Love Is in the Air (18 page)

It was like having a statue in your room. A brooding, contradictory statue just standing there, seemingly deaf and dumb.

With her back to him, concentrating on scrambling the eggs, Sal could almost imagine he wasn’t there. But not quite. His presence radiated across the living room in waves. If she quieted her mind, she could hear his soft, regular breaths. And that leather coat of his, Sal could sniff it out a mile away.

While Tyr’s presence had felt strained at first, it mellowed into something oddly familiar. Feeling more tired than angry, she went back to the refrigerator and found a soggy onion and a couple of mushrooms that didn’t look like they’d gone all the way killer-fungi.

The scrambled eggs smelled like the finest gourmet food San Francisco had to offer. Whether Tyr found it as appetizing was his problem.

While the eggs finished cooking, Sal started to set the table for two, then stopped. Had she ever set her table for two before? Either Richard cooked at his place, or they ate out. She wasn’t sure if another living person had used that second kitchen chair. It was virgin territory.

Sal piled the eggs onto a plastic platter she didn’t even realize had been hiding underneath the counter. Placing it in the middle of the table, she turned to Tyr. “You going to join me, or what?”

Still, he stood with his legs shoulder-width apart, knees locked. Sal knew the stance well. Usually about sixty hours into a seventy-two-hour shift. While Tyr seemed to want to project a stoic, unmoving presence, she knew he was on the verge of falling over.

Much softer. “How many days has it been since you’ve eaten?”

There was a pause, but not necessarily a delay. She could see his muscles tense under his coat, his head cocking ever so slightly in her direction.

“Four,” the word was more of a rumble than a spoken answer.

“Then sit,” Sal urged, as she pulled the chair out for him.

Tyr didn’t move. Sighing, she went back to the sink and drew up two glasses of water. The milk had gone way bad.

When she turned back, Sal found him devouring the eggs. She’d nearly forgotten how quietly he could move when he wanted to. Also, in his land they clearly didn’t understand the concept of a communal plate as he dug into the eggs with a vengeance.

Sal sat across from him. When she was little, growing up in the Spanish ghetto of the Mission district, she’d found a starving puppy. Every night Sal had brought out her leftovers to the scrawny thing, and he had gulped them down without even tasting the food, just like Tyr. Which was probably for the best, given her meager cooking supplies.

Only after the last speck of the eggs was consumed did Tyr glance up. He was nowhere near full. Just like the puppy. He looked almost ashamed of his hunger. Whatever anger she had felt melted away under those sad blue eyes.

“I think I can scare up some more.”

His hand gripped her wrist. “Thanks be…” Tyr looked up, seeming almost shy. “I know not the lady to thank.”

For a moment she didn’t understand the question, and then realized he didn’t know her name. “Sal.”

“I do not think when your mother put your smooth cheek to her breast for the first suckling, that was the name she uttered.”

Sal blushed. Of course it wasn’t. But how she hated her given name! It was so… so girlie. “Salista.”

“Salista…” Somehow when Tyr rolled the name across his tongue, it didn’t sound hateful at all. “Your mother may not have the word for essence, yet she truly captured yours.”

Her cheeks must have been fuchsia by now. Her intimacy alert was ringing loudly in her ear. His words were intimate. His hand against the tender flesh of her wrist was intimate. His mixture of sweat and leather was intimate. She had to find some way to counteract it.

That repressed anger welled again. His sweet words now didn’t erase his action in the museum. “Yet you were so willing to sacrifice it, weren’t you?”

His fingers released her hand, and he was up and out of the chair, heading back to the window. It was her turn to grab his arm.

“No, damn it! Look at me.”

It took him drawing upon a strength greater than that he used to fight the beast to turn back to her.

“How could you do that to me?”

“I am dead blood,” he explained without explaining.

Sal shook her head. “That doesn’t mean you don’t have morals.”

“I hunt beasts. I kill beasts. To expect more of a dead blood is folly.”

Tyr winced as he tried to pull away from her. The action opened the edge of his coat. Beneath the leather, his white shirt was torn to shreds, revealing red, angry claw marks across his chest.

Even though she’d seen him receive the wounds, Sal was still shocked at how bad they looked. She had assumed his Praxis, or whatever it was, would heal the deep wounds as they had his wrist cuts.

“We’ve got to dress these.”

Tyr jerked free of her grasp. “I need no witch’s care.”

Fear and concern converged. “You know, for someone who keeps showing up at my door, you might want to watch your tone.”

His eyes narrowed as his lips struggled with a retort, the hurt clear on his face. To see him so vulnerable bled all the frustration from her voice.

“Your wounds are badly infected. Do you know what that means?”

A curt shake of his head.

In so many ways, Tyr was the master. Of weapons. Of Praxis. Of hunting. But in so many other ways he was nearly a babe new to the world.

“There are tiny, unseen organisms called bacteria that attack your tissues. If they get into your bloodstream, they can kill you.”

Tyr’s jaw clenched. “Tales woven by your kind, to sell your wares.”

Well, she could tighten her jaw as well. “Believe me or not, but this infection could bring you low even faster than the beast himself.”

He seemed unmoved. Perhaps before, she might have thought him stubborn. Now, Sal could feel the pain within. Tyr simply couldn’t admit that he didn’t understand what she was talking about.

“If your Praxis is so powerful, why then are these wounds so bad? And worsening with each passing hour?”

Tyr’s eyes squinted, seemingly trying to determine if she tucked an insult to his skill in there somewhere. “My range of potions has narrowed. The vial meant to keep the blight at bay drained a day ago.”

“Was it blood?” Sal asked, but already suspected the answer.

“No. But a potent tonic from the scum found on hardened bread.”

Sal smiled. That would be mold. In particular,
penicillium chrysogenum
. In layman’s terms, penicillin. Little did he know that some
of his Praxis was based on her witchcraft. However, she didn’t feel like
expending the effort to fight. She went for a much more direct route.

“Are you going out to hunt tonight?”

Tyr didn’t even answer. He didn’t have to. What else would he do?

“Then I would think you’d want to be as strong as possible. Or is that just a witch’s fable?”

Whatever the battle that raged within him, it broke.

He sighed heavily. “If it would be no bother.”

CHAPTER 56

Sal returned from the bathroom with her medicinal supplies to find Tyr still struggling to remove his bandolier. He had not been lying. The bandolier was nearly empty of tokens. Whatever supply of blood and potions he had come into her world with was nearly drained.

Hurriedly setting the bottles on the table, Sal grabbed the sash.

“Let me.”

Then she realized why he was having so much trouble. Dried blood had nearly glued his skin, his shirt, and his jacket together. Gingerly she lifted the coat away, inch by inch. Muscles rippled under her fingers as Tyr gritted his teeth against the pain. One especially tender spot caused him to flinch so badly that Sal gulped and couldn’t go on.

Of all the years in the ER, how many victims had she treated? But she didn’t think she’d ever been so tentative or shared another’s hurt in this way. Each time he winced, she felt her own flesh cry.

Her scientific mind knew that her nociceptors, those tiny, fine nerve endings honed for pain, could not possibly be receiving input from Tyr’s nerves, yet an ache that wasn’t her own settled upon her chest.

“Finish it,” he whispered.

“This is going to hurt.”

Tyr didn’t answer. He just looked away. He was ready, but she wasn’t so sure. At some point the garments had to come off, though, to clean the wounds properly. Bracing herself, Sal grabbed the edge of his coat with both hands and jerked it aside.

They both gasped as the wet sound of the wounds being reopened filled the room. Tyr tipped forward and caught himself on the table. A wave of nausea rolled over Sal as if it were her skin oozing a mixture of blood and pus. Recovering a little more quickly than Tyr, she finished removing his coat, and then ripped his linen shirt off, leaving him naked from the waist up.

She should have been repulsed. Three huge claw marks left jagged wounds, but the sight of those broad shoulders and taut abs did nothing to repel her. Even though Sal thought she preferred smooth-chested men like Richard, the thick black hair that coursed over Tyr’s torso made her want to reach out and run her fingers through it. And that happy trail? She could only imagine where it led.

It took Tyr trying to straighten up and failing in his attempt to remind Sal that she might react as a woman, but she was a doctor first.

“Sit.”

This time, he didn’t argue. He more poured himself into the chair rather than sat down.

Sal surveyed her medical supplies. They were meager at best. One would think a doctor would be better stocked, but when you had an entire hospital at your disposal, who needed the stuff at home?

What was the phrase? A cobbler’s son never has any shoes?

That was certainly the case here. Instead of an array of gentle antiseptics, Sal only had hydrogen peroxide, which was going to burn like hell, or alcohol, which only burned worse.

They’d get the job done, but
ouch
.

“You need to brace yourself.”

Tyr sneered. “I am battle-hardened.”

His chiseled shoulders and his perfect pectorals confirmed his words, but Sal didn’t think he knew what he was in for.

She drenched a gauze in peroxide. “I’d grab hold of something.”

But Tyr’s pride seemed too great for that. Not knowing what else to do, Sal pressed the biting antiseptic against the wounds.

His startled cry would have been echoed by her own if she hadn’t gritted her teeth first. Tyr not only braced against the table, but his fingernails dug into the wood.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Sal tried to soothe, as the peroxide bubbled in the wounds. She knew it hurt like a bitch, but she needed it to finish its job of killing off the bacteria before wiping the caustic fluid away. “Breathe. Breathe through it.”

Another set of advice that Tyr ignored. Not that she could blame him. It was hard to override the body’s pain reflex to clamp down.

“Just another second…”

Actually, it was another twenty or so seconds of agony, but finally the bubbles died down, and Sal hastily wiped the antiseptic off. She knew, however, from the burning of her own skin, that the pain was far from over.

Tyr’s exhale came in a rush, and then he couldn’t stop breathing. Nearly panting, his body tried to make up for the lost oxygen. Sal wanted to reach out, put a hand on his back, but she feared he would see it as more of an insult than a comfort.

Finally, his respirations steadied, and he sat upright. Sal showed him the tube of antibiotic cream. “This shouldn’t be as bad, but…”

CHAPTER 57

A single nod answered her unspoken question of whether to give him a few more minutes to recover, or just to do it. Putting a dollop of the ointment onto a Q-tip, she gently applied it to the deep slashes. His only reaction was a clenching of his fists. It may not have been as painful, but this step took so much longer. She needed to make sure to treat each and every nook and cranny of the ragged lacerations. It was the only way to keep the bacteria at bay.

“So is this why you came here? So I could care for your wounds?”

Tyr didn’t answer. Instead, he just tilted his chin and gave her his squint-eyed, left-sided frown. It should have been a look of disdain, but instead it warmed her. Why? Because he trusted that she would understand its meaning. She would know his frown meant that he never would have sought out her “witch” help for something as minor as festering wounds.

In that moment of their shared bond, Sal realized how close they had become. Physically. Sometime while she was caring for him, she had sunk to her knees, bringing her level with his chest. At the same time, he had lifted his arm to allow her better access to his wounds. Which nearly brought them into an embrace.

With his head tilted down, his stubble was so close to her forehead that she could almost imagine it brushing her skin. She could almost imagine him tilting her chin up. She could almost imagine too much.

Flustered, Sal pressed down too hard on the wound. Tyr groaned, his hand flying up to her arm, gripping it, warning her of the pain she had caused, asking her to take better care.

Doing her best to ignore his warm clasp, Sal finished tending the wound and rapidly pulled away from him.

To cover her discomfort, she asked, “Why did you show up, then?”

Tyr, as per usual, didn’t immediately answer. Instead, he brought his arm up as if raising his sword. He winced, but could finish the motion. Which he shouldn’t have been able to do. To her surprise, the wounds looked better. Not that the pus had been cleaned off better, but a healthy, healing tissue better. The claw marks were on the mend.

“I’ll get some bandaging material.”

Tyr shook his head and opened his hand. In it was a small vial only a quarter full of a pink-tinged fluid. “This will seal the flesh far better than any cloth.”

“Is this blood?”

Sal tried to focus on Tyr’s words as their hands touched upon the exchange. “In the raw form it comes of, but it has been distilled down to nearly pure essence… use it
sparingly
.”

She leaned the bottle on its side to get a better look at the contents. The liquid didn’t seem that special, but she already knew enough of Tyr and his Praxis that it must be special indeed. If blood was precious, distilled essence must be coveted. Very carefully, Sal opened the vial and allowed a single small drop to fall onto the tip of a fresh Q-tip.