Great. “I just came here to help my brother.”
“He’s the one guy who doesn’t need it.”
“Yeah, I’ve already figured that out, but thanks for poking at the wound anyway.” He dabbed hard on a crusted-over abrasion. Wulfric didn’t so much as blink.
“Tit for tat,” the man answered. And when Bruce shot him a confused look, he smiled. “You’re poking at my wounds.”
Right. Banter. He was trading quips with a two-hundred-year-old werewolf who didn’t believe in magic. Could his life get any weirder? “You really need a doctor. And a plastic surgeon.”
“My mother will make me pretty again once this is done.”
“And if it gets infected?”
Wulfric stretched to the bedside table and pulled open a drawer. There were pill bottles in there. A quick scan showed them to be heavy-hitter antibiotics and the hydrocodone.
Bruce nodded. “What about other pains? Bones? Joints? Are you having any trouble breathing? Heart palpitations?” He ran through the standard litany. Wulfric shook his head for each one. “Are you lying to me?”
“Would it matter if I was?”
“To me? Not in the least. To you, if you suddenly keel over from sepsis? Yeah, probably.” Or maybe not, given that Wulfric didn’t seem to care if he lived or died.
“I’m not lying. It takes too much effort.”
“Says the guy with the fairy glamour.”
“That was put on me years ago. I couldn’t take it down if I tried.”
That explained the hero worship Bruce heard in everyone’s voice whenever they mentioned Wulfric. Bruce kept working on the wounds. He stopped when Nero came in with a couple of bowls of broth, two smoothies, and some sports drinks. And one straw.
Nero set everything down on the edge of the bed, his gaze turning sharp the moment he saw the bloody water in the basin and the antibiotic cream that Bruce had been using.
“You’re a fucking asshole, you know that, Wulfric?”
The superimposed image was back, and it showed a healthy Wulfric grinning. “I do try.”
Nero looked at Bruce. “He going to live?”
“Probably. But he needs to be watched closely. He ought to be in a hospital.”
“They can’t see through the fairy shit.”
Right. That did cause a problem.
“I’ve survived for two hundred years. I’m not going to keel over now.”
Even though he might want to.That was the message underneath the guy’s words, and Bruce didn’t have a way to address that. He wasn’t the touchy-feely type. That was why he’d become a paramedic. He routinely rolled out lies likeYou’ll be fine. The doctors are the best. Your wife is fine and will see you at the hospital.
He’d long since stopped looking to find out if what he’d said was true. He didn’t check up on patients after the hand-off, and he sure as hell wasn’t hanging around to learn that the wife hadn’t made it after all.
Nero, however, took the words at face value. He grunted in approval and shoved a straw into the bone broth. “Drink.” Then, when Wulfric gingerly held it to his mouth, Nero continued, “I can’t believe I offered to make you a steak.”
“I know,” Wulfric agreed. “I gave up meat decades ago.”
“Bullshit,” Nero countered, and Bruce had no idea which was true.
It didn’t matter. He focused on debriding the wounds, then applied the cream and gently laid gauze over the injuries. All through the process, Nero watched them both with heavy eyes, and the superimposed glamour stayed strong.
Bruce had finished putting everything away when Wulfric asked him a question. “So what are you going to do?” he asked. “About finding the demon and saving the world.”
