A Terrible Fall of Angels (Zaniel Havelock #1)(27)

“Angels can heal people if God allows it; people who are angel touched can sometimes heal people, too. Gimble was angel touched, and I . . . knew how to hijack the energy and use it to protect us.”

“I’ve been hearing versions of what you did from staff that witnessed it.” He raised a skeptical eyebrow at me. “I didn’t believe most of it until I saw how healed the claw marks are on you. After seeing what they did to Gonzales . . .” He stopped talking and just shook his head. “He had you pinned in the hallway for at least five minutes, but you’re intact.”

“I told you it’s a side effect of the angels. If I’d been thinking more clearly, I might have tried to use the energy to heal me completely before the wings faded away.”

“Some people saw wings, but others saw . . . other things.” He sounded a little grim when he said the last part.

I almost asked what the others had seen, but I wasn’t certain I wanted to know. I’d used angel magic in a way I hadn’t attempted in over a decade, and it had worked. God hadn’t turned his grace from me, and neither had the angels. They could be more judgmental than the Big Guy sometimes.

“I’ll bandage up your arm. Will antibiotics work on demon wounds?”

“This demon was more solid and real than any that I’ve ever touched, so use what you’d use if he was just a monster and not an Infernal. Even if it doesn’t help, it won’t hurt.”

Paulson nodded. “Good to know since we’re pumping Gonzales full of them. How about a tetanus shot?”

“Unknown, but again it can’t hurt,” I said.

He nodded again. “How long has it been since you had a tetanus booster?”

“I’m up-to-date. Got shoved into a pile of scrap metal last year.”

I hissed when he put cream on the scratches that Kate had carved into me. I knew that a woman’s nails could leave marks, but these seemed deeper, or maybe it had just been so long since I’d had a woman’s nails on me, I didn’t remember.

“Do they seem deeper than normal?” I asked.

“This is usually what we see if a woman fights back from an attack.”

“So I’ve just never had a woman try to hurt me that much, but it’s ‘normal’?” I made quote marks in the air with the hand he wasn’t bandaging up.

“I can’t share patient information with you, but no, this level of damage from human scratches isn’t normal.” He looked at me as he said it, as if he was trying to tell me something with just the look. Whatever he was trying to say I was missing it. My face must have shown it because he frowned and raised the eyebrow again. “I’ve said all I can, Detective Havoc.”

“Detective Havelock; Havoc is just a nickname,” I said.

He half smiled, then shook his head. “Good to know, because Detective Havoc sounds like a comic book hero.”

“Dr. Havoc would be worse, that sounds like a comic book villain.”

He laughed then. “It really does.” He finished patching me up and then he escorted me to Kate.





CHAPTER NINETEEN




Kate looked younger lying in the new bed in a hospital gown that seemed even larger than the last one, so that her figure was completely hidden. She was only about five foot six standing, so lying down she seemed even smaller. With her brown curls tousled on the pillow and the big brown eyes she looked childlike. It made me wonder if she was Mark Cookson’s age. God, had I gotten so needy that I couldn’t tell a teenager when I saw one?

“I don’t remember the demon hurting your arm,” she said, looking at the bandages.

“It didn’t,” I said.

She turned her face away from me on the pillow so that all those brown curls spilled over her face. I fought the urge to brush the curls away until I could see her better. I couldn’t tell if it was a parental gesture because she looked so fragile lying there, or if I just wanted an excuse to touch her, so I kept my hands to myself.

“I’m sorry, Zaniel, I’m so sorry,” she said, voice hoarse. I couldn’t tell if it was from screaming or emotion.

“You don’t have to be sorry, Kate, not for anything. I’m just sorry that I couldn’t have gotten you out of the room sooner.” It was my turn to look away; I didn’t want to see her looking so fragile, knowing that if I’d only gotten her free sooner . . . Heaven help me, Heaven help her, because we were both going to need it after today.

“I was the one who hurt you, so I should be the one who’s sorry,” she said.

That made me look at her again. She was looking straight at me now, her brown eyes staring up at me through the tangle of her hair. So she looked like a frightened little girl and then her eyes filled up with . . . her, I guess, and suddenly I knew she was no child, no teenager, because you had to be older than that to have a force of personality like that in your eyes. Something eased in my chest and I didn’t feel like a dirty thirty-year-old guy who was hitting on teenagers at the mall. Men like that had creeped me out when I was a teenager; my opinion of them had never changed. I didn’t always know what kind of man I wanted to be when I grew up, but I knew not that.

“You’re stronger than you look,” I said, trying to make it light.

“It wasn’t human strength that cut your arm.”