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The room smelled of vamp and blood and sex It was an outer-wall room with a hich was covered by steel, electronic blinds on the outside and a padded velvet board on the inside, andit very hard to re vamp It was a room for a low-level vaerous for vamps by day Yet this room was clearly used as a lair, and by the scent, by Edmund And Zelda His sex and dinner partner Ed way from clan blood-master to slave, with an outer roo that story
"Cut it off," I said to Zelda "You’re right" To Titan Two, I said, "There are plastic braces at the joints, silver-over-titaniuonna be hard to cut off"
Titan Two held up a pair of leather snips, a pair ofblade "Nota Texan accent and not ht" Beast? I thought She still didn’t answer It occurred tobetween us,up Hope you like Edmund
Beast chuffed back, the sound full of pain
Getting the leathers off hurt Hurt like I had never expected It was a three-person job, Titan Two cutting and snipping, Zelda easing the leather back and rippinghis own blood and using his tongue to heal Unlike other ti was finished and only needed vamp saliva and blood to make it feel all better and scar quickly, this ti place at the sa, and the vamp saliva had no way to keep up with the pain I screah, the nose-dribbling, sobbing, hiccupping, whining kinda crying I smelled the stink of my burned and broken and torn flesh and the scent of my own blood and tears It wasbad Really, really bad
When it was over, I fell asleep, my body so full of endorphins, adrenaline breakdown products, and Edmund’s saliva and blood that sleep was the only possible reaction Only vaguely did I hen soed my arm and later pulled a T-shirt over er, and so couldn’t bother to rouse myself before dreams smothered me back under
The dreaes, of white and black wings and claws, as if a white bird and a black bird were fighting Of rain and lightning and the sensation of being cold, so cold I kneas dying Of so, "Yehowa, Edoda," words for Great Spirit "Unequa, adanvdo" And "Anidawehi," the word for angels "Yehowa Edoda Unequa Adanvdo Anidawehi Unequa, anidawehi--help me, accept asp of fear, lying in a bed, on clean sheets, still wearing my leather pants, my boots off, nized by feel and scent without having to open my eyes The dream faded as the scents and sensations of the real world took over The shirt was a fuzzy purple long-sleeved T with a colorful red-striped dragon on the front It was iven towoven into the fibers and into the dragon on the front It was ugly, but the healing worked into it had lasted through several healings and repeated washing and drying I loved this ugly shirt
Edmund was cradled around me, his arms around my waist, which, with vamps, usually meant a need and request for sex, but he was so relaxed that he had to be sleeping He sighed, relaxing further, a boneless slus--he was asleep and probably drea human, and that he’d recently drunk fresh blood It was Zelda’s, and I soody A ht was dim, and even with my eyes still closed, my time sense toldof well-being and the lack of pain told me that I was safe I had tiether And ti able to mute my pain with her own body cheht about how often I drew on her gift If the new soul-binding, the fighting ability, and the tionna make it harder to deal with a purely huure into any future fighting circu downti / reality-folding gift that was new to us
Orcapacities was just because of the in of the injury I had to make time to meditate and check out Beast in ht But before I could concentrate on me, I had a list of Enforcer stuff and vamp-hunter stuff to do
First was to talk to the priestesses and see how to track Joses Bar-Judas and how to kill hi a swath of dead huot to hiure out where Leo had taken Adrianna and ain Second and a half was to find out what thedid, so I could counter it next time we met up Third, once I had the Son of Darkness beheaded, was to research how she had known Joses Bar-Judas and uesses on how Leo planned to use her brain-dead (hopefully) self
Fourth was to check in on Del Try a little girl talk
Fifth was to talk to Jodi, my contact in the New Orleans Police Departht have records I hadn’t found yet about Joses Now that he was free and possibly a danger to the public, I needed to tell her about Joses and accept the figurative butt whupping I was likely to get for keeping his presence a secret Andinjured humans There had been injured humans in the base turned I was supposed to report dead humans to the local law, and I’d been too hurt to think clearly about that Now I had no way to determine if there were dead humans or not Leo would never tell me, nor would his people
Satisfied that I had a plan of action, I opened ht came from a small electric lamp on the bedside table, cast froris in shades of green and brown, topped by a square, buff-colored shade It was elegant in ways I didn’t usually appreciate, for a child It sat on a green-veined, s of the sa over the fireplace, which was faced with reen-veined reen so pale that they looked al, door, and floor, which contrasted brightly The floors ood, with rugs tossed here and there in black and greens and tiny spots of red, as if blood had splattered across theht was really expensive, even to my untrained eye