Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [285]
Ronnie came up beside me, gun pointed at him. She took one look and stumbled outside, nearly tripping over the dead man’s legs. She fell into the grass, wretching and crying.
Zane just lay there, bleeding. Louie was checking his pulse. “He’s dying.” He wiped the blood on his T-shirt and went out into the sunlight to take care of Ronnie.
I stared down at Zane’s pale chest. One bullet had taken him low in the lungs. Red bubbles filled the wound, making that horrible sound that sucking chest wounds make that says, without a medic or a doctor, the person is dead. Just a matter of when, not if.
33
WE’D CALLED THE ambulance and found that they weren’t coming right away. Too many other emergencies ahead of us. It was Louie who pried the phone out of my hands and apologized to the nice operator.
Cherry ran to the kitchen. I could hear her opening and shutting drawers, cabinets banging.
I walked into the kitchen.
She was standing in the middle of the room with a drawer pulled all the way out in one hand. Her eyes were almost wild. Before I could say anything, she said, “I need a Ziploc bag, masking tape, and scissors.”
I didn’t ask stupid questions. I opened the small drawer beside the stove and handed her the tape and scissors. The Ziploc bags were one of the few things in the roomy pantry closet.
Cherry snatched them from my hands and headed for the living room. I had no idea what she had in mind, but she had the medical training. I didn’t. If it would give Zane a few more minutes, then I was for it. The ambulance would come eventually. The trick was having him alive for it to matter.
As far as I could tell, she didn’t use the scissors. She taped the bag over his chest, plastering it with tape except for one corner. It was very obviously meant to be left that way, but I had to ask. “Why is the one corner untaped?”
She answered without looking up from her patient. “The open corner lets him breathe, but when he sucks in air the bag collapses and seals the wound. It’s called an inclusive bandage.” She sounded as if she was lecturing. I wondered, not for the first time, what Cherry was like outside the monster stuff. She was almost like two different people. I’d never meant anyone, monster or not, who seemed so divided.
“Will it keep him alive long enough for the ambulance to get here?” I asked.
She finally looked up at me—eyes very serious. “I hope so.”
I nodded. It was better than I could have done. I was great at putting holes in people. Not so good at keeping them alive.
Richard brought a blanket and folded it over Zane’s legs, letting Cherry take the upper part of the blanket to fix the way she wanted around the wound.
Richard was wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, his tanned skin beaded with water as if he hadn’t even taken time to dry off. The towel clung in a smooth tight line to his butt as he folded the quilt over Zane. His thick hair hung in heavy strands, so wet that water trickled from it in fine lines down his back.
He stood up, and the towel flashed a lot of thigh.
“I have larger towels,” I said.
He frowned at me. “I heard gunshots. I wasn’t really worried about the size of the towel.”
I nodded. “You’re right. Sorry.” My anger with Richard seemed to shrink in direct proportion to his clothes. If he really wanted to win the war, all he had to do was strip. I’d have put up a white flag and applauded. Embarrassing, but almost true.
He ran his hand through his hair, smoothing it back from his face and squeezing out the excess water. That small movement showed his arms and chest to wonderful advantage. He arched his back just a little, which stretched the rest of his body in one long muscled line. It was the back arch that did it. I knew he was showing his body off on purpose. He’d always seemed unconscious of the effect his body had on me until now. Now,