Two blinks.

“Ziggy, please. I don’t want you to get an infection I can easily prevent.”

After a long moment, one blink.

I went to the bathroom and scrubbed my hands thoroughly. Then, with the consideration I’d give a sexual assault case in the E.R., I began my examination.

“I’m going to take this sheet off of you, but I’ll rearrange it so you’re not completely uncovered. Right now, all I’m doing is evaluating the severity of your injuries.”

And some were pretty severe. Long, but fairly shallow cuts latticed his chest. Hideous, purple bruises darkened his skin, and claw marks showed where Cyrus had gripped the boy’s shoulders. When I moved lower, I saw bite marks, not inflicted by fangs, but blunt, human teeth, on the inside of his thighs. I turned my head away.

When I looked back, I saw a tear roll from Ziggy’s eye. He wouldn’t look at me.

A few hours ago, he’d been indulging in what looked like some pretty terrific sex. Then he’d run away from the only home he’d ever known, just to come here and be violated and humiliated by Cyrus. And me.

I debraded the bites and scratches and covered the worst with squares of gauze. “Do you hurt…anywhere else?”

He answered with two blinks, but croaked a barely audible “No.”

I went to wash my hands and snag an extra blanket from my bed. When I came back, I tucked Ziggy in, then dropped wearily into a chair. He spoke again, with more strength behind his voice this time. “Thank you.”

I heard the emotion in his words and tried to sound casual. “It’s okay. If you need anything else, just let me know.”

“Some aspirin would be nice. I’m sore all over.” He swallowed with a wince.

I looked through the medicine kit and found a bottle of acetaminophen. “This will have to do. I don’t want to thin your blood, with all those…wounds.”

I couldn’t say bites. I crushed the pills into quarters so they’d go down easier and got a paper cup of water from the bathroom sink. Slipping my hand behind his head, I helped him to ingest the pills. “Why did you come here?”

He choked a little on the water, and it roughened his voice. He sounded like a man, not the boy who’d attacked me in the bookshop. “You saw what happened. He kicked me out.”

“That doesn’t explain why you’d come here. You knew who lived here.”

“I knew you lived here.” His arm jerked in an effort to wipe away his tears, but he couldn’t yet control his limbs. “I thought you’d let me stay. I didn’t know you were going to feed off me and let him do w-what he did to me.” The last part came out as a shamed whisper, and he closed his eyes. “I love irony, when it doesn’t happen to me.”

He felt he was being punished. I wanted to weep for him, trapped in his prison of self-loathing, but he didn’t need that now. He would shun my pity and turn away from me. Then he’d have no allies left. “You didn’t deserve this.”