The Devil's Wife Read Free Page B

staring at a bullet wound in the centre of my chest.
          I glanced at her and looked at the wound. I rubbed absently at it. "Not as badly as you. Give me your hand."
          She lifted it, and it shook. I grabbed it and made her press another towel to the wound, then rested my hand on her cheek as her eyes rolled back in their sockets. The contrast of her skin on mine made me frown for a second, but I put it from my mind. I could tell she was trying to focus on me.
          "What's your name?" I asked her, gently slapping her cheek to jolt her awake. "Listen to me, focus on me. You have to keep your eyes on me, keep yourself awake. If you fall asleep, I won't be able to help you, and you will die, okay?"
          She nodded. I turned my attention back to her stomach, glancing up now then to make sure she was still awake. With a well-practiced movement, I threaded the needle and wiped off the new blood with a clean towel.
          "My name's Clarissa," she said quietly, each word a groan of pain. "Clarissa Avario."
          I paused for a second and smiled slightly. It was a nice name. I cut the thread and looked up at her. "This is going to hurt, though I don't know if you'll feel it through the pain in your stomach. You've only just avoided catastrophe—the knife missed your organs, your arteries, and everything else that could kill you. Your muscles are a different story, however."
          I picked up a bottle of scotch from the counter and poured two glasses of it. I placed one on the table next to Clarissa's stomach, lifting her head slightly. "This will help ease the pain for you," I said, putting the glass to her lips. "Drink some."
          She swallowed a couple of mouthfuls and made a face. "God, I hate that stuff. It's like liquid fire!"
          I smiled at her, helping her lie back down. "Scotch, or alcohol in general?"
          She smiled indulgently at me, her eyes crossed. "Scotch. I'm not a nun. I was also a teenager at one stage, and that led to many a night out drinking myself unconscious on anything I could afford. From the age of twelve, if my memory serves me."
          "Really?" I lifted an eyebrow at her, taking a sip of the second glass.
          "Yeah, as hard as it is to believe. I'm a vodka girl." She smiled at me, which I took to be a bad sign, judging from her first reaction to my presence. She might have been going loopy with blood loss.
          I smiled, then warned her, "This'll sting." I poured the scotch into her wound and quickly wiped off the unmarred skin around the laceration. She cursed and yelped, her back arching with the sting, but I held her down.
          "Jesus Christ!" Clarissa cursed, startling me. "I knew the Devil was a bastard, but that's going too far! I won't get to Hell for a while yet, so you can save the fucking torture for then!"
          I snickered, then laugh, falling back against the
    cupboard as she glared at me.
          "What?" she demanded irritably, slightly cross-eyed. The restorative healing I was doing on her must have taken, or she wouldn't be so lively.
          I tried to rein in my laughter, sniffling and setting to work on sewing together the muscles in her stomach, giggling occasionally. "Nothing, you just startled me, that's all. 'Devil's a bastard' indeed..."
          She glared at me again, the corner of her mouth twitching in pain every now and then. "Yeah, well, you scared the shit out of me when you revealed yourself! I thought for sure I was dead, that he'd hit something vital that killed me without me knowing it. Ah!"
          "Don't be silly. You're in too much pain to be dead." I tied off the thread, poking the needle through the leg of my jeans so I wouldn't lose it. I grabbed a small pile of the gauze and gently stuffed it into the wound, where it would soak up the excess fluid and keep the wound open. That way I could keep an eye on the stitches in her