I pulled a knife and sliced through Rick’s bonds. Lifted him, his ragged breath hot on my neck. And carried him like a baby out of the cabin.
The van roared through the compound fencing, taking out an entire section of the chain link. One of the boys had cut enough away during my diversion so it wouldn’t be a difficult feat. The van braked to a stop and the side door opened. I climbed inside, Derek with me. He slammed the sliding door. I sat on the floor. Holding Rick. “Go,” I said. The word didn’t sound remotely human.
Derek grunted, “Pellissier clan home.” The van took off just as I smelled gasoline and saw a gout of fire through the windshield. The Vodka boys were burning the place. And I knew the bodies of the wolves would disappear, deep in a swamp somewhere.
We bumped horribly over the ground back into the street. Rick groaned, turned to the side and vomited. He was covered with bite marks, lacerations, cuts, his skin green and yellow and purpled with bruises old and new. And he stank of his own filth and sex and wolf and sickness. He was burning up with fever.
Derek opened a gallon of water and poured it over Rick, his blood and filth washing over me, sloshing to the floor. Somehow I had grabbed a sheet up with Rick, and I pulled it gently from under him and sopped his torso. Derek poured another gallon of water over him, washing him clean, which didn’t seem like a standard battlefield medic task.
As if he knew what I was thinking Derek said, “I called vamp HQ. Asked the black leopard how to treat him. He said get as much blood and saliva off him as possible.” Silent, movements economical, practiced, he tore into packets of medicated bandages and slapped them over the worst of the injuries, the bandages self-sealing. Four went on Rick’s throat. More on his shoulders. And his groin. He rolled Rick over and applied some to his back, taking special care of a deep one over Rick’s left kidney. Derek quickly ran out of the prepared bandages and started improvising. Opened packets of gauze, tape, antibiotic ointment, Cling Wrap, and applied more. I helped turn Rick and move his limbs, hearing Rick’s breath hitch with pain and a wheeze from deep in his lungs.
My breath was hot and tight. My heart thundered in my ears. But as we worked, the Beast and battle chemicals leached out of my system. I touched Rick’s face, his beard uneven and wet beneath my fingertips. His eyes were black, one swollen shut. His jaw was swollen on one side. The tattoos of the mountain lion and bobcat on his shoulder had been shredded as if chewed, and looked like ground meat, yet I could still make out tattooed blood droplets and both sets of big-cat eyes, the amber of the artwork almost seeming to glitter in the bloody mess.
When the worst of the bleeding had been contained, and the worst of the wounds covered, Derek handed me a bottle of water. “Here. See if you can get him to drink.”
I shifted Rick gently and raised his head. His body burned where it touched me, his fever dangerously high. I held the bottle to his lips and dribbled a bit between them. They were chapped and swollen, split and bruised. A tear trailed down my cheek. It hurt to breathe past the ragged pain in my throat.
He swallowed. Again. And lifted a hand to bring the bottle closer. Latched onto it with his mouth and drank, hard and fast. Sucking it dry. Derek replaced it with another. Rick drained that one too and sighed as if it was the best thing he’d ever tasted.
He opened his one good eye. Blinked. Focused on me. His face was too beaten for me to read any emotion on it. Until he smiled. “Jane. Jane Yellowrock,” he whispered. “I dreamed of you.” His lips moved into what have been a smile. And he closed his eye.
Beside me, Derek was applying a blood pressure cuff, and checking Rick’s vitals. I gathered Rick close and bent my head to his. “I dreamed of you too,” I whispered into his ear. His smile widened. Only a hint. But I saw it.
Moments later, we pulled to a stop and Derek opened the van door. Rick in my arms, I stepped from the van and carried him up the front steps of the Pellissier clan home. Inside, standing on the mosaic of the Anzu, was Gee. Gee took Rick into his arms and sat down, right there on the floor. Blue magics spilled over Rick, hiding his naked, bruised and broken body in an indigo mist shot through with purplish, pink sparks.
Bruiser took me by the elbow and guided me through the house, silent, our footsteps the only sound, to a white marble bathroom. He removed my weapons, placing them carefully on a marble counter, gold flecks showing in the polished stone. He removed my leathers, undressing me like a baby. Unable to see for the tears that blinded me and dripped onto his head as he unlaced my battle boots, I let him. When I was naked, he pushed me under the steaming shower. And left me there. I cried. And screamed. And roared. And beat the walls with my fists.
I ended up head down over the toilet, retching until I was empty, clean, inside and out.
EPILOGUE
Two weeks had passed, and I still hadn’t gotten the carnage out of my mind, my memory, my nightmares. I had thought I was used to the stink of slaughter, the screams, the cursing, the eardrum-blowing concussions. The stench of my own fear-sweat. The smell of the dead.
I’d been wrong. Nothing about that morning at Booger’s Scoot had fit in with my past experience. Unlike my usual chase-’em-down-and-stake-’em method of hunting and killing rogue vamps, this had been a slaughter.