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needed to get upstairs and put a
few more locked doors between us and any bad guys.
    Darla came bounding back into the
room--her arms piled high with blankets.
    I grabbed one from her and went over
and wrapped it gently around Luke. “Hang in there.”
    I looked up at Darla who was busy
wrapping herself up in a pink and white afghan. “The medical kit?”
I asked.
    “ Behind the counter. I’ll
get it,” she answered.
    Luke reached out his hand and touched
my arm. “You’re shivering.”
    I pulled my arm back. “I’m
okay.”
    “ Last thing I need is the
person saving me succumbing to frostbite.” He was joking. It seldom
dropped below freezing in this part of the country. But he was
half-right. Hypothermia was a distinct possibility. I was chilled
to the bone, my clothes were drenched, and I was covered in
mud.
    I leaned over and grabbed a blanket
from the pile Darla had dropped onto the floor. I wrapped it around
my shoulders. “There, satisfied?” I asked, smiling at
him.
    “ Much better.” He suddenly
winced and pain filled his eyes.
    “ We need to get you to a
proper healer.”
    “ I know someone, but we
can’t risk going out again tonight. That crew wasn’t so happy with
the way things turned out. They can be vindictive. I wouldn’t put
it past them to come back and hang around, waiting for a chance to
get even.”
    “ What about the
cops?”
    “ I doubt they’ll even come.
This isn’t their favorite part of town.”
    “ So banshees? Is that
something you do a lot?”
    “ Not if I can help
it.”
    I leaned down and looked at
his injury. “The whole scene was pretty freaky.”
    “ You got hurt.” He reached
out and touched the scratches on my arm. “I brought them forth, and
they did my bidding. I’m sorry they hurt you. I wouldn’t have let
them seriously injure anyone.”
    He was still bleeding, more
than I would have liked. “Not even the bad guys?”
    He kept silent and winced
as my fingers gently moved around the wound.
    “ Banshees seem pretty hard
core.”
    “ You’ve no idea the kinds
of things we can do.”
    And that worried me, more
than I wanted to admit.
    Darla knelt down beside me and handed
over a blue plastic box with a medical symbol on its
cover.
    I pulled it open and started taking
out bandages, tape and a pair of scissors. “This is going to
hurt.”
    He nodded and closed his
eyes.
    I used an antiseptic wipe to clean my
hands and then got to work. As quickly as I could, I cleaned out
the wound and bandaged it. I could tell he was in pain by the way
he was breathing. Every time I came in contact with the wound, his
breathing hitched or increased, and he let out a soft moan. I tried
to focus on the task at hand and not the pain I was
inflicting.
    Darla sat beside me and quietly kept
handing me bandages and ointments.
    I had done all I could. I sat back on
my knees and wiped the hair out of my face. The injury wasn’t bad
enough to kill him but, if left unattended for too long, it could
get infected and become serious.
    I turned to Darla. “We need to get him
upstairs.”
    “ I can walk,” he said,
pushing himself slowly, but unsteadily to his feet.
    “ Last thing I need is to
have you fall over and get a concussion because you’re being a
macho idiot.” I stood up and put my arm around his
waist.
    We made our way across the room and up
the stairs. It was slow going. Once upstairs I helped him into his
room and onto his bed. I pulled a black and red striped duvet over
him.
    He laid his head back against the
pillow. “Darla, go make some tea. It will help warm us
up.”
    She nodded and headed out of the
room.
    “ There you go, snug as a
bug in a rug.” I leaned over and brushed my hand across his
forehead. He didn’t have a fever. Infection and fever were the
things we had to worry about. We had to get him to a healer
soon.
    He smiled. “My mom use to say that to
me when I was a kid.”
    His bedroom was bigger than it looked
from the outside. He had a