“That’s not how possession works, not even physical possession.”
“Nothing about this possession was normal,” Charleston said.
Hazel Prescott ushered me down the hall. “Let’s see if you need stitches, then you can come back and start figuring out where our patient and your suspect went.”
“I’ll question the new guy,” Lila Bridges said, motioning with her thumb at Sato, who was still waiting in the hallway where I’d left him.
“Thanks, Bridges,” I said.
“No problem.” She turned back, the brown ponytail bouncing as she moved. She’d made it high up on her head today, which had always been one of my favorite looks on a girl going back to elementary school. I closed my eyes and shook my head. I knew better than to date anyone in our unit; that never ended well.
“I thought you were comforting me,” Gimble said to her.
She quirked a smile at him, giving her own cynical look, except her eyes were empty cop eyes that gave nothing away. “You’ve still got an IV hanging out of your arm.”
He looked down at it as if he’d just noticed. “Ow,” he said, because like so many things it only hurts when you notice it. Broken hearts are like that, too.
I followed Hazel down the hallway and tried not to notice the way her uniform fit from the back. I tried to think what I’d say to Kate and was happy that I’d been all covered in angel magic when I held her naked in my arms. It meant I would have more objectivity when I saw her again. God, I needed a date.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Paulson had passed Gonzales the nurse to a surgical team, so he was the one who patched me up. Paulson had me take my shirt off and drop my pants so low I had to hold my gun in place and let everything else slide around. He’d wanted to make sure there were no wounds that I’d missed from the fight. I’d have liked to argue but I knew that sometimes in the heat of battle, or even fighting demons, you don’t always feel every wound at first. Paulson inspected my abdomen so long and so closely that I finally asked, “What’s wrong, Doc, sad that you don’t get to stitch me up?”
Paulson had to raise his face up to see me; he’d been bending that low over my stomach. “You should be hurt enough for stitches. You took more damage from the woman’s fingernails than the demon’s claws; how, why?”
I debated on what to tell him and finally settled for most of the truth. “It’s a side effect of the angelic energy.”
“So that healed the demon injuries?”
“Partially?”
“Why didn’t it heal it completely?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t it heal the scratches from the woman?”
“I don’t know.”
Paulson frowned at me. “Are you holding back information?”
I rose up on my elbows and the scratches where Kate had scored her nails down my skin were a sharp, immediate pain, compared to the dull ache of the abdominal scratches. The ones there felt like the injuries had healed for a few days already, while the scratches on my arm felt fresh. One of the things I’d missed most, other than the friends I’d left behind at the College, had been the healing ability. It had lingered for a few months and then I was just as mortal as anyone else. There’d been moments in the army when I missed the angels for a lot of reasons.
“Angels can heal people if God allows it; people who are angel touched can sometimes heal people, too. Gimble was angel touched, and I . . . knew how to hijack the energy and use it to protect us.”
“I’ve been hearing versions of what you did from staff that witnessed it.” He raised a skeptical eyebrow at me. “I didn’t believe most of it until I saw how healed the claw marks are on you. After seeing what they did to Gonzales . . .” He stopped talking and just shook his head. “He had you pinned in the hallway for at least five minutes, but you’re intact.”
“I told you it’s a side effect of the angels. If I’d been thinking more clearly, I might have tried to use the energy to heal me completely before the wings faded away.”
“Some people saw wings, but others saw . . . other things.” He sounded a little grim when he said the last part.
I almost asked what the others had seen, but I wasn’t certain I wanted to know. I’d used angel magic in a way I hadn’t attempted in over a decade, and it had worked. God hadn’t turned his grace from me, and neither had the angels. They could be more judgmental than the Big Guy sometimes.
“I’ll bandage up your arm. Will antibiotics work on demon wounds?”
“This demon was more solid and real than any that I’ve ever touched, so use what you’d use if he was just a monster and not an Infernal. Even if it doesn’t help, it won’t hurt.”
Paulson nodded. “Good to know since we’re pumping Gonzales full of them. How about a tetanus shot?”
“Unknown, but again it can’t hurt,” I said.
He nodded again. “How long has it been since you had a tetanus booster?”
“I’m up-to-date. Got shoved into a pile of scrap metal last year.”
I hissed when he put cream on the scratches that Kate had carved into me. I knew that a woman’s nails could leave marks, but these seemed deeper, or maybe it had just been so long since I’d had a woman’s nails on me, I didn’t remember.
“Do they seem deeper than normal?” I asked.
“This is usually what we see if a woman fights back from an attack.”
“So I’ve just never had a woman try to hurt me that much, but it’s ‘normal’?” I made quote marks in the air with the hand he wasn’t bandaging up.
“I can’t share patient information with you, but no, this level of damage from human scratches isn’t normal.” He looked at me as he said it, as if he was trying to tell me something with just the look. Whatever he was trying to say I was missing it. My face must have shown it because he frowned and raised the eyebrow again. “I’ve said all I can, Detective Havoc.”
“Detective Havelock; Havoc is just a nickname,” I said.
He half smiled, then shook his head. “Good to know, because Detective Havoc sounds like a comic book hero.”
“Dr. Havoc would be worse, that sounds like a comic book villain.”
He laughed then. “It really does.” He finished patching me up and then he escorted me to Kate.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Kate looked younger lying in the new bed in a hospital gown that seemed even larger than the last one, so that her figure was completely hidden. She was only about five foot six standing, so lying down she seemed even smaller. With her brown curls tousled on the pillow and the big brown eyes she looked childlike. It made me wonder if she was Mark Cookson’s age. God, had I gotten so needy that I couldn’t tell a teenager when I saw one?
“I don’t remember the demon hurting your arm,” she said, looking at the bandages.
“It didn’t,” I said.
She turned her face away from me on the pillow so that all those brown curls spilled over her face. I fought the urge to brush the curls away until I could see her better. I couldn’t tell if it was a parental gesture because she looked so fragile lying there, or if I just wanted an excuse to touch her, so I kept my hands to myself.