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Admittedly, it was a toss-up between bleeding and vomiting on my “things I dislike” list, but in this particular moment, I was thinking I’d have preferred puking.
“Are you well enough to stand?” Eli was at my side, looking more warrior than prince. He looked fierce, even as he stepped over the already-rotting corpse.
“I’m good.” I nodded. I was standing. Well, I was leaning on a cooperative oak tree outside Beatrice’s castle, but that waslikestanding.
“How bad?”
“I’m upright.” I shrugged, clutching my new blade as if I’d be any use against the sort ofdraugrinside the castle.
“I want you to get me inside the car before my blood spills onto the ground.”
So far, I’d held my arm so the gash was angled upward, so nothing had dripped to the soil.
Yet.
“I give it about ninety seconds.” I shoved off the oak’s trunk.
Eli scooped me up and all but ran to open the passenger door on his little blue convertible. I was ready to leave, not argue with whatever Thom, Rick, or Marie I summoned if I bled on soil.
Inside the safety of the car, Eli said, “Lower your arm, cupcake.”
“Can’t. I’ll ruin the seats.” Blood wasn’t great for Eli’s butter-soft leather seats seats. They weren’t going to come to life, but I still had no desire to bleed on them.
If my magic wasn’t fucked sideways lately, I wouldn’t be bleeding. Trying to avoid thedraugrmeant I’d been careless. My temper was lousy.
“Least I got a new toy.” I patted the machete in my lap. “And Beatrice owes me.”
“You could have died.”
I don’t know if I replied. I was sleepy, the sort of sleepy that only seemed to come with massive blood loss. I closed my eyes for just a moment, but somehow my moment was almost an hour.
When I opened my eyes, Eli was driving through the city with the sort of speed that came of fae reflexes and arrogance. I was in far more danger from my average week than his driving though, so I just let myself relax as much as could.
When he scraped the undercarriage to park directly in front of the door, blocking the side walk, I didn’t argue.
And I didn’t argue when he half lifted me out of the car. All I knew was that we were on the sidewalk and then inside. No blood on the soil. No dead summoned to me. That was a victory.
Machete loosely in my hand, I leaned against the building while Eli rolled up the steel doors that protected the building. Mostly it was for thieves, but sometimes the newly-dead were apt to crawl into a person’s home. No one liked that. Finding out that a biter was watching you was creepy. Hell, dead or not, it was creepy. I like some weird, but stalkers are another thing entirely.
My eyes were drifting closed with all these thoughts of sleep.
“Plum pudding?” Eli’s voice was falsely cheery.
So, I made a rude gesture.
“I’d prefer you be awake when we consummate our love,” he said.
I opened my eyes. “Our what?”
Rather than answer, he opened the door and ushered me inside the bar. We were, obviously, late enough that the bar was closed, and for that I was grateful. Eli’s bar staff was alternately tense and mothering with me. No one was outright unpleasant, but I think they worried that I was about to get their boss killed.
That was how I’d first ended up cozying up to him. No human was strong enough to fight again-walkers. Eli was. I was . . . andthatwashow I ended up here. Again. Tonight was to be a simple dinner, but somehow, I was bleeding.
“My pretty dress,” I said.
Eli set the locks and rolled the steel. “You look gorgeous, buttercream, even with the blood. A warrior goddess.”
I grabbed a bar towel. They were clean, bleached, and absorbent. It wasn’t the worst bandage ever.
