Page 66 of Land of Shadow

“Focus. Tell me how to fix this.” He gingerly takes my wrist and pulls my arm out taut. Closing his eyes, he breathes out slow and hard. His fangs slowly retract, and when he opens his eyes, they’re blue again. “You’re bleeding all over the place. Tell me what to do.”

“I need the sample to?—”

“Absolutely not.” He bares his fangs at me.

“Then this was for nothing!” I gesture at my arm.

“Agreed!” he snaps. Again, he takes a deep breath and lets it out. More calmly, he says again, “Tell me what to do to fix this.” He reaches for some gauze, uncertainty in his movement.

“No, that won’t do.” I cast a forlorn glance to the smashed sample. There’s no saving it now anyway. It’s tainted beyond use. “I’ll just have to sew it. I cut too deep.” The ache is heavier now, pulsing up my arm with dull, insistent pain. “Unless you’re offering your blood to fix me up?”

He gives me a stony look.

“I suppose that’s a ‘no.’ Here. I’ll work better under the light.” I hold out my good hand.

He takes it and pulls me up, then scoops the supplies and lays them out on the counter.

“This.” I grab more alcohol wipes and hand him one. “And this.” I flip open my sewing kit.

He wipes his hands and sits beside me, his gaze glued to my arm. The blood is still welling. “A towel,” I tell him.

He’s gone and back in an absurdly short amount of time and hands me a towel. I cushion my arm on it and get to work.

“Keep it clear for me.” I hand him a fresh wipe. “I can sew it, but I’ll need your help with the knot.”

He nods, still taking deep breaths. His free hand is clenched in a fist, the knuckles gone white.

We work for a few minutes in silence, my fingers moving with practiced ease through the motions. He swipes the blood away gently when I pull too tightly. I grit my teeth against the pain and keep going, only hesitating to poke the needle through on a few passes.

“You’ve done this a lot.” He sits back, his gaze still fixed on my bloody arm.

“Once the plague spread, I stopped teaching and spent my days and nights working at the hospital triage.” I flinch when I hit a particularly painful nerve. “We saw all sorts of cases. When the world went to shit, people still had accidents, still got hurt the old-fashioned ways. There was the plague, and then there was everything else. I was on the front lines for people needing care. So, yeah, I’ve done my fair share of stitches.” I hold up the thread. “Can you pull this taut so I can finish up?”

He pinches the suture thread between his thumb and forefinger as I use the needle to weave it into a tight knot. “That’s it.” I relax against the chair back and inspect my work. “Not bad for a one-handed job.”

“Will it scar?” he asks.

“Definitely.” I reach for the gauze.

“Allow me.” He grabs it and unrolls some, them places it over the wound. “Like this?”

“Yes.” Emotions I don’t want to feel try to surface as I watch him carefully tend to my wound. Why is he doing this? Is it a tactic?

“Tape.” I point.

He gives the bandage the tightest edges I’ve ever seen, the tape perfectly cut to make a rectangle. “What else?” he asks.

“That’s it.” I glance at the blood splatter on the wall. “Now you can explain to me why the hell you ruined my experiment.”

He meets my gaze. “I took you for an intelligent woman, Doctor.”

“I took you for a bloodthirsty monster. Oh wait, I’m right about that,” I fire back. “How did you even know what I was doing?” A chill crawls down my spine at the thought of him watching me. I’ve scoured this place looking for cameras or listening devices and came up empty, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t here. He’s said as much.

“I told you. Vampires have a keen sense of smell, especially when it comes to humans. Mine is even keener when it comes to you.”

My mouth drops open when I realize what he’s getting at. “Are you saying you could smell my blood?”

He gives me a wolfish smile. “From the ground floor.”

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