Lupi 06 - Blood Magic

against the side of a building when they decided to teach Cynna a lesson for "talking back."
    He'd been attracted from the first, of course. She had a beautiful body, and she smelled good. But more, he'd just plain liked her. He still did. How strange that two of the people he cared for most had found each other.
    Had married each other.
    Rule's muscles tightened. His hands clenched. Cynna stirred without quite waking. He swallowed and forced ease on a body that wanted to move - or to hit something. Someone.
    Cullen's surgery had gone on so long. Too long.
    Most lupi never went into surgery, which was problematic for them. Set a bone, sure. Cut into them with a knife? Not such a good idea. Anesthesia didn't work on lupi - and a conscious but badly wounded lupus might try to kill someone who cut him open.
    Nokolai, however, had Nettie - shaman, doctor, healer. The combination of her healing Gift with her shamanic training let her put a lupus patient in sleep so they could be operated on. She'd done so to Rule twice - once after a spectacular motorcycle crash when he was young and foolish. Once when a demon gutted him during his sojourn in hell.
    Neither of his surgeries had lasted much more than an hour.
    Rule checked his watch. Four hours and twenty-one minutes. He and Cynna had been waiting almost four and a half bloody hours. What was taking so long?
    Nettie's a fighter, he reminded himself. She hasn't given up.
    Why did people think of medicine as a gentle profession, anyway? Doctors were vicious, bloody warriors, and their battleground was the patient's body. They brought terrible weapons onto that field. They cut people open and poisoned them.
    Not that they called their drugs poisons, but what else were they? Mild poisons usually, poisons administered in small enough doses that the body could endure their assault while they killed bacteria or cancer cells or rendered the patient comatose so the surgeon could cut him open.
    Drugs didn't work on lupi, but something had worked on Cullen, hadn't it? Whoever stabbed Cullen had known enough to find one of the few poisons that affected a lupus. Wolfsbane? Gado?
    Whoever stabbed Cullen...
    Deliberately, he turned his mind away from that thought. He couldn't afford to speculate, not if he was to stay in control throughout this bloody, bedamned, interminable wait.
    Cynna made a small sound and jolted. Her eyes popped open.
    He touched her shoulder. "Bad dreams?"
    "Uh-huh." She sat up. "I keep seeing him fall. He just went down, you know? No warning. I wish I had your trick of knowing. You and Lily always know that the other one's okay."
    No, they didn't - but they knew the other one wasn't dead. That's what she meant, and right now Rule would define okay as "not dead," too. He studied Cynna's face. She talked strong - she was strong - but she had a bruised look around the eyes that worried him. He kneaded her shoulder lightly. "Maybe you should eat."
    She gave him a wry glance. "Cullen's always trying to feed me, too. I promise you, it won't help right now."
    "Hmm." Humans did benefit from regular meals, if not as dramatically as lupi, but Rule didn't argue. "I don't know if it will help you, but I remind myself frequently that we would have already heard if he'd died. The waiting is hard, but bad news would arrive quickly."
    "True. And he's going to be okay. I know that in my gut. It's just that my head knows other stuff - like that it shouldn't take this long. I don't know a whole lot about healing, but I know it doesn't take this long, so whatever Nettie's doing isn't working right."
    Hard to argue with her when she was right. He did his best. "Her healing may not be working normally against this poison, but he isn't dead, so it is working."
    "Right." She gave a firm nod, grimaced, and said, "Give me a hand up, okay? I'm stiff."
    He stood and helped her rise. He wasn't sure how much she really needed the help - her center of balance was disrupted, but she was extremely fit.
    Once on her feet she ran both hands through her hair, glanced at the room's other occupants, and said quietly, "Guilt always makes the other feelings worse, doesn't it?"
    Startled, he blurted, "You don't have anything to feel guilty about."
    "Of course I do. I didn't say the guilt was accurate, just that I feel that way. This wouldn't have happened if we hadn't gotten married. My choices led to him being attacked. His choices, too," she added, "not to mention the bastard with the knife. But that