throng, tripped over a hose. Shook off a hand that tried to pull me back. Rounded the ambulance, my boots grinding with my speed. Smelling the blood even over the smoke. Bruiser's blood. Everything in my life narrowed to that one scent. I dodged another man who tried to stop me, shouting it was too dangerous for onlookers. I jumped into the ambulance. Bent over Bruiser, touched his shoulder, and leaned in to breathe in his scent, my unbound hair sliding forward.
His shirt had been half cut away, bloody rags still on one arm and half tucked into his trousers. Blood smeared his chest, as did brown Betadine and swathes of white bandages centered on his upper left shoulder and his right chest below his pec. Bags of clear fluid hung from IV stands; one was a plasma expander, the other normal saline. His eyes were closed and his skin was chilled where my hands brushed over his chest. But he was full of vamp blood. He would have some residual accelerated healing.
I tried to say something, anything, thinking, Are you okay? Or something like that. Something normal. Instead what growled out of my mouth was "If you bleed to death, I'll kill you and Leo both."
A faint smile touched his face, but before he could reply, the paramedic said, "Ma'am, unless you're next of kin, get out, you." Frenchy patois. Cajun background.
"She's next of kin," Bruiser said, without opening his eyes.
"Your wife, she is?" The paramedic sounded incredulous. I ignored him.
"Sure. She can make any medical decisions for me. My lawyer has the papers."
Which was news to me, if it was true. And wife? I shook that away, even as Beast purred a satisfied Mine. "What happened?" I asked, knowing it had something to do with my trips and the vamp who was attacking other MOCs. "This is my fault," I said.
He tried to laugh, but his breath caught with pain. I thought I heard something wet and gurgly in his chest, but the paramedic didn't seem concerned and the sound stopped.
When he could speak, he said, "You struck the match? Carried the gasoline? Tried to kill my friend and master?"
Inside, I flinched at the two terms used together for Leo, who was both vamp and monster, but I kept it there, in the dark inside me. I shook my head no.
"Just after moonrise, Leo was sitting down to breakfast," Bruiser said. "We heard gunfire. Vamps and blood-servants attacked, killed the gardeners and three security men in the first ten seconds. Inside of fifteen they had us pinned down inside. By thirty seconds, they had firebombed the house and were taking off on trail bikes that they must have pushed in. Then we heard the second wave, gunfire from the surrounding property. It was well coordinated. They were professionals, well trained, and they are still fighting out there." He lifted a finger and pointed off behind the house. "How can any of that be your fault?"
I had seen the property from an all-terrain vehicle during my review of Leo's security systems, and hadn't liked the easy access to the house. But making Leo move into town and give up his family home hadn't been an option. When I'd suggested the move, he had lifted a narrow black brow and uttered a laconic "No." I hadn't argued and I should have. Now that decision was back to bite Leo. Worse was the knowledge that I was even more involved in today's fiasco.
"It's my fault because the man I killed in my hotel room was the Enforcer of the master vamp who's challenging and taking other vamps' territory."
Faint humor touched his features, his closed eyes crinkling slightly. "Why do you think that?"
"Leo's enemy left me a letter on a dead man."
"A? Z? Q?" the paramedic asked, and laughed at his own joke.
Bruiser's brown eyes came open slowly, as if they had been glued together. There was pain in his gaze, but also intense concentration and focus. He lifted a finger and touched my hand. I almost jerked away from the contact, his flesh as cold as a vamp's, but his fingers closed over mine. "When you first saw him in your hotel room, was his gun drawn?"
The question surprised me nearly as much as the gesture. "I don't know." I stared into his eyes, unable to block out his study of me. Unable to not remember. It had been months, and what I recalled about the man had been the initial