Page 76 of Death is My Ride or Die

“To the table,” I ordered. “Lean on me.”

We made our way into the dining room, until Death was close enough to a chair to dump himself into it. His massive body hardly fit in the seat, but now wasn’t time to get Goldilocks picky on our seat choice.

“Downstairs,” Death breathed, his deep voice ragged and weak. “In the closet where I keep the wrap for your knuckles. Large first aid kit. It’s blue.”

He’d hardly finished, and I was already sprinting to the gym.

With all of the gear and equipment we had been using recently, it took a minute of scrambling and moving things around in the closet to find the kit. When I got back to the main floor, Death was hunched over and worse for wear. He’d managed to shrug out of his cloak and drape it over his chair, but he appeared to be struggling to take off his tattered black shirt.

“You might want to look away.”

But I didn’t. I set down the first aid kit, taking in the ghastly sight of his injury.

“That looks horrible.”

“It’ll heal.” Using one hand, Death wrangled his T-shirt the rest of the way over his head and then peeled off his right glove with his fangs. He reached for the first aid kit and popped it open. His nails were black and pointed at the tips, like deadly blades prepared to unleash. “Need to sew it up to speed up the process, though.”

“I’ll call for help.”

“No,”Death said firmly. “Don’t call anyone. This stays between you and me.”

“Okay,” I said. “But you can’t sew yourself shut, can you?”

“I’ve done it a thousand times before.” I watched him attempt to thread a needle with his enormous, bloody hand and noticed the slight tremble to his fingers. Evidently, asking for help was not in his nature.

“Give me that.” I plucked the needle from his grasp and threaded it for him. Then I bit the bullet and pulled up a chair to sit in front of him.

“Faith . . . ”

“It can’t be that difficult, can it? At least not this part.” I pointed to the part of the wound where the skin hadn’t torn as far apart. “My mom’s mom, Grandma Evelyn, she was a seamstress and taught me how to sew when I was a kid.” I took the plunge and started to stitch up the wound, and Death didn’t even flinch. “She still makes her own clothes, and whenever I see her, I like to watch her work. I’ve just never sewn up a . . . well, abody.”

I was babbling, but I was focused, and I could do this. I could feel his stare on me as I worked. Suturing a wound was trickier than patching up a pair of jeans, that’s for sure, but with his occasional guidance, I got much further than I thought I could.

“So,” I said. “You gonna tell me how this happened?”

“Harpies.”

“Herpes?”

Death laughed unexpectedly, then hissed with a curse. His first outward sign of pain since I’d started suturing. “Harpies,” he corrected through clenched teeth. “With an a.”

“Ah, see, that makes more sense. Your accent got a little thick there.” I wonder if he knew I’d heard him correctly and had just tried to lighten up the mood.

“Harpies are avian monsters.” Appearing to be gaining strength, Death carefully took the needle from me and finished the suturing. “Violent, temperamental creatures that manifest from the Underworld through storms. I had a run-in with a group of them in an abandoned church. Harpies are notoriously unlucky, and there was a whole hive of the damn vultures.”

“Can I ask what you were doing in an abandoned church? Other than being insanely cliché?”

Another brusque noise that resembled a laugh. “I’d tell you, but I’d have to kill you.” On that enigmatic note, Death closed the wound. While I was impressed by his rapid needlework, it was also disturbing that it seemed to have been learned by rote. “The harpies pinned me down and ripped out half my bowels before I managed to get free.”

“Ow.”

Death cut the string with his talon. “For a mortal who threw up after running half a mile, you have an iron stomach. That was gruesome.”

“It was three miles, you jerk,” I replied. “And I’m just as surprised as you are.” The truth was, I’d been so worried about him that nothing else had mattered. “Let me, um, get some soap and water to help clean you up.”

“I don’t want—”

“Eh!”I held up a palm for him to shut it, already backing out of the room. “Sit your undead ass down.”

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