Eli gave a breathy grunt.
I repositioned the Benelli again, counting back to rounds fired. And how many were left before I had to reload. Peeked into the room, taking in everything with a single glance. Back out. Considered. No lock on this busted door. The furniture was piled inside the room—chests of drawers, chairs, mattresses propped on their sides where they had once pressed against the door. Barricade. I bent and duck-walked in. Eli was on the other side of the furniture. On the floor. Blood everywhere.
Beyond him, on the floor in a tight ball, was Lachish Dutillett. She sat up. Appeared uninjured. Eli had been protecting her. Lachish had called for our help. Lachish was supposedly a prisoner here, being held for a crime I had never learned about. In an unlocked room. Whatever she had done had happened around the same time as the Sangre Duello, when Leo “died.” Her crime and punishment had to be involved with that. Except there was no door lock. She wasn’t wearing null cuffs.
I dropped to my knees, facing the door, and put the shotgun on the floor, easy to hand. I shoved Eli’s hands out of the way and took over tightening a pressure bandage on his thigh. Same dang thigh he was still rehabbing, same thigh that was full of steel from a bad break and muscles and tendons that were weak from being cut from the bone. But this was just a gunshot.Just a gunshot...Going by the empty oversized syringe beside him, he had already inserted the Xstat to control the bleeding.
With this many injured, we needed an Infermieri, butI had sent Florence back to visit her kin in Lincoln Shaddock’s territory. I needed healers.
Koun staggered into the doorway, one hand over his belly. “My Queen,” he said.
“Eli needs vamp blood,” I said.
Koun went to a knee and cut his wrist, holding it to Eli’s mouth.
“How bad?” Alex asked over comms.
“Bad enough,” I said. “He needs an ambulance and surgery. Again.”
Alex cursed.
“As do you,” Koun said. “I smell your blood.”
“Jane?” Alex asked, his voice cracking slightly with anxiety.
“Fine,” I groused. “I’m hit. Get someone in here for me.”
“Kojo was at the back,” Alex said, “He’s in. Bringing reinforcements.”
Maybe five seconds later, Kojo popped into sight and knelt at Eli’s side. The ancient African vamp pulled a small steel blade and cut his wrist, placing the bleeding wound at Eli’s mouth. “Drink,” he commanded.
Alrighty then.That was new. Kojo and his wife, Thema, resisted giving their blood to anyone except by direct order. This was the first time either of them had actively volunteered. “When you’re done, I need help. And Koun needs a little topping off.”
Kojo chuckled, his teeth white in a face so dark I could barely make it out in the lightless room, even with Beast’s night vision. “I will feed your pet,” Kojo said, looking up at Koun as he insulted my right-hand vamp. Which was a lot more like his usual uncompassionate self. “But the Dark Queen should know. The attacking Naturaleza are gone. They took their dead and some of the prisoners with them.” Vamps knew Natureleza by their smell and the speed with which they moved. That was important. But my vision was going dark and kinda fuzzy around the edges. “Uhhh,” I said. The world whirled and spun sideways. The room darkened. I was passing out.
Thema popped into the room and caught me as I fell to the side. She righted a chair and placed me into it. LikeKojo, she cut her wrist but she held hers to my mouth. I drank. Power flooded into me, along with the tart, nearly bitter flavor of the ancient vamp’s blood.
I hated drinking blood.
Inside, Beast said,Good strong vampire blood. Want more.
I didn’t reply. My heart rate was a little odd. Too fast. Kinda stuttering. I looked down at my arm, which looked silver and gray in the dark.
The lights overhead came on. I blinked as the silver and gray of Beast’s night vision resolved into scarlet. Blood all over me. All over the floor where I’d walked and stood.
I had lost more blood than I thought.
I had thought my armor had deflected the round and it had just nicked my arm, the thump of impact numbing my hand. Had thought my weakness was sharing Eli’s symptoms of blood loss. Nope. I was bleeding alot.
Nausea made my mouth water, a sour slime mixed with the taste of Thema’s blood.
Thema cursed in a language I didn’t recognize and withdrew her wrist. “I thought someone had killed the witches’ housecats,” she said, peeling off my armored jacket, exposing the thin long-sleeved T-shirt I wore beneath. The reek of my sweat and my cat blood hit me. Thema had a point, one I had never noticed. My pelt was gummed with clotting blood. My upper arm looked yucky.
I looked away as Thema licked the wound, her saliva clotting my blood. She recut her wrist and began to smear her blood into my wound, healing it. My vision cleared now that I was sitting down, and I took in the room.
Lachish fully uncurled from her place on the floor, revealing something squarish and brown. A wooden box. I kept half an eye on her.
Eli made a soft sound, not quite a groan but a sound of pain. Kojo was applying his blood to Eli’s thigh. Koun, who had only recently been belly-staked, sat heavily onto the floor, a barely controlled fall.
