“Forgive me.”

Micah said, “Fuck!” He almost never cursed.

We both looked at him as he jerked his fingers out of the wound and showed us the tips of his fingers. There was whitish-gray liquid on them, and the skin was blistering. He stood and turned on the shower next to us, running it over his hand.

“What is it?” Rafael asked.

“I’m not sure,” Micah said, “but it’s in the wound. Whatever it is reacts almost like liquid silver; you’re never going to heal with that in there. None of us could.”

“I should know what that is,” I said.

“What do you mean, should know?” Micah asked.

“I’ve seen it before; I didn’t know it did this to lycanthropes, but . . .” I took a deep breath and tried to dredge up the memory. “Vampires, it was supposed to kill them if you injected it into the bloodstream.”

“What was supposed to kill them?” Micah asked.

“Silver nitrate,” I said.

“I thought that looked more silver.”

I shook my head. “People think that, but the silver liquid that beads up is mercury; they use that in movies, but in real life silver nitrate isn’t as silver as that, and it doesn’t bead up like mercury either.”

“Did it work on vampires?” he asked.

“It worked, but it wasn’t quick enough for the older ones, and a vampire can do a lot of damage to you in its death throes.”

“How did it get in my wound?”

“Maybe it was in the blade when he broke it open inside you,” I said.

“The healer would have seen it,” Micah said.

“Unless she put the silver nitrate in the wound when she was supposed to be putting dressing on it.”

Micah knelt beside Rafael again. “Did it burn when she dressed the wound?”

“Yes, she said it was a coagulant and antiseptic. The bleeding did stop.”

“Because she burned the wound closed,” Micah said. He turned to me. “Help me turn him so the water will flush out the wound.”

We got him on his knees. I knelt in front of him, letting him put his hands on my shoulders, and steadied him as Micah turned on the water. It hurt at first, but as the water flushed out the poison he began to relax. The water ran for a long time before Micah was satisfied.

“How does it feel now?” he asked.

“Better, much better,” Rafael said.

“Are the burned edges in the wound healing?” I asked.

Micah knelt down and examined the other man’s back. “No, it’s reacting like a burn on us. The healing just stops.”

“I can’t keep an open wound in my back forever,” Rafael said.

“You don’t have to, but making it so you can heal it is going to hurt a lot,” I said.

He looked at me from inches away because we were both still kneeling on the wet floor. “How will you cure me?”

“If you get a limb amputated and burned at the same time, what do you do as a shapeshifter?” I asked.

His dark eyes studied mine, and then I saw him understand. “How much and how deep is it burned?”

“A lot of the wound and as deep as it goes into your back,” I said.

“You’re talking about cutting off the burned area so his body can heal the new wounds, aren’t you?” Micah said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“That’s going to hurt more than just a lot,” he said.

“Yep, but now we can get the doctor on call to do it.”

“No,” Rafael said in that so-certain voice.

“Yes,” I said.

“No,” he said.

“This isn’t weakness on your part; no lycanthrope could heal this, Rafael. If you’d been weaker it could have killed you, but you were just too strong for the bastards.”

“Is the pain making me miss your point?”

“Maybe, but this was a deliberate plot to kill you; the challenger was only one of the conspirators. The healer was at least his partner in crime, if not part of a larger plot.”

“Anita is right, Rafael; only someone as strong as you could have survived this attack. If your body hadn’t healed fast enough to keep the silver nitrate from entering your bloodstream, you might never have made it here alive.”

“The healer must die for this,” he said, at last.

“Yes,” Micah said, “but first we need to find out if she and your challenger were the only ones involved in the plot. If it’s a larger problem we need to know that.”

“Yes, yes, of course, I think the wound is clouding my thinking.”

“Pain will do that,” I said.

“Let’s get your guards in here to help take you to the medical area. I’ll alert the doctor on duty.”

“I need to give orders to Benito about the healer, before the doctor begins cutting on me.”

“Agreed,” Micah and I said together.

“Will you both help me give the orders needed? I want to make certain she is alive long enough for questioning.”

“We’ll help you give clearheaded orders,” I said.

“Thank you, both of you.” He hugged me and held his other hand out to Micah, who took it. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if the sex I had with Rafael was really what made us more than friends; maybe it was the shared mantle of responsibility instead? Something about having people trying to kill you, and knowing that the three of us were on the short list of those we could trust implicitly, was a pretty good bonding experience. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, and all that jazz.

26

MICAH AND I stayed with Rafael long enough to see him safely with the doctor in the medical area we’d put in under the Circus. We had too many injuries that we didn’t want to explain to a normal hospital, like Rafael’s stab wound. Dr. Lillian had even found a painkiller that would work, briefly, on shapeshifters so he didn’t have to feel every cut as she sliced away the damaged tissue and let the blood flow. Once it was just fresh wounds he’d be able to heal himself, maybe slower than normal because of what caused the damage, but he’d heal.

But before he let Doc Lillian give him the painkiller, he talked to Micah, Benito, and me. He set in motion that the healer who had done this would be taken, questioned, and eventually killed. That last part wasn’t stated, but it was a given. You try to assassinate the king, you die; period. Regicide is just one of those crimes that has to carry maximum punishment to discourage anyone else.

Micah went back to see if there was still food for dinner. I went to get clothes, because even though most of the lycanthropes would have walked around nude if we’d let them, I just felt better with clothes on if it was normal, everyday stuff. Naked was for sleeping and sex. Nathaniel texted me that he’d saved me food. I’d stopped off at the locker room to free my guns, because now that I had belt loops and pants I could load up again. My good gun belt was tacky with the clear stuff that I’d washed off myself. I’d planned on cleaning the leather after my shower, but the next emergency had distracted me. I was debating on cleaning it before I went to dinner, which would mean I was unarmed but would give the leather time to dry out, when my phone rang.