“This is nothing,” he said. “What about you? I could smell you coming fifty yards away.”
I looked at my own arm, which in contrast to his was red and dripping. The swathe of pain throbbed in time with my pulse.
Ben unbuttoned and pulled off his shirt. Taking my arm, he used the shirt as a makeshift bandage, tying off the wound and mopping up blood. The pressure settled the pain to a dull roar.
Caleb stood a few yards away from us; his eyes shone dull gold. Rage contained. He cupped a cell phone in his hand, pressed to his head. “I’ve got a cleanup,” he said. Then, after listening a moment, “More of theirs than ours.” He clicked the phone off and shoved it in a pocket.
“I have people who can take care of that,” Ned said.
“This is my territory, vampire, I can handle it.”
“I think there’s enough mess for both of you to clean up,” I said. Even I thought I sounded tired.
“You two all right?” the alpha werewolf asked. He didn’t seem tired at all; rather, he seemed ready to go another round.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Anyone who isn’t needed here should get indoors,” Caleb said. “Ned, you, too. Get that fixed.” He gestured at the injured arm.
“I can help—”
“We’re supposed to be working together. Isn’t that what this is all about? We work together, I trust you, you trust me. Try to keep blowups like this from happening. Keep the buggers out of our city.” He shook his head. “I’ll be at your place in twenty minutes.”
“All right, then,” Ned said.
Ben touched my arm and nodded down the path; I caught the scent just before they appeared—a new group of werewolves, burly, broad shoulders built up from manual labor, five-o’clock shadows from being up all night. Caleb approached them, and they ducked their gazes in submissive greetings. In moments, they went for the bodies, slinging them over their shoulders. The visual—these strong and silent men carrying off naked, bloodied bodies—was surreal, definitely criminal.
“He’s right,” Marid said, after we’d watched a moment. “We should go.”
Chapter 16
THE GROUP of us trooped back up the path in the other direction, to Ned’s town house. Before we left the park and the blackout area created by the disabled CCTV cameras, Ned adjusted his coat to hide his ravaged arm. To anyone watching, via camera or otherwise, we’d look like a group of acquaintances walking home after a night out. Actually, Marid, Ned, and Antony probably wouldn’t show up on the cameras at all. I stuck close to Ben.
Back at the town house, Emma came running into the hallway from the parlor.
“How did it go?” she asked.
Before I could answer, Ned closed and locked the door and shrugged off his coat so that she had an excellent view of the injured arm. Emma gasped, bringing her hand to her mouth. A very human gesture.
Recovering quickly, she pointed vaguely to the back of the house. “I’ll go get something for that.”
“That would be lovely,” Ned said, a weak smile shifting his beard. “You might find some bandages for Ms. Norville as well.”
“I think I’m just about healed,” I said, unwrapping Ben’s shirt from my forearm. The wad of torn fabric had become a crusty mess. I frowned at it, then frowned at my arm. Sure enough, a fresh scab colored an angry, healing pink ran down the skin. When I flexed the muscle, it hurt, but not as much as it had before. Go go super healing.
“I’ll just throw that away for you,” Emma said. I handed the bloody shirt to her, and she ran back down the hall and disappeared around a corner.
“What exactly does one do to fix something like that?” I said to Ned, nodding at his own injury. Then I remembered. “Wait a minute, you’re not going to ask me to help with the first aid, are you?”
“One would think you’d been in such situations before,” Ned said amiably.
“You mean have I had injured vampires beg a pint off me? Yeah.”
Ben looked at me. “Wait a minute, what?”
Ned narrowed his gaze. “I can fend for myself, never fear. Let’s retire to the library, shall we?”
Infuriatingly, Antony was chuckling. “She’s a bit jumpy,” he said to Ned, leaning in to whisper. As if I couldn’t hear him.