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«I will find her heart for you,» Olaf said, and I was glad my hearing wasn't quite working right. It made his voice sound flat and lose a lot of the inflection. If I'd heard all the longing in his voice that I saw on his face I might have shot him. I was betting his special ammo would have made a really big hole in a human body. I thought about it, I really did, but in the end I gave him back his gun. He extinguished his torch. Someone brought us an axe and a freshly sharpened knife. I was really missing my vampire kit, but it was at home, no, at the Circus.
Her spine was brittle from the fire, easiest decapitation I'd ever done. Olaf was having to dig in her chest to find the pieces of burnt and bloody heart. We'd made a mess of her. I kicked the head a little ways from the body. Yeah, I wanted to burn the head and heart and scatter the ashes over moving water, but she was dead. I kicked the head again, so that it skittered across the floor, too burned to bleed.
My knees wouldn't hold me anymore. I collapsed where I was standing with the axe still in my hands.
Edward knelt beside me. He touched the front of my shirt. His hand came away crimson like he'd dipped it in red paint. He ripped my shirt open to my chest. The claw marks looked like angry, jagged mouths. There was something pink and bloody and shiny bulging out of one of the mouths like a swollen tongue.
«Shit,» I said.
«Does it hurt yet?» he asked.
«No,» and my voice sounded amazingly calm. Shock was a wonderful thing.
«We need to get you to a doctor before that changes,» he said, and his voice was calm, too. He wrapped his arms around me and stood, cradling me. He started back the way we'd come at a fast walk. «Does that hurt?» he asked.
«No,» I said again, my voice distant and too calm. Even I knew I was too calm, but I felt sort of distant and unreal. Let's hear it for shock.
He started ru
«No.»
He ran faster.