I went with him to talk to Niley. He was lying on his back. They'd set up an IV bag and tried to stop the bleeding, but he was cut up pretty bad. I stood so that he could look up at me without straining.
He licked his lips, and it took him two tries to speak. "How did you pass the circle?"
"It was meant to trap evil inside or keep it out. I'm not evil."
"You raise the dead," he said.
"I'm a necromancer. I was kind of doubting where that put me on the scale of good and evil, but apparently God's okay with it."
"You stepped into the circle not knowing if you would be safe?" He was frowning, clearly puzzled.
"I couldn't just sit there and watch Charlotte die."
"You would have sacrificed yourself for her?"
I thought about that for a second or two. "I didn't think about it that clearly, but I couldn't let her die, not if I could save her."
He winced, closed his eyes, then looked at me. "No matter what the cost to you personally?"
"I guess so," I said.
He looked past me, eyes starting to lose their focus. "Extraordinary, extraordinary." His breath sighed outward, and he died. The EMS crew fell on him like vultures, but he was gone. They never got him breathing again.
Jason was suddenly beside me. "Anita, Nathaniel's dying."
"What are you talking about?"
"He caught two bullets in the chest when people were shooting at the demon. The feds were using silver shot because they knew what Linus was."
"Oh, God." I took Jason's hand. "Take me to him."
There were paramedics on either side of him. There was another IV, and they'd set up a lamp. Nathaniel's skin was pale and waxy in the light. Sweat covered him like dew. When I knelt beside him and tried to push my way past the paramedics, his pale eyes didn't see me.
I let the paramedics push me out of the way. I sat there in the weeds and listened to Nathaniel try to breathe through two holes in his chest. The bad guys hadn't shot him. He'd gotten caught in stray fire from the good guys. It was just a stupid accident. He was going to die because he'd been standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. No, I would not let an accident take him. I would not lose another person I knew to bad timing.
I looked up at Jason. "Is Marianne here?"
"I'll look." He went running into the chaos.
Nathaniel's back bowed upward. His breath rasped out. He lay back on the ground, horribly still. One of the paramedics shook his head and got up. He took some of the equipment and went to help someone else.
I crawled around to take his place at Nathaniel's side. I looked across at the other paramedic. It was a woman with a blond ponytail.
"Is there anything you can do?"
She looked at me. "Are you a friend?"
I nodded.
"Close?"
I nodded.
"I'm sorry," she said.
I shook my head. "No, I won't let him die." I wasn't evil. Everything that I'd done, and my faith was still pure. When I spoke the words, they were just as real to me as when I'd memorized them all those years ago for the Christmas pageant. The words still moved me. I never doubted God. I doubted me. But maybe God was a more generous God than I allowed him to be. Jason was there with Marianne.
I grabbed her hand. "Help me call the munin."
She didn't argue, just knelt beside me. "Remember the feel of his body. Remember his smile. The smell of his hair and skin."
I nodded. "He smells like vanilla and fur." I knelt by him, touching his skin, but it was already growing cool to the touch. He was dying. I didn't feel sexy in the least. I felt sad and frightened. I bowed my head and prayed. I prayed to be opened to Raina. I prayed to open my eyes and look at Nathaniel and feel lust. It was a weird thing to be praying for, but it was worth a try. I felt that measure of calm that I sometimes got when I prayed. It doesn't mean you'll get what you asked for, but it does mean that someone is listening.
I opened my eyes slowly and stared down at Nathaniel. There were leaves in his long, unbound hair. I pulled them away. I held his hair in my hands and buried my face in it. It still smelled like vanilla. I rubbed my cheek against his, burying my face behind his ear into the silk of his hair. I laid a hand over the wounds with my face still buried in his hair. He made a small pain sound when I touched him. I don't know if it was the pain sound, the familiar smell of his body, or the prayer, but Raina spread through my body like flame. The munin rode me, and I opened to it, no fighting, no struggle. I embraced it, and her laughter rolled out of my lips. I rose up on my knees and stared down at Nathaniel.
I wasn't horrified anymore. Raina thought it would be a grand thing to fuck him as he died. I laid my lips against his, and his lips were cool, dry. I pressed my mouth over his and felt that fire pour into his mouth from mine.
My fingers found the wounds in his chest and stroked them, pushing my fingers into the wound. The paramedic tried to pull me off of him, and Jason and someone else pulled her away. I dug into the wound until Nathaniel's eyes opened and he moaned with pain. His eyes fluttered, pale, pale lilac in the artificial light. He looked up but didn't see me, didn't see anything.
I covered his face in soft kisses, and each touch burned. I went back to his mouth and breathed into him. When I drew back, his eyes focused. His breath eased out in something too low to be a whisper. "Anita."
I straddled his body and laid my hands on his bare chest. I covered the wounds with my hands, but I touched the inside of his chest with something other than my hands. I could feel the damage. I could roll his damaged heart in the heat that fell from my hands, that sank into his skin, that filled his flesh.
I was burning alive. I had to feed the heat into him. Had to share this energy. My hands left the wound on his chest and fumbled at my shirt. The dress shirt came off and vanished into the grass, but the tank top was trapped under the shoulder holster. Hands helped me slip the holster off my shoulders. It flopped heavy and awkward over my hips. I undid the belt and I think it was Marianne who helped me slip the belt out of the loops. I know it was Marianne who stopped me from undoing my pants. Raina snarled in my head.
Hands caressed up my bare back and I knew it was Richard. He knelt behind me, legs straddling Nathaniel's legs, but putting no weight on them. He cradled me back against his body. I was suddenly aware that we were the focus of the pack. They surrounded us like a wall of faces and bodies.
Richard's hands slipped off the spine sheath and the blade down my back. His hands found my bra strap and undid it. I started to protest, started to hold it, and he kissed my shoulders, sliding his lips down my back and sliding the bra away. He whispered, "Bare skin is best for this." That prickling rush of energy filled the watching lukoi, filled them and spread into me. The energy of the munin fed on that power, grew until I thought my skin would burst with it.
Richard guided my body to Nathaniel's. My bare breasts touched Nathaniel's chest, a brush of velvet skin against the torn flesh of his smooth chest. I shuddered against him, and that heat spilled from my bare skin. At first it was as if my naked flesh rode above his skin on a pool of sweat, then I felt the flesh give. My body fell against his with a sigh, and it was as if our bodies became plastic, liquid. Our bodies melded together into one flesh, one body, as if I were sinking into his chest. I felt our hearts touch, beating liquid against one another. I healed his heart, closed his flesh with mine.
Nathaniel's mouth found mine, and the power flowed between us like breath until it raised the skin from my body, and there was nothing but his arms around me, his mouth on me, my hands on his body, and distant like an anchor I felt Richard, and beyond him the rest of the pack. I felt them offer their energy, their power, and I took it. And beyond that, distant as a dream, I felt Jean-Claude. I felt his cool power join with ours and strengthen; life from death. I took it all and thrust it into Nathaniel until he tore his mouth from mine and cried out. I felt his body give under mine, and his pleasure rushed over my skin, and I threw it out into the waiting pack. I took their energy and gave them back pleasure.