Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

I started to get queasy as I tried to hold my arm absolutely still, waiting for the medics to get around to me. Edward was talking to the police that he'd made work friends with in the days he'd been here ahead of me. He'd been wearing the super-duper earplugs that he'd recommended to me, and I had a pair, but I had been in a police station. I had thought we were safe and I didn't put hearing protection in, so although my head was still ringing from the noise of the shots inside the ambulance so that I couldn't really hear what people were saying, or a lot of other sounds, Edward was fine. Later, I'd ask him if he just lived in the damn earplugs. Knowing Edward, he probably did. The ringing in my head had stopped, and my hearing was returning faster than I'd thought it would. Yay for super-healing ability!

Nolan was staying with him, though I wasn't sure he was helping with the making-friends part. Jake and Kaazim were searching the crowd for threats, or old friends. I wasn't exactly sure which, and not sure I cared as much as I should have, because I was fighting not to throw up. One, it would make the Irish cops think less of me, and two, there was no way to throw up without moving more of my body than I'd want to move, like my arm.

Domino, Nicky, and Damian were with me at the ambulance full of exploded bits of vampire like the one in my arm. It was considered unsanitary now, so until they cleaned it up, no one would be using it unless they ran out of supplies in the other ambulances, or got desperate to transport someone. There really weren't messy bits until farther into the ambulance, so Damian was sitting just inside it out of direct sunlight. I sat on the edge of the open back of it with my feet swinging so that I felt like I was five again. Damian had his hand resting against my back. He wasn't rubbing it, or petting me, because that had made my body move minutely, which wasn't good right now. The doors of the ambulance were still open, so we were blocked from sight of most of the crowd that had gathered outside the police tape and barriers. Nice to see some things were the same as back home; if there was a crime scene, you always got a crowd.

I could look up at Domino standing in front of me like a living shield, blocking me and Damian from sight of pretty much anyone. Nicky had been doing the same on the other side of the door, but now he was kneeling in front of me, helping me hold my arm very still. It wasn't bleeding much, which was both good and bad. The bad was that it meant the bone shard was probably in deep and tight, so that it acted like a cork in the wound stopping me from bleeding much at all, which was good, but it also might mean that they'd want a surgeon to help them take it out of my arm.

Nicky waved his hand in front of my face, so I'd look at him. He directed my line of sight to his face. I looked into that one blue eye with the fall of his blond hair hiding the other one, if it had been there. I did the long blink, which usually meant I was a little shocky.

"Is she okay?" Domino asked.

Nicky didn't answer him, just kept staring at me, so I could keep my focus on his face, on the blue of his eye. Damian answered, "She's a little in shock, but her hearing has come back better than I'd feared."

I blinked at Nicky and turned my head back to look at Damian, which made my arm move just a fraction too much. My stomach tightened and the wave of nausea rolled up my throat and over me. I felt the sick sweat starting as I swallowed hard.

Domino touched his own stomach and said, "I felt that one even through shielding. If she throws up, I'm not sure I can keep from joining her."

"Don't you start," I said; my voice sounded normal in my head, which it shouldn't have, not that soon after all the shooting in the confined space of the ambulance. When Nathaniel had called on my phone earlier I hadn't heard it. Damian had taken it and talked to him. Apparently Nathaniel and Dev--Devereux--had both felt the shadow of the sound concussion and the wound in my arm. At that point, I couldn't hear well enough to talk on the phone; now I was hearing just fine. What the hell? My ears should still have been ringing with it, at the very least. The thought helped chase back the nausea.

I looked at Nicky where he was kneeling in front of me. "Can you hear me?"

He smiled and nodded.

"Say something to me," I said.

"I'm fine," he said.

I narrowed my eyes at him, because I didn't believe him. I turned my head again to look at Damian. Nicky tightened his grip on my arm just a little to help steady me. It was exactly what I needed in that moment, which he managed to do most of the time. I said to Damian, "My hearing shouldn't be this good yet. I think Nicky's taken the damage for me like a good cannon-fodder Bride."

Damian looked past me at Nicky. "It is his job metaphysically as your Bride."

I sat there with Nicky's hands so firm and steady on my arm, and he didn't feel like expendable cannon fodder. It felt like his hands on me helped me breathe a little better. "Yeah, but now I'm in love with him and that seems shitty. Okay, that seemed shitty once the system was explained to me."

Damian smiled at me and touched his fingertips to the edge of my face. "You can be so harsh, but you are also one of the most genuinely caring people I've ever met."

The compliment embarrassed me. I wasn't sure why, but it did. "I don't know what to say to that."

"You don't have to say anything."

Domino said, "If Nicky really can't hear well, we need to know that if he's going to keep being one of your bodyguards today."

"Good point," I said, glancing at him. The sunlight was touching the top of his hair, making the few white curls in all the black almost iridescent, as if the thick Irish sunlight brought out the shine in his hair.

"He'll feel me talking, because he's touching me. One of you say something where he can't see you talking."

Damian bent down to ki

ss me so that his face was hidden from Nicky's view. He kissed me, soft and gentle, but as he drew back, he said, "Can you hear me, Nicky?"

There was no answer from the man holding my arm. I had to fight an urge not to turn and look at his face, because that would be enough to give him a clue. "Try again," I told Damian.

He bent down and got another kiss, but he kept our foreheads touching so that his long hair fell forward, and even if you'd been standing, you couldn't have seen our faces, let alone our lips. It probably looked very intimate, but Damian spoke like that, hidden from sight. "Nicky, if you can't answer my question, then you have to step down as Anita's bodyguard."

We waited a second with our faces touching, but Nicky didn't answer the question. Crap. "Nicky, can you really not hear us at all?"

"That would be a no," Domino said.

Damian sat back up and looked at Nicky. I turned around and looked at him. I looked into that face, which seemed to steady me just by being here. Not everyone I loved made me feel that way, so maybe it wasn't our special love, but the fact that he was my Bride. I hated thinking that, but it was a type of hiding from the truth not to think it. "Nicky, can you hear anything we're saying?"

"Yes," he said.

Domino was standing a little behind him, so that he couldn't see him as he asked, "How much can you hear?"

Nicky turned and looked at him. "Some."

"How much is some?" Domino asked.

"My ears are ringing, and I'm hearing everything down that long tunnel that happens without ear protection."

I touched his face with my free hand, turning him to look at me. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"You can hear, right?"

I nodded.

He smiled. "Then I'm doing my job."

"If you shift to lion, will that fix it?" I asked.

He frowned, which probably meant he didn't understand everything I'd said. I tried again with fewer words and enunciating carefully. "Shapeshifting will heal you?"

"Yes."

"But he needs to shift soon," Domino said. "The longer you go without shifting to heal, the greater the chance that you'll have some damage left over. It works that way more with some things than others, but hearing can be one of them."