“I doubt very much that he missed me, Lieutenant.”
“Talk to him, maybe I can persuade both of you to go to the hospital for more tests.”
I looked up at him, startled. “I’m okay now, the bleeding stopped.”
“You were attacked by a demon, Havoc, and the wounds keep bleeding even though all the medical personnel tell us the wounds are too healed to bleed. You need a healing specialist to look at you, Havoc.”
“You want me to try to make it a sort of dare for Harshiel—if you go to the hospital, so will I?”
“Now you’re getting the idea.”
“He hit me in the wounds and opened them back up, simple as that,” I said.
“The wounds are healed, Havoc, they shouldn’t be able to bleed.”
“The first paramedics are testing the blood to see if it’s mine. You know how demons borrow body fluids from other places to use,” I said.
“That’s when they borrow shit or money from somewhere else to smear all over the place, or to trick some fool into letting the demon make them rich as a price for their soul. One case they tested the bodily substances at a possession and found out it belonged to half a dozen different people, none of them related to the possession,” Charleston said.
“That’s my point, sir, I think it’s not my blood.”
“Why would the demon keep wasting something as precious to them as fresh human blood to keep smearing it on you, and why aren’t you sensing the demonic activity that’s doing it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Thanks for making my point, Havoc, now go talk your friend into the hospital and agree to sign up for more testing yourself.”
I wanted Harshiel to see a doctor, because what if I had damaged his kidneys, but I didn’t want to go back to the hospital for a lot of reasons. “I’m afraid if I go back for tests they’ll keep me overnight, and I have tentative plans to see Reggie for lunch tomorrow to talk over some stuff. I don’t want to have to cancel on her for something that can wait until we get the blood work on my clothes and bandages.”
“I take it this lunch is a positive sign, not just a hash-the-details-of-our-separation-out?”
I smiled. “Yes, very positive.”
He grinned at me and clapped me on the shoulder. “I am glad to hear that, Havoc. Okay, we’ll wait until some of the older blood work comes back, as long as you promise that if you start bleeding again for any reason you’ll head to an ER, or call me, and if the blood is all yours, you’ll agree to go in for tests after your lunch date.”
I finally nodded. “That all sounds reasonable, Lieutenant.”
“Good, then let’s try to talk sense into Harshiel and you can go home and get some rest at least.”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s bullshit, I should have sent you home sooner.”
“I’m . . .”
“Don’t say fine.”
“I’m okay.”
He rolled his eyes at me, then motioned me up to walk across the room to try to reason with Harshiel. I didn’t think anything I could say would make any difference, but if Charleston thought it would, I’d try. I trusted his judgment about people, even when I thought I knew everyone involved better than he did. The hate in Harshiel’s eyes had shocked me; maybe it wasn’t just women that I didn’t understand, maybe it was everybody.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
They had stripped Harshiel out of his shirt so they could see his back, but the very darkness of his skin made it harder for them to see if it was bruising badly, blood rushing to the surface. His usual upright posture in the chair was strained. I could see the tension in his shoulders and his hands gripping the arms of the chair as he tried to not hunch over the pain. I’d hurt him and hadn’t meant to, or had I? Charleston was right; if I hadn’t meant to hurt him, I wouldn’t have punched him like I had, so why had I done it? I honestly had no idea which made me feel worse somehow.
I started to say I was sorry, but he spoke first. “I did not know you were injured, Zaniel. It is not honorable to strike an opponent in an injury that I did not give them.”
“It’s all right, Harshiel, you could not have known.”
“Is it true that it was a demon that clawed you?”
“It is true,” I said, falling back into the rhythm of the language I’d grown up with instead of just saying yes.
“You fought a demon hand-to-hand and kept him from killing you?”
“I did, or I would not be here to speak with you.”
“And I used the wound against you in a fight; I am ashamed of taking advantage of such a thing.”
I started to touch his shoulder, then stopped, because I wasn’t sure how he’d take it. “There is no shame because you could not have known I was injured. I am the one who should be ashamed; I should not have hit you the way I did, such a blow should be saved for life-or-death battles only.”
“I thought you would be slower, less able because you left Master Donel’s training, but you were fierce and fought well.”
I bowed my head, putting my right hand over my chest, fingertips lightly touching my opposite shoulder. Falling back into the old gesture without thinking. “I am honored that you found me a worthy opponent.”
He tried to bow his head in return, but stopped the gesture halfway, frozen in pain. “Most worthy.”
“As a worthy opponent may I ask you to see a doctor, so that I will know that I have not injured you too badly?”
He raised his dark face toward me but had to finish the gesture with just his eyes, as if even that small movement hurt. I touched his shoulder then and fought not to touch the side of his face. When we were children, I had loved how dark his skin was compared to mine, but especially compared to Cosmiel; she’d been a natural redhead with the palest of skin to offset her green eyes. At seven, I had marveled at all the colors we came in, and it had been one of the hardest things to learn in the outside world that it was considered racist to remark on skin color. I had been raised to believe that our differences made us beautiful, and no matter how wrong some things at the College had been, it hadn’t all been bad; in fact some of it I wanted to teach to my son.
Harshiel was studying my face as if he was trying to read my thoughts, and then I realized he could read my mind. I’d touched him enough for him to be able to know what I was thinking. It was one of his gifts, but only with close contact. He couldn’t read someone across a room or across the world like others at the College. It was one of the reasons he’d been trained to fight, because if he could touch you, he had a chance of literally picking your brain.
“Zaniel,” he said, and reached up to put his hand over mine where I touched his shoulder. “If you missed us so much, why did you stay away?”
“Because I could not have all of you and leave the College,” I said. His palm and fingers were rougher than they had been the last time I’d felt his hand on mine. We’d both lifted more weapons, more weights, touched more of life. I felt the loss of not having been there for each other, but then I stopped my thoughts, let myself sink into that stillness that we’d been taught. If you didn’t want someone reading your mind or emotions you could prevent it by simply not thinking, not feeling. It was like the empty mind of meditation but reached in an instant. When you deal with angels, blanking yourself for a fellow human is so much easier.