He acknowledged Rossi with a short nod then set the box down and approached Jame who had been focused on him since before the door opened.
They worked pretty closely together since Jame and Ben were firefighters and Mykal was a paramedic. I thought they were friends. But Jame was a werewolf and Mykal was a vampire. Despite Rossi faking his relaxed and comfortable vibe on the couch, there was not a lot of love stretching between the two races right now.
“Hey, man. Any word?” Mykal held out his hand and Jame clasped it.
That was a good sign.
“Not yet. There is a demon looking.”
“A…really? How did we score a demon on our side?”
“Gave it a soul.”
“Well, that’s a bummer. Who was the victim?”
“Delaney.”
Mykal looked over at me, just a little of his fang showing when he smiled. “Protect and serve doesn’t mean serve up parts of yourself to lying, cheating, underworld assholes, you know.”
“That’s a pleasant thought,” a whiskey-smooth voice said. “Would you care to repeat it to the lying, cheating, underworld asshole who just saved this vampire’s life?”
Bathin.
Bathin was standing in the middle of the room, just to one side of the coffee table.
In his arms was a very thin, very bloody, and very wet Ben Rossi.
Vampires are fast. Rossi and Mykal both made a move toward him. They would have reached him first if Jame hadn’t roared.
“Do not touch him!”
That, like a slap of thunder, stopped all of us in our tracks except Bathin and Jame.
Jame was on his feet, moving toward the demon. Bathin carried Ben like he didn’t weigh more than a box of chocolates, then transferred him, carefully into Jame’s arms, blood and wet included.
“Into your arms. Breathing, as whole as I found him, with no ties I am able to break attached.” Bathin looked over at me, met my gaze. “As we agreed.”
For a second, just three heartbeats, it felt like time stopped, the world stopped, and everything, everything finally clicked into place, was going to be okay. Was going to be normal again.
I knew there was nothing but gratitude in my eyes. I knew Bathin saw it, because there was, for the briefest flash, a clear and sincereacknowledgmentin his gaze. Almost as if it had actually been his pleasure to save Ben, to bring him home, to do this good thing.
And then the world seemed to begin again. Jame moaned, keened. It was a gut-wrenching sound, a mix of raw grief and relief and anger. A sound I hoped I’d never hear again.
He was bent, shoulders bowed in as if to protect Ben. Then he rolled the unresponsive Ben into his chest, as close to his heart as he could get him, his head tipping down so that he could place his lips over Ben’s mouth.
“Is he breathing?” I asked. Stupidly. Vampires didn’t breathe and I knew that. “Is he alive?”
And, yeah, that wasn’t quite right either, but it was close enough.
Mykal put his hand on Jame’s shoulder. Jame snarled at him, his body responding with just enough of a shift into wolf that his arms and shoulders and legs bulked up and his eyes flashed yellow.
“Easy,” Mykal said. “Keep him there. Keep him in your arms. Hold him close. I need to check his vitals. Jame, let me see if he’s okay.”
It struck me then, as I watched Mykal, Jame’s close friend who just happened to be the one person who Jame might trust to give Ben medical attention, that Piper sending Mykal here, on this little delivery-boy trip, wasn’t a coincidence.
Piper has seen this knot in the string and made sure that we’d have the help Ben needed when Bathin brought him home.
Mykal touched Ben’s face, then his throat, then pressed his hand on the back of his head, as if he could sense some kind of vital statistic through his hands that only a vampire could feel.
