aid kit?"
"I'm all right. The bleeding has stopped."
"Don't be ridiculous," I said, coming to a swift decision. I took him by the arm and gently but firmly guided him over to the nearest butt-height rock. "You were skewered clean through. Those sorts of wounds simply do not stop bleeding. Now, you sit here, and I'll go find someone to help you. Try not to move around."
He dug in his heels midway to the rock, his expression alternating between incredulity and annoyance. "You don't want to listen to me, do you?"
"It's not that I don't want to," I said, tugging on him as gently as I could. "You're in shock. You don't know what you're saying. I'm simply doing what's best for you."
A little ripple of surprise claimed him. You're . . . tending me?
If you want to call it that.
No one has ever done that. No one has cared.
Well, sheesh, you're hurt, badly hurt, and although I may not want to have sex with you again -
You do, though. I can feel your interest in me just as you can feel mine in you.
- although I may not want to have sex with you again, I'm not so callous that I'll let you die here. Or come close to dying again.
Why not? You think I'm a murderer and abuser of women.
"I never said you abused a woman. I just said you killed one."
"One day we will discuss why you had a vision of my past, but for now, allow me to relieve your anxiety by showing you this." He pulled open his shirt.
Instinctively I flinched at the blood on his belly, but then I realized that, rather than looking at a great big gaping hole, I was seeing blood and nothing more.
"You . . . I saw the sword. What . . . ?" I touched the spot on his stomach where the sword had pierced him. There was an ugly red line there, hot to the touch, with dried blood flaking off around it, but no open wound.
"Dark Ones have regenerative powers."
I spread my fingers out over the wound, noticing that his eyes lightened a little in color from a dark forest green to jade. "You're hungry again."
"I lost blood. That happens."
"You should feed - "
"No. You've given me too much blood already."
"I feel fine now," I said, waving my arms around in the air as if that proved my point.
Querida, as you found out, to a Dark One, the act of feeding can be highly arousing. Do you really wish for me to bury myself in your body again?
The words, spoken with such intimacy, caused my body to go up in flames. For a few seconds, I was about to tell him to go ahead; then the good part of my brain, the smart part, shoved the inner devil aside and took over. "I'm happy to give you more blood if you need it, but there will be no more sex, Alec. That was an aberration, nothing more."
He said nothing, but I could feel him thinking plenty. He just didn't let me see what it was he was thinking.
I walked along beside him as he rebuttoned his shirt, heading once again to the north. "So, about this Tool thing. I don't like being evil. How do I make it stop?"
"You're not evil; you're simply a conduit to Bael's strength. That's all the Tools are - they have no abilities of their own; they simply allow others to tap into his power."
"So you used me to access the English dude's power to destroy his own demon?"
Alec's expression was bleak, surprisingly so, considering that he had just defeated someone who I assumed was going to make mincemeat of us both. "Yes."
"Why aren't you happy about this?" I asked, nudging him in the side. He wrapped an arm around me, pulling me up next to him. I ignored, for the moment, the fact that I felt extremely secure snuggled against him. "This is a good thing, isn't it? I'm not evil. You got rid of that mean chick, although why she wanted to hurt me is totally beyond me. Assuming she wanted to hurt me. Maybe she wanted to take me out of the Akasha?"
"She's Bael's right hand. I can assure you that for whatever reason Bael desires your presence - and I assume it's because he put two and two together, and realizes what happened to the Tools - it is not going to be something you want to experience."
I