Page 47 of Edge of Oblivion (Night Prowler 2)
“Let’s get him up on the table,” the human said, gesturing to the glossy mahogany dining table.
“I can work better up there. And I’ll need towels and blankets, and something for him to bite down on if we’re going to do the surgery here. A wooden spoon is good.”
“Um, gentlemen?” Morgan tried again. And failed again. The two Ikati took hold of Xander’s shoulders and legs while the human rushed over with his medical bag and began clearing the silk flower arrangements from the center of the table.
“Easy, watch his head!” the human man chastised as Mateo and Tomás laid him out on the table. Xander jerked and groaned when he was set down, but his lids remained closed. “Roll him on his side, like this,” the man said, working over him. “Gently, please. Gently.”
“Guys—”
“Meu deus, he’s lost a lot of blood,” Tomás muttered. He stood at the head of the table, looking down at Xander’s pale face, his blue lips.
“He’s strong,” Mateo said, by Xander’s feet. His face was as almost as pale as Xander’s, his jaw clenched tight. “He’s made it through much worse.”
Morgan cleared her throat. “May I just have a word—”
“He won’t last long without a transfusion,” murmured the doctor, peering at Xander’s bare lower back. “You’ll have to find someone local, and quick because he’s fading—”
“You let him die, and we’ll have your head, Bartleby,” snapped Tomás, bristling.
“Not helpful,” said Mateo, noting how the man blanched under the assault of Tomás’s anger.
He addressed the doctor directly. “There is no one local. There’s no colony in Italy, and obviously it can’t be either of us since his body will reject blood from another male. You’ll just have to find a way to make it work without—”
“Hello!” shouted Morgan.
Three heads swiveled in her direction.
“I can give him blood,” she said, calmer now that she had their attention. “I can be the donor.”
Frozen, Bartleby glanced first at Mateo, then Tomás, both of whom had turned to stare at her with the flat, killer gaze of jihadists. No one moved.
“You are the mark,” said Mateo. Dispassionate, his gaze traveled over her body.
“I am the Morgan, actually,” she answered tartly.
“Mark means target,” Tomás cut in with a curl of his full upper lip. “Hit. Job. Pigeon. Victim
—”
“How enlightening,” Morgan interrupted, folding her arms over her chest. She glared at him so hard she thought her eyes might cross from the effort. “Thank you for the vocabulary lesson. Now are you going to let me be the donor or let your boy bleed to death on that lovely Cassina table?”
There followed a long, crackling silence.
Morgan was at the very end of her reserves of patience, a well that was shallow under the best of circumstances. She was exhausted. Her body ached, her bones ached, even her teeth ached, and her blood was boiling like someone had lit a fire beneath her feet. If she had anything to compare it to, she’d have thought she was coming down with the flu. So the fact that there were two more strange, hostile males staring at her as if she were lunch didn’t freak her out as much as it should have.
“He can only take blood from an Ikati female,” she said, exasperated at their continued silence, their narrow-eyed hostility. “And if he doesn’t get it soon, he’s going to die. Right?” she added, glancing at the human. With a quick, birdlike dip of his white head, he nodded. She nodded back, already knowing the answer before she asked. Ikati had no blood types, no blood-borne diseases, and human blood was useless to them, as weak as water. Only a female could give a male blood and vice versa.
“So I’m offering,” she said in conclusion.
Still no response. Mateo and Tomás stared at her while somewhere outside a dog began to bark.
Morgan exhaled and dropped her arms to her side. The exhaustion sank down to stain her bones, and it felt suddenly as if her skin were too tight. “Fine,” she said, bitter. “It’s on you, then.
When the Assembly asks what happened, it’s on you.”
She turned and was about to walk to the phone on the glass-topped desk in the living room to call Leander when Mateo’s gravel-rough voice stopped her.
“Why would you do that?”
