Hunter had almost been a habit. In college, he’d come down with mono, and refused to stay in the infirmary for reasons he wouldn’t discuss. His mother was dead, he said, and there was no one else at home to take care of him. Another time, years later, he came back from a trip to Africa with a combination of malaria and parasites that had nearly killed him.
I had loved him then, with a fierceness that made me queasy when he suffered. And there was my triumph in his recovery, when he was too weak to do anything but look up at me with love and devotion.
The problems started when he got better, and hardly looked at me at all.
Struggling with the scissors, I managed to cut partway through the jacket before having to take a break. Thanks to the sheriff’s wormwood drink, I looked and felt human, but there was a fine tremor in my hands, and I didn’t have complete fine motor control. When I started cutting again, Hunter winced. “I’m sorry if I’m hurting you.”
“Liar.” His dark eyes met mine, and despite the pain and tension, or maybe because of it, we both burst out laughing. It was the first time in over a year that we had been in accord, and it brought back memories. But the moment passed, and Hunter closed his eyes again, his chest rising and falling with his rapid, shallow breaths.
“All right. Let’s get your jacket off you before you bleed out.” I gritted my teeth and sawed through the leather with as much strength as I could muster. Hunter was silent, but he slumped when I finally split the sleeve in two and could pull the sides of the jacket away from his arm. I tried to be as careful as I could not to touch the wound while cutting through his shirt, so it was a few minutes before I could really see the whole arm. Putting down the scissors, I peeled the jacket and shirt away from Hunter’s arm.
“How bad is it, Abs?”
“Well, you’re not going to bleed to death right away, but it’s not pretty.” The blood flow had slowed, which was good, but there were jagged teeth marks on his forearm, two of them deep enough to reveal the white gleam of bone underneath. Defensive wounds, I thought, the kind you get when you bring your arm up to protect your face. Whatever had tangled with him had also crushed the lower part of his arm, and I could see the tip of the ulna protruding from his skin. Without an X-ray, I couldn’t tell if the break had been a clean one or not, but I suspected there was more than one fracture.
Hunter struggled to lift himself up onto his good elbow. “Is it broken?”
“Yes,” I said simply, leaving out that the break was complex, compound, and probably comminuted. “Now, lie back down while I figure out what to do next.” The bleeding wasn’t too bad, but there wasn’t much I could do besides icing and splinting the limb, and I was concerned that Hunter might need an operation to align the bones properly. “What happened? Was it manitou?”
Hunter looked puzzled. “Bear man,” I clarified. “Or I guess it could be some other kind of combination. It seems we’ve got new shoppers at our local supernatural clearinghouse.”
Hunter grunted as I irrigated the wound with saline. “Bear. He was on our property.”
“So he just attacked you with no warning?”
“Arggh—Jesus, woman.” Hunter grimaced as I finished cleaning his arm. “Talk about no warning.”
“Sorry, I’m not used to patients who can talk.”
Hunter smiled at the joke, then winced as I cracked a cold pack and pressed it against his arm, and I felt a rush of my old affection for him.
“So Bruin didn’t talk to you at all?”
“Bruin?”
“That’s what he told me to call him. I’ve run into him, too,” I said, but instead of replying, Hunter just lay there on the floor, his eyes closed. “Hey,” I said, touching his face. “You still with me?”
“Hurts to breathe,” Hunter said, and I cursed as I realized I hadn’t really checked him over properly.
“Shit, you probably have a broken rib … Come on, Hunter, stay with me.” I didn’t say it out loud, but I was also wondering if my former husband hadn’t sustained some internal injuries. His face was going gray now, and the minor blood loss from his arm didn’t justify that. Shit. I didn’t have the facilities