For the Dead Travel Fast

—-xxx—-

Oh, shit.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

He carried her to the backseat and climbed in after, pressing a frantic hand to the blood seeping from just above the waistband of her jeans. She was yellow-white in the dim interior of the car, and when her head hit the seat, it rolled unnaturally.

Shit.

His eyes were drawn to the wound. When he had run the backs of his fingers against her torso just under her breast, it had felt... permeable, as if his fingers might sink into her flesh if he accidentally knuckled hard enough. Now, pushing up her blood-sodden shirt, he saw he'd been right—the skin had split from just under her breast down to her jeans, a ragged tearing open of the first few layers.

And more. There was a deep... depression where the bullet must have struck, and the gristle of bone.

Shit. That was a chip off her ribs. And she was losing blood. As if it was just... leaking through her skin, running back to the seat, pooling at her jeans, her shirt just absorbing dark ugly red like an ink blot.

He didn't know how to save her.

No teeth, just tongue.

But he had to use his teeth, didn't he? He had to open it up enough to get out that bullet which was doing her damage. He didn't want to do this; he wanted so much to do this. (It was all he could think about, and he knew that meant bad bad things.) He placed bloodied fingers against her neck and checked for her pulse.

Weak. Erratic.

He bent over to listen for breath sounds, and he was appalled at just how shallow and light her breath was, barely there. A whistle in the sound that he didn't like at all, but he didn't know what it meant. How many times had he researched the crisis team response to a GSW, how many times had he relived the day of her shooting and the frantic attempts to keep her with them, how many wikipedia entries and JAMA articles had he combed through to get the exact order of events correct in his own writing?

And yet for his own wife, in this moment, he had no idea what he should do. (But what he wanted to do was bury his face in her breasts and devour.)

The scent of her bleeding out was every erotic fantasy—even as it was his every nightmare.

The cognitive dissonance was so intense he was reeling.

Sorry, she'd whispered as she'd blacked out. As if she could apologize for leaving him stranded, as if she could toss off one word and that would cover it.

"No," he growled, pressing his hand more firmly to the tear.

Only for the wound to split wider with his pressure, as if peeling away. His horror spiked, staring as the blood welled up through a thing layer of yellow fat.

He cursed and reacted—purely instinct—dipping forward to put his mouth on it so it wouldn't go to waste.

The first hit of her taste was excruciating. It burned fire on his tongue and seeped back down his throat, rancid and wrong. But it was also right, as some part of him understood it had to be done to get her clean. To keep her alive. Get her clean.

Fresh, he thought, and his lips brushed the split in her skin like licking an overripe fruit as it was coming undone. Where he caressed—holding himself back, holding himself in check, he hoped—there was the ripple against her skin as if being sealed by the same fire he tasted. He prevented her skin from peeling back where it was thin and dry and damaged, and then he went to the source.

The wound was heady, rich. It was a wine whose flavor was so tantalizing, all he wanted to do was roll it across his tongue and parse every tone and note. The higher functions of his brain were caught up in finding words to describe the sensation of her on his tongue while his lower animal mind craved and slaked his thirst. He sipped and there was, of course, the immediate fire of alcoholic haze, the burn, but below that, it brought forth a palette reminiscent of loamy earth and diatoms, of splashing in the sea and sun-bleached days on the beach with his wife. The sand, her hair whipped into his face by the breeze off the waves, her kiss dry, warm, faintly salty—

The sudden bloop of a police siren broke his reverie. Castle reared back, faintly dizzy with the intoxication of her taste, his eyes wild and rolling in his head. He saw the highway patrol car pulling onto the emergency shoulder behind their vehicle and immediately the lovely buzz was killed dead.

"Shit," he hissed. The windows were all down, though the back was tinted—he had maybe thirty seconds before the patrolman got out to investigate.

Thirty seconds to think.

(It was so hard to think with her taste on his tongue.)

He grabbed the duffle, yanked out a shirt to stuff against her wound under the breast, wrapped her awkwardly with the strap of the seatbelt to hold it in place. His head was an angry swarm—difficult to think—(would he even have stopped if it hadn't been for the siren screaming through his trance?)—scrubbed both hands down his face, grime-smeared, the blood under his fingernails, all over his hands, oh shit, oh shit—

Castle shoved open the back door just as the patrolman—heavyset older white guy, thinning dark hair, possibly a former linebacker who definitely could take Castle in his emaciated state—took a step back.

His gun was already drawn.

"Help!" Castle let the panic feed him. "Help us! My wife has been shot—I need help; she's bleeding!"

The gun did not waver. "Get away from the vehicle, sir!"

No. "I can't do that. She's bleeding."

"Hands up! And step away from the vehicle!" The gun was all he could see, pointed in his face, unwavering. "I said step away."

Castle's hands were up—when did he do that?—but he knew he was streaked in her blood. His shirt, his neck, his mouth, his hands. "I can't."

The patrolman inched forward. His finger was on the trigger.

Castle was trembling now; he shot a fast look into the back of the car, her body folded awkwardly on the seat, his panic far more real now, doubling. "Please," he rasped. "Please save her." He could smell her blood, he could smell her bleeding again. "A bullet. In her chest." He made a gesture towards his sternum and patrolman barked at him. Castle tore his eyes from her. "We were shot... at. We were shot at. She has a bullet in her chest and no matter what I do she keeps bleeding."

A weird ripple went across the patrolman's face; if Castle hadn't been staring at him as his only damn hope, he might have missed it.

The patrolman straightened up. "She transition you?"

Castle gaped.

"I can smell the newbie on you. You're green, you're fresh bait, there's gonna be a lot of confusion when you're new, a lot of misunderstanding. But I can't holster my weapon until you step away from the vehicle."

Castle stared at him.

The man showed a palm. There was a tattoo on it. He didn't think tattoos stayed on the palm. The man closed his hand but now only held the gun with one. "I'm the law in this county. Not just for Ohio, but also for the Horde."

"The what?" he rasped.

"You have to step away from the vehicle and let me take a look at your mate."

His mate. "Progenitor," Castle rasped. "My wife."

The patrolman flinched. "That's something of a curse around here. I suggest you not use it. Now, kiddo, step away from the car."

"You'll—hurt her," Castle trembled. Something about his tone, the way the older man said kiddo like his mother did. No. "I can't let anyone—"

"I won't hurt her. I have a wife of my own. I don't need yours. Besides, you're the one who smells like a wedding night, if you know what I mean."

He wasn't sure he did. But his feet were taking him back, stumbling to one side, and he had the vague and unhelpful thought—I should obey him.

The moment the patrolman leaned into the back, Castle's head cleared, the confusion melted from him. "Hey!" He darted forward, snagged the man by his shoulder—

He was on the pavement, head ringing, black stars exploding across his vision. The patrolman stood above him, a bit crouched; the weapon was holstered. "You're young, as far as vampires go, and you're stupid. And how did your mate get shot?"

"Wife," he wheezed. "She's a detective."

The patrolman straightened up. "She is? Why didn't she send out the word?"

Castle stared up at him, uncomprehending.

"I can get her bandaged, do some first aid, but son, you're gonna have a time of it keeping her alive until you get somewhere safe." He held out his hand to Castle, forcibly grasped him by the wrist, and hauled him onto his feet as if he weighed nothing. "And here ain't safe. You understand me?"

"No," he breathed, shaking his head. "I don't understand at all."

—-xxx—-