It was Cherry who peeled away from the crowd around him and came to me. She had thrown a white coat over the usual black Goth outfit. Her heavy eyeliner had run down her face like black tears. She touched Peter's shoulder as she went past, and said, "Let the drugs work, Peter. You can't help him by fighting to stay awake."
"She was trying for me," he said. "She was reaching for me. He put himself in her way. He saved me."
She patted his shoulder and checked the IV almost automatically, but she also adjusted the little knobby thing on it. The liquid began to drip a little faster. She patted him again and came to the other side of the gurney so that she could look at Nathaniel across me, or maybe so she could keep an eye on what was happening to Cisco. There were so many people around him that it looked like they were getting in each other's way.
She said, "Nothing I can do over there." She said it almost to herself, as if she were trying to convince herself.
She put on a fresh pair of gloves before she looked at my stomach. There was blood on the sleeve of the white coat she was wearing. She seemed to see it at about the same time I did. She just stripped off the coat, tossed it in the little hamper they had for washables. Threw the clean gloves away, got another pair of clean gloves, and came back to me. Her eyes stared at the wound, not at me. Her face had gone to concentrating on her job. If she just concentrated on her job then she wouldn't fall apart. I knew the look, I had one like it.
I tried to do something else while she looked at the wounds. Somehow I didn't want to see my insides on the outside again. But it was like a train wreck; you couldn't quite look away. "What is that?" I asked.
"Intestine," she said, in a voice that held no emotion.
I heard someone shout, "Clear!"
The crowd around Cisco cleared, and I saw Lillian using the crash cart on his chest. She was about to try to jump-start his heart. Fuck.
Micah was in the crowd. He turned and looked at me, his mouth and chin covered in blood. As if Nathaniel read my mind, he said, "He was trying to call flesh and help Cisco heal the wound."
Micah could help a healing wound heal faster by licking it. He'd done it for me once. He wiped the blood off his face as he looked at me across the room. The look on his face was anguish. He'd tried.
Lillian hit Cisco's chest three times, four, but that high-pitched alarm sound just kept going. Flatline.
I didn't hear the door open, but Richard came through leaning so heavily on Jamil, one of his bodyguards, that he was being half-carried. Jamil put him by the gurney. Their bodies blocked me from seeing what was happening.
Cherry was swabbing my hand; she had a covered IV needle in her other hand. I looked away. Richard's power ran over my skin like heat. Nathaniel shivered where he held my hand. I glanced at him. His body was covered in goose bumps.
"You feel it?" I asked.
"We all do," Cherry said, and the needle bit home in my hand. I squeezed Nathaniel's hand hard and kept staring at Richard's broad back.
Micah came to stand at the head of my gurney. He'd wiped most of the blood off, but his eyes held defeat. If I'd had a spare hand I would have offered it. He laid his face against the top of my head. It was the best we could do.
Jamil stumbled away from Richard, leaving him to half-collapse across the gurney. Jamil's body exploded; one second he was tall, dark, handsome, the next he was the black-furred werewolf that had saved my life once. Lillian fell to the floor, her body writhing, twisting. She was suddenly gray-furred. She lay on the floor with her newly ratty face turned up to the gurney. The other doctors and nurses kept their distance. Richard was trying to bring Cisco's beast, trying to help him heal by forcing him to shift. But the alarm was still screaming, still letting us know that Cisco's heart wasn't beating.
Richard clutched at the gurney with one hand and Cisco with the other. His power spread through the room as if someone had forgotten to turn off some invisible hot bath, and it was filling up the room. Micah stood up, put his hand against my head. I felt his power spring to life, felt him throw it around the four of us like a shield, keeping Richard's power out. Most of the time Micah could protect the other wereleopards, but my ties to Richard were too strong. It worked today. Today, Micah held me in the calm of his power along with Nathaniel and Cherry.
Richard screamed, a long, loud, anguished sound. He collapsed to his knees, one hand still clinging to Cisco's arm. The arm flopped limp, dead. Richard's back rippled as if some giant hand were pushing out from the inside. He threw his head back and screamed again, but before the echo had died, the scream turned into a howl. Fur poured over Richard's body. It was as if his human body were ice, melting to reveal fur and muscle. His human form just melted into a wolf the size of a pony. I'd never seen him in full wolf form, only the half-and-half. The wolf threw its head back and howled, long and mournful. It turned a head as big as my entire chest to look at me. The eyes were all wolf, amber and alien, but the look in them was not a wolf's look. It held too much understanding of the loss that lay on the gurney.
One of the other white coats started turning off the machines. The scream of the alarm went silent. Except for the ringing in my one ear the room was deathly quiet. Then everyone began to move. The doctors and nurses started pulling things out of Cisco's body. He lay on his back, eyes closed. I remembered seeing spine in the throat wound; now the bone was covered. He'd been healing, but not fast enough.
Jamil climbed to his furry feet and put a half claw, half hand on the wolf's back. He said in a voice gone to growl, "I'll take us to feed."
One of the doctors helped Lillian to her feet. She seemed more shaken than Jamil was, but then I'm not sure she'd ever had someone rip her beast from her human form. Jamil had been on the wrong end of Richard's anger more than once. "Come with us, Lillian," he said, and the wolfish muzzle had trouble with the double L sound.
She nodded and took the hand he offered. The dark-haired man who had turned off the alarm said, "We'll take care of the other patients, Lillian."
Her own voice sounded high-pitched and nasal. "Thank you, Chris." The three of them walked out together, leaving the others to begin to clean up.
"Why did he die?" I asked.
"He bled out faster than his body could heal," Cherry said.
"I've seen you guys heal from worse," I said.
"You hang around with too many big dogs, Anita," Cherry said. "We don't all heal like Micah and Richard." She had the IV on its little metal hat rack. She reached up for the knob that would start the drip.
"Wait, will that put me out?" I asked.
"Yes," she said.
"Then I need to make some phone calls first."
"You're not hurting too much yet, then?" She made it half question, half statement.
"No, not yet. It aches, but it doesn't exactly hurt."
"It will," she said, "and when it does you'll want the painkillers."
I nodded, swallowed, nodded again. "I know, but we still have Soledad's masters out there. We need them dead."
"You aren't slaying any vamps today," she said.
"I know, but Ted Forrester still can."
Edward looked at me at the mention of his alter ego. His hand was on Peter's hair, as if he were a much younger boy and Edward had just come in to tuck him in for the night.
"I need you to take over my warrants," I said.
He nodded. His eyes weren't cold, they were rage-filled. I wasn't used to seeing this much heat from Edward; he was a cold creature, but what blazed in his eyes now was hot enough to burn a hole through me. "How is Peter?" he asked Cherry.
"Now that he's out, we'll sew him up. He should be fine."
Edward looked at me. "I'll kill the vampires for you."
"We will kill them for you." Olaf's voice from the door. He must have arrived in time to hear the last few comments. I hadn't heard him come in; not good. Not good that I hadn't heard Olaf, but not good that it could have been someone else, something else. I trusted Edward to see me safe, but I was usually more help to myself than this. Admittedly, I was having a bad day.