Lasciel inclined her head to him respectfully. Then she walked over to me, gorgeous and warm in the harsh light, her eyes lowered. Without a trace of self-consciousness, she sank down to her knees, bowed her head, and said, "How may I serve you, my host?"

I opened my eyes and found myself on my back. There was a candle burning nearby. Mouse had curled himself protectively around my head, and his tongue was nicking over my face, rough and wet and warm.

I hurt absolutely everywhere. I'd learned to block out pain under the harsh lessons of Justin DuMorne, but it went only so far.

Lasciel had shown me a different technique.

I couldn't have explained to anyone what I did. I wasn't sure that I understood it myself, at least on a conscious level. I simply knew. I gathered the pain together and fed it into a burning fire of determination in my thoughts, and it began to steadily recede.

I exhaled slowly and began to sit up. My brain registered the screaming torture of the muscles in my stomach—it just wasn't horribly important, and took up little of my attention.

"My God, Harry," Butters said. His voice was thick and slurred, as if he were holding his nose. His hand pushed on my shoulder. "Don't sit up."

I let him push me back down. I needed a couple of minutes to let the pain continue to fade. "How bad is it?"

He exhaled. "It's pretty hideous, but I don't think he actually perforated the abdominal wall. Skin and tissue damage, but you did some bleeding." He swallowed and looked a little green around the gills. "That's my best guess, anyway."

"You okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, fine. It's just… I work with corpses because I just couldn't handle… you know… actual living people."

"Heh. You can eat lunch while looking at a three-month-old corpse, but first aid on my stomach is too much to handle?"

"Yeah. I mean, you're still alive. That's just weird."

I shook my head. "How long was I out?" I was surprised at how calm and steady my voice sounded.

"It's been about fifteen minutes," Butters said. "I found some bandages and alcohol in the old man's duffel bag. I've got your belly cleaned and covered, but I don't have much of an idea of how much trouble you're in. You need a hospital."

"Maybe later," I said. I lay on my back, poring over what Lasciel had given me about the writings in the book. Hell, the thing had been written in German. I didn't know German, but Lasciel had translated the text about the Darkhallow. It felt like we had talked about it for an hour or more, but dream time and real time aren't always lockstepped.