Jeanne Louise didn’t answer right away. She set the child on the bed and then turned her on her stomach so that she could examine the back of her head. The wound was as big as it had felt to her hand. She could see right through to her fractured skull.
“I don’t know,” she said unhappily. It certainly didn’t look good. Not only was there the tumor for the nanos to contend with, and her weakened state, but now there was the head wound and the loss of blood.
“Please don’t let her die,” Paul said quietly. It was a prayer really, a quiet request of God. But Jeanne Louise flinched as if he’d lashed her with the words.
In the next moment, she suddenly raised her uninjured wrist to her fangs and tore into it with even more vicious intent than she had the first. Paul winced and started to turn away, but then forced himself to watch the woman he loved tear a great gaping wound into her wrist. She was doing this for him after all, for him and Livy.
While Jeanne Louise had merely grunted the first time she bit herself, this time a shriek of pain was torn from her throat with the action. But then this time the wound she brought on was bigger, the flap of skin she tore away almost twice the size of the first. She then held this new gash over Livy’s injured head and began to squeeze the wound as if trying to get as much ketchup as possible out of a plastic bottle. Paul swallowed at the hissing breath she sucked in as she did it, knowing she was causing herself even more pain. He then turned and hurried from the room, and rushed to the bathroom between the two bedrooms.
Paul felt like he was going to be sick, but that wasn’t why he’d come. He ignored the toilet, swallowed the bile in his throat and quickly opened the cupboard door under the sink. A stack of towels sat inside and he grabbed several and then hurried back to the bedroom where Jeanne Louise’s wrist had stopped gushing, the wound reduced to little more than a trickle. Still she squeezed at the wound trying to get more of the valuable liquid out.
When she finally gave up on getting any more out, and let her wrists drop to her side, Paul stepped to her side and used the towels to bind first one wounded wrist and then the other, wrapping the towels tightly around each.
“Why did you bleed on her head?” Paul asked quietly as he finished with the second wrist. “Will it help?”
Jeanne Louise shook her head and heaved out a weary sigh. “I don’t know. It was the only thing I could think to do. The nanos might be able to heal the head wound. And her skull is cracked, they might be able to get through it to get to the tumor quickly and start to work on it. As to whether it will help or not though . . .” She shrugged helplessly.
“It might help.”
Paul turned sharply at that growl, his eyes narrowing on the man with short dark hair now entering the room.
“Daddy!” Jeanne Louise said with relief and hurried forward to hug the man while Paul gaped.
Daddy? The guy had short dark hair, wore jeans and a T-shirt and didn’t look a day over twenty-five. But then neither did Jeanne Louise, or any of the other immortals he’d ever met. None of them looked over twenty-five or so. Still . . . the guy didn’t look like he could be her father, Paul thought, and then changed his mind on that when the man in question released Jeanne Louise and turned to spear him with a look of cold dislike and said, “Is this the bastard who kidnapped you, Jeanie?”
“Oh . . . er . . . no,” Jeanne Louise said quickly, moving to put herself between Paul and her father. When her father turned a sharp look on her for the lie, she added, “I mean yes, but only at first. I’m not being held against my will anymore. He’s my life mate, Daddy. Or he was,” she added dully, her shoulders drooping unhappily as she glanced to Livy. Swallowing, she glanced back and asked, “Do you have any blood?”
“We only have a couple bags left. Bricker went out to fetch them from the cooler in the van,” a woman’s voice answered.
Paul shifted to the side to see who this new speaker was, his eyebrows rising as he spotted the tall black woman with short, spiked hair standing behind Jeanne Louise’s father. He recognized her at once as the woman in the van at the mall in London. Eshe, Jeanne Louise had said her name was. Her stepmother.
“Only a couple bags?” Jeanne Louise echoed with dismay.
“Nicholas and Jo are only a few minutes away and have more in their cooler, as do Etienne and Rachel. They were searching the small towns along Lake Huron for you too,” he explained.
“How did you know we were on the lake?” Jeanne Louise asked with a frown.
“After I spotted you leaving the mall parking lot, a debit withdrawal and credit card transaction popped up,” Eshe explained solemnly.
When Jeanne Louise turned to him in question, Paul said helplessly, “We’d already been spotted in London. I figured it was safe enough to get gas and withdraw more money. They knew we were there and I didn’t think it would lead to their figuring out where we were.”
“It wasn’t the cash or gas that told us. It was the raft and water wings,” her father said dryly. “Those along with the mosquito repellent suggested the beach to us so we concentrated on searching the waterside towns on either side of London.”
Paul felt the blood slip from his face. Christ, he’d bought them at the gas station, not even thinking . . . He’d brought these people here with his own actions. He’d ruined everything himself. His gaze slid to Jeanne Louise but she wasn’t looking at him now. She stood, face turned away and hands clenched. Hating him for blowing it for them, he supposed miserably.
Silence reigned in the room for a moment and then Jeanie’s father moved to the bed to peer down at Livy. Mouth tight, he asked, “Bricker said you used your turn on her?”
“I didn’t have a choice,” Jeanie said quietly. “He scared her and she fell down the stairs. She was dying.”
“What does that matter? She was already dying,” he growled and Eshe moved up behind him, putting a hand on his arm.
“She’s the daughter of her life mate, Armand,” Eshe said softly. “She loves the child. It was her choice. She wasn’t forced.”
“No, just kidnapped and emotionally blackmailed,” Armand Argeneau growled, casting another glare Paul’s way.
He shifted uncomfortably under the look, thinking the guy definitely acted like a father. He himself probably would have been pissed at the way things had played out if he was Jeanne Louise’s father. He’d made a mess of everything.
“What is it?”