Kylee’s stomach flipped. No wonder it smelled so bad. She clamped her teeth, taking in the swollen and blackened mess that had been Tip’s leg. In the meat of the calf, a scabbed-over wound could be seen; it was leaking pus around the edges. The knee and thigh were so enlarged the leg looked more like an over-inflated sausage than a limb.

“Dear God,” Madison whispered, bracing one arm on the table. She clamped her slanted eyes closed, her tall body tense as a stressed spring.

Flute’s big head stuck nearly a meter into the room where he filled the doorway. There just wasn’t enough space for him inside. His three eyes gleamed in the lantern light, his frill of a collar expanded; spots of teal interspersed with bruised purple, communicating his concern. From down inside, a clicking could be heard. The sound he made when he was worried.

“Tip?” Madison demanded, leaning down. “What did this? Was it a skewer? A bem?”

“Don’t know,” Tip managed through clenched jaws. “I was climbing. On a rocky slope. Steep. Like a cliff. Thing bit me. Through the pants. Ate into my leg.”

“What did it look like?” Kylee asked. “A sort of sidewinder or—”

“No.” Tip’s too-thin face worked against the pain. “Like a tube. Eating into my calf. Pulled my knife. Stabbed it. Cut it in two. But it just kept eating its way inside.”

He grunted at the pain as Madison started pressing on his swollen skin. As she did she said, “I’m feeling for it, Tip. Hang in there.”

To Kylee’s disgust, she could see coagulated blood pooling and slipping around under the too-thin skin. And the smell—as the wound really began to drain—almost overpowered Kylee’s stomach. Given the room’s confines, how Madison kept from reeling and throwing up was beyond her. But then, Madison was one of the toughest women she’d ever known.

As Madison’s fingers pressed down around the knee, Tip threw his head back and screamed, bloodcurdling, his body bucking on the table.

“Something’s in there,” Madison managed through gritted teeth.

“Guess we got to take it out, huh?” Kylee endured a sensation, like an itch in the roots of her teeth. Her stomach continued to tickle with nausea. This was Tip, damn it. Didn’t matter that they’d been fighting; she wanted to do a little screaming herself.

“Hey,” Chaco’s voice came from outside. “Let me in, beast.”

Flute backed out far enough that Chaco could duck past the hulking jaws and into the light. Chaco Briggs was a muscular man in his mid-forties. Sharp dark eyes, a mane of sandy hair that hung down just past his collar, and a dark and thick beard gave him what Talina had once confided to Kylee as “lady killer” good looks.