Zerbrowski, Manny, and the grave diggers were all standing at a little distance, as if they’d run toward us to stop the fight but it was over before they could get here. It had been like most fights, over incredibly quickly. It probably hadn’t lasted more than two, three minutes tops. It just seemed much longer when you were in it.

“Shit, he’s fast,” the tall blond grave digger said into the sudden quiet.

“Anita, do we need an ambulance?” Zerbrowski asked.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“This guy so needs an ambulance,” the short, dark-haired grave digger said.

I couldn’t really blame him for saying it. The lower half of Domino’s face was covered in blood, his skin was pale, and there were cuts on the side of his face higher up. He lay utterly still as if he’d never wake up, and if he’d been human he might not have, but he wasn’t human. One rattling breath came, and then he tried to sit up, but that seemed to hurt too much, so he fell back to the ground coughing blood, or maybe it was coming out of his broken nose, it was hard to tell. I helped him sit up enough so he didn’t choke on his own blood.

Susannah was near enough now that she could comment. “That was brutal.”

“He’s not dead. If I’d been brutal, he would be,” Nicky said; he was easing out of the fighting stance, but it was as if once put on alert he was having trouble letting it go.

Domino coughed more blood up and there was no way not to get some of it on me. Susannah came to kneel beside me, to help. “He’s a lycanthrope,” I said.

“I don’t have any cuts for the blood to get into.” She started trying to help hold pressure on his nose, but that made it harder for him to breathe. It was still a point for her that she was willing to touch a shapeshifter that was bleeding; a lot of humans wouldn’t have.

“Don’t press on the nose, you’ll make it harder for him to breathe,” Nicky said.

“Like you give a damn,” she said, glaring up at Nicky, but she stopped trying to press so hard on Domino’s face.

“Is this where you call me a brute and feel sorry for him?”

“You are a brute and a bully! It was vicious!” she said, and sounded totally indignant.

Nicky looked at me. “How about you, Anita? You think I’m a brute and a bully? That I’m vicious?”

“I think we just saw a serious cultural misunderstanding.”

“What?” Susannah asked.

“They aren’t the same kind of wereanimal. Domino comes from a culture where a fight like that would go so far and then stop; Nicky’s culture finishes every fight pretty much like that.” I didn’t want to say what kind of animal each of them was, because it was like telling people what gun you carried; if they got spooked or wanted to make trouble for you, they could give details that made their bullshit seem more real to the police. I didn’t think Susannah would do that, but it was just a rule when dealing with this many outsiders. I didn’t know the grave diggers at all.

“You’re not making any sense,” she said.

“Can you sit up?” I asked Domino. He nodded, still coughing or wheezing out blood. Susannah came behind him and let him rest against her shiny fire suit. I wondered if it was dry clean only, or if the blood would even be able to soak in. One arm of my jacket and the side of my hip and thigh were bright with his blood. I tipped my dry cleaner generously and often.

“He threw the first punch,” I said.

“But he didn’t have to beat him senseless!” Susannah said as she cradled Domino.

“Well, that is true,” I said.

“Yeah, that is true,” Nicky said. He was standing more normally now, most of the tension of the fight drained away.

I stood in front of him, gazing at the tiny spot of blood on the corner of his mouth. “Did he actually make contact, or is that his blood spattered on your face?”

He licked the corner of his mouth. “Mine.”

I smiled. “Once he drew blood it was all over.”

Nicky made a little hands-out gesture, as if to say, Of course.

“You broke my damn ribs,” Domino said in a voice thick with blood and the damage to his nose.

“The way you’re coughing blood, one of them might have nicked your lung,” Nicky said, but he didn’t sound sorry.

“Does he need an ambulance?” I asked.

“A doctor, but not an ambulance, unless he wants to pussy out and says differently.”

“Fuck you,” Domino said; he coughed more blood, then bent over something that hurt.

“No ambulance, I guess,” I said.

“He needs a hospital,” Susannah said, “and you should be in handcuffs.” She looked at Zerbrowski. He spread his hands wide and said, “Just because he lost the fight doesn’t mean he didn’t throw the first blow and start the fight.”

“That’s insane,” she said.

“No, it’s just the truth,” I said.

“You’re not going to call me a bully?” he asked.

“No.” In my head, I thought, A lion maybe, and to the uninitiated that amounted to the same thing. Werehyenas would fuck you up quicker, cripple you, so the fight could end sooner, but werelions would kill you quicker, and they were more likely to start the testosterone throw-down among themselves. When dealing with other wereanimals they tried to tone it down. Our old lion pride hadn’t worked that way, and it was only when talking with Micah about other prides having issues across the country that I’d learned some of the cultural divide. I’d also seen it when Nicky fought anyone. He didn’t start fights, because he knew I wouldn’t approve, but he sure as hell finished them.

“Are you going to be mad at me?” he asked.

I thought about it and shook my head. “No.”

He smiled. “Does this mean the winner gets the girl?”

“Don’t push it.”

He smiled wider, which made him touch the cut in the corner of his mouth with his tongue again, more exploring to see how deep it was, which meant the wide smile had hurt, at least a little.

“I’ve still got to dump the ashes in the stream, and then we can get Domino to medical.”

“I can put the ashes in the water,” Manny said. “You take care of your boy.”

I shook my head. “I’ll finish my job, and we’ll stop on the way home to dump more in the river, because I’m still working.”

“You can’t mean to make him wait to get medical attention while you do all that,” Susannah said, holding Domino a little close and protectively.

“If he wants you to drive him to a hospital, or to the Circus of the Damned, that’s fine with me.”

“He beats me to shit, and you reward him,” he said, and he was coughing a little less.

I went to one knee beside him. “Nicky didn’t start this fight; you did. You drew first blood, and you did it while you were supposed to be on duty as my bodyguard, so you didn’t just take your attention away from guarding me, you took Nicky’s away from the job. If something bad had happened while the two of you were fighting, I’d have had to deal with it, with no help from either of you, because you let something spook you tonight. You let yourself lose sight of the job.”