Page 141 of Veil of Death and Shadow

When I let myself catch a brief glance of his back again, I relaxed a little.

Maybe he was right. With most of the blood washed away, I could almost convince myself he wasn’t an inch from death.

But then he turned around again, facing me, and I saw that the gash in his stomach was somehow worse than I thought, blood so dark it looked black still bubbling out from his skin.

He grabbed the rubbing alcohol I’d been unconsciously holding onto, my grip denting the plastic bottle. With hands somehow steadier than mine right now, he poured it liberally over the worst of his wounds.

I blinked back a fresh wave of tears, and reached for some towels, then went back into my room to find the largest pair of sweatpants I had.

Handing them to him, I turned around, busying myself with grabbing his things and cleaning up as he put them on, as if modesty mattered at a time like this.

“All good,” he said, his voice laced with the barest trace of amusement. “You can look now.”

I added the boxers to the pile of his things when I noticed them on the ground, then glanced up. The sweats were at least a foot too short for him, but they were better than the soaked, bloody, and torn options he otherwise had. So, for now, they’d have to do.

He grabbed another towel from the shelf behind me, and the bottle of whiskey, then led us back to my room.

Eyes glassy, cheeks flushed with the heat of a buzz, he draped the clean, dry towel over my bed. After another healthy swig of booze, he tossed me the sewing kit, then collapsed back onto my bed, his head falling on the pillow.

I stared at the package, my fingers trembling.

This was just regular run-of-the-mill thread. The kind you mended stuffed animals or old clothes with. Not human flesh.

“Levi, I?—”

“You just need to close it as best as you can. I’ll pull the thread out in the morning when my people can take a better look at it. But I really think I just need to give my body a chance to heal while I sleep. Speaking of,” he glanced up at me, looking sheepish, “sorry, I should have asked. Is it okay if I crash here? I can take the couch if you and your roommates are cool with it.”

“Yes, and you’re not taking the couch. But that’s beside the point. This wound is how-are-you-still-alive serious, not sleep-it-off serious. I can’t just sew you up like one of those bears in the mall.

“Trust me, you can. And it won’t be that bad,” he added, his face stretching into a loopy smile, “and if it is, I’m drunk enough now that I’ll probably forget the pain by tomorrow.”

Blackout or not, I had no doubt that he’d be intimately familiar with pain tomorrow. But sensing I was getting nowhere, I simply nodded, wondering, briefly, who exactly his ‘people’ were and if they were used to him showing up looking like Frankenstein’s monster, then spent the next five minutes furiously washing and sanitizing my hands until they were raw.

When I got back, he had a satisfied smirk on his face as he scanned my room.

I kneeled next to the mattress, trying to get a better angle on the wound. It was still bleeding profusely. He had bandages pressed to his stomach and they were already soaked through.

“You know,” he leaned back against my pillow, eyes glassy and amused, “it smells like you in here.”

“Well, I do live here.” Under different circumstances, I might be concerned about that observation, wondering what I smelled like and whether it was a good thing.

With fumbling fingers, I opened the sewing kit, then took a slow, deep breath, trying to calm my nerves. The last thing he needed was me shaking while I tried poking holes through wounded flesh.

With the needle threaded, I lifted the bandages to study the wound. It was bad, but it did seem to be abitless dire than I’d remembered it being when I first got a look in the bathroom.

I glanced at the clock next to my bed and froze, the needle hovering an inch above his skin.

It was a few minutes past midnight.

Realization of what that meant left my lungs forgetting how to work.

“It’s my birthday—” I said, my voice flat.

“I know.” He shifted to look at the clock, his eyes sparkling with the exact opposite energy that I felt. “That’s one of the reasons I was in the area tonight. Happy Birthday, Mars.”

“I can’t do this.” I shook my head and sat back on my heels. “We need to get you to the hospital.” He didn’t get it. I didn’t mention the day because I wanted to celebrate it. The people I loved died on my birthday, and now Levi was lying here, pale as a ghost, with a serious gut wound. “You can’t—Levi, you can’t?—”

“Just breathe.” He grabbed my hand, squeezing it softly. “I won’t die, Mars. Not today. I promise you that. You can kill me if I break it.” His mouth twitched at the joke, but when I didn’t react, his humor dried up. “It’s okay, I get it, I shouldn’t have asked this of you. I wasn’t thinking. Didn’t put it together—what this might mean for you, today of all days. Here, I can just—” He grabbed the needle, and shoved it through his skin, wincing as he sloppily tried sewing himself back together.

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