jumped, but Tristan was already moving, pulling out disinfectant, bandages and a needle and thread with grim determination. He glanced up, dark blue eyes meeting mine, and I saw the raw emotion behind his careful soldier’s mask. A lump caught in my throat, and I gently lowered Garret to the ground, then accepted the supplies thrust into my hands. For the next few minutes, we worked to keep the soldier we loved from dying on the barren flats outside Salt Lake City, while Riley loomed over us both, connected to Garret by a thin stream of red, his expression like a thundercloud.

Chapter 3: RILEY

RILEY

Whoa, getting light-headed here.

I swayed, gritting my teeth, as a wave of dizziness washed over me, making me stagger back a step. Thankfully, Ember and St. Anthony, still bent over the soldier, didn’t seem to notice. They’d patched up his many wounds, either by wrapping them in gauze or sewing them shut, and he now lay between them on the salt flats, still as death and nearly as white as the ground beneath him. I looked at Ember, at the tear tracks staining her cheeks, and wondered if she would cry for me if I ever bit the dust.

“He still alive?” I asked gruffly.

The other soldier of St. George felt his wrist, then nodded once and sat back on his heels with a sigh. “Yeah,” he answered in an equally brusque voice. “For now.”

“Well, that’s good. I’d hate to be getting this nauseous for nothing.” I watched him carefully remove the tube from the soldier’s arm and tape the final wound shut. The end of the tube dropped to the ground and leaked my blood all over the salt.

“You should go,” St. Anthony said in a low voice, not looking at me. “Get him out of here. Before the rest of the Order shows up.”

I nodded wearily. “I’ll call Wes,” I told Ember. My human hacker friend waited on standby, ready to speed to our side if anything went wrong. I’d say this classified as very, very wrong. “He should be here in a few minutes.”

She nodded without looking up, her attention riveted to the soldier, and I stifled the growl rumbling in my throat. Instead, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and pressed a familiar button.

“Tell me you’re not dead, Riley,” said the terse English voice on the other end.

I sighed. “No, Wes, I got my head blown off, and this is just my ghost speaking to you from the afterlife. What the hell do you think?”

“Well, since you’re calling me, I take it things did not go as planned. Did St. George manage to get himself killed?”

I looked down at Ember and the soldier. “Maybe.”

“Maybe? What kind of bloody answer is that? Either he’s dead or he isn’t.”