With that, he pushed away from the dresser he’d been leaning against and took one step toward the bathroom before his knees buckled.
“Rans!” I cried, lunging for him at the same instant Len did.
We managed to keep him upright, Len cursing a blue streak the whole time.
“...’m fine,” Rans mumbled unconvincingly. “Jus’ moved too fast, is all.”
“I don’t know how the hell he’s even upright at this point,” Len muttered.
We manhandled him into the bathroom, Len taking most of his weight as I teetered dangerously on my ridiculous heels. Once there, I peeled off his long leather coat and tossed it aside. Len shoved the shower curtain out of the way and we sat Rans on the edge of the tub, half-turned so his back was facing the fluorescent strip light above the sink.
“Three entrance wounds; no exit wounds,” Len said. “There should be way more blood than this. Vampire thing, I’m guessing?”
I nodded, trapping my lower lip between my teeth.
“The bullets wouldn’t be an issue,” Rans said hoarsely, “only silver is anathema to vampires. Silver through the heart is one of the very few ways to kill my kind.”
“Thought you told me you were already dead,” Len muttered, still prodding at the skin around the entrance wounds. He stuck a couple of fingers under Rans’ jaw, pressing into his neck. “Jesus. You were serious about your heart not beating.”
“No, Len,” Rans said through gritted teeth, “I was fucking joking with you, because this whole thing is one big laugh-fest. Of course I was bleedin’ serious. Now take one of the daggers and cut these damned bullets out of me before I decide I need a top-off from the most irritating source of platelets within arms’ reach.”
“Shut up, asshole. I saw your idea of battlefield surgery earlier,” Len said, “and if you think I’m going to slice your torso open with an unsterilized knife in a motel bathroom that’s probably harboring more communicable disease organisms than the CDC—”
“Len,” I interrupted softly. “You don’t understand. You can’t kill him. The first time I saw him, he’d collapsed in my garden shed after taking a shotgun blast through the chest. Through the chest, Len. There was a big gaping hole in the center of the ribcage, and ten minutes later he woke up and tore the door off the shed from the inside.”
Len stared at me, as though trying to decide if I were delusional or not.
My lips thinned. “If I’m nuts, then so are you. You just checked his pulse, and you saw Tristan’s stomach heal practically before your eyes. Rans needs that silver out, and I don’t think...” I swallowed, hating my weakness. “I don’t think I can do it.”
“Okay.” Gray eyes softened incrementally, and Len rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead. “Okay, fine. One of the bullets looks like it hit a rib. It’s not buried all that deeply under the skin. I can probably take that one out without doing much more damage, and we’ll see from there.”
“Saints be praised,” Rans gritted out. “Anytime you feel like getting started...”
I nodded in relief and took a seat on the closed toilet lid, where I could watch Rans’ face without also having a front row ticket to Len prying the bullet out of him. Len washed his hands and the dagger blade with soap and the hottest water the sink would produce, scrubbing for well over a minute.
“That’s completely unnecessary,” Rans complained wearily.
“Humor me,” Len bit out, adding under his breath, “Jesus. I must be out of my fucking mind...”
He returned to the tub and positioned Rans so his blood would drip into it. I took Rans’ hands in mine, scowling at him when he rolled his eyes at me. I could see Len frowning in concentration behind him. Rans didn’t so much as twitch, and a few moments later, something metal clinked against the porcelain of the tub bottom.
“That’s one,” Len said in a grim voice. Then his eyebrows went up, the piercing in the left one glinting under the harsh lighting. “Holy. Shit.”
“I tried to tell you,” Rans said. “Now, will you stop pussyfooting around and get the other two?”
Len was still staring. “But... your flesh. It just... closed up. In seconds.”
I thought I heard Rans’ teeth grinding together, so I stepped in. “Len, he’s serious when he says you can just get in there and get the bullets however you need to, and it will be fine. Please... just do it?”
“Though if you could avoid pushing the one lodged behind my clavicle into my heart by accident, that would probably be for the best,” Rans added.
“This is nuts,” Len said, for the second or third time in the last few minutes. “Okay, then. Brace yourself.”
I was perfectly content not to see exactly what Len had to do to get the other two bullets out. Rans sat like a statue, neither breathing nor flinching as two more clinks marked the removal of the remaining two projectiles. By the time he was done, Len was gray in the face again, but he continued to watch Rans’ back with sick fascination as it healed.
“That is utterly unreal,” he said. Then his eyes shifted to meet mine. “Of course, so is your shoulder. About those answers, Zorah...”
My gaze slid away from his. “Yeah, um. Rans, do you need some of my blood? Between the bullets and what you gave to Tristan—”
Deflection for the win.
Rans sighed. “Yes, I need to feed. But I’d also prefer not to be sporting a raging hard-on whenever our demon decides to show up.”
Right. The demon. I’d nearly managed to forget about her.
Meanwhile, Len’s expression was creeping back toward, ‘Oh, god, I’m locked in a motel room with crazy people.’ And I did feel pretty bad about asking, but still—
“Can he have some of your blood, Len?”
There. Because that was hardly weird at all,
