Then, the gun went off.
My two companions and I stopped moving. The guy used the brief lull to wiggle away from us and ran off into the night. I exhaled a breath of relief, grateful it was all over.
"Georgina - " said Vincent.
Seth sank to his knees, and that's when I saw the blood. It was all over his left thigh, dark and slick in the watery light of a flickering streetlight. His face was pale and wide-eyed with shock.
"Oh, God." I fell down beside him, trying to get a look at the leg. "Call 911!" I screamed at Vincent. Having anticipated me, he already had his cell out.
Some part of my brain listened to him speaking frantically into the phone, but the rest of my attention was on Seth.
"Oh God, oh God," I said, ripping off my coat. Blood was pouring steadily out of the wound. I pressed my coat into it, trying to slow the bleeding. "Hang with me. Oh, please, please, hang with me."
Seth's eyes looked at me with both tenderness and pain. His lips parted slightly, but no words came out. I lifted the coat and looked at the wound. Vincent knelt beside me.
"It won't stop, it won't stop," I moaned.
Vincent peered over my shoulder. "Femoral artery."
After over a millennium, I knew the human body and what could kill it. I would have realized what kind of a shot this was if I hadn't been so hysterical.
"It'll drain him," I whispered, pressing the coat into his leg again. I had seen it happen before, watched people bleed to death right in front of me. "It'll kill him before they get here. That bullet hit perfectly."
Beside me, I heard Vincent take a deep, shaking breath. Then, his hands covered mine. "Take it away," he said softly.
"I have to slow the bleeding."
But he gently lifted my hands away, taking the coat up as well. There was blood everywhere. I imagined I could see it steaming in the cold air.
Vincent rested his hands on Seth's thigh, oblivious to the mess. Words formed on the tip of my tongue but never came out. The air around us began burning, and a prickling feeling raced across my skin. For a moment, Seth seemed to be bathed in white light. From Vincent, I suddenly had the sensation of dried lavender and humidity. It was tinged in something else...something I'd never hoped to sense again.
Then, it all faded away. Vincent removed his hands, and when I looked down, blood no longer oozed from Seth's thigh.
"I'm sorry," gasped Vincent. "I'm not so good at healing, and if I do any more, the others will sense me. This will keep him alive until the ambulance gets here."
In the distance, I heard the faint sounds of sirens. In my chest, my heart thudded. The world slowed its pace. How long had Vincent said he'd known Yasmine? Fifteen years. Too, too long. He didn't look any older than thirty. They hadn't met when he was a teen. The timing didn't make sense. Neither did the fact that he had just healed a major injury.
But none of that was as telling as what else I'd already discovered. For just a moment, he'd let his defenses slip, and I'd felt - an immortal signature. And while immortals have unique features of their own, all types of immortals have certain attributes that identify them by creature as well. Succubi. Vampires. Angels. Demons. Vincent's signature had given him away.
The others will sense me.
I stared at Vincent as red flashing lights rounded the corner. My eyes were as wide as Seth's had been.
"You're a nephilim," I breathed.
CHAPTER 15
The doctors at the hospital said Seth's survival was a miracle. Which, of course, it was.
The police officers who talked to all of us believed Seth's actions had been rash - but also admirable. Defending a fair maiden tends to elicit that reaction, and since Seth hadn't been killed, no one else viewed his gallant defense quite the same as I did. Because honestly?
I thought it was stupid.
I thought it was so stupid, and I was furious. Beyond furious. I'd surpassed it and moved into an uncharted area of enragement.
What had he been thinking?
"I wasn't thinking," he told me in a low voice, when I questioned him in the ER. The others had stepped out for a moment, busy with other things, and it was just the two of us. Seth lay on the bed, face still pale, but otherwise alive and well. "That guy had a gun. You were in his line of fire."
I opened my mouth to argue the poor logic there, but one of the doctors stepped back inside. She needed to check Seth, and I backed out of the room before I said something I'd regret. Seth might have acted like an idiot, but he was in the hospital with a major injury. Blowing up right now probably wasn't the most appropriate course of action for the healing process.
Instead, I sought out Vincent. After his interview with the police, he'd stationed himself down the hall, back against the wall and hands stuffed into his pockets. He tilted his head back, face staring miserably up at the ceiling.
"Hey," I said, careful to keep a safe space between us.
He glanced down at me. "Hey. How is he?"
"Fine - considering everything. The doctors are amazed the bullet 'missed.'"
Vincent turned away and gazed blankly down the hall. He stayed silent.
I didn't know what to say. So...you're a nephilim. How's that working out?
Frankly, I could guess how that was working out. Horribly. Nephilim were the offspring of angels and humans. Those angels were now demons, of course. You couldn't sleep around with hot humans and still play for heaven's team - as I'd noted with Yasmine. It was why Jerome had fallen. In what had to be the most unfair deal in the world, many nephilim had been hunted and killed by angels and demons - even their own parents. Heaven and Hell viewed nephilim as dangerous abominations. The fact that nephilim tended to have unruly natures and poor impulse control didn't really help their reputation.
As a result of their persecution, nephilim usually walked the earth disguised, hiding the full brunt of their power - which rivaled their parents' - as well as the immortal signatures that could give them away. And while I felt bad for them, they nonetheless scared the hell out of me. Many of them held grudges against angels, demons, and anyone else immortal. Jerome's son Roman was like that. He had come to Seattle a few months ago and embarked on a revenge killing spree. Looking at Vincent now, I wondered if I was dealing with the same sort of thing.
"Does...Yasmine know?" I asked after several more awkward moments.
His eyes flicked back to me. "Of course." He said it with the same matter-of-fact tone he'd used when we'd talked about their relationship. It was a tone that implied how could she not know? Like it was absurd that he would keep anything from the woman he loved.
"It kills her," he said with a sigh. "It's eating her up inside."
"Because...of...what you are...?"
"No." His eyes were so sad that I almost forgot he came from a race of uber-powerful psychopaths. "She doesn't care about that part. What she can't stand is that it's a secret. That she has to hide everything. You know they can't lie...but she's not exactly telling the truth either. It's deceitful, and she hates that. And I hate that she hates it. I've tried to end our...thing a couple of times, but she won't do it because..."
"Because she loves you," I finished.
Vincent shrugged and looked away from me again.
"I'm sorry," I told him at last. And I was. How horrible. Yasmine loving anyone was dangerous enough, but for her to love one of the most despised creatures in our world...well, yeah. That took it to an entirely different level. An angel should have been reporting Vincent's existence, not hiding it.
Vincent turned his attention back to me. "Who will you tell? Carter? Jerome?"
I stared into those dark, dark eyes, those eyes filled with so much sorrow and so much love. I stopped being afraid of him. He wasn't Roman.
"No one," I said quietly. "I'm not going to tell anyone."
He turned incredulous. "Why? You know what I am. You know you could get in trouble for hiding me. Why wouldn't you tell?"
I thought about it. "Because the system is f**ked up."
I went back to Seth's room after that, and when I stepped out into the hall later, Vincent was gone. He wasn't at my apartment when I returned home that night.
Seth was released the following morning, and I stayed home from work with him.
"I don't need to be coddled, Thetis," he told me gently - though I could swear there was the tiniest hint of annoyance in his voice. "I'm fine. I won't break."