“I thought that would get you up,” she said, moving my bloody hand back to my leg and taking my blood pressure and pulse a second time.
I could tell she was a high-blood living vampire despite her trying to hide it in the old way, and I felt safe with her. Her blood lust would be carefully in check while she worked on me. That’s the way living vamps were. Children and the injured were sacred.
Still mad about my jeans, I took a shallow breath, staring at the chaos lit by the orangey yellow glare of the setting sun. “Let’s see it,” she said, and I released my hold on my leg.
Worried, I peered down. It didn’t look bad from a bleeding-to-death standpoint—just a slight oozing and what looked like a huge bruise in the making—but it hurt like hell. Saying nothing, Dr. Lynch opened her tackle box and broke the seal on a small bottle. “Relax, it’s water,” she said when I stiffened as she went to pour it on me.
She had to hold my leg still with an iron grip as she poked and prodded, cleaning it while muttering about torn arterioles and them being a bitch to stop bleeding but that I’d survive. My three-year-old tetanus shot seemed to satisfy her, but my stomach was in knots when she finally decided I had been tortured enough and slipped a stretchy white pressure bandage over it.
Someone was directing traffic to keep the rubberneckers moving and the bridge open. Two cars of Weres had stopped to “help,” worrying me. I wanted them to see the statue rolling around on the floor of the front seat, but having them this close was a double-edged sword.
Slowly I tucked the remote to blow the NOS under my good leg and out of sight. The wind through the straits pushed my hair out of my eyes, and as I looked at the faces pressed against the windows as they passed, I started to laugh, hurting my ribs. “I’m okay,” I said when the woman gave me a sharp look. “I’m not going into shock. I’m alive.”
“And it looks like you’re going to stay that way,” she said, taking both my hands and setting them so they hung past the shelf of my lap. “Aren’t you the lucky one?”
She poured more water on my hands to get the grit off, then set them palm up on my lap to make a wet spot. Disgusted, I watched her pluck a second packet from her tackle box and rip it open. The scent of antiseptic rose, whipped away from the wind. Again I jumped and ow’ed as she brushed the grit and glass from my hands, earning another “wimp” look from her.
More people had stopped, and Nick’s truck’s paint job was showing where the metal had crumpled. Jenks was inside with Peter. They were trying to get him out. Weres had gathered at the outskirts, some in jeeps, some in high-end cars, and some in little street racers. I felt the remote under my leg, wanting to use it and finish this run. I wanted to go home.
Nick. “Where’s the guy who hit us?” I said, scanning the faces and not seeing him.
“He’s fine apart from a damaged knee,” she said as she finished and I pulled my hands close to inspect the little crescent moons from my nails cutting my palms. “It might need surgery at some point, but he’ll live.” Her deeply brown eyes flicked to my dental-floss stitches. “Your gnomon is with him,” she finished, and I blinked. Gnomon? What in hell was that?
“She’s keeping him occupied until the I.S. gets here to take his statement,” she added, and my eyes widened. The woman meant Ivy. She thought I was Ivy’s scion, and gnomon was the flipside of the relationship. It made sense—a gnomon was the thingy on a sundial that casts a shadow. I was about to tell her Ivy wasn’t my gnomon, then didn’t. I didn’t care what she thought.
“The I.S.?” I said with a sigh, starting to worry now that it looked like I was going to survive. Motions quick, she fixed a big bandage over each palm. I hadn’t forgotten about the I.S., but if Nick’s truck wasn’t burning before they arrived, it was going to be a lot harder to get rid of that defunct statue.
Her attention followed mine to the truck, her shoulders stiffening when Jenks and two men pulled Peter’s broken body out. I expected her to get angry they were moving him, surprised that she was messing with the living and not him, obviously the worse off—until she leaned close with her little penlight and flashed it in my eyes, saying, “You cried for Peter. No one ever cries for us.”
I pulled out of her grip, shocked. “You know…”
She moved, and I panicked. With vampire quickness she was atop me, knees to either side of my thighs, pinning me against the barrier. Her one hand was behind my neck holding me unmoving, the other held that light as if it was a dagger pointed at my eye. She was inches away, her closeness going unnoticed or considered okay by way of her official-looking lab coat.
“I’m here because DeLavine told me to come. He wanted to make sure you survived.”
I took a breath, then another. She was so close, I could see the soft imperfections in her cheek and neck where she had been professionally stitched. I didn’t move, wishing I wasn’t so damn interesting to the undead. What in hell was their problem?
“I’d tell him to leave you alone,” she said, her breath lost in the wind, “because I think you’d kill him if he tried to hunt you, but it would make him interested, not simply—concerned.”
“Thanks,” I said, heart pounding. God help me, I would never understand vampires.
Slowly she lowered the penlight and got off. “Good re-flexes. No head trauma. Your lungs sound clear. Don’t let them cart you off to Emergency. You don’t need it, and it will only jack up your insurance,” she said, switching from scary-ass vampire to professional health provider in seconds. “I’m done here. You want a pain amulet?”
I shook my head, guilt for being alive cascading through me when Jenks and two men set Peter gently on the ground apart from everyone. Jenks crouched to close his eyes and the other two men backed away, frightened and respectful. The woman’s face blanked. “I wasn’t here, okay?” she said. “You bandaged your own damn leg. I don’t want to be subpoenaed. I wasn’t here.”“You got it.”
And she was gone, the purple lab coat flapping about her calves as she lost herself in the crush of growing turmoil surrounding the single spot of stillness that was Peter, alone on the pavement, broken and bloody.
Feeling the adrenaline crash, I met Jenks’s gaze. He sank to the pavement beside me so he could see Peter from the corner of his eye. Respect for the dead. He handed me my shoulder bag and I put it on my lap, hiding the remote to blow the NOS. “Push it,” he said.
There were sirens in the distance. They weren’t approaching quickly, but that would change when they reached the bridge and the closed northbound lanes. Behind Jenks was Nick’s truck, a twisted chunk of metal with wheels and no hood. It was hard to believe I had survived it.
The Weres were starting to edge in, clearly wanting to swipe the statue. No one was within that golden circle of twenty feet or between the truck and the questionable safety of the temporary railing and a possible fall. Jenks leaned closer, and with him protecting my face with his body, I clenched my eyes shut and pushed the button.
Nothing happened.
I opened one eye and looked at Jenks. His expression was horrified, and I pushed the button again.
“Let me try,” he said, snatching it away and pushing it himself. The little bit of plastic made a happy clickity-click sound, but there was no big ba-da-boom after it.
“Jenks!” I exclaimed barely above a whisper. “Did you fix this too?”
“It’s not my fault!” he said, green eyes wide. “I rigged it myself. The NOS should have blown. Damn friggen moss-wipe remote. I should have had Jax do it. I can’t solder with that stupid-ass iron Nick had. I must have fused the fairy fucking thing.”
“Jenks!” I admonished, thinking that was the worst thing I’d ever heard him say. Starting to get one of those “Oh crap” feelings, I looked at the Weres. As soon as official people started poking around in there, that statue would be gone and my life with it when they realized it was a fake. “Can you fix it?” I asked, my stomach knotting.
“Five minutes with an iron I don’t have in a private space that doesn’t exist on a bridge six hundred feet above the water surrounded by two hundred good Samaritans who don’t know crap. Sure. You bet. Hell, maybe it’s just the battery.”
This wasn’t good. I sat and stewed while Jenks took out the battery and shocked himself on his tongue. While he swore and danced from the mild zing, I pulled my knees to my chest to get up, wincing at the dull throb in my leg. Ivy and Nick were still beside the flat panel of the Mack truck, Nick looking nothing like himself under his legal disguise charm. The wind coming up through the grating they stood on sent her hair flying. She gestured with a small movement, and I gave her a lost look. Her lips pressed together and she rounded on Nick.
Nick’s head was down, and it stayed that way as she put her hands on her hips and shot unheard questions at him. Blood soaked one of his pant legs and he looked pale. That he was hurt would make it easier to get him to the hospital where the vampire doctor waited, ready to pronounce him dead of a complication, mix up the paperwork, and shuffle him both out the back door and out of my life forever. Peter would be moved to the vamp wing underground until his body repaired itself. Everything was perfect. But the damn truck wasn’t exploding.