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Normally I would have argued, but not tonight.
Jean-Claude and I looked at each other. I wanted to ask why I couldn’t feel him in my head like normal. I realized that was part of my almost frantic desire to touch him. I was missing the constant low-level hum of his power running through me.
Ethan leaned over and whispered, “He’s afraid his energy will reignite the holy water.”
“It won’t,” I said.
“You cannot know that for certain,” Kaazim said.
“I used power outside, and it didn’t ignite my flesh if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Come see our Wicked Truth and then tell me that I am too worried for your safety, my bride-to-be.” He’d never called me that as a nickname, it was alwaysma petite, Anita when he was upset. For some reason him calling me something new was unnerving.
“Fine, take me to Wicked and Truth so they can go to the hospital, and I won’t touch them. If you’re still worried about that.”
“No,” Kaazim said, “once you see them you will remember why you should not touch them.”
That scared me, I didn’t say it out loud, but it did. Of course, I might as well have said it out loud.
17
Wicked lay onthe stretcher face up. He looked like his usual gorgeous self, and then he turned his head. The right side of his face was a red ruin. It looked like the upper layer of skin was gone and it looked like raw wounded meat. I know my emotions showed on my face for a second, before I got control of myself. He closed his eyes, and I gave a moment of thankfulness that his eyes hadn’t been damaged.
He spoke with his eyes still closed. “You do not have to look at me, Anita, it is all right.”
“I will always want to look at you.”
He opened his eyes then and stared at me, searching my face. “Why are you crying?”
I wiped at my eyes; I hadn’t even realized I was crying. I’d learned in therapy that if I felt like crying I should do it. I just hadn’t meant to be doing it right now. I wiped at my eyes, but it didn’t stop. I finally said, “You being hurt is worth crying about.”
“I have not had a woman shed tears over me in a very long time,” he said.
Truth came to stand on the other side of the stretcher. His face was clean, normal, unhurt. I wanted to touch his face to make sure my eyes weren’t lying. I fought not to glance down at his brother andcompare their nearly identical faces. Truth’s eyes were very gray, the blue swallowed by anxiety and pain.
“Where are you hurt?” I asked, and my voice was already hoarse as if thick with tears yet to come.
He raised his left hand up. It wasn’t just burned and raw, I could see bone through some of the reddened flesh. The tears dried up as I thought about one of our best warriors being down a hand. I wasn’t a doctor but there had to be muscle, ligament, tendons, and things I didn’t even know the name for damaged. The brothers were some of the most smoothly ambidextrous people I’d ever seen in or out of weapons practice.
“Oh my God, Truth.” I glanced down at Wicked’s face and then back at Truth. They were so calm. I wouldn’t have been calm. I think I might have been hysterical. “Did they get new painkillers for vampires?” I asked.
A paramedic appeared around Truth. “No, we got nothing for most preternatural patients.”
I looked at the brothers and said what I was thinking, without that pause to decide if I should say it out loud. “Why aren’t you guys screaming?”
“Because I am taking their pain,ma petite,” Jean-Claude said. He came closer to us, with Jake standing as if poised to stop us from touching, but he didn’t have to worry about that. Kaazim was right that looking at the damage to Wicked’s face and Truth’s hand meant I was afraid to touch any of the vampires.
“Then why aren’t you screaming?” I asked.
“I am not taking on their pain,ma petite. I am soothing them, so they do not feel it.”
I started to say,I didn’t know you could do that, but there were too many strangers around to share secrets. I tried to think it at him, clearly and carefully, but it was like there was nothing on the other end. It wasn’t that I couldn’t get through to Jean-Claude because he was shielding too hard, but as if he wasn’t there at all. I was lookingright at him, but the tie that made me his human servant was…blank.
Fear rushed through me so hard that it left my arms and fingertips tingling with adrenaline. I whispered his name, “Jean-Claude, I can’t…”
He tried to move close enough to whisper back, because my hearing wasn’t as good as his, but Jake stepped in the way. “We will not risk you until she has cleansed herself of the holy water.”
“I can’t feel…I…”
