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Cherry looked down the length of Nathaniel's body, then touched his thigh. She moved his legs apart. "Of course, the femoral artery. Why is the skin discolored on both bites?" She touched the skin of his inner thigh. "The skin feels almost cold."
Nathaniel writhed on the bed. He let go of my hand, reaching for me as if he wanted a hug. He grabbed one arm, and a handful of my blouse. His eyes were wild. "It hurts."
"What hurts?" I asked.
"The bites are contaminated," Asher said.
"What do you mean, contaminated?"
"Think of it as a poison."
"He's a wereanimal, they're immune to poisons," I said.
"Not this one," Asher said.
"What kind of poison is it?" Cherry said.
There was a knock on the door. Jason said, "It's us."
Damian looked at me. His eyes had calmed down to a soft glow, his skin almost back to the milky perfection that passed for normal.
I nodded.
He opened the door. Jason came in with a first aid kit bigger than most overnight bags. Maybe Cherry had been a Girl Scout in another life. Jamil followed behind Jason like a dark, solemn shadow.
"The kind of poison that nothing in that little bag will stop," Asher said.
I stared up at him, suddenly realizing what he'd just said. "You mean he's going to ... " I couldn't even say it.
"Die," Asher said in that same utterly calm, almost mildly amused voice that he'd been using since they first walked into the cabin.
I stood, Nathaniel's hands clinging to me. I looked at Cherry and she moved in to help me draw free of him. I wanted to say things to Asher that I didn't want Nathaniel to hear. Zane crawled onto the bed on the other side. Nathaniel grabbed his hand and held on. Another spasm threw Nathaniel writhing on the bed. Zane and Cherry held him down, let him use that crushing strength on their hands. The two wereleopards stared at me while Nathaniel thrashed, eyes rolling back into his head. Zane and Cherry watched me. I was their Nimir-ra, their leopard queen. I was supposed to protect them, not drag them into shit like this.
I turned away from their accusing, expectant eyes and moved with Asher to the door. "What do you mean he's going to die?"
"You've seen the kind of vampires that rot and re-form themselves?"
"Yeah. So?"
"One of them bit Nathaniel."
"I've been bitten by one of them. Jason's been bitten by one of them. Nothing like this happened to us." I glanced back and found Jason holding Nathaniel's hand while Cherry started cleaning the chest wounds. Somehow I didn't think bandaging the cuts was going to help.
Jamil and Damian joined us. We stood in a little circle, talking, while Nathaniel screamed. Asher said, "It is one of the rarest of talents. I thought that only Morte d'Amour, Lover of Death, the council member could do this. Colin chose his messages carefully. The slashes are harm from a distance with just a flexing of power."
"Jean-Claude can't cause harm from a distance," I said.
"No, and no one else can spread corruption from their bite. No one else in this country."
"You keep saying corruption," Jamil said. "What does that mean exactly?"
Cherry came to us with white gauze pads in her hands. Her pale freckles stood out like ink on her suddenly pale skin. There was yellow and green puss on the gauze. "This came out of the chest wounds," she said quietly. "What the hell is it?"
We all looked at Asher, even Damian. But I was the one who said it out loud, "He's rotting. He's decaying while he's still alive."
Asher nodded. "The corruption is in his blood. It will spread and then he will rot."
I looked back to the bed. Jason was speaking low and softly to Nathaniel, stroking his head like you'd comfort a sick child. Zane was looking at me.
"There has to be something we can do," I said.
Asher's face was as closed and careful as I'd ever seen it. One of Jean-Claude's memories of Asher went through me so forcefully that my fingertips tingled with it. It wasn't a memory of any one event. I recognized the set of Asher's shoulders. I knew his body language with a familiarity built up of years of observation. More years than I'd been alive.
"What are you hiding, Asher?" I asked.
He looked at me, pale, pale eyes blank, empty, lined with those amazing golden eyelashes like shining lace. He smiled. The smile was everything it should have been: joyous, sensual, welcoming. That smile went through my heart like a knife. I remembered that face whole and perfect. I remembered when that smile had made me catch my breath.
I shook my head. The physical movement helped. I shook off the memories. They faded, but it didn't change what I'd seen, what I knew. "You know how to save him, don't you?"
"How badly do you want to save him, Anita?" His voice wasn't neutral now, it was almost angry.
"I brought him down here, Asher, I put him in danger. I'm supposed to protect him."
"I thought he was supposed to be your bodyguard," Asher said.
"He's walking food, Asher. You know that. Nathaniel can't even guard himself."
Asher let out his breath in a long sigh. "Nathaniel is a pomme de sang."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"It means apple of blood. It is a sobriquet among the Council for willing food."
Damian finished the thought. "The vampire that feeds from a pomme de sangis duty bound to protect them, like a shepherd keeping the wolf from his sheep." Damian looked at Asher while he said it, and it was not a friendly look. They were fighting about something, but there was no time.
I touched Asher's arm. It felt stiff, wooden, not even alive. He was drawing away from me, away from the room, away from what was happening. He was going to let Nathaniel die without even trying. Unacceptable.
I made myself grip that wooden, unalive arm. I hated it when Jean-Claude felt like this. It was a reminder of what he was, and what he wasn't. "Don't let him die, not like this. Please, mon chardonneret."
He jumped like I'd hit him when I used the old nickname that Jean-Claude had used so many years ago. It meant literally, my goldfinch, which sounded silly in English. But the look on Asher's face wasn't silly. It was almost shocked.
"No one has called me that in over two hundred years." His arm softened under my hand, feeling warm, alive again.
"I don't beg often, but for this I will."
"He means so much to you?" Asher asked.
"He's everyone's victim, Asher. Someone has to give a damn about him. Please mon --" He put his fingers over my lips.
"Don't say it, Anita, don't ever say it again unless you mean it. I will save him, Anita, for you."
I felt like I was missing something. I could remember Jean-Claude's pet name for Asher but I couldn't remember why Asher was afraid to try to heal Nathaniel. As I watched him walk to the bed, golden hair trailing like a glittering veil across his shoulders, that missing memory seemed very important.
Asher held his hand out to Damian. "Come, my brother, or does the famed courage of the Vikings fail you now?"
"I was slaughtering your ancestors before you were a gleam in your great-granddaddy's eye."
"Shit, this is dangerous, isn't it?" I asked.
Asher knelt beside the bed. He looked back at me, the golden hair sliding over the scarred side of his face, hiding it. He knelt, all golden perfection, and smiled, but it was bitter. "We can take the corruption into ourselves, but if we are not powerful enough, it will enter us, and we will die, but your precious wereleopard will be saved either way."
Damian crawled onto the far side of the bed, moving Zane away from his spot by Nathaniel's head. Nathaniel had stopped screaming. He lay very still, skin pale, shiny with sweat. His breath came in shallow pants. The wounds on his chest were oozing pus. There was a smell in the room now, faint but growing. The bite on his neck still seemed solid, but the skin of his neck was a deep blackish green like a bruise that was killing deep.
"Asher," I said.
He looked at me, one hand running along Nathaniel's bare thigh.
"Damian's not a master."
"I cannot save your leopard by myself, Anita. Who would you save? Which will you sacrifice?"
I looked at Damian. His green eyes were human again. He looked very mortal, curled beside Nathaniel.
"Don't make me choose."
"But it is a choice, Anita. It is a choice."
