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That shut him up. For about a second. And then he started quivering all over and screeching, and throwing bits of himself at the ward, tearing off leaves and fronds of what looked like half a dozen different plants, pieces of which had been stuck into and taped around a familiar-looking pair of assless pants.
“Ray!” I said sharply, only to be ignored. “Ray!”
He just stared at me out of a blackened face, like some kind of whacked-out commando who’d failed camouflage school. His blue eyes were wide and glazed; his black hair was sweaty and sticking up everywhere; and he was drooling slightly. He looked completely out of it, and that really wasn’t going to work right now.
So I slapped him again.
Only to have him promptly slap me back.
After which followed a bitch-slapping fest that I won by virtue of kneeing him in the gonads.
“Oh. Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God!”
“Get up!” I told him impatiently, because I hadn’t hit him that hard.
But he just continued to moan and roll around, to the point that I seriously contemplated leaving him there. But Ray had been stuck here for a couple weeks while the Senate pumped him for information, and there was a good chance he knew more about this place than I did. He could hardly know less.
So I jerked him up again.
And was rewarded by a slightly more sane, if entirely infuriated glare. “The fuck was that?” he screeched.
“That was to get your attention. I need—”
“You hit me in the nuts!”
“And I may do it again if you don’t—”
“You don’t just go around hitting guys in the nuts!”
“Ray—”
“You just don’t, okay? That is not cool. That is not on. That is not—”
“Ray!”
“—ever, ever—God! There’s got to be some damned limits—”
So I did it again.
“THE FUCK?”
“Ray. Get a grip—”
“I have a grip! I have a damned fine grip! If I didn’t, I’d be dead already, and I don’t know why I’m not and it’s no thanks to you and where the hell have you been?”
“That’s what I’m trying—”
“We have to have a talk,” he told me, his voice trembling slightly. “About your responsibilities as a master.”
“I am not your master.”
“One of which is protection, okay? Which I haven’t been seeing too goddamn much of!” He took off his bushy hat and threw it at the floor. For a second he just looked at it, a crumpled mass of leaves and Scotch tape sliming about in an oil slick, and then his face crumpled, too. And he grabbed me in a bear hug that threatened my ribs. “Oh God,” he said brokenly. “I didn’t think you’d ever get here!”
I just stood there a second, completely nonplussed. Of all the crazy things that had happened today, I thought this might actually top the list. I had a master vampire sobbing in my arms and no idea what to do about it.
Except for the obvious.
“Ray?” I told him, stroking his dirty, disheveled hair.
