The blonde, Julie, stopped cursing the stupidity of men under her breath and just joined him in staring at my arm. She was careful not to touch me, since she hadn't double-gloved, but she let his fingers do the walking. When he spread the edges of the wound, I protested. "That hurts," I said.
"Sorry," he said, but didn't look up from the wound.
"How long ago did you say this happened?" Julie asked.
"An hour, less," I said.
"No way," she said.
Matt finally met my eyes. He was frowning. "I'd say this was hours, maybe a day old, at least."
"I told you I carry lycanthropy. It means I heal faster than human-normal."
"It's healing so fast it's going to heal crooked. Stitches would have kept it from doing that," Matt said.
"Crooked?" I asked.
"It's going to scar more," Julie said, "than if a doctor had stitched it for you."
I looked down at my arm. It was a long, jagged cut, almost like angry lightning going from elbow to almost wrist. "Nothing to be done about it now," I said.
"Actually if you go to the hospital they can cut it open again, and then sew it up. We just had a seminar on preternatural patients. Lycanthropes can heal so fast that they scar more, or even get their muscles bunched up so the wound gives them pain almost like arthritis." Matt said it staring down at my arm, as if it were a sort of show-and-tell.
"Is there a time limit for when I need to come in and get this done?"
"Sooner is better, at the rate you're healing," he said, poking at the wound again.
"Please, stop poking it," I said.
He looked up a little startled. "I'm sorry; it's just the first wound like this I've seen since the seminar."
"Matt's a big one for theory in the field," his partner said.
I looked at her, nodding. "I usually heal without scarring now."
"Well, this is going to scar," she said.
I looked at it and believed them, but wasn't sure why it was happening. I thought about it, and then realized I'd absorbed anger when I visited the red tigers, but I hadn't fed the ardeur. The anger had taken the edge off my hunger, but it hadn't really refueled me. I wasn't healing as well as normal, which explained why the tree limb had hurt me so badly in the first place, as well as the scarring. I could go longer between feedings. I could control it, but apparently this was the price. I healed better than a pure human, but not as well as I could heal. That wasn't good when hunting the Harlequin. Shit.
I tried to imagine what Raborn would say if I actually did take time out for a nookie break. It didn't even bear thinking about; I couldn't stop for sex, not until we finished hunting through the woods. Well, fuck, or rather no fuck. Damn it, I was tired of getting punished for not having sex. It was sort of the horror movie cliche turned on its ear; only the slutty survived, not the virginal.
I couldn't explain any of this to the EMTs, or anyone else here but Edward. Always before with the ardeur it had consumed me, forced me to feed, but now I had enough control that I could delay it. The angry purple and red wound on my arm showed me the price for controlling the ardeur. Staring down at the wound, I realized that I had started counting on healing and being harder to hurt. I tried to remember the last time I'd been hurt by accident like this, and I couldn't remember. My stomach clenched tight and it wasn't hunger - that wasn't where the ardeur's hunger hit me - it was fear. If a tree limb could do this to me, then what about a sword, or a bullet? Shit.
"You okay?" EMT Julie asked.
I nodded. "Fine."
"You really need to go to the hospital and let a doctor open the wound and then stitch it back up," she said.
"I know," I said.
She frowned at me. "But you're not going to do it, are you?" She sounded disgusted with me, I really couldn't blame her.
"I can't let them go into the woods without me."
"You know, the marshals around here do just fine when you're not in town. They hunt vampires and beasts, and they do a good job. Let them do their jobs and let us do ours and take you to