by C. L. Coffey
I reached for it and handed it over.
With a wry smile, Gabriel took it from me. “Don’t worry. I can handle this.”
“Do you need me to go and get some whiskey?”
Gabriel’s gaze switched back to me. “We don’t drink.”
We . . .
Well, I wasn’t going to deny that half a bottle of whiskey sounded better to me than a bottle of holy water.
Gabriel opened the tin, somehow managing to spill the contents into the pool of bloody water beside him.
I quickly snatched the thread and strip of needles from the pool of blood. “Hold up your hands.”
With a sigh like he’d been caught out, Gabriel raised his hands. They trembled in the air.
“Aren’t surgeons supposed to have steady hands?”
“I’m sewing myself up, not doing keyhole surgery.”
“Yes, and you’re going to end up with some deformed Harry Potter scar on your otherwise perfect abs.”
My attention went to the soaked thread and I sighed. I reached up for one of the disposable plastic cups, removed the ridiculous cap housekeeping had put on it, and poured what was left of the holy water into it. After cutting a length of thread, I dunked it in the water, hoping it would be enough to wash the tainted blood away.
“Smart,” Gabriel muttered.
I did the same with the needle before squeezing out the water from the thread. Surprisingly, my hands weren’t shaking. Considering everything I’d been through, I had no idea how I was even functioning or how I was about to stitch Gabriel’s wound together, so I was surprised at how steady my hands were.
The thread went through the eye of the needle on my first attempt.
Turning to Gabriel, I paused. “This is going to hurt.”
There was also the strong possibility that, even though I had just mocked Gabriel for it, my own stitching was going to leave a scar.
“I trust you.”
“You shouldn’t,” I said. “I’ve never done this before.”
Hell, it had been so long since I’d watched a medical show that I couldn’t even reference an episode for my medical knowledge.
“Have you repaired a hole in a shirt before?”
It was a lot cheaper to salvage a shirt than to buy a new one, even from Goodwill. I’d had plenty of experience at sewing up holes and tears, but I wasn’t a dressmaker, and Gabriel’s skin wasn’t a blouse.
Gabriel looked down at the wound. “I think you can do that in ten stitches. My body will heal—it just needs a little bit of extra help.”
Biting my lip, I looked up at him. “And you’re still not feeling well enough to transport yourself to a place where there’s someone who can help you?”
“I can’t. I tried. I don’t know if I’m too tired or the tainted weapon is affecting me, but right now, it’s just you and me.” Wincing, Gabriel leaned over and placed his hand over mine, avoiding the needle. “If you can’t do it, you don’t have to. I don’t mind a small scar on these otherwise ‘perfect’ abs.”
Inwardly, I cringed. Had I really said that?
“Distract me,” I told him.
Gabriel’s hand left mine and went up to my hair, brushing it gently back from my face.
In an almost robot-like move, I turned my head to frown at him. “I said distract me, not make me forget what I need to be doing.”
Gabriel grinned, lowering his hand. “Then how would you like me to distract you?”
“Tell me something. I don’t care what . . . wait. The meaning of life?” I shrugged. “You’ve been alive forever, there must be something?”
“The archangels came to earth and established Houses around the world. Most of us chose Rome as a starting point, apart from Uriel who went to what is now called South Korea.”
“And you chose the Vatican City?” Even now it was an incredible place—or the small part of it that I had seen.
“Officially, the Vatican City wasn’t established as the sovereign nation it is now until 1929. Until then, it was Rome.”
A history lesson?
It was something, I suppose.
Leaning forward, I sucked in a deep breath and pinched the two pieces of skin back together as gently as I could.
Gabriel barely flinched, even though the surrounding area was red and inflamed.
“I’ve spent years around millions of humans, and none of them have stood out to me like you have.”
The needle jabbed through Gabriel’s body with more force than I intended, making Gabriel wince. Somehow, I didn’t let go, but I turned, frowning at Gabriel. “Little tip. Don’t flirt with me when I’m armed with a needle and thread.”
Gabriel’s eyes were closed tightly and his fists were once again clenched. “Kennedy, I’m not well versed in flirting, and that wasn’t my intention. You asked about the meaning of life.”
“If you’re about to tell me I’m the meaning of life, I might just stab you.” I held up the needle in the most threatening way I could manage with a thin piece of metal.
He let out a long sigh. “That was a lie. I was attempting to flirt.” His eyes met mine. “At least it wasn’t a failed attempt.”
I smiled as his cheeks turned pink. Cool, confident Gabriel was shy.
“When I’m not sewing you up, you have free rein with the flirting.”
When Gabriel fell silent, I turned my attention back to the wound. The sour egg smell seemed to be coming more from the pool on the floor than the wound, which I was taking as a good sign.
“How did you find me?” I asked, my attention remaining on what I was doing and not him. “My mom thought we were being chased for years by my fallen angel father, and I thought we had been doing a great job at hiding. Then you found me.”
“After everything that happened in New Orleans, we—Heaven—realized there were more Fallen and nephilim than we initially thought. The numbers were growing over the centuries. Lucifer was defeated, and it was decided that we would actively recruit any potentials we came across, and we would also hunt down the last of the Fallen. I figured if there were no fallen angels left to reproduce, once they were dead, the nephilim would eventually die out too.”
“And yet you tried to kill me.” There was no lingering grudge left in me. Not that I particularly enjoyed almost being killed, but I’d forgiven Gabriel. Since then, he was helping nephilim and not trying to end them.
“If we came across nephilim in the process, we were to kill them. You were a fluke. I’d never set out to find you. I’d been told there was a fallen angel who had been spotted in Phoenix. The Fallen like places where inhibitions are lowered—bars, casinos and nightclubs. The establishments aren’t inherently evil, nor are most of the people who frequent them. But once you throw alcohol into a situation, humans can be easily led astray.”
I’d managed to stitch about three quarters of his cut back together, but I paused to look at him. “I was working security. I was hardly on the dancefloor trying to persuade someone to start a fight. In fact, that night, I broke one up.”
“Nephilim tend to be taller, but otherwise, when you compare a human to a nephilim, there’s very little difference. The human side of you keeps the aura. Sometimes the color can indicate a person’s true intentions, but just as easily as a nephilim’s aura tells me they’re devious or narcissistic, that can also apply to some humans.” Gabriel paused, his body tensing.
“Did I do it too hard?”
Gabriel let out a dry laugh that quickly had him wincing when his chest shuddered. “Nothing about what you’re doing doesn’t hurt, and we have a high pain tolerance and fast healing ability.”
“I’m nearly done.” Two more stitches should do it.
“But to the trained eye, you move differently.”
As Gabriel continued talking, I resumed stitching him up.
“I saw that fight. Your reactions were too quick, and your body, too strong. You could have done some serious damage if you were so inclined.”
Afte
r tying a knot, I reached for the scissors and cut the thread off. It looked like the stitches you drew on your skin when pretending to be a pirate.
With the remaining thread and the needle now discarded, my brain registered what Gabriel said. “You mean the only ‘evidence’ you had was that I was a little bit faster, a little bit stronger, and a little bit taller than most people? What if I had been human? You would have killed an innocent person.”
“I wouldn’t have killed a human, Kennedy.”
Pinnosa’s sources had seemed sketchy to me, but now they seemed more reliable than Gabriel’s judgement.
But I was too exhausted to dissect this further.
“You should rest,” I mumbled.
The floor was still covered in watered down dirty blood, but looking at Gabriel’s pants, it was clear most of it had been absorbed into the fabric.
Grabbing the bottle of holy water, I poured some of what was left over the freshly stitched wound and then gave it back to Gabriel to finish up. As he did, I picked up the gauze, pressed it over the cut, and then started wrapping the bandage around his torso, being careful not to let the end touch any of the mess on the floor.
I was focused on tying the bandage off when I felt Gabriel’s lips on my forehead. He pulled back, smiling softly. “Of all the millions of people I’ve been around, you’re still the one that stands out the most to me.”
“You should go lie down on one of those beds and get some rest. Do you think you can get changed into something clean by yourself?”
When Gabriel nodded, I backed out of the room to give him some privacy. It was only when I was out of the bathroom and out of Gabriel’s eyeline that my body seemed to wake up and remind me that I’d been injured, too.
Everything had dulled considerably since the fight, but my shoulder was throbbing, and my head felt like someone had taken a blender to my brain. I doubled over, my hands on my knees, and took some deep breaths.
As soon as Gabriel was asleep, I would check myself over. I was stabbed in my left shoulder, but I was right-handed, so Gabriel hadn’t noticed me favoring a side. If I went in there now, he’d be distracted when he should be resting.
Whatever my injury was, it wasn’t bad enough that it stopped me from helping.
There was a strong possibility that I was firmly in denial about that.
I’d had a stake stabbed through my shoulder.
It was more likely that I was riding high on adrenaline overload, and I was as badly injured as Gabriel was.
But I still wasn’t going to worry him.
The bathroom door opened, and Gabriel staggered out. Bare feet, bare chest, but clean pants hung off his hips.
Making sure to use my good shoulder, I turned to help him to the bed. “I thought you were doing better?” I asked, accusingly.
Gabriel’s eyes were already closed. “I will be after some rest.”
I waited until he fell asleep and the rise and fall of his chest was regular. Then I grabbed my bag and returned to the bathroom.
There was so much blood smeared across the tiles that it looked like a massacre happened in there. Gabriel had kicked his soiled clothes to the side, and they mopped the floor in blood.
I picked them all up and tossed them into the back of the shower. The bathroom had a drain in the floor at the side of the room. Gabriel’s body had acted like a dam, stopping all the bloody water from draining away. Now it was tacky and drying on the tiles.
Making a mental note to put the ‘no housekeeping’ sign on the door before I went to sleep, I shut the bathroom door, dumped my bag on the toilet, and then grabbed the shower head. It was one of those cheap ones that could be moved to all angles, including out of the shower.
Turning it on, I winced as the blast of cold water hit me when I couldn’t move out of the way fast enough. My cleaning was going to be far from perfect, but if I could hide the worst of the blood, housekeeping wasn’t going to call the cops on us.
We weren’t in a five-star hotel, but this place was still better than some of the apartments I’d lived in. This wasn’t the kind of place to turn a blind eye at the clientele who stayed here.
Using my feet to scrub at the floor, the water slowly warming up, I managed to get rid of most of the blood. If the cops came in here, they would undoubtedly find it, but housekeeping hopefully wouldn’t.
Leaning into the shower, I batted the showerhead away before turning the water off, and then I turned to the mirror above the sink.
I looked like crap.
My hair was spilling out of my braid at all angles, some of it, plastered to my head and other parts sticking up like I was in a punk band. My face was the palest I’d seen it, aside from the bloody smears from where I’d clearly pushed hair from my face with dirty hands.
My gaze dropped to my shoulder. I’d never fastened my jacket up, and it looked like the fallen angel had managed to impale me without damaging the jacket. Not that I was going to keep it. It was covered in blood.
Gabriel must have been a lot worse than I thought if he hadn’t noticed the blood over me.
Biting at the inside of my cheek, I finally allowed the jacket to fall from my shoulders. The vest top I was wearing underneath was damp from all the blood soaked into it. This morning it was white. Now it looked like it rust colored.
Grabbing the bottom of it, I pulled it up over the top of my head, biting down hard to stop myself from crying out in pain. Raising my arm made it feel like I’d been stabbed again.
Taking my time to ball the top up and toss it into the bottom of the shower, I finally turned back to see how bad the injury was.
“Holy shit,” I muttered.
There was a hole in my shoulder.
Turning to the side, I inspected my back. There was another hole there.
I couldn’t see through it.
My back looked worse than my chest. The skin around the edge of the wound had puckered up, but the inside was dark and scabbed. I wasn’t a medical expert by a long shot, but my experience of cutting myself in the kitchen and the scabbing over made it look like I’d been injured a couple of days ago.
Looking down at the entrance wound, it was very similar.
Tentatively, I pushed on it.
It was definitely tender, and poking at it made me grit my teeth, but the scab felt pretty solid and the bruising around the edges wasn’t consistent with an injury only a couple hours old.
I wasn’t sure if this should have been the type of injury that would need a stitch or two, but my gut was telling me it was a waste of time right now.
Thankfully. There was no way I could stitch my own injury.
In fact, I had the strangest feeling that taking a shower and washing the dried blood off my skin would make me look a lot better than I did.
Was I experiencing advanced healing? Didn’t Gabriel say nephilim didn’t heal as fast as angels?
Closing my eyes, I emptied my mind. My head felt foggy and worrying about a wound healing faster than it should have was not a thing to be worried about. Clearly, the stake wasn’t tainted like the sword that cut Gabriel.
Peeling off the rest of my clothes, I turned the water back on, waiting for the shower to turn warm before I stepped under it.
The warmth seemed to amplify my exhaustion as I stood under the flow of water. I could barely keep my eyes open to watch the blood-stained water slowly run clear as it drained away.
Chapter Sixteen
Despite everything that happened, it wasn’t late when I’d finally collapsed onto the bed and fell asleep. I’d managed to pull on some clean pajamas but drying my hair felt like too much effort, especially when raising my hands above my head hurt too much.
In the end, I’d rolled onto my side, closed my eyes, and fallen straight to sleep.
When I woke up, the room was still dark. It could have been an hour later or six. The small red numbers of the clock radio on the bedside table was flashing all zeros. I had no idea if it had been doing that when I fel
l asleep or if there was a power outage during the night.
My body still ached, but fortunately, it felt more like waking up after a particularly hard session in the gym.
I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling as I did a mental check of my body. The worst source of pain was my shoulder, which I expected. What I didn’t expect was that it felt more like I’d pulled a muscle than having a piece of metal rammed through my body.
If we had been back at the college, I would have been skipping gym.
After realizing I wasn’t going to fall back to sleep, I sat up, rubbing my face. I flicked on the light, grateful that it was dim enough to not wake up Gabriel, even if it did have me wincing as my eyes adjusted.
The remote for the television was next to the clock, so I picked it up and turned the TV on. The volume wasn’t loud, but I turned it down as Gabriel stirred.
Flipping through the channels, I found the local news with a convenient clock in the corner. It was just after six. I slept for nearly seven hours—which was actually a lot more than most nights since starting at Greenwood Prep.
Just when I realized the reporter was standing in front of a smoldering building, it cut to the weather.
Was that Abaddon’s place? What were the chances of there being two building fires last night?
The weather woman droned on about how the county was set for clear blue skies and highs of seventies. I barely paid attention, busy staring at the rise and fall of Gabriel’s chest.
Had he healed?
Had I?
Just in case Gabriel chose that moment to wake up, I padded to the bathroom, flicking on the light. Aside from the pile of blood-stained clothes still in the bottom of the shower, you couldn’t tell how much blood covered the floor last night.
With the door shut, I peeled off my shirt.
The hole had shrunk. It was barely even a hole anymore. It looked like something I’d gotten weeks ago. Turning, I discovered the back looked almost the same. The raised skin from the night before had almost gone too.
“That’s incredible,” I whispered as I prodded at the scab. My shoulder and arm might have been aching enough to distract me, but I couldn’t complain. Not when my arm healed this well.
