Now we're getting to it. The story got much easier to write from here on out, and certain characters started listening to me!
Chapter 7
He didn't last the night. As dawn crept over the horizon, Edward heard the man's heart stutter to a stop, unable to deal with the blood loss of internal injuries. Edward shut his eyes tightly, willing himself anywhere else. Willing Bella anywhere else. Her shivers had finally stopped during the night, but he knew well that was not because it was suddenly warmer. Instead, a slow fever was gradually setting in as the infection in her knee grew. There was nothing he could do.
The rest of them woke to a pounding on the door and shouted Spanish telling them to move to the far wall. They were already there anyways, and no one had the strength to put up a fight as armed men entered the shack and dragged them outside. They brought the body too, before they realised it was dead.
Once they did, they tried to drag the dead man away, but his friend wasn't having any of it. Edward finally stepped close to him when a gun was levelled in his direction.
'He's gone,' Edward whispered in German in the man's ear. 'You cannot help him now, but getting yourself shot will not help any of us.'
Glumly the man nodded, letting go of his tight grip on his dead friend's shirt.
Bella buried her face in Edward's bare chest, her words only just loud enough for him to hear. 'You should have fed. He's been dead for hours, hasn't he?'
Edward nodded above her. 'I'm fine,' he added. And even if he wasn't, there wasn't a chance he was going to descend into the madness of drinking human blood once more. Even if the blood belonged to a no longer breathing human. He wasn't about to let their captors take him to that level.
Bella didn't respond to that.
Once the body had been dragged away, they were forced to a corner of the fence out of sight of the main camp. There was a hole in the ground. The men gestured towards it. Edward didn't need to read minds to figure it out.
'What?' Bella asked, leaning heavily on Edward and trying not to put weight on her swollen leg.
He lifted an eyebrow.
'Oh,' she said.
The men standing guard weren't about to turn their backs. Bella only went after the Mexican woman had done her business, caught between blushing in embarrassment and in anger.
They were then taken back to the shack and handed a cup of water each. If that was all they got for the day, it would barely sustain the humans. With Bella's fever inevitably growing worse, it wouldn't do any good at all, even though Edward gave her his water as well.
Then they were shoved back inside and the heavy lock was drawn closed.
After that, there was no more contact for the day between captives and gunmen. Bella grew more uncomfortable as the day progressed and her low grade fever turned worse. Edward could do nothing more than offer his cold body against her flush one and a cold hand against the pulsing wound. And pray that Alice was coming. He set his mind to concentrating on the men outside, but that was annoyingly unhelpful. Reading minds was a useful gift in situations like these, he would have guess, but it was proving useless now. It seemed hard to get a read on any one person and unpleasant when he did. The minds of them men were not a place he wanted to me in for very long. They told him little; most of them were wrapped up in their own thoughts; concerned with the next meal, the next payday and the next kill.
The four other prisoners seemed lost in their own worlds again. The surviving German man hadn't spoken a word and was staring off into space, lost, his thoughts a confused jumble. The Mexican woman was praying nearly constantly, the litany of Hail Mary's running through Edward's mind until he finally tuned it out. The two men were now attempting to come up with escape plans; most of which were very similar despite the fact they weren't talking to each other. Most of them were very bad ideas.
We should have gone last night. We should have risked it, he thought to himself, ignoring the unhelpful thoughts of the others.
In his arms, Bella moaned in pain.
There was no point asking the guards for help. They hadn't seemed to care about the German man, except that now they had a body to deal with. Whatever the true purpose for their kidnapping was, keeping them alive was not at the top of the to-do list. Which was very worrying to Edward. He needed Alice. And Jasper and Emmett. And Bella needed Carlisle. Or a hospital at the least. Edward made a rough guess that, if she continued to deteriorate at the current rate, Bella had maybe two days before the wound turned septic. And after that, recover was a far cry from guaranteed.
He'd change her before that. He knew it. But changing her here, locked in this shed, was ten kinds of a bad idea. For one, there was no telling what screams would make their captors do, and it would certainly keep the other four prisoners awake for the next three days solid. Edward couldn't deal with a vampire in transition while trying to get the others out alive. And if Bella woke a vampire before they got out, the other captives would be dead in minutes and she would never forgive herself.
No, he couldn't change her until they got out.
But they had to get out soon.
They were given another cup of water that night and a hunk of bread to share between all of them. The other prisoners seemed ready to give up their food for Bella, but there was no point. She turned her head away at the very smell of it. Edward could not risk feeding her and having her vomit it; she couldn't afford to lose what little water she had left in her body. He coaxed two cups of water into her in slow measured sips, but her fever continued to climb.
Even knowing there was no point Edward took a look at the wound in the last fading light of their second day as captives. It looked awful, to put it simply. He revised his estimate; they needed to get out by the next night or it really might be too late.
As the sun set again, Edward observed the camp. A few of the men, probably a small hunting party, had left in the morning, but that still left nearly eighteen armed and dangerous criminals. However, their thoughts revealed that another group would be leaving the next day, to meet up with another camp to the north. It sounded like less than a dozen would remain – more than enough to look after locked up and disheartened prisoners, especially when one was severely injured. The next night would be the best chance they would have to get away.
Edward spent that night, as the humans about him struggled to sleep and Bella tossed and turned in his arms, shivering and sweating in equal measure as the temperature dipped and her fever climbed, running contingency plans in his head. If Alice had seen what had happened by now, she would hopefully also see his decision to go the next night, and the fact that there would be fewer men around. With just her and Jasper, it would be enough to incapacitate the men and get the humans to safety, as well as Bella.
But Edward hoped it wasn't just Alice and Jasper who were coming.
Morning came eventually. Sometime in the night the Mexican woman had curled up with the German man; Edward had heard her quiet sobs. Quickly, far too quickly, captivity was breaking their spirits. Even the other two men made no effort to get up when the door was unlocked the next morning.
Instead of dragging them outside, a jug of water was slapped down on the floor, spilling nearly half the contents, and the door was left open. Edward knew it was a joke; that any move outside would be met by at least one gun trained on each person.
They shared the water between themselves. Edward tried to rouse Bella from sleep, but he couldn't more than half wake her. She was in far too much pain; lost in a fever haze.
'Bella, please,' he begged quietly. He dribbled a few drops of the cold water between her lips, but she gave no indication that she noticed.
'She is bad,' the woman said, coming to sit next to them. 'I am sorry.'
'She'll be fine if we can get out of here.'
The woman arched disbelieving eyebrows. 'If the army comes, perhaps, but I do not think the army will come.'
Well no, Edward thought; at least not the military. But an army was coming. He had to continue to believe that, so he made no answer.
'I will hold her. You must go outside, no?'
He didn't need to, but he also didn't want anyone to start questioning his movements, especially their captors. Drawing any attention to the fact that he was different could end badly. So Edward eased Bella's hot body from his arms into the gentle grip of the woman, pressed a soft kiss to her temple and went with the other men outside to 'relieve himself'. Their captors seemed less attentive today, but the guns were no less obvious.
He had just returned to the shack when the commotion started. The woman began shouting in high-pitched Spanish. Edward pushed past the other captives to stand in front of the building. Outside, in the dirt, the woman was kneeling over Bella's body, trying desperately to shield her. How the two of them had ended up outside in the first place made no sense, but it didn't matter. The two guns pointed at the woman mattered.
'No!' Edward shouted, rushing forward to stand in front of her. 'Please,' he said, knowing it was begging and not caring.
The Bolivian in front started jabbering in Spanish. 'She's dead. We got no need for dead captives. Put her with the other one.'
Edward literally saw red. It took every ounce of control he'd ever possessed not to attack the man. Sanity invaded his consciousness. There were guns trained on the woman and Bella. He couldn't take the chance.
'She's not dead,' he said, aware his voice sounded weak even to his own ears. 'She's not,' he repeated.
The look the Mexican woman threw him was one of utter pity.
Their captors hesitated, exchanging quick glances and then one of the shrugged. 'He want the dead girl, let him have her.'
One of them stepped forward, obviously moving to grab Bella, but Edward beat him to it. He pulled Bella's unresisting body into his arms and climbed the stairs into the shack. He was aware that the other prisoners were being herded inside as well. The door was slammed shut and the lock drawn home.
'By tomorrow,' the woman said, 'they won't let you keep her.'
Edward had no intention of letting them. He also had no intention of any of them being in camp come the dawn.