spot which had been the start of my deathhawk, much less the ragged tufts on my crown where they’d run out of paint-encrusted hair to whack off. Oh, no. Oh, hell, no. “You can’t let anyone in here with me looking like this!”
“Dakota,” Davidson said gently. “We haven’t been letting them in here at all. Until you woke up we didn’t know anything about your assailant other than ‘a guy in a black coat.’ Now we know his name and that he’s a vampire, but you were too distraught to give a statement. Not even Miss Winters knows what this Transomnia looks like, though she is checking. So for all I know he’s waiting to take another crack at you, sitting in that crowd—”
“Crowd?” I asked. “What crowd?”
“There are a lot of people here to see you, Dakota. A lot of people. You need to see them sometime,” Davidson said, in that oh-so-calm voice that let you know he’d back your play, but you’d be disappointed in yourself for not stepping up.
Finally I gave in. “Oh, all right. But not in here. Clean me up and take me to them.”
“I don’t think—” Davidson said, looking back at the hall. “You’ve just had knee surgery. You shouldn’t be walking—”
“Get me a fucking wheelchair, then,” I said. “Just don’t let anybody in here, not with me laying in bed looking like a… like a damn victim.”
Davidson abruptly turned and stepped out the door. After a minute he returned, stepped into the bathroom for a hot wet towel, and sat down next to me. His expression was tender as he patted down my forehead; his hands were delicate and dextrous. I closed my eyes as the cloth wiped my cheeks, smiling once when his thumb brushed a bit of grit from beneath my eye. When I opened my eyes Philip was holding up a comb.
“Mind if I use mine?” he asked. “I’m clean.”
“I don’t have enough hair left to give a shit,” I said softly.
“You still look beautiful,” Philip said, running the comb over the crown of my head.
“Liar,” I replied, as he straightened out the remainder of my hawk.
“But I do it so well,” he responded. My hair no longer fell in my eyes, so I’d ignored it; but when he was done, the hair that was left climbed straight back, and I felt much better.
“Philip,” I said. “I… I want to learn to defend myself.”
“Defend yourself?” Philip asked. “But you—”
“It’s just bravado,” I admitted, near tears. “I play it big and bad… but it’s all talk. Just talk. I need to learn to back it up—”
“Whoa, whoa,” Philip said. “What exactly are we talking about? You mean, as in, to fight? To fire a gun?”
“I mean, whatever it takes,” I said. “Just this… never again. I mean, ev-er.”
“Dakota,” Philip said. He sounded worried. “Even trained agents get mugged. Me-heap-bad-man-in-black tried to fight off a mugger and got pistol-whipped, lost the briefcase I was supposed to be protecting and ended up in the hospital, just like you.”
I stared at him. I knew what he was getting at—with all his training, with all his equipment, he’d still got caught off guard and ended up in the hospital, just like me. Even if I’d had training, there always was a chance that Transomnia could still have caught me off guard—and so no amount of training would guarantee that this wouldn’t happen again.
Philip had a point. It was a good point, but I didn’t want to get it, refused to follow it through. In the end, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t go through this again, not without knowing I’d done everything I could to keep myself safe.
“I-don’t-care,” I said deliberately. “I want to learn to defend myself.”
“Alright, Dakota, I’ll help you,” he said, though I wasn’t sure what he meant by ‘help’ was what I wanted. “Now let’s go see your friends.”
Philip did a little ‘social engineering’ to get the chair—it was amazing. If you listened to what he said, he never exactly told the nurse that the doctor had ordered a wheelchair so I could leave my room, but he certainly left that impression and within minutes he was wheeling me out into the hall. Outside my room, I saw Vickman, the hard-faced man from the Vampire Consulate, speaking quietly with a policeman; when he saw me he raised an eyebrow.
“Is the waiting area clean?” Philip asked.
“Yes,” Vickman said. “We’re checking out everyone who goes in there.”
“Great. Thanks for your help, Mister…”
“Just ‘Vickman,’” he