I lay slumped against the side of the bar for a few seconds, my mind reeling with the echoed percussion.

“Bee!”

The voice was close at hand, and yet sounded so far away. Idly, I wondered how that could be.

“Bee, are you harmed? Sins of the saints.” A crash followed, one that was sufficiently loud as to cause me to open my eyes. Constantine flung off a heavy mirror that had been hanging on the wall, blood dripping down his chest and belly. To my horror, he got to his knees, clearly intending on making his way over to me.

“Don’t move!” I spoke without being consciously aware of it, and likewise I suddenly found myself crawling over to Constantine, shoving bits of plaster and wood and glass out of my way. “Mother of mayhem, you’re bleeding, don’t move at all. That mirror must have sliced you to ribbons.”

He looked down at himself, surprise flitting across his face before it turned to concern as, despite my order, he got to his feet and moved the few remaining yards to me. “Stop crawling through the glass. You’ll cut yourself, you deranged woman.”

That pulled me up short. I sat back on my heels and glared up at him. “Deranged woman? I like that! Here I was trying to save you from spilling your guts all over the room and you call me deranged? Hey.” I frowned at his belly, then moved my gaze upward. There was blood on his chest and stomach all right, but it wasn’t due to gashes. The blood followed the pattern of the curse. I reached up and gently touched the edge of one bloody curve. “That’s the curse. It embedded itself in you. Oh, Constantine! I’m so sorry.”

“You can’t think you are responsible for this?” He lifted me to my feet despite my brain shrieking warnings about people who are bleeding from their torso making such exertions. “The curse is not of your making, Bee. Unless you are really Asmodeus in disguise, and since we saw him earlier, I suspect that can’t be.”

“Of course I’m not Asmodeus. But I did Charm the curse, and clearly, I did something wrong and it blew up on us—”

“And what of this?” He held up my hand.

I gave a little shriek at the sight of the ring. It was black now, as black as coal. “Get it off! Hellballs, it’s stuck!”

Constantine examined my hand closely, touching the now-black ring. “Does it hurt?”

Slowly, I stopped panicking at the thought of the ring turning my finger black, and wiggled my fingers. “No.”

“Is it uncomfortable?”

“Not really, no. I mean, I’m aware of it.” I twisted the ring on my finger. It didn’t seem to want to come off, but at least it moved. “My hand feels a bit heavier with the ring on it, but it doesn’t bother me.”

“Can you remove it?”

“Probably, if I really worked at it, but it doesn’t feel like it wants me to do that. Should I be worried about it changing color?”

“No,” he said after a moment’s thought. “It must still have power; therefore, we must keep you safe from demons. Asmodeus would likely kill you to get the ring.”

“Great,” I said waspishly, and would have continued, but at that moment, an unearthly moan came from the other side of the room, followed by a hacking cough.

“Gary!” I whirled around to see if the head had been hurt. Evidently my own head, knocked around as it had been, protested such movement, and I weaved to the side and would have fallen if Constantine had not caught me up against his chest.

Constantine tsked at me. “You see? You are deranged. You have been hurt. You will stop fussing over me and let me see how badly you are harmed.”

To my horror/surprise/secret swooning delight, Constantine scooped me up and, stepping carefully over the debris from the curse’s percussion blast, set me down onto a clear section of the bar.

“Glorious green goddesses, what happened?” Gary groaned. “Did the demons set off a bomb?”

“I’m fine, Constantine. Stop trying to undress me,” I said, slapping off Constantine’s hands when he attempted to pull my shirt off. “That’s seriously over the line, you know. Besides, it’s my head that was hurt, not the rest of me.”

“You’re bleeding,” Constantine pointed out, nodding toward my shoulder, and with a speed I hadn’t seen in a man, he had my nice linen shirt unbuttoned and tossed aside before I could blink. “You’ve been injured. I must ascertain where and how badly.”

“I’m hurt, too. At least I think I am. Oh great, I lost a tooth,” came Gary’s feeble voice.

“You must ascertain nothing. For one, I’m not your responsibility, and for another, I’m a big girl and if I say I’m not hurt, then I’m not—ow.” I turned my head to reach my shirt, when my ear brushed against my shoulder. Pain burned for a few seconds, causing me to reach up. My earlobe was wet with blood, and pierced by a jagged sliver of glass about the width of a pencil.

“Stay still, I will remove it.”

I flinched, and was about to tell him to leave it be, that I’d get a professional to look at it, when there was a brief zing of pain from my ear, and Constantine was tossing the shard of glass onto the floor.

“Ten lords a-leaping!” I shouted, trying to clutch my poor, abused earlobe, but Constantine’s head was in the way. “That hurt!”

“Stop being such an infant,” he said sternly, peering close at the ear. “I have had much more grievous wounds, and never did you see me shrieking like a woman.”

“I am a woman,” I snarled, and gestured toward my breasts, exposed as they were in my bra. “Which should be pretty obvious to you since you were so fast to get my shirt off. Give me a cloth or something so I can stop my ear bleeding. I’ve got blood all over my shoulder now.”

“It was my favorite tooth, too. Do you think I could get a gold replacement?”

We both continued to ignore Gary. Constantine pursed his lips for a moment, then leaned in and blew on my ear. At least that’s what I thought he did at first, but the momentary sting that followed quickly melted into a warm, tingling sensation that made me jerk back in fear.

“Did you just breathe fire on me?” I gasped, snatching up my shirt and holding it like a shield in front of me.

“I cauterized your wound, yes. It has stopped bleeding, and will now heal.” He eyed my chest. “I should probably examine the rest of you to make sure you are not further injured.”