"Don't I know it," Jason said. He was still across the room, hugging his na**d chest, hands rubbing up and down his bare arms as if he were cold. He wasn't cold.
I turned back to Jamil. "I am bound to Richard. It isn't the same kind of bonding that he'd have with another lycanthrope, but it is a bond."
"You are Jean-Claude's human servant," Jamil said.
I hated the term, but it was accurate, technically anyway. "Yes, I am, just as Richard is Jean-Claude's wolf to call."
"He cannot call our Ulfric like a dog. Richard does not answer to the vampire's whims."
"Me, either," I said. "Sometimes I think Jean-Claude may have bitten off more than he can drink with the two of us."
The door to the cabin opened, no knock, no preliminaries. Asher stepped through with Nathaniel in his arms. He was bundled into Asher's suit jacket. What I could see of his legs were pale and bare.
I ran forward. "What happened?"
Asher laid Nathaniel on the bed on his back, trapping the jacket under his body. He was nude except for the jacket. Nathaniel tried to curl up onto his side into a ball, but Asher stopped him, trying to smooth his legs down, to make him lie still. "Lie still, Nathaniel."
"It hurts!" His voice was strangled, twisted tight with pain.
I knelt by the bed, touching his face. He looked at me, eyes so wide they flashed white. His mouth opened and a small moan escaped him. His hand clawed at the bedspread as if he needed to hold something, anything. I gave him my hand and his grip was so tight I had to remind him not to crush my hand.
He muttered, "Sorry," then his spine bowed, body twisting. Normally, seeing Nathaniel completely nude would have embarrassed me. Now I was too scared to be embarrassed. There were bleeding cuts on his chest, but they looked shallow. Nothing seemed wrong enough for this kind of pain.
Cherry disappeared into the bathroom. I didn't think you were that squeamish if you were a nurse.
"Who did this?" I asked.
"He is our message from the local vampires," Asher said.
"What message?"
Nathaniel twisted on the bed, his other hand grabbing at my arm. Two slow tears trailed down his cheeks. "They kept asking me why we'd come here." He threw his head back and forth, and I caught a glimpse of something on his neck. I got one hand free and moved all that long, auburn hair so I could see his neck. A vampire bite showed in the smooth flesh of his neck. The bite was clean, neat, but the skin was slightly darker than it should have been.
"Did one of you do this?" I asked.
"I took blood from the bend of his arm," Asher said. "That is Colin's doing."
Nathaniel's body eased against the bed, the spasm or whatever passing. "I told them we were here to rescue Richard. I told them the truth, over and over." His hand convulsed around mine, eyes closing as if he were riding a wave of pain. After a few seconds, he opened his eyes, his hand easing around mine. "They wouldn't believe me."
Cherry came out of the bathroom. She tried to push me gently but firmly out of the way, but Nathaniel clutched at my hand. Cherry settled for making me kneel by the head of the bed. He could still hold my hand, but I was out of the way. She began to explore the wounds on his chest. She was very submissive, almost untrustworthily so, but let someone be injured and it was like a different Cherry rose to the occasion. She became Nurse Cherry, as if the leather-slut-from-hell was her secret identity.
"Do you have a first aid kit in this cabin?" she asked.
"No," I said.
"I've got one in my suitcase in the other cabin," Cherry said.
"I'll get it," Jason offered. He started for the door.
"Wait," I said. "Jamil, go with him. I don't want anyone else taken tonight."
No one argued with me. It was a first. The two werewolves just went for the door. Damian had to move out of the way for them to leave. He shut the door behind them and leaned against it. His eyes had gone a drowning, solid green, like emerald fire. His pale skin was taking on that translucent, almost glowing quality that the vamps get when their humanity begins to fold away. Strong emotions will do that to the lesser vamps: fear, lust, anger.
I looked at Asher. He was ... normal. He stood just back from the bed, that handsome, tragic, face blank and empty. It was so like the expression Jean-Claude used when he was hiding something.
"I thought Colin was either supposed to attack us directly or leave us alone," I said. "No one said anything about this kind of shit."
"It was ... unexpected," Asher said.