“He needs blood, Jame,” Rossi said. “You need to get him to the hospital. Now.”
Jame must have only heard half of what Rossi said. Must have only heard him saying Ben needed blood.
“The ambulance is right outside,” Mykal said.
Jame wasn’t listening to him. He shifted his hold on Ben and tore into his own arm with teeth and fang, biting off a big enough chunk of his own flesh that even, I, the soulless one hissed in sympathy.
“Jesus, Wolfe,” Mykal said. “Sit down before you bleed out.” Mykal was no longer being tentative and consolatory with Jame. He took hold of him by the elbow and back, and steered him to the couch. He forced him to sit, and then helped arrange Ben across his lap so that Ben’s mouth could reach the bleeding wound Jame had created.
Jame looked both fevered and shocky, but at least he’d stopped growling. He couldn’t look away from Ben. Not even when Rossi reached down and pressed his own fingers, which were dripping a thick, dark fluid, into the corner of Ben’s mouth.
Mykal nodded. “Keep doing that. If he’s going to make it, it will take both your blood.”
“Can we help?” Myra asked.
Mykal looked away from Ben like he’d forgotten we were in the room. He made a quick assessment of all of us, including the demon, who he lingered on the longest, and then he nodded. “I might need to draw blood. I have some in the back of the ambulance, but he’s critically low.”
Myra was already rolling up her sleeve and so was I. “Will we be enough?” I asked.
Ryder disappeared into the kitchen, which, yes, was odd. I didn’t think he usually ran from needles. Or vampires.
“If not, we have more at the bank. I can get someone to bring it over.”
“Fresher is better, is it not?” Bathin asked.
“Yes,” Mykal said tightly, like it pained him to agree with the demon. “But we have rules in Ordinary.”
“You taking it out via an I.V. line?” Ryder asked as he walked back into the room.
He was carrying two boxes of mint Girl Scout cookies and a jug of lemonade. I wondered if Ben or Jame liked Girl Scout cookies enough to keep them stocked.
“Needle and tube,” Mykal said. “We don’t put fang to flesh.”
“Mores the pity,” Bathin mumbled.
“Then let’s do it fresh,” Ryder said.
He set the lemonade on one of the side tables and opened the cookies, then went back into the kitchen for cups.
“Look who’s taking charge like a boss,” Myra said.
“I know,” I agreed. “It’s kind of hot.”
She frowned, but a smile quickly replaced it. “You like a man who’s going to push his way into making the rules around here instead of us? Seriously?”
“I’m not making them,” Ryder said, cups in hand. “Just enforcing them. Think of me as the muscle, not the brain. You Reeds are the brains.”
He winked at her, and she turned to me with wide eyes. “It’s like when he was captain of the baseball team in high school. Thought he owned the whole school.”
“That was my barn, don’t you deny it. And trust me, I can back it up.” Ryder rolled up his sleeve before pouring lemonade.
Yes, I was staring at him. Yes, I knew he was being insufferable and sexy as all hell. I knew I wanted to jump him, to kiss him hard until all that heat and arrogance was under my hands, just to see if he’d give in and give me the key to his barn.
Two things stopped me. One, there was a vampire possibly dying three feet away from us, and two, as soon as I thought those things: taking off his clothes and mauling him until he was sweaty and undone, the need for those things were washed away by a cool wave of numbing.
Dammit!
I glared at Bathin, who was watching all of us with a kind of grudging interest as we willingly got ready to bleed for our friend.
