She grabs a tiny vial from a kit from beneath her bathroom sink and inserts a needle through the opening to draw up some of the liquid.
“This will make it so you won’t feel me digging around.”
Without waiting, she injects me, and then she waits a few moments before touching near the wound.
“Can you feel that?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Here?” She taps the needle against my skin much closer to the wound.
I shake my head.
“Good.” She goes back to the kit, rummages around, and puts on gloves, muttering about how she should’ve had them on earlier. Then, she removes a pouch that contains tweezers. “Should be sterilized.”
I shrug.
She glances at me, the tweezers an inch from the opening. “You let me know if this hurts too much, and I’ll stop.”
"You gave me stuff, so I'm all numb. I won't—"
“I don’t know if I’ll find the bullet right away, and if I have to dig…”
I shrug again.
She reaches inside with the tweezers, but only a few seconds later, she draws back.
“Can you grab the flashlight and shine it at the wound?” she asks, nodding to the kit.
I do as directed, and she goes back in. She does dig a bit, and right when I’m starting to feel it, she pulls back, this time with the bullet, stained blue, is caught inside the tweezers.
“All done!” she says triumphantly.
“Thank you,” I say.
She covers the wound with a bandage, using tape to keep it in place. It’s soft, almost as soft as her hands, and once she’s done, I grab her hand, placing my other on top to sandwich hers.
“Thank you,” I repeat.
“It was nothing,” she insists.
She pulls her hand free and cleans up everything and puts the kit back where it goes.
“We should call the general and let her know what happened.”
“I suppose,” I grumble.
She eyes me, lifting her eyebrows.
I just force a smile. “You can call.”
“Hmm.” She just shakes her head as she leaves the bathroom.
But I’m grinning. We should celebrate, and she knows it.
18
Sophia
“You’re sure there aren’t any other bounty hunters who are going to show up and try to take me out?” I ask the general.
It’s only twenty minutes after my phone call to her, and I was surprised when she showed up in a centuricmobile with several other soldiers. The soldiers all loaded the bodies onto the car, and two of them are holding up the now-conscious bounty hunter who the general identified as Travis Grey.
“Travis here has always been a thorn in the other bounty hunter’s side, trying to steal jobs away and acting as if he’s the best of the best when he’s passable, if that,” the general remarks.
“You don’t even know who I am, lady.” Travis scowls.
The general just smiles.
“You don’t even know who she is,” I retort.
The general just motions for the soldiers to escort Travis to the centuricmobile.
“What do you think you’ll do with him?” I ask.
"That decision isn't up to me," she remarks. "The other bounty hunters have already been told that John Doe is dead. There's no longer a bounty over your head, and the others should leave you alone. If you want to keep an eye out to be sure, I won't blame you, but you should be in the all clear."
“Good. Thank you for dealing with all of them.”
"It's a part of the job, unfortunately." She wrinkles her nose. "We think we can trace the car back to where it had been last, courtesy of GPS. If we can get to one of John Doe's hiding holes, we might be able to find out what all he hoped to set into motion."
"So you can stop it before it happens because whatever he wanted to happen, I'm guessing shouldn't."
"Exactly. We might be in touch with you for help with this."
“Doesn’t really seem to be a bounty hunter-type job.”
“I think you have skills that can be stretched beyond bounty hunting. Maybe you’ll agree. If not… there will be more bounties eventually, I suppose.”
I nod, and she nods back, to me and to Tox, who has been standing in the doorway, whereas the general and I are on my lawn.
The general gets into the centuricmobile. A soldier climbs into John Doe’s car, and he follows the centuricmobile away.
I turn back to Tox and usher him inside. “You should rest.”
“I’m fine,” he protests.
“I don’t care if you think you are. Don’t be a stubborn ass.”
“You can take care of my ass by rubbing it,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “Not happening.”
“Why not?” he demands without being too forceful.
“You were just shot!”
“I heal faster than humans do.”
“So, what, Kurians are part-vampires?”
“No.”
I blink a few times. “You know what a vampire is off the top of your head, but you didn’t know about Romeo and Juliet?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you know about vampires?”
He crosses over to me, towering above me, and he slowly leans down and kisses my neck. His teeth scrape against the tender skin there, and then he nips and even bites harder.
A moan slips out, and he leans back with a cocky grin on his face.
“Oh, so someone else you had sex with called you a vampire.” I nod a few times.
“Are you jealous?” he asks.
“Do you want me to be?” I counter.
“You first.” He lifts his chin in challenge.
“I’m not.”
“No?” He grins. “Good.”
“You don’t want me to be jealous?”
“No. I think jealous is an act of… What did you call it? Immature love? Like Romeo and Rosaline.”
“Ah. Is that so?” I murmur.
He nods. “Besides…” He trails his fingers down my cheek and then rests his hands on my shoulders. “I would rather think that the others I fucked, but you…”
I suck in a breath, waiting, listening.
“You I made love to.”
“You hardly knew me then,” I protest.
“But I wanted to protect you.”
“You came to kill me.”
“No. I thought about it, but I didn’t want to kill you. I was going to suggest that we fake your death, but then you had to go and be all how can I buy you off? What
