same instant that Victor’s power smashed into her. She screamed at its touch, but the power drove her back. Victor’s power was a warm, living wind that chased her back, gently but inexorably. Then, suddenly, she was gone, and I was alone in my skin. Alone in my skin, but still wrapped in Victor’s arms.
He drew away from the kiss, but kept his arms on me, as if he wasn’t sure I could stand. Me either.
“You’re bleeding,” Bernardo said, softly.
I looked down and couldn’t see anything under the vest, but Victor had blood on the lower part of his body. “I don’t think it’s mine,” he said.
Edward moved up to block the view. “We need to get out of here.”
“You make friends too damn fast for comfort.” Hooper was there, with some of his team.
Victor whispered, “Can you stand?”
I thought about it, then nodded.
Victor stepped away from me, standing so that the cops might not see the blood on his front. I said, “Sorry you don’t like how I make friends, Sergeant.” I meant that, actually. I liked Hooper and would have liked to keep his good opinion, but… The most important thing was to get the hell away from all the other cops and see how badly I was hurt.
“I’ll be your friend.” This from Georgie.
“Sorry, my dance card is a little full.”
“No fucking joke.” He gave me that look that you never want to see from a man who is supposed to be a coworker and has never been your boyfriend. His too-young face didn’t carry the look well.
But Hooper was giving me a look I wanted even less. He’d narrowed his eyes and was trying to see around the blocking bodies of the other men. He started toward us. Edward started us toward the car. Victor came with us. We did our best to keep the blood out of sight. It didn’t show on my black-on-black, but Victor’s pale shirt showed the blood scarlet.
Hooper sent the other men inside, then kept walking toward us. Sanchez caught up with him, kept him talking. It looked like they were arguing, but it gave us enough time to get me in the back of the car. Victor rode shotgun so he could direct Bernardo to the doctor. Edward rode in back with me, and Olaf, too. We tried to get Olaf to drive, but he simply would not agree to driving. Hooper had broken away from Sanchez and was moving our way again. We were out of time to argue.
“Drive,” Edward said.
Bernardo drove.
48
“TAKE OFF THE vest, Anita. We may need to put pressure on the wound.”
If it had just been Edward and me in the backseat, I’d have been okay with that, but Olaf sat beside me like some looming shadow. I gave one glance up at his face, and there was nothing in his face that made me want to undress in front of him.
“Stop being a girl,” Edward said, “just do it.”
“That’s not fair,” I said.
“No, and I know why you don’t want to do it, but bleeding to death because you don’t want Olaf to see you bloody and half naked is a stupid reason to die.”
Put that way… “Fine,” I said, and let that one word hold as much anger as it could. I helped him get me out of the holsters and weapons. I gave them to Edward, as I’d given them to him at Bibiana’s place, because who else would I trust with my weapons? But that left Edward’s hands full, and Olaf to help me unfasten the side of the vest. I expected him to dwell on each movement, the way he had in the morgue, but he was strangely businesslike. He simply unfastened the Velcro on the sides and lifted it off me. The blue of my T-shirt had streaks of purple on the stomach area, where blood had soaked through. Not good.
Olaf just suddenly had a knife in his hand. I said, “No! You don’t have to cut the shirt off me!” I started pulling the shirt out of my jeans. I admit that I was tensed, ready for it to catch and hurt on the wounds. Cutting it off would actually have been more practical, and the shirt was ruined anyway, but the sight of the big man looming over me with the huge serrated blade… No way was I giving him an excuse to bring the blade closer to my skin.
I must have made some small involuntary pain sound, because Edward put my weapons on the floor and had his own knife in his hand. “We need to see, Anita.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he’d picked up the slack of the shirt and was already cutting. I could have stopped him, but he was right, and I wasn’t afraid of Edward. He cut up the middle of the shirt, his blade sharp enough that it made a straight, almost surgical line up the center. He cut it until the collar of the T-shirt stopped the blade. I might have protested that I really was half naked now, but I could see my stomach, and the fact that everyone could see my bra just didn’t seem important.
“Crap,” I said.
There were bloody claw marks on my stomach. I’d bled before when I almost changed, but I’d never had wounds from it before. Blood had seeped out from under my nails, but never this.
Olaf’s fingers hovered over one ragged-edged wound. I started to tell him,
“They go out, not in,” Edward said.
I stared down at the wounds, but the angle wasn’t as good for me, or maybe it’s just harder to look at your own body when it’s cut open and analyze the wounds. I tried to be positive. “Well, at least it’s not as bad as the last stomach wound.”
“True,” Edward said.
“Yes, your intestines are not bulging out this time,” Olaf said. He said it so calmly, as if it hadn’t mattered then and didn’t matter now. I guess, what can you expect from a sociopath?
He put those big fingers just over the wounds. There was a faint shudder in his hand, and he had to raise it higher to flex the hand, and then he put it back over the wounds and traced his hand over the wounds. “It looks as if something has tried to get out, not slashed from a distance.” He spread his hand over the marks. I started to protest, but realized his hand could almost cover it all; a dainty claw as claws went. Dainty as the wounds we’d found on the victims.
“They are the same size,” he said. He laid his hand on the wounds. The pain was sharp and immediate, and I know I made some small sound, because two things happened at once. Edward said, “Olaf,” with that warning in the word; and Olaf let his breath out in a sigh that was totally inappropriate for blood and wounds. Okay, inappropriate if you weren’t a serial killer.
“Stop touching me,” I said, and made every word as hard and firm as I’d ever made them. I don’t know why, but for the first time this kind of behavior from him didn’t scare me. It just pissed me off. Let’s hear it for anger.
He moved his hand and gazed down at me with those cave-dark eyes. Whatever he saw in my face didn’t please him, because he said, “You aren’t afraid.”
“Of you, not right now. I just had something try to tear its way out of me. Sorry, but on the horrible scale, that’s got my attention. Now stop using my pain as your foreplay and fucking help me.”
He took his leather jacket off, folded it, and put it against my stomach. “It will hurt, but if I apply pressure to the wounds you will not lose as much blood.”
“Do it,” I said.
He pressed, and it hurt, but sometimes things need to hurt some now, so they don’t hurt a lot more later. I must have made a small sound because Edward asked, “Is he hurting you?”
“No more than he needs to,” I said, and was proud that my voice was almost steady. Let’s hear it for the tough-as-nails vampire hunter. Not fazed by overgrown serial killers or the beasts inside her. Shit.
“Victor,” I said.
He turned in his seat to look at me. His glasses had apparently been left on the sidewalk because I was gazing into the bare blue eyes of his tiger. No, of him. The weretigers, like Victor, were born, not made. “Yes, little
