“We have to try!”
“And what do you suggest? Carrying him through the streets of Alexandria with a sword sticking out of him? A taxi? Transporting him could kill him.”
Palming the back of Josh’s neck, Shade spewed out guttural, coarse words in a language she didn’t know but understood nonetheless. “Let me check the internal damage.”
Serena held still, hoping they’d forgotten she was there. Shade closed his eyes and concentrated. The tattoos on his hand, identical to Josh’s, began to glow.
“Shit,” Shade whispered. “Kidney, liver, stomach… oh, man, he’s fucked up. The blade severed his aorta. We move it, he bleeds out in seconds.”
Eidolon swung his fierce gaze, glinting with flares of gold and red, around to her. “What happened?”
“He… he’s a demon.” Geez, that was a stupid thing to say, given his brothers were, too. But her mind seemed mired in fog. So much had happened in the last fifteen minutes, too much to process.
“Yes, we know that.” His voice was no-nonsense. Professional. Scary. “How did he get impaled?”
Right. “Byzamoth. Fallen angel. He… he wanted Josh’s blood.”
“Wraith,” Shade growled. “His name is Wraith.”
Wraith moaned, his eyes fluttering open. “Help…”
“We’re here,” Eidolon murmured. “We’ll help you.”
“No.” Wraith coughed, spraying blood. “Serena. Help… her.”
“She’s okay, man. Right now, we need to take care of you.”
“Promise… me.”
Shade’s raw curses blistered the air, this time in plain English.
“Promise.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Shade muttered. “Just relax. I need you to relax.”
Eidolon and Shade exchanged glances. “I have to remove the blade,” Eidolon said.
“He’ll bleed out.”
“I know. We need to get blood into him.”
“I’ll start a central line.” Shade dug through the medical bag he’d brought with him and quickly inserted a catheter into Josh’s neck. Eidolon hung up a bag of blood from the door handle, and Shade connected it via a long tube to the catheter. When he’d finished, he set up another bag of blood, connected a tube to it… and held it out to Serena. “I need you to feed this to him.”
She recoiled. “What?”
“Just hold the tube to his mouth. He needs to drink.”
Oh, God, this was such a nightmare. “I don’t understand.” She still hadn’t moved, and her reluctance earned a glare from both of the demons.
“He’s a vampire,” Shade snapped. “We need to get blood into him however we can. Now, do it or he dies.”
Vampire? But he’d warned her about them. And he was warm. Had a heartbeat. Walked in the sun. He couldn’t be a vampire.
“You a vampire?”
“Yep.”
Okay, so he’d admitted to it, but… she shook her head. This was crazy. Shade cursed. “Never mind.” He propped the bag of blood against Josh’s shoulder and inserted the tube into his mouth, but it kept falling out. The bag fell over.
“I’ll do it,” she said finally, and held the tube between Josh’s pallid, dry lips. He didn’t suck, didn’t move.
“Squeeze the bag.” Shade’s deep voice was rough, his tattoo glowing.
She did as he said, and blood flooded the tube. She watched with morbid curiosity as it flowed into Josh’s mouth… and dripped out the other side. He wasn’t swallowing.
“Dammit,” Eidolon breathed. “Come on, Wraith. Fight. Damn you, I don’t want to lose you now.”
Serena’s eyes stung. She might hate Josh—she just couldn’t think of him as Wraith—for what he’d done, but he’d asked his brothers to help her when he was facing more immediate danger, and she didn’t want to watch him die. Some twisted part of her still loved him. Leaning close, she brushed her lips over his cheek.
“Please,” she whispered. “Drink.” She stroked his lips, squeezing a little more blood between them. His mouth opened ever so slightly, just enough to encourage her. “That’s it. Take some.”
His brothers worked frantically, barking out status reports and commands to each other, and the squishy noises of surgical gloves working in blood and flesh made it all so horrific. Eidolon had somehow closed up one of the stab wounds, but now he was using a scalpel to open up the other one even more.
“Manage his pain, Shade.” Eidolon put down the scalpel. “This is going to hurt.”