Burnt Offerings - Laurell K. Hamilton [95]
I let it go. No need to explain how often being around Richard ended in such “desperate measures.” Across the ring Jamil sat up with Richard’s help. Zane had untied both the wereleopards. He’d led Vivian over to Gregory. They both knelt by him, Vivian hugging Zane and crying.
I got my feet under me and found that I could walk. Great. Richard got there before I did. He stroked Gregory’s tangled hair out of his face until the wereleopard looked up at him. “We have to set these legs.”
Gregory nodded, lips in a thin tight line that reminded me of Cherry.
“We need a hospital for this,” I said.
Richard looked up at me. “The legs have already begun to reknit like this, Anita. Every minute the bones are out of alignment is another minute that they heal, badly.”
I stared down at Gregory’s legs. He was totally nude, but the wounds were so fearful that it wasn’t embarrassing; it was just piteous. His legs from the knees down bent the wrong way. I had to close my eyes and look away. If it had been a corpse, I could have looked at it, but Gregory was still bleeding, still hurting. Made it worse somehow.
I looked back. “You mean the legs would heal like that?”
“Yes,” Richard said.
I stared down into Gregory’s frightened eyes. They were still the surprised cornflower-blue of Stephen’s. They looked even bluer from the mask of blood that covered his face. I tried to think of something to say, but he spoke first.
His voice was thin, scratchy, as if he’d screamed until he was hoarse. “When you left without me the first time, I thought you were going to let them keep me.”
I knelt beside him. “You’re not something to keep. You’re a person. You deserve to be treated…” To say, “better than this” seemed too obvious. I tried to hold his hand the way you’d comfort a child, but two of the fingers were broken so badly, I didn’t even know how to touch him.
Vivian spoke for the first time. “Is he dead?” Her voice was breathy, husky, somewhere between that of a little girl and a seductress. She would be great on the phone. The look in her eyes was neither childish nor seductive; it was frightening. She stared past us to where Fernando lay, and her hatred was a hot, scalding thing.
Not that I blamed her. I went to check on our little rapist. Gideon and Thomas got to him first. I noticed that they hadn’t gone near him until I did. Why did I think that they didn’t like him much better than we did? Fernando just had a way of pissing people off. It seemed to be his only talent.
His bare stomach was a bloody mess where Richard had tried to dig his intestines out, but the wound was healing. Filling itself in like a fast-forward motion picture. You could actually see his body rebuild itself.
“He’ll live,” I said. Even to me, I sounded disappointed.
“Yes,” Thomas said, and that one word sounded as disappointed as I felt. He visibly shook himself, and turned sad brown eyes to me. “If he had died, then Padma would have destroyed the city, seeking you. Make no mistake, Anita, Padma loves his son, but more than that, he is his only son. The only chance he has of having an heir.”
“I wouldn’t think a vampire would sweat that,” I said.
“He comes from a time and a culture where a son is an incredibly important thing. No matter how long we live or what we are in the end, we start out as people. We never quite lose all that we were during life. It haunts us over the centuries, our humanity.”
“You’re human.”
He smiled and shook his head. “Once, perhaps.”
I opened my mouth to ask something, but he held his hand up. “If there is time, Gideon and I would enjoy speaking with you and Richard at length on what a triumvirate can be, but now, you must leave before Fernando awakes. During daylight hours he is in charge of us.”
My eyes widened, and I looked at Gideon. “But he’s not alpha enough