26
My hands were wet with blood. The shirt had soaked up what blood it could, but more was pouring out. It was soaking into my jeans, covering my forearms. He stared at me with yellow eyes, mouth open, trying desperately to keep breathing. Long-clawed hands made small convulsive movements in the leaves. A prickling warmth spread under my hands. His skin moved under my hands like warm, furry water.
Shapes appeared out of the darkness. They looked like people, but I knew it was a lie. Werewolves -¨C I was eyeball deep in werewolves.
"He needs a doctor," I said.
A dark-haired man with small, round glasses knelt on the other side of Jamil. He opened a large brown satchel and pulled out a stethoscope. I didn't question it. Most packs had a doctor. Never knew when you'd need some confidential medical care.
He pushed my hands from the wound. "It's healing. It wasn't silver shot." He shone a penlight into the wound. "What the hell is in there?"
"My shirt."
"Get it out before the skin heals around it."
The wound was healing. My hand barely squeezed into the opening. I got a handful of blood-soaked shirt and pulled. It came out in a long wet sloppy mess. Blood poured in a steady stream from one corner of the shirt. I let the shirt fall to the leaves. I would not be wearing it tonight. I had a thought that I was wearing nothing above the waist except a black bra. I didn't care.
"Is he going to live?" I asked.
"He'll live."
"Promise," I said.
He stared at me and nodded. Stray moonlight made his glasses look like blank silver mirrors. "I promise."
I looked down into Jamil's wolfish face. I stroked the fur across his forehead. The fur was both rough and thick and soft. "I'll be right back."
There were other people with Jason and Zane. Cherry with Zane, cradling him. Nathaniel was kneeling by them, but his eyes were for me. There was even a man leaning over the rifleman. He was tying a belt off on the stump of his arm. Good. I wanted him alive. I had questions for him but not yet.
I knelt by Jason. He lay in the leaves on his side. A woman was tending his wounds. She was dressed in short shorts and a halter top, dark hair tied back in a loose ponytail. It wasn't until she turned her head that I realized it was Lucy. She held a penlight between her teeth and was searching Jason's wounds with sure hands, as if she knew what she was doing.
She answered my question before I asked. "He'll heal, but it's going to take a couple of days." Which meant if Jason had been human, the beating would have been fatal.
She looked at me then. Our eyes met from inches away. The makeup was a little less severe, but the face was still pretty by moonlight.
I turned away from her first. I didn't want to see what was in her eyes. I just didn't want to know. I knelt over Jason, started to touch his face, then stopped because the blood was still wet on my hands.
He said something very soft. I had to lean over him to hear it. "Let me lick the blood," he said.
I stared down at him, eyes just a little wide. "You're not dying, Jason," I said. "Don't get cute."
Verne said, "It's fresh blood, Anita. It's pack blood. It will help him heal."
I stared at him. The local Ulfric stood off to one side, tall and straight and slender, letting his medical personnel do their jobs. I started to ask him where the hell he had been while we got cut up, but Zane made a sound.
Zane seemed to be healing just fine from a rifle blast that would have cost a human his arm. But it hurt, and he made small pain sounds while the doctor worked on him.
"The blood will help them heal," Verne said. "Especially blood from someone as powerful as you are. Marianne feeds the pack sometimes."
Lucy said, "It really will help him." Her face was neutral as she said it.
I looked down at Jason. His face was a mask of blood. One eye was swollen completely shut. He tried to smile at me, but his lips were so badly swollen that the smile didn't work. It was like part of his face just didn't work right now.
I touched those wounded lips with my fingertips, brushed the fresh blood across his lower lip. He rolled his lip under, tasting the blood. But the movement made him wince. It hurt.
I laid two fingers against his lips and slid them gently into his mouth. He tried to suck them, but his mouth wouldn't work right. He licked the blood, swallowing almost convulsively. I drew the fingers out, and his hand came up to grab my wrist. I let him guide two new fingers into his mouth.
Richard spilled into the clearing, going to his knees in the leaves. Shang-Da was at his back like a good bodyguard. Richard's gaze met mine, and just the glance opened me up to him a little more. Without Jean-Claude to act as a buffer, the marks between Richard and I were stronger. He knelt there, his breathing coming in near-painful gasps. I could feel his chest rising and falling, almost as if I were breathing for him. I felt him look at the woman beside me. I saw Lucy for a second as he saw her. I saw the rise of her breasts swelling under the halter top.
The line of her cheek half in shadow, half in moonlight. She raised her face to meet my eyes like she could feel me looking.
"He still wants you," I said.
She gave a very small smile. "But not as much as he wants you."
The marks between Richard and I quieted. I couldn't feel him breathe or what he was thinking. He had cut me off. Afraid of what I'd see, maybe. "What happened, Verne? They were supposed to be safe in your lands," Richard said.
Cherry answered, "Jamil sent the three of us for help. He" -¨C she pointed to a shadowy figure on the other side of the clearing -¨C "wouldn't let us pass into the lupanar. He wouldn't take our request for aid to Verne."
The man stepped forward so a patch of moonlight showed him: tall, muscular, dark-haired, pale. "They are not pack. They have no right to demand passage."
Verne was just suddenly there, and the tall werewolf was on the ground. I hadn't seen him move. It was a speed that was dreamlike, impossible. But I'd almost seen it.
"I am Ulfric. I decide who is worthy and who is not, Eric. You are only Freki, third in the pack. You have one more battle before you can even challenge me."
Eric touched his hand to his face and came away with something dark and liquid. "I am not challenging you."
There was movement behind me in the leaves. Zane was crawling towards me, the wounded arm held close to his chest with a makeshift sling. "I came back to help while Cherry and Nathaniel argued with their watchwolf." I could feel an intensity to his gaze, even in the dark. "The blood's going to dry before he gets to it all." He stayed there in the leaves, just out of touching distance. His shirt had been ripped off one side of his slender chest. It hung in rags to one shoulder. He stared at me and even by scattered moonlight, I could see the need, not in his face but in his body, the way he held himself. He was asking for more than the healing of his body. If he hadn't been there, Jason would be dead now. Even a lycanthrope has a limit to the damage he can take.
Jason held the palm of my hand to his mouth, licking with long, lingering movements.
"You need the other hand?" I asked.
"It will be dried before he can use it," Lucy said.
I stared at her and hated her just a little. Hated her for having been in Richard's bed. Hated her for doing things with him that I'd never allowed myself to do.
"The wereleopard doesn't need the blood," Richard said. "He'll heal without it."
I just stared at him and held my hand out to Zane. He crawled to me on his knees and his good arm. I stared at Richard while Zane took my fingers into his mouth. He sucked on them like a hungry child licking the last bit of cake from a spoon.
"He's mine, Richard, mine as much as Jason is. I am Nimir-ra and lupa."
Richard stood. "I know what you are, Anita."
I shook my head. "You have no idea what I am." The moment I said it, I felt that warm, growing presence. Munin rising inside of me like a pool of warm water, spilling upward. Richard's mark seemed to bring it on sometimes. Or maybe it was just the way he made me feel. Lust or anger or both. I didn't fight the munin.
Marianne had said if I stopped fighting, that it would lose some of its control over me. I wasn't even sure I could fight it off completely. The best I could do was control it. I let it flow over me, down my arms into the two men.
Jason had worked his way to my wrist, tongue moving over the veins there. He'd been hesitating over the smell of fresher blood so very close to the surface. Now his good eye stared up at me, wide, a little scared.
I smiled down at him, and I knew that it wasn't just my smile. I was still here, but I wasn't exactly alone. Raina's thoughts lay over mine like a veil. I could see out, but it colored everything I saw. Her body, our body, wanted things, craved things that made me want to run screaming. But if I were careful, I could use her as she used me. It was like walking up a flight of steep, narrow stairs with a cup of scalding coffee filled to the brim. Careful, oh, so careful or it spills over the edge and you get burned.
The alternative to letting the munin have a little fun was what happened in the woods earlier. I did not want another full-blown memory with Jason and Zane hanging onto me. Not tonight, not ever. Jason couldn't handle it, and neither could I.
I looked down at Jason. "It's all right, Jason. Enjoy the blood while it lasts. I don't think you're going to get this offer twice."
He ran his tongue up my arm, working hard against the skin like a cat washing its own fur. Zane had sucked my fingers clean and had raised my hand up in front of his face, cradled in his good hand. He was licking very slowly, very thoroughly up my palm.
There was a sound behind us. I turned to see the rifleman. He was conscious and in some pain. The doctor with the round glasses was about to give him a shot.
I called, "Bring him to me."
The doctor and the werewolf with him looked across the clearing to Verne and Richard. Richard had moved across to the other Ulfric. They were discussing how everything had gone wrong. They could discuss things all night. I wanted answers.
"Don't look at them. Look at me. And bring him to me!" Raina's munin swelled outward and burst over me, over Jason, over Zane. It spilled over Lucy and brought a gasp from her throat. Everyone in the clearing got a taste, a preview if you like. It was getting harder to hold together. Harder to think.
They dragged the rifleman over to me. I knew what I looked like. I was wearing a black underwire bra that hid more than most bathing suits, but it was still a bra. I was still covered in blood. Jason and Zane were licking blood from my naked skin. It was strange and macabre and would work as a threat very nicely.
The doctor and the other werewolf threw the rifleman down in front of me. Jason and Zane ignored him, mouths on my skin. Zane slid his mouth along the edge of my skin, teeth grating ever so gently on the skin. His eyes slid to the rifleman, and I knew we would put on a show for him.
I felt Raina's munin like a warm glow. She, it, whatever, wanted to cover Zane's mouth with ours and taste Jamil's blood. Wanted to rip the bandage off his shoulder and lick the wound. With the thought came the knowledge that licking the wound would make it heal faster. Surely not.
The rifleman stared at me, his eyes showing mostly white. I could feel his breath, smell his fear. I could smell his fear like a miasma of sweat. I could taste in his scent how injured he was. I knew his skin would be cool to the touch from blood loss. All this from a smell. Shit.
"What's your name?"
The question seemed too hard for him.
"We can check your wallet. What's your name?"
He made an involuntary move to his back pocket with a hand he didn't have anymore.
"If we get him to a hospital soon," the doctor said, "they might be able to reattach the arm."
"If he answers my questions truthfully, you can take him to the hospital."
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Terry, Terry Fletcher."
"Okay, Terry. Who sent you to kill us?"
"I wanted to pay you back for making us look bad. That's all. Nobody was supposed to die."
Jason had cleaned my arm to the elbow. I could feel the passage of his tongue like a cool line running over and over my skin. Hot where he still touched me, cool where he'd just been.
"Lies won't get you to a hospital, Terry. Lies won't save your arm. Who paid you to hurt us?" I asked.
"He'll kill me."
I looked at him and laughed. The laugh was rich and thick enough to hold. It rolled out of my mouth and it wasn't my laugh. The sound raised the hairs on the back of my neck and made Jason hesitate, mouth pressed to my arm.
"Do you really think I won't kill you?"
A breeze had finally come up, hot and stale. Jason's mouth was cooler.
His mouth had healed enough to suck at my skin, but there was an edge of swelling to the side of his mouth. I wanted to kiss the wound, lick it, see if what I was being told was right. Could I really heal him?
I looked at Terry. "Tell me who paid you to hurt us. Tell me who sent you to kill us. Tell me everything I want to know, and the good doctor will take you to a hospital where they may save your arm. Lie to me, and your arm is just so much meat. Lie to me, and you die tonight, here, in this clearing. You think it over, Terry. I've got all night."
I leaned over Jason, drawing his mouth away from my arm. We kissed, and I could taste Jamil's blood, my skin, the faint remnant of the perfume on my wrist, and Jason's blood. His mouth had bled, and I could taste that, too. But it wasn't bleeding now. It was healing, and I could make it heal faster. It took everything I had not to press my mouth hard against his and force that warmth into him, everything I had not to press Jason's wounded body into the leaves and ride him.