Read Valknut: The Binding for Free Online

skin. Junkyard leaned closer and drew a sharp breath. Blood
pooled in a puncture wound the size of a fifty-cent piece. The
injury looked deep and fresh—the skin around it was clean and there
was not yet blood on her t-shirt.
    An injury like that hadn’t sprouted on its
own.
    He whipped the flashlight around and searched
the boxcar again, this time methodically examining every inch. An
attacker had nowhere to hide and Junkyard saw no object that could
punch a hole like that. A puncture wound that big could be serious,
especially if it went as deep as it looked.
    “Upper right side...right side,” he muttered.
“Uh, spleen...no—no, liver. Could have hit the liver. Damn it!
Lennie, wake up.”
    He patted her face, but she didn’t respond.
He directed the flashlight at her eyes and pulled back first one
lid, then the other. Pupils responsive—at least until her eyes
rolled back into her head. “Come on, Lennie, you gotta wake
up.”
    She didn’t move. Abandoning caution, he
strode back to his pack in a fraction of the time it had taken him
to crawl across the floor on his face. He tore through clothes and
gear until he found the first aid kit. By the time he returned to
Lennie’s side, blood was beginning to well out of its neat circle.
Better staunch it fast, or she’d never make it to Minneapolis.
    Wedging the flashlight between his knees, he
pressed his palm down hard on the wound. His hand slipped over skin
made slick with blood. He fumbled the kit’s lid open with his other
hand and spilled half of its contents onto the floor. The train
lurched and his only roll of gauze took off for the door.
    “Shit!”
    He let go of Lennie and scrambled after it,
but the wind caught the roll’s trailing end. Before he could catch
it, a streamer of gauze fluttered into the night. Swearing
fervently, he returned to Lennie’s side, ripped the bandana from
his head, and wadded it into a ball. Her shirt had fallen over the
injury again. He pushed it back, ready to apply pressure.
    A wound the size of a dime stared up at him
like a mocking red eye, so shallow he could see a layer of skin
under the blood.
    “What the hell?”
    He sat back, stunned. As he watched, the
blood seemed to evaporate and the hole slowly closed. Nothing
remained but a red splotch on her shirt and a small white dimple on
her side. He reached a hand toward it—a hand sticky with her
blood—but the dimple disappeared under his fingers. He couldn’t
bring himself to touch the smooth space where it had been.
    He ran the flashlight along her body,
half-expecting her to sprout wings or disappear, but she just lay
there, snoring lightly. The scrapes and bruises on her arms and
face from boarding the train were gone as well. Blood stained the
edges of a tear in the knee of her jeans. That injury had been
particularly raw. He scooted closer and directed the light at
it.
    Smooth, fair skin. Not even a scar.
    That just wasn’t right. He had seen a lot of
strange things on the rails, but nothing came close to this. An
eerie, vulnerable feeling came over him, as if the shadows of the
nearly empty boxcar suddenly held an extra pair of eyes that
watched him when the flashlight pointed the other way. Fighting
panic, he swung the light around again, but there was nothing.
    “Jeez,” he muttered. Next, he’d start
spinning in circles trying to shine the light everywhere at once.
He snorted at the thought.
    Still, the blood on his hands had come from
somewhere.
    He directed the light on Lennie again,
half-hoping, half-dreading it would wake her up. She stirred and
muttered something about a squirrel, but continued sleeping. He
examined her for some oddity, some hint to explain what had just
happened. There was something different about her. He had sensed it
from the moment she had boarded the train.
    Slender, almost boyish, she wasn’t beautiful.
At least, not by the usual standards. Her features, half-hidden
under a tangle of gold-brown hair, were soft and rounded