Лорел Гамильтон - Rafael

Rafael managed a smile for me, but his eyes stayed pain-filled. “Your face, Anita, now I know how bad it is.”

I fought not to cry; I could at least do that for him. I started to kneel down and then realized I would have to put the bloody swords in the sand, so I wiped the blood clean on my pants, so that sand wouldn’t cling to the edge if I had to use them later. It probably wouldn’t have made that big a difference, but one, they weren’t my swords so I wanted to take care of them, and two, sometimes small things can make a big difference on how well an edge slices, or if it catches on things. You want a blade to slice clean, sharp, and even. It helped steady me to worry about the swords. It let me kneel and place them one on either side of me and not cry.

I touched his shoulder and he made a motion toward my hand with the other arm, but a shudder of pain ran through him and he had to close his eyes and focus on breathing not to cry out. He was king; he would not let them see him be weak. I had to swallow hard not to cry; if he could be strong, I could be, too. “Don’t move, Rafael. I’ll come to you.” I took his hand in mine, the same hand that Fredo had been holding.

Rafael opened his eyes, smiled, and then closed them again, breathing through another wave of pain. His legs were shredded. The only other time I’d seen damage like this had been wereanimal attacks where the human victims were already dead before I got there to hunt the killer down and make sure they never hurt anyone else ever again.

“Jean-Claude says we could give you energy to heal.”

He swallowed and tried to focus on my face. “What does Neva say?”

I debated lying to him, but I couldn’t do that to him. If we healed him and it lost him his right to be king . . . Rafael had to know the risks first.

“She says that since it’s vampire power keeping you from healing, it might be okay to use other vampire power to heal you.”

“Will it cost me the throne?” he asked, voice hoarse as if he’d been screaming when I knew he hadn’t been.

“They’re checking your rules and stuff, that’s why they wanted Fredo. I didn’t even know you guys had a lore keeper until tonight.”

“We are a complicated people.”

I smiled. “You can say that again.”

He smiled back, but his eyes were beginning to wander as if he couldn’t see me or was having more trouble focusing. He was pale. He had a slight dew of sweat on his forehead. I touched his hand to my face, but it was still warm and then I realized that Fredo had been holding it. Had his shoulder been warm or cold when I touched it? I couldn’t remember, so I raised his arm and laid my cheek against it. His skin was clammy. Shit!

I yelled back toward the waiting group around Hector. “Can I put a tourniquet on Rafael’s wounds?”

Benito yelled back, “We cannot allow doctors onto the sands yet.”

“Can I do first aid?”

Claudia came jogging toward me, her long strides making the distance nothing. “You may only use what you have brought with you onto the sand. We can’t call in any of the medics.”

I let go of Rafael’s hand and said a prayer of thanks that I’d brought the tourniquet and combat gauze with me.

Claudia said, “You brought a tourniquet with you?”

I got the other rubber-banded pack out of another pocket. “Do you know how to use a rapid-application tourniquet? It’s a Gen 2.”

“Yes,” she said. I handed the second package to her. I put three fingers through the loop of the RATS tourniquet, then realized I was going to have to lift Rafael’s leg so I could slide the tourniquet under before I put it over my hand. My hand was too small to lift his thigh, so I knelt down and slid my arms underneath to lift. Blood gushed over my arms, and it was the usual surprise that enough blood was hot against my skin. His leg was too light, or too heavy, or just not weighted right. Nothing moved like it was supposed to, and when a piece of the meat of his leg swayed and hit my hand, I had to swallow hard. I would not throw up, damn it. If Rafael could endure it, I could handle helping him get through it. If he’d been human, he’d have lost both legs below the knees, but he wasn’t human. If we could get him out of here alive, he would heal.

I put three fingers back through the loop and cinched it tight. Rafael groaned, which I took as a good sign. Claudia’s bigger hands and longer arms were making it quicker for her to encircle his leg multiple times. It wasn’t the blood that was slowing me down so much as the pieces of his leg swinging in against my body at odd moments. The amount of damage that Hector had done to his legs was disturbing. You never know what will bother you until it does. This bothered me. I swallowed hard and was taking deep, even breaths as I finished the last round of the tourniquet until it was tight enough and hooked the end into the little clip. The only thing the RATS Gen 2 didn’t have that most other tourniquets did was a place to write the time you put the tourniquet on. If you left it in place, you could destroy the limb you were trying to save, but the rule was life over limb, though I wasn’t sure Rafael would agree. But I knew that for him and any shapeshifter, if we could just keep him alive, then they could chop off the leg above the dead point and he’d grow back the legs. There were options if we could just keep him alive.

The blood trickled to a stop on the leg I was working on. I glanced over at the other leg and the blood had stopped there, too. I felt a moment of triumph and then wished like hell I’d thought about the simple first aid sooner. I started to open the gauze packet, then stopped and asked, “Will this work on you guys?”

“Yes,” she said.

I tore the packet open and then didn’t know where to put it. The leg was dismembered, so it was like there were too many wounds. I was happy I’d brought two packets of both gauze and QuikClot, but looking at Rafael’s legs, I wanted an armful of QuikClot. Jesus, I’d never seen anyone who lived through wounds like this, and then I realized that I’d never seen anyone who was just cut up this way here; when a shapeshifter went bad, they didn’t stop at the legs. They didn’t stop until there were pieces missing that we’d never find. It’s not like that scene in Jaws where the body parts come spilling out of the shark. Mammals digest things faster and have to chew them up into smaller bites to eat them.

“Put it here,” Claudia said. She guided my hand and I let her do it, because I’d never tried to treat a wound with this many moving parts. Rafael moaned as we shoved the QuikClot gauze against his wound. Again, I took it as a good sign. As long as he was reacting, he was still alive.

Benito came to stand above us. “The brujas need you. I will stay here with Claudia and tend Rafael. The tourniquets and QuikClot will hold our king on this side long enough for the brujas to work their magic.” He offered me a hand and I took it, but my hand was so slippery with Rafael’s blood that I lost my grip and Benito grabbed my arm to steady me.

“So much for being suave and debonair,” I muttered.

He smiled and patted me on the back before he let me go. “Pierette and Fredo will have your back while you help the brujas.”

I didn’t question it, just walked toward the other little group on the sand.

32

HECTOR WAS STILL on the ground with his wrists and ankles shackled together with a long bar of metal. They were the new restraints that the police had designed for supernatural prisoners now that they were actually taking some of them into custody instead of just executions all around. Fredo and Pierette stood ready with sword and knife. When Neva and the other two brujas looked at me, their eyes were all black and shining with the cold light of distant stars, but Hector was still laughing. “The greatest magic the rats have at their disposal and it is not enough. You cannot defeat my master.”