with my seat belt. It came undone, and while people shouted and gathered like ants on a caterpillar, I pulled my foot free. Nothing hurt yet. I was sure that would change.
'Peter,' I said again, touching his face. His eyes were closed but he was breathing. Blood seeped from a ragged cut over his eye. I undid his seat belt, and his eyelids fluttered.
'Rachel?' he said, his face scrunching up in hurt. 'Am I dead yet?'
'No, sweetheart,' I said, touching his face. Sometimes the transition from living to dead goes in a heartbeat, but not with this much damage, and not with the sun still up. He was going to take a long nap to wake hungry and whole. I managed a smile for him, taking my pain amulet off and draping it over him. My chest hurt, but I didn't feel anything, numb inside and out.
Peter looked so white, his blood pooling in his lap. 'Listen,' I said, adjusting his coat with my red fingers so I couldn't see the wreckage of his chest. 'Your legs look okay, and your arms. You have a cut above your eye. I think your chest is crushed. In about a week you can take me dancing.'
'Out,' he whispered. 'Get out and blow up the truck. Damn it, I can't even die right. I didn't want to burn.' He started crying, the tears making a clear track down his bloodied face. 'I didn't want to have to burn….'
I didn't think he was going to survive this even if the ambulance got to him in time. 'I'm not going to burn you. I promise.' I'm going to be sick. That's all there is to it.
'I'm scared,' he whimpered, his breath gurgling from his lungs filling with blood. I prayed he wouldn't start coughing.
Broken chips of safety glass sliding, I pulled myself closer, gently holding his shattered body to me. 'The sun is shining,' I said, eyes clenching shut as memories of my dad flooded back. 'Just like you wanted. Can you feel it? It won't be long. I'll be here.'
'Thank you,' he said, the words terrifyingly liquid. 'Thank you for trying to turn the lights on. That makes me feel as if I was worth saving.'
My throat closed. 'You are worth saving,' I said, tears spilling over as I rocked him gently. He tried to breathe, the sound ugly. It was pain given a voice, and it struck through me. His body shuddered, and I held him closer though I was sure it hurt him. Tears fell, hot as they landed on my arm. There was noise all around us, but no one could touch us. We were forever set apart.
His body suddenly realized it was dying, and with an adrenaline-induced strength, it struggled to remain alive. Clutching his head to my chest, I held him firmly against the massive tremor I knew was coming. I sobbed when it shook him as if he were trying to dislodge his body from his soul. I hated this. I hated it. I had lived it before. Why did I have to live it again?
Peter stopped moving and went still.
Rocking him now for me, not him, I shook with sobs that hurt my ribs. Please, please let this have been the right thing to do.
But it didn't feel right.
Thirty-four
'Rachel!' Jenks cried, and I realized he was with me. His hands were warm and clean, not sticky like mine— and after struggling with the door to the truck, he reached inside the window to unlatch it. I let my grip on Peter loosen as it opened. My leg, twisted behind me, felt kind of cold, and I looked at, going woozy. There was a dark, wet stain on my jeans, and my brand-new running shoe now had a red stripe. Maybe my leg was hurt more than I thought?
'Get Peter out,' I whispered. 'Ow. Ow, hey!' I exclaimed when Jenks dragged me across the seat and away from Peter. His arms went around me in a cradle, and with me getting Peter's blood all over him, he carried me to a clear space on the cold pavement.
'Up,' I whispered, cold and light-headed. 'Don't lay me down. Don't hit the button before you get him out. You hear me, Jenks. Get him out!'
He nodded, and I asked, 'Where's the truck driver?' remembering not to call him Nick.
'Some lady in a lab coat is looking at him.'
Fumbling, I pulled my half of the inertia-dampening charm from around my neck. I slipped it to Jenks, and he replaced it with the remote to ignite the NOS. Palming it, I watched him nudge the amulet through the nearby road grate, destroying half the evidence that we were committing insurance fraud. David would have kittens.
'Wait until I get back before hitting that, will you?' he muttered, his eyes darting to my closed grip. Not waiting for an answer, he loped to the truck shouting for two men in the crowd to help him, and a woman descended upon me.
'Get off!' I exclaimed, pushing, and the narrow-faced woman in a purple lab coat fell away. How had she gotten there so fast? The coming ambulance wasn't even a noise yet.
'I'm Dr. Lynch,' she said tightly, frowning at the blood I'd left on her lab coat. 'Just what I need. You look like you're a worse PITA patient than me.'
'PITA?' I asked, slapping at her when she took my shoulders and tried to lay me down.
She pulled back, frowning. 'Pain in the ass,' she explained. 'I need to take your blood pressure and pulse supine, but after that you can sit up until you pass out, for all I care.'
I tried to see around her to Jenks, but he was inside the truck with Peter. 'Deal,' I said.
Her eyes went to my leg, wet from the calf down. 'Think you can put pressure on that?'
I nodded, starting to feel sick. This was going to hurt. Holding my breath against the wash of pain, I let her take my shoulders and ease me down. Knee bent, I clamped my hand to the part of my leg that hurt the most, making it hurt more. While she took her God-given sweet time, I listened to the sounds of panic and stared at the darkening sky framed by the bridge's cables, holding my ribs and trying not to look like they hurt lest she wanted to poke them too. I thought of my pain amulet, praying it had eased Peter when nothing else had. I deserved to hurt.
She muttered at me to hold still when I turned my head to look at the passing traffic. A black convertible was parked just inside the closed northbound lane. Hers?
I jerked at the ugly ripping sound and the sudden draft on my leg. 'Hey!' I shouted, putting my hurt palms against the pavement and levering myself up. I held my breath as my sight grayed at the pain, then got mad when I realized she had cut my jeans up the seam to my knee. 'Damn it, those were fifty bucks!' I exclaimed, and she gave me a cold look.
'I thought that would get you up,' she said, moving my bloody hand back to my leg and taking my blood pressure and pulse a second time.
I could tell she was a high-blood living vampire despite her trying to hide it in the old way, and I felt safe with her. Her blood lust would be carefully in check while she worked on me. That's the way living vamps were. Children and the injured were sacred.
Still mad about my jeans, I took a shallow breath, staring at the chaos lit by the orangey yellow glare of the setting sun. 'Let's see it,' she said, and I released my hold on my leg.
Worried, I peered down. It didn't look bad from a bleeding-to-death standpoint—just a slight oozing and what looked like a huge bruise in the making—but it hurt like hell. Saying nothing, Dr. Lynch opened her tackle box and broke the seal on a small bottle. 'Relax, it's water,' she said when I stiffened as she went to pour it on me.
She had to hold my leg still with an iron grip as she poked and prodded, cleaning it while muttering about torn arterioles and them being a bitch to stop bleeding but that I'd survive. My three-year-old tetanus shot seemed to satisfy her, but my stomach was in knots when she finally decided I had been tortured enough and slipped a stretchy white pressure bandage over it.
Someone was directing traffic to keep the rubberneckers moving and the bridge open. Two cars of Weres had stopped to 'help,' worrying me. I wanted them to see the statue rolling around on the floor of the front seat, but having them this close was a double-edged sword.
Slowly I tucked the remote to blow the NOS under my good leg and out of sight. The wind through the straits pushed my hair out of my eyes, and as I looked at the faces pressed against the windows as they passed, I started to laugh, hurting my ribs. 'I'm okay,' I said when the woman gave me a sharp look. 'I'm not going into shock. I'm
