Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 117336 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117336 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
We do get a response from a dragon named Vaan and his mate, a woman about my age from Louisiana named Gwen.
They're not fond of Azar. In fact, they're downright unpleasant to him, and he's equally unpleasant back. I try to smooth things out but it's like being in a room with spitting cats. I'm not certain why they don't get along, but I take Azar's side. I'm his consort, after all. Just because he's unpleasant or some of his methods unorthodox doesn't mean that he's a bad person.
Gwen’s black like me, and when she arrived, I was delighted to see another black woman involved with dragon-Salorian politics like I am. But Gwen has made it clear to me that she’s here for Vaan and I’m on Azar’s side, so we’re not friends.
I’m not surprised. A little sad, maybe, but not surprised.
After the initial meeting, Gwen and Vaan decide to stay in Fort Dallas to “help” out, to be a liaison between the fort and the scattered women who have mated dragons and that won't answer Azar's call.
Something will break through the Rift, eventually. Gwen and Vaan are worried that we’ll need all the help we can get when that time comes, so they’re part of Fort Dallas now. A reluctant part, but still a part.
Me, I can’t help but wonder when Earth is going to catch a break. First the Rift, and now a new menace. Will we ever get to relax?
Part Two
Chapter
Seventeen
MELINA
I'm bathing an elderly man's trembling limbs when Alma comes to my side, her expression weary. "I lost another," she says simply. "Can we call the soldiers?"
Oh no.
I tuck the sheets over the elderly man's body, smiling down at him with my best physician look. "I'll be back soon." If he hears me, he doesn't reply. He just lies in the cot, weak, his skin a pasty gray as the sickness roars through him. I get to my feet, trying not to feel despair as I look around my normally empty clinic. I have seven cots set up for patients in the clinic, and on a bad day, I might have two that are occupied.
Today, all of them are occupied. Have been for a week now. There are pallets on the floor, and the sick are crowded in everywhere possible. I step over a few sleeping bodies and follow Alma to the back, where she's been working with the sickest patients. The smell of vomit and urine is everywhere, and as I move past, another woman pukes into a bucket at her bedside. We both pause, and I move to the woman's side, rubbing her shoulders as the worst of it moves through her.
"Try to eat," I tell her as I give her a bit of cornbread and make sure her water glass is full.
"I'm dying," she cries, clutching the bucket to her chest. "I'm dying."
"You've got food poisoning," I tell her gently, and hate that I have to lie. "It's a sour stomach. It'll pass."
"Can you give me something for it?" Her eyes are full of tears, and there's a burst blood vessel next to her iris from the force of her vomiting.
I should tell her no. I should tell her there's nothing left, because wave after wave of sickness has been hitting Fort Dallas, and my supplies were wiped out days ago. Even so, I have to offer hope. "I'll look for something, but drink some water and eat your cornbread. Small bites. If you can keep that down, I can give you something to help with the nausea."
She gives me a grateful look and collapses back onto her cot.
Alma waits patiently nearby. Her clothes are sweaty and covered with stains, and her bronze face is sallow, deep circles under her dark eyes. Her normally neat hair is frizzy and escaping her ponytail, but I think she's too tired to notice. We both are. She leads me to the back of the room and to the man she's covered with a sheet, like they did back in the old movies. I don't tell her that we're just going to have to sterilize that sheet and re-use it, because I get it. No one wants to look at a dead man in the cot next to them. It makes the patients think they're next.
And…they're right.
Ever since this sickness cropped up, it comes in waves. Entire households will be affected and show up on my doorstep with the same symptoms—vomiting, fever, nausea, and diarrhea. I originally thought it was poisoning, but when it continued to spread, I knew it was something else. People keep dying, and I've run out of the medicine to treat them.
"This one has the worms, too," Alma tells me in a whispered voice. "I checked."
I swallow hard, nodding. This isn't a true plague, not really. It's not an airborne sickness and no one can catch it from being coughed on. All of the patients are ingesting something that's making them sick, and when they die, we find strange, horrible worms in their stool. The fact that it comes in waves tells me that it's something that people are eating, and I suspect it's the bugs.