"Get it out before the skin heals around it."
The wound was healing. My hand barely squeezed into the opening. I got a handful of blood-soaked shirt and pulled. It came out in a long wet sloppy mess. Blood poured in a steady stream from one corner of the shirt. I let the shirt fall to the leaves. I would not be wearing it tonight. I had a thought that I was wearing nothing above the waist except a black bra. I didn't care.
"Is he going to live?" I asked.
"He'll live."
"Promise," I said.
He stared at me and nodded. Stray moonlight made his glasses look like blank silver mirrors. "I promise."
I looked down into Jamil's wolfish face. I stroked the fur across his forehead. The fur was both rough and thick and soft. "I'll be right back."
There were other people with Jason and Zane. Cherry with Zane, cradling him. Nathaniel was kneeling by them, but his eyes were for me. There was even a man leaning over the rifleman. He was tying a belt off on the stump of his arm. Good. I wanted him alive. I had questions for him but not yet.
I knelt by Jason. He lay in the leaves on his side. A woman was tending his wounds. She was dressed in short shorts and a halter top, dark hair tied back in a loose ponytail. It wasn't until she turned her head that I realized it was Lucy. She held a penlight between her teeth and was searching Jason's wounds with sure hands, as if she knew what she was doing.
She answered my question before I asked. "He'll heal, but it's going to take a couple of days." Which meant if Jason had been human, the beating would have been fatal.
She looked at me then. Our eyes met from inches away. The makeup was a little less severe, but the face was still pretty by moonlight.
I turned away from her first. I didn't want to see what was in her eyes. I just didn't want to know. I knelt over Jason, started to touch his face, then stopped because the blood was still wet on my hands.
He said something very soft. I had to lean over him to hear it. "Let me lick the blood," he said.
I stared down at him, eyes just a little wide. "You're not dying, Jason," I said. "Don't get cute."
Verne said, "It's fresh blood, Anita. It's pack blood. It will help him heal."
I stared at him. The local Ulfric stood off to one side, tall and straight and slender, letting his medical personnel do their jobs. I started to ask him where the hell he had been while we got cut up, but Zane made a sound.
Zane seemed to be healing just fine from a rifle blast that would have cost a human his arm. But it hurt, and he made small pain sounds while the doctor worked on him.
"The blood will help them heal," Verne said. "Especially blood from someone as powerful as you are. Marianne feeds the pack sometimes."
Lucy said, "It really will help him." Her face was neutral as she said it.
I looked down at Jason. His face was a mask of blood. One eye was swollen completely shut. He tried to smile at me, but his lips were so badly swollen that the smile didn't work. It was like part of his face just didn't work right now.
I touched those wounded lips with my fingertips, brushed the fresh blood across his lower lip. He rolled his lip under, tasting the blood. But the movement made him wince. It hurt.
I laid two fingers against his lips and slid them gently into his mouth. He tried to suck them, but his mouth wouldn't work right. He licked the blood, swallowing almost convulsively. I drew the fingers out, and his hand came up to grab my wrist. I let him guide two new fingers into his mouth.
Richard spilled into the clearing, going to his knees in the leaves. Shang-Da was at his back like a good bodyguard. Richard's gaze met mine, and just the glance opened me up to him a little more. Without Jean-Claude to act as a buffer, the marks between Richard and I were stronger. He knelt there, his breathing coming in near-painful gasps. I could feel his chest rising and falling, almost as if I were breathing for him. I felt him look at the woman beside me. I saw Lucy for a second as he saw her. I saw the rise of her br**sts swelling under the halter top.
The line of her cheek half in shadow, half in moonlight. She raised her face to meet my eyes like she could feel me looking.
"He still wants you," I said.
She gave a very small smile. "But not as much as he wants you."
The marks between Richard and I quieted. I couldn't feel him breathe or what he was thinking. He had cut me off. Afraid of what I'd see, maybe. "What happened, Verne? They were supposed to be safe in your lands," Richard said.
Cherry answered, "Jamil sent the three of us for help. He" -- she pointed to a shadowy figure on the other side of the clearing -- "wouldn't let us pass into the lupanar. He wouldn't take our request for aid to Verne."
The man stepped forward so a patch of moonlight showed him: tall, muscular, dark-haired, pale. "They are not pack. They have no right to demand passage."
Verne was just suddenly there, and the tall werewolf was on the ground. I hadn't seen him move. It was a speed that was dreamlike, impossible. But I'd almost seen it.