The walk back to the Hotel hadn't been fast by any stretch of the imagination, with Erskine having to lean heavily on Anton just to keep upright and stumbling in a vaguely forward motion. Funny, if he stopped thinking about the fact that Skulduggery had been one unhappy thought away from assassinating him, he could almost believe that this was just another day in the war--Shudder the one still standing, the others alive but in various stages of injury, limping through St. Petersburg or Dresden or Lisbon. Except they were a few men short, weren't they?

He was pale by the time they made it into the Hotel. Not quite ashen, which would have signaled the onset of shock, but with the amount of blood soaking the back of his shirt and the leg of his trousers it couldn't be far away. He glanced down at the little patters of blood trailing behind them across the floor with a hazy sort of distress.

"I'm going to have to clean that, aren't I."

At the gesture of support from Aqua he eyed her warily. Not that he didn't trust her (if Anton trusted her that was good enough for Ravel) but was she really going to be able to support the weight of a full grown man barely able to stand on his own? As tentatively as he could manage, being not quite all there at the moment, he transferred some of his weight to her, ready with his good hand to push at the air to keep them upright should it become necessary.