Page 38 of Sin and Salvation

“Gotta get the bullet out," he told Zane, whose golden eyes burned as he took in the little graze on my side.

I wanted to punch him. All of them, actually.

They were treating me like I was made of glass over what amounted to a scratch, when Zane had an actual hole in his body that was leaking blood on the floor.

“We should get a doctor for Zane, at least,” I said, my tone a little frosty. If they were going to act like I was dying because I’d shed a few drops of blood, then by all means we should be planning Zane’s funeral right now.

“Told you, sugar.” Crow rummaged in the kit. “We don’t need one, now that you’re here. Now take your shirt off.”

I stared at him, and he held up a bottle of disinfectant and some cotton swabs.

With a sigh, I stripped off my shirt. Unbelievable. I’d finally gotten clothes I actually wanted to wear, and the first thing to happen was a bullet shredding it.

Maybe I could just cut more holes in the shirt and make it work.

I had zero compunction about stripping down to my new bra in front of the guys. They’d all seen me practically down to my birthday suit; Zane focused on me as Aeron began probing in his shoulder with what looked like long, thin metal tongs.

“Talk to me, sweetheart,” he said, his eyes a little glazed with pain.

“Okay.” I swallowed, wondering what I could talk about that would distract him from the skewer poking around in his body right now. “Umm… have you ever been to Lake Litae?”

Zane shook his head.

“It’s the sister lake to Calleis, except with a better reputation. My parents used to take us there when we were kids. I always felt a little out of place, all the rich kids vacationed there, but it was fun. And there were no bodies with cement shoes at the bottom.”

I was vaguely aware that I was burbling, coming up with random shit from my childhood as Aeron prodded. But Zane didn’t lose consciousness, occasionally asking me something that would set me off on a tangent.

As I talked, Crow pressed the cotton gauze, cold and wet with disinfectant, against the graze in my side. I winced, sucking in a breath as stinging erupted again; once my shirt had come off and Crow had inspected me, I’d realized it was a little deeper than I thought.

But Crow dabbed gently, wiping the wound and removing the dried blood.

“Got it.” Aeron’s shoulders relaxed as he withdrew the needle-like tongs from Zane’s shoulder, a bullet clamped in them. He let it drop to the counter with a tinkle. “Time to disinfect.”

“Is it going to suck as much as being shot?” Zane asked dryly.

“Probably more.” Aeron took the disinfectant from Crow. “You’re not high on the adrenaline rush anymore. You really should’ve gotten shot more often, then this wouldn’t come as such a surprise.”

“Aeron!” I glared at him, and the hellhound’s green eyes squinted with laughter.

“I’m just kidding.” He poured disinfectant into Zane’s wound, and the Greed demon swore. “Kind of.”

When he’d finished cleaning out the wound, Crow vanished from the room. Zane looked up at me. “Do you have any power left?”

I nodded. Since I’d been taken into Club Onyx, the steady flow of lust I felt for them had actually amped up my power well beyond its usual background level; I’d only fed a small amount of it into Crow.

I held out a hand, and Zane took it.

“Maybe not so much, this time,” he said, a smile crossing his face.

I fed it into him, feeling that silvery sensation of his magic I’d felt before. But this time, under controlled circumstances, it didn’t blast the edges of my mind; the coolness of it flowed around me, and I felt it growing stronger, strengthened by my own.

My eyes had been closed as I fed him power, but they popped open when I felt fingers on my side. I looked down and saw Zane stroking the graze on my skin, and it was healing as I watched.

It was no longer a graze but a pink scar, fading rapidly to a pearly white.

“There,” he said quietly, and then touched his own shoulder. It took longer than my minor wound did, but soon enough the bullet hole was a knot of scar tissue, completely healed.

I allowed my magic to fade back to the background again as his face regained a little color. “I had no idea you could do that.”

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