A Terrible Fall of Angels (Zaniel Havelock #1)(26)

I frowned at her, fought to stop, and then sighed heavily. “I’ll do my best.”

She scowled at my stomach. “You’re hurt.”

I looked down to see the blood that was finally starting to flow through my shirt. “The angel magic kept it from bleeding,” I said, as if everyone knew that.

“Men,” she said, rolling her eyes. She grabbed my arm, and it was all nurse or Great-Aunt Matilda, no flirting involved. “Let’s get you patched up before you go see your damsel.”

Charleston called, “Havoc, I need your opinion in here.”

I actually turned toward the broken doorway, but Prescott yelled, “Your detective needs a doctor before he does any more detecting, just like you have to have a doctor look at you before you leave the hospital.”

Charleston stuck his head back out. “I told you I’m fine.”

“You were unconscious for nearly twenty minutes, so you don’t get to leave without a doctor checking you over, or you signing a waiver releasing the hospital of responsibility when you lose consciousness driving home and kill yourself.”

“I thought nurses were supposed to be comforting,” I said.

She gave me that been-there-done-it-all look again. “I keep you alive and help you heal; I leave comfort to the new nurses who haven’t lost their youthful optimism.”

Lila Bridges snorted from the doorway beside Charleston. “Did you ever have youthful optimism? Because I sure as hell didn’t.”

Hazel smiled and shook her head. “Come on, white knight, I need to stop the bleeding long enough for you to reassure your damsel so we can treat her.”

“Come back as soon as you can, Havoc,” Charleston said.

“Roger that, Lieutenant.”

“We can’t find Mark Cookson’s body.”

That made me turn back toward him. “The demon should have abandoned the body and left him to die.”

“Shoulda, coulda, but didn’t,” Bridges said.

“That’s not how possession works, not even physical possession.”

“Nothing about this possession was normal,” Charleston said.

Hazel Prescott ushered me down the hall. “Let’s see if you need stitches, then you can come back and start figuring out where our patient and your suspect went.”

“I’ll question the new guy,” Lila Bridges said, motioning with her thumb at Sato, who was still waiting in the hallway where I’d left him.

“Thanks, Bridges,” I said.

“No problem.” She turned back, the brown ponytail bouncing as she moved. She’d made it high up on her head today, which had always been one of my favorite looks on a girl going back to elementary school. I closed my eyes and shook my head. I knew better than to date anyone in our unit; that never ended well.

“I thought you were comforting me,” Gimble said to her.

She quirked a smile at him, giving her own cynical look, except her eyes were empty cop eyes that gave nothing away. “You’ve still got an IV hanging out of your arm.”

He looked down at it as if he’d just noticed. “Ow,” he said, because like so many things it only hurts when you notice it. Broken hearts are like that, too.

I followed Hazel down the hallway and tried not to notice the way her uniform fit from the back. I tried to think what I’d say to Kate and was happy that I’d been all covered in angel magic when I held her naked in my arms. It meant I would have more objectivity when I saw her again. God, I needed a date.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN




Paulson had passed Gonzales the nurse to a surgical team, so he was the one who patched me up. Paulson had me take my shirt off and drop my pants so low I had to hold my gun in place and let everything else slide around. He’d wanted to make sure there were no wounds that I’d missed from the fight. I’d have liked to argue but I knew that sometimes in the heat of battle, or even fighting demons, you don’t always feel every wound at first. Paulson inspected my abdomen so long and so closely that I finally asked, “What’s wrong, Doc, sad that you don’t get to stitch me up?”

Paulson had to raise his face up to see me; he’d been bending that low over my stomach. “You should be hurt enough for stitches. You took more damage from the woman’s fingernails than the demon’s claws; how, why?”

I debated on what to tell him and finally settled for most of the truth. “It’s a side effect of the angelic energy.”

“So that healed the demon injuries?”

“Partially?”

“Why didn’t it heal it completely?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t it heal the scratches from the woman?”

“I don’t know.”

Paulson frowned at me. “Are you holding back information?”

I rose up on my elbows and the scratches where Kate had scored her nails down my skin were a sharp, immediate pain, compared to the dull ache of the abdominal scratches. The ones there felt like the injuries had healed for a few days already, while the scratches on my arm felt fresh. One of the things I’d missed most, other than the friends I’d left behind at the College, had been the healing ability. It had lingered for a few months and then I was just as mortal as anyone else. There’d been moments in the army when I missed the angels for a lot of reasons.