He wasn’t sure he agreed with Xcor on the whole she’s-his bullshit, but he wanted answers and she had seen what had gone down in there.
Before taking off, he’d also assessed an elderly human who was clearly dead; then he’d killed the lights and locked up. There’d be time to return and retrieve weapons and clean the scene before the human police were called. There were bigger-and-betters to worry about at the moment.
“I can’t disagree with you,” Manny muttered as the RV went over some kind of pothole and they swayed to catch their balance like something out of a Star Trek episode. “I mean, you vampires are good at the self-repair, but nothing like this.”
In spite of the fact that Balz had been lying facedown in twelve quarts of his own plasma, all the skin, the veins underneath, the tendons and ligaments were sealed up. Which wasn’t to say that there hadn’t been a hell of an owie there. The red line of the injury was very evident, the slice a clean and deep one given the amount of blood loss.
“We’ve got to get him fed,” Manny said as he took out his cell phone. “His blood pressure is for shit, and he’s tachycardic. Oxygen stats are in the basement. He’s out of the woods by inches, not feet, and if he stays where he is much longer, he’s going to have brain damage.”
As some other obstacle in the road was run over, V had to catch his balance a second time, throwing out a hand to a grip that was bolted on the ceiling. The second he was steady, his eyes went back to Balz’s naked body. They’d cut off his leathers, in search of other wounds to explain the bleeding. But except for some lashing burns on his arms and abdomen, a handful of contusions consistent with having been in a close-contact fight, and a couple of cuts worthy of Band-Aids, there was nothing obviously wrong with the fighter.
That mysterious throat injury was what had caused him to bleed out.
“How are we?” Xcor called back from the driver’s seat.
“We’re arranging for a Chosen,” V answered.
“Good. We’re pulling into the garage now.”
More lurching, the IV bag swinging on its pole, Balz’s body lolling in its restraints on the table. V glanced over to the shallow bench he’d put the human woman on. He’d strapped her into the seat, and she was clearly not too with it, her head jerking up like the rough ride had roused her out of a coma.
He remembered how he’d found her, lying on the concrete beside Balz, her hand palm-up under the front of the Bastard’s throat. Right where that red flush was.
As if her touch alone had buttoned things back together.
Not possible.
Humans were a lot of things—bad drivers, nosy, dangerous because so many of them were stupid and there were too many of them on the planet—but they were not able to reconnect veins and arteries, and close the wound of what might as well have been a surgical cut all the way through Balz’s esophagus.
So what the fuck happened back there? he thought as he focused on that right palm of hers.
“He slit his own throat.”
The softly spoken words were rough, like the woman’s own throat was having trouble, and V shifted his stare to her face. She was almost as pale as Balz was, and even with her being fully dressed, he could tell she was going to have her own set of black-and-blues: She had scuffs on her pants, her shoes, the jacket she was wearing.
While the surgical unit came to a halt and the engine was cut, she pushed herself up a little higher on the bench; as she grimaced and pulled at the seat belt that crossed her chest, it was impossible to tell exactly what part of her body was hurting. Maybe all of it.
“I’m sorry,” V said. “What was that?”
Even though he’d heard her just fine. He wanted her to repeat the words, though, to make sure she knew what the hell was coming out of her mouth.
“He took out a knife, put it to his throat…” Her breath hitched, but then she overrode the constriction with such force, it was obvious she had experience reining in fear. “He cut his own throat.”
Up in the driver’s seat, Xcor’s head whipped around. “What.”
“Guess he decided to save me the job,” V muttered.
“Chosen’s on the way,” Manny cut in.
The woman then became the focus for all three of them.
As if she knew what they wanted from her, she said in a surprisingly steady voice, “I went to the shop to see if I could get more information on a book that was stolen from a crime scene. He was there.” She nodded at Balz. “We were talking to the owner of the place—or what I thought was the owner.”