She answered without looking up from her patient. "The open corner lets him breathe, but when he sucks in air the bag collapses and seals the wound. It's called an inclusive bandage." She sounded as if she was lecturing. I wondered, not for the first time, what Cherry was like outside the monster stuff. She was almost like two different people. I'd never meant anyone, monster or not, who seemed so divided.
"Will it keep him alive long enough for the ambulance to get here?" I asked.
She finally looked up at me--eyes very serious. "I hope so."
I nodded. It was better than I could have done. I was great at putting holes in people. Not so good at keeping them alive.
Richard brought a blanket and folded it over Zane's legs, letting Cherry take the upper part of the blanket to fix the way she wanted around the wound.
Richard was wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, his tanned skin beaded with water as if he hadn't even taken time to dry off. The towel clung in a smooth tight line to his butt as he folded the quilt over Zane. His thick hair hung in heavy strands, so wet that water trickled from it in fine lines down his back.
He stood up, and the towel flashed a lot of thigh.
"I have larger towels," I said.
He frowned at me. "I heard gunshots. I wasn't really worried about the size of the towel."
I nodded. "You're right. Sorry." My anger with Richard seemed to shrink in direct proportion to his clothes. If he really wanted to win the war, all he had to do was strip. I'd have put up a white flag and applauded. Embarrassing, but almost true.
He ran his hand through his hair, smoothing it back from his face and squeezing out the excess water. That small movement showed his arms and chest to wonderful advantage. He arched his back just a little, which stretched the rest of his body in one long muscled line. It was the back arch that did it. I knew he was showing his body off on purpose. He'd always seemed unconscious of the effect his body had on me until now. Now, staring into his angry eyes, I knew he'd shown me his body very deliberately. His way of saying, without words, see what you passed on, see what you lost. If it had just been the great body I'd lost out on, it wouldn't have hurt so much.
I missed Sunday afternoons watching old musicals. Saturday hiking through the woods, bird-watching, or entire weekends of rafting on the Meramec. I missed hearing about his day at school. I missed him. The body was just a very nice bonus. I wasn't sure there were enough roses in the world to make me forget what Richard had almost been to me.
He stalked away towards the stairs and his interrupted shower. If I'd been as strong of will as I liked to think, I wouldn't have watched him walk away. I had a sudden vivid image of licking water off his chest and jerking that tiny white towel away. The image was clear enough that I had to turn away and take a few deep breaths. He wasn't mine anymore. Maybe he never had been.
"I don't mean to interrupt the stud watch," Jamil said, "but who is the dead guy, and why did he try to kill you?"
If I thought I'd been embarrassed before, I was wrong. The fact that I'd let the shit with Richard distract me from the much more vital question of the would-be murderer just proved that I wasn't up on my game. It was too careless for words. The sort of carelessness that can get you killed.
"I don't know him," I said.
Louie lifted the sheet that someone had thrown over him. "I don't recognize him either."
"Please," Ronnie said. She was looking somewhere between grey and green again.
Louie let the sheet fall back, but it was flatter somehow and clung to the top of his head. The blood soaked up the cotton like oil to a wick.
Ronnie made a small sound and ran for the bathroom.
Louie watched her run out. I watched him watch her. He caught me looking and said, "She's killed people before." The implied "why is this worse?" went unsaid.
"Once before," I said.
He stood up. "Did she react like this?"
I shook my head. "I think it was the sight of his brains leaking all over the porch that did it."
Gwen walked into the room. "A lot of people who can take the sight of blood don't like to see other things leaking out."
"Thank you, Ms. Therapist," Jamil said.
She turned to him like a small blond storm, her otherworldly energy spiraling through the room. "You are a homophobic bastard."
I raised eyebrows. "I miss something?"
"Jamil is one of those men who believes that every lesbian is just a heterosexual woman waiting for the right man. He was persistent enough to me that Sylvie kicked his ass."
"Such language from a trained therapist," Jason said. He'd rushed up from the basement where the vampires were stored for the day when the shooting started. When the excitement died down, he'd gone back to check on everybody.