Revenant

Settling in next to him, she laid out the supplies she’d need to sew him back together. He watched her with curiosity as she performed a rapid exam to determine the extent of his injuries, but aside from the near-evisceration wound, all she found were burns and abrasions.

She carefully cleaned the surgical area and threaded a needle with absorbable thread. “I don’t have anything that will numb the area, so this is going to hurt.”

He took a deep swig. “Trust me, you can’t do anything to me that hasn’t been done before.”

Setting the needle and thread aside, she unwrapped a sterile scalpel. “Sounds like you’ve had a violent life.”

He snorted. “Who hasn’t?”

“I haven’t.” Thanks to her mother’s paranoia, Blaspheme had, for the most part, stayed out of trouble.

“Isn’t that special.” Revenant held up the bottle in a salute. “Good for you.”

“Yeah, good for me.” She scooted in closer to Revenant and tried to ignore the heat coming off his muscular body. “I need to excise the damaged skin on the edges of your laceration. Try not to move.”

He didn’t move at all. He closed his eyes, put his head against the wall, and half an hour later, she was finished cleaning and prepping the wound. Next up, stitches.

“In the deepest parts of this lac, I need to put in internal sutures. It should only take a few minutes.” She pierced his flesh with the needle. “Lucky for you, most of the cut is fairly shallow.”

“You know you don’t need to go to a lot of trouble,” he said, his voice starting to slur a little. “I’m immortal. I’ll heal on my own eventually.”

She looked up at him. “That’s why I’m not worried about infection or making this pretty.” She pulled on the thread. “But you shouldn’t have to be in pain until you heal.”

His lids opened, just a crack, but she felt his intense gaze scorching her skin. “It’s been a long time since anyone gave a shit about my pain.”

She stopped breathing. She could tell him that she only cared because it was her job to care, but she sensed that when he said a long time, he wasn’t talking about a few years, or even a few decades. Maybe not even a few centuries. Was he that awful of a person that no one could care for him? Or did he push people away so they didn’t have the chance to care for him?

Either way, it was kind of heartbreaking.

“Just relax, and you’ll feel better in a few minutes.”

One corner of his mouth curved into a half smile. “Promise?”

“Promise.”

“We’ll see.”

Bending over the laceration, she got back to work. “Not very trusting, are you?”

“Because people aren’t very trustworthy.”

She’d have argued, because she’d met a few standup humans and demons, but he’d closed his eyes again, and his breathing had settled into a deep, steady rhythm.

She spent the next forty-five minutes stitching Revenant up in silence, and as she finished, her cell buzzed with a text from Eidolon.

Meet me in my office tomorrow at 2 PM.

Doc E had never been one to mince words. She set the phone aside and turned back to Revenant.

“What was that about?” Revenant’s voice was drowsy and his eyes were still closed, but he somehow managed to radiate a sense of alertness most people couldn’t match after ten hours of sleep and five cups of coffee.

“Nothing.”

His lids lifted as his features settled into irritation. “There is very little that pisses me off more than being lied to.”

“Okay, fine,” she said. “It was something, but it’s none of your business. That’s not a lie.”

He pegged her with his black gaze. “I’m not the enemy. You know that, right?”

“Actually, no, I don’t.” She smoothed a bandage over his wound. “You’re a fallen angel. You, more than anyone, should know that fallen angels aren’t exactly honorable.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” The bottle he seemed to have forgotten about became his best friend again, and he took a swig. “I’m not fallen. I’m a one hundred percent, full-blown, Heavenly angel.” His voice lowered, became thick with liquor. “What a fucking joke.”

Now he was making no sense. She reached for the bottle. “Let me just take that —”

He jerked it way. “Mine.”

She huffed. “As your doctor, I’m ordering you to give that to me.”

“Mine.”

“Hand it over,” she said between clenched teeth.

His gaze roved over her in a frank, unhurried sweep. “Mine,” he growled, and her body flushed with heat, as if it thought he was referring to her.

“I give up,” she muttered as she shoved her medical supplies back into her bag.

He gave her a lopsided grin. “I like that you give in to me so easily.”

“Yeah, well, don’t expect me to give in to anything else. If you want a hangover for the record books, that’s your problem. Don’t come asking me for aspirin.”

Half-lidded eyes swept her again, and the heat intensified. “There’s a pub song about how women get better looking at closing time.” He held up the bottle in salute. “You’re already hot as hell. But now you look like an angel.”

“Aw, I’ll bet you say that to all the doctors who sew you up.”