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only then that he realized the room was tilting a bit and that his knees threatened to give way again, but there was no chance in hell he was going to let them go right now.
    “What the hell happened to you?” he asked, clutching the counter as an overhead light came on.
    “I’m fine,” Selena said with a definite glare as she sagged in the chair. “You shouldn’t—be out of—bed.” The hitch in her voice told him that she was struggling to keep her breath steady.
    Once relieved of her awkward burden and turning on the light, Vonnie had metamorphosed into calm efficiency. Water splashed in the sink and cupboard doors thumped and banged as she, presumably, searched for first aid supplies.
    But from what Theo could see, Selena needed more than simple first aid. “Where are you hurt?” he asked, plucking at her shirt with one hand while steadying himself against the counter with his other.
    He realized it was testament to her weakness that she allowed him to yank at her shirt after trying so hard to push him away only moments before. In fact, she tilted her head back, eyes shuttering, and leaned against the wall behind her. And let him have his way, so to speak.
    Theo hadn’t undressed a woman in more than a year, but there was nothing about this moment of tearing (literally) the blood-soaked shirt from her body that he found erotic. Beneath the tatters of the thin cotton, he found gashes in her left shoulder, nearly to the top of her breast. He also noted that she wore surprisingly interesting lingerie, a rarity in this world—lacy pink shells, one of which was now dark with her blood.
    Ganga slashes. Deep and ragged.
    “Out of my way,” Vonnie said, barreling over. Theo complied and she snatched in a horrified gasp when she saw the four bloody slashes. “My God,” she breathed. “Selena. You’ve got to stop. You’ve got to stop.”
    The other woman hissed—a warning, or was it the pain? And rolled her head from side to side in a quick jerk of negation. But that didn’t keep Theo from asking, “Doing what?”
    What the hell was so important that she had to go out of the walls at night? Alone? Even Theo, who’d done his share of ballsy and crazy things over the years, rarely took such a chance.
    “I’m going to have to send for Cath this time,” Vonnie said, her voice unsteady as she stared at the gashes without making any move to touch them. A cloth dripping with steaming water dangled in her hand.
    “No.”
    “Who’s Cath?” Theo asked, maneuvering Vonnie out of the way so he could examine the wound. He’d seen and treated more than a few ganga marks in the last fifty years—and those people were the lucky ones.
    These gashes were deep but not life threatening, that he could tell—unless they got infected, which was a real possibility, considering where those filthy, flesh-tearing hands had been. She’d need stitches probably. “What do you have to put on them?” he asked, taking the warm cloth from Vonnie’s hand. “Any alcohol?”
    “Cath’s the closest thing we have to a doctor,” Vonnie told him, coming back to life as Theo began to gently dab at the gashes. “Here. We have this balm to put on it. I’ll get bandages.” She set a lidless jar on the counter next to them and bustled away.
    “Yeah,” Selena said, her voice tight, her face raised back to the ceiling after her emphatic negation a moment earlier. Other than that, she seemed unmoved as Theo shifted a pink bra strap out of the way. “Cath gets to save the ones who can be saved. I get to watch the rest die.”
    The bra strap hung, useless, halfway down a toned arm that curved with sleek, feminine muscle. Theo noticed . . . then moved on from the fact, and also noticed that one of the lacy pink shells now gapped away from a nice handful of breast. “Ganga nails are probably going to cause an infection,” he said, wishing that Elliott could be here. “You need to be stitched up. Have you got anything to clean it