Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  He dragged me to the stairs, and when I stumbled, he didn’t give me time to get to my feet, but literally dragged me up the stairs.

  The door opened behind us, and I heard a man say, “Lieutenant!” I thought I recognized the voice, but I wasn’t sure, and there wasn’t time to look, I was too busy trying not to get rug burns from the stairs.

  I couldn’t get my feet under me long enough to stand in the heels. The headache burst full-blown behind my eye, and the world was a trembling thing.

  I found my voice, “Dolph, Dolph, damn it!”

  He opened a door and jerked me to my feet. I staggered while the world ran in streamers of dark color. He held me with one of his big hands on each of my arms, only his grip kept me on my feet.

  My vision cleared in pieces, as if the scene were some sort of video puzzle. There was a bed against the far wall. I glimpsed white pillows against a lavender wall, then a woman’s head, and some of her shoulders. It didn’t look real, as if someone had propped a fake head against the pillows. From about collar bones down, there was only a red ruin. I don’t mean a body. I mean it was as if the bed had been dipped in dark fluid. The blood wasn’t red, it was black. A trick of the light, or the fact that it wasn’t just blood.

  The smell hit me then—meat. Everything smelled like hamburger. I saw the pile of bedclothes, black, and red, and sodden, soaked in gore. Gore, not just blood, gore. I looked back at the woman’s head, I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help it. I looked, and I finally could see. It was all that was left of her, all that was left of an adult woman. It was as if she’d exploded with her head on the pillows, and her body . . . everywhere.

  I felt the scream building in my throat, and knew I couldn’t do it. I had to be stronger than this, better than this. I swallowed the scream, and my stomach tried to come up my throat. I swallowed that, too, and tried to think.

  “What do you think?” Dolph said, and he pushed me, trapped between his big hands, towards the bed. “Pretty enough for you? Because one of your friends did this.” He pressed me too close to the bed, and my legs squeezed against the gore-soaked bed clothes. The blood was cool to the touch, and it helped keep my beast from curling up my body. What good was blood if it wasn’t hot and fresh?

  “Dolph, stop this,” I said, and my voice didn’t sound like me.

  “Lieutenant,” a voice came from the open door.

  Dolph turned with me still gripped between his hands. Detective Clive Perry stood in the doorway. He was a slender African American man, dressed conservatively, neatly, but well dressed. He was one of the most soft-spoken men I’d ever met, and the most soft-spoken policeman.

  “What is it, Perry?”

  Perry took a deep breath, that moved his shoulders and chest up and down. “Lieutenant, I think Ms. Blake has seen enough of the crime scene for now.”

  Dolph gave me a little shake that sent my head rattling and my stomach churning. “Not yet, she hasn’t.” He jerked me around to face back into the room. He dragged me towards the headboard, which was painted a lavender so close to the wall’s color I hadn’t seen it. He pushed me forward until my face was inches from it. There was a fresh claw mark like a pale scar in the wood and paint.

  “What do you think did that, Anita?” He jerked me around until he was holding me facing him, his big hands still wrapped around my upper arms.

  “Let go, Dolph.” My voice still didn’t sound like me. No one else could have done this to me. I’d have fought back by now, or been scared, or pissed. I still wasn’t any of those things.

  “What do you think did that?” And he gave me a little shake. It made my head rattle, my vision stream.

  “Lieutenant Storr, I must insist that you let Ms. Blake go.” Detective Perry was behind him, to one side, so I could see his face.

  Dolph turned on him, and I think only the fact that his hands were already full kept him from grabbing Perry. “She knows. She knows what did this, because she knows every fucking monster in town.”

  “Let her go, Lieutenant, please.”

  I closed my eyes, which helped the dizziness. His hands on my arms let me know where his body was. I rammed the pointed heel of my shoe into his instep. He flinched, his hands loosened. I opened my eyes and did what I’d been trained to do. I brought my arms up between his and swept outward, downward. It broke his hold on me, and I drew my right arm back, and hit him a short upper cut into his gut. If he’d been shorter I’d have tried for the solar plexus, but the angle was bad, so I hit what I could get.

  The air went out of him in a grunt, and he bent double, hands over his stomach. I still haven’t quite come to terms with being more than human strong. I had a second where I hoped I hadn’t hurt him more than I meant to, then I stepped back, away from him. The world was trembling, like I was looking at everything through wavy glass.

  I kept backing up, and my heels hit something slick and thicker than just blood, and down I went. I landed hard on my ass, and blood spattered upwards. It soaked through my skirt and I struggled to my knees to keep it from soaking into my panties. The blood was cool to the touch, and then my knee smeared in something that wasn’t blood.

  I screamed and scrambled to my feet. If Perry hadn’t caught me I’d have fallen again. But he was moving too slow for the door. I didn’t want to throw up in here. I pushed away from him and half-staggered, half-ran through the doorway. When I hit the hallway I fell to all fours and threw up on the pale carpet. My head roared with pain, and my vision exploded with starbursts of white, white light.

  I crawled towards the head of the stairs, not sure what I planned to do. The floor came up to smack into my body, and there was nothing but a soft, gray nothingness, then the world was black, and my head didn’t hurt at all.

  21

  THE TILE FELT so good against my cheek, so cool. Someone was moving around. I thought about opening my eyes, but it seemed like too much effort. Someone put a cool cloth against my neck. It made me shiver, and I opened my eyes. My vision took a second to focus, then I saw the knee beside my face was wearing hose, and a skirt.

  I knew it wasn’t one of the men, unless they had hobbies I didn’t know about. “Anita, it’s me, Tammy, how you feeling?”

  I rolled my eyes, but some of my own hair was in the way, and I couldn’t see up that far. I tried to say, help me sit up, but it didn’t come out. I tried again, and she had to lean close to hear me. She pushed a piece of her straight brown hair behind her ear, as if that would help her hear better.

  “Help me,” I swallowed, “sit up.”

  She got an arm under my shoulders and lifted. Detective Tammy Reynolds was five ten, and she worked out at least enough to keep the other—read male—cops from giving her grief. She didn’t have much trouble getting me up, my back against the bathtub.

  Staying there was my job, and that was a little more trouble. I propped myself on one arm and leaned against the tub.

  She picked the rag up from the edge of the sink where she’d laid it, and put it against my forehead. The rag was cold, and I jerked away from her. I felt cold, that was a new symptom. I thought of something.

  “Have you been,” I coughed to clear my throat, “putting cool rags on me?”

  “Yes, it helps me when I’m sick.”

  “Cold rags don’t seem to be helping me.” I didn’t tell her that it was probably one of the worst things she could have done for me. Ever since I had inherited Richard’s beast, or whoever’s beast, cold didn’t seem to help me when I was sick. I healed like a lycanthrope now, and that meant that my temperature ran hot when I was sick, like my body was cooking itself. A well-meaning doctor had almost killed me with ice baths for what they thought was a dangerously high fever.

  I started to shiver.

  She got up, rinsing the washrag out, and spreading it out to dry on the edge of the sink. “I threw up in the yard,” she said. She put her hands on the sink, head bowed.

  I hugged myself, trying to stop the shivering, but it didn’t r
eally help. I was cold. I hadn’t been cold earlier today. Was a new symptom good or bad?

  “It’s a bad scene,” I said, “I’m sure you weren’t the only cop who lost their breakfast.”

  Tammy looked at me through a trailing edge of her hair. She had to keep her hair above her collar, just like the male policemen, but she kept it as long as she could. “Maybe, but I’m the only one who passed out.”

  “Except for me,” I said.

  “Yeah, you and me, the only women at the scene.” She sounded so tired.

  Tammy and I weren’t actually friends. She was a Follower of the Way, Christianity’s version of witches. Most of the Followers of the Way were zealots, more Christian than the right-wingers, as if they had to prove they really were worthy of salvation. Tammy had mellowed since she’d been dating Larry Kirkland, my fellow animator. But this was the first time I’d realized how much of that bright and shiny exterior had been worn away. Police work will eat you up and spit you out.

  As women we needed to be tougher just to be accepted. Today hadn’t helped either of us.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. The shivering was beginning to get a little worse.

  “No, it’s my damn doctor’s fault.”

  I looked up at her. “Excuse me?”

  “He gives me a prescription for birth control pills then prescribes antibiotics, and doesn’t warn me that while I’m taking the antibiotic, the pill won’t work.”

  My eyes went wide. “I’m sorry, are you saying . . .”

  “That I’m pregnant, yes.”

  I know the surprise showed on my face, I couldn’t help it. “Does Larry know?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “What . . .” I tried to think of something good to say, and gave up. “What are you going to do?”

  “Get married, damn it.”

  Something must have showed on my face, because she knelt by me. “I love Larry, but I didn’t plan on marrying now, and I certainly didn’t plan on having a baby. Do you know how hard it is to get ahead in this job as a woman? Of course, you do. Sorry.”

  “No,” I said, “it’s not the same for me. Police work isn’t my entire career.” The shivering had started up again; no amount of astonishment could keep me warm.

  She took her own jacket off, showing her gun in its front holster. She wrapped the jacket around me. I didn’t argue, but clutched it closed with my hands.

  “Is the shivering from the pregnancy?” she asked. “Someone said you said you were sick, are you?”

  It took me a second or two, blinking at her sort of stupidly to understand what she’d said. “Did you just say ‘pregnancy’?”

  She made a face at me. “Anita, please, I haven’t told anyone either, but they’re going to guess. I threw up at the murder scene, I’ve never done that. I didn’t pass out cold like you did, but I came close. Perry had to help me out into the yard so I could be sick. It won’t take them long to figure it out.”

  “This is not the first scene I’ve thrown up at, not even the fourth,” I said. I haven’t done it in a while, but I’ve certainly done it before. Surely they’ve told you the story about me throwing up on the body. Zerbrowski loves that one.”

  “Sure, but I thought he was exaggerating. You know how Zerbrowski is.”

  “He wasn’t exaggerating.”

  “You can lie to me if you want to, but unless you’re planning to abort, they’ll all figure it out sooner or later.”

  “I am not pregnant,” I said, though I had a little trouble saying it, because I was shivering so badly it was hard to talk. “I’m just sick.”

  “You’re freezing, Anita, you don’t have a fever.”

  How could I explain to her that I was having a bad reaction to a vampire bite and the fact that I shared Richard’s beast. Odd metaphysics weren’t easy to explain. Pregnancy was nice and simple, compared to that.

  She grabbed my arms, a lot like Dolph had. “I am three months pregnant. How far along are you? Please tell me, tell me I haven’t been a fool. Tell me I haven’t ruined my life by not reading the fine print on a bottle of medicine.”

  I was shivering so hard, it was hard to talk, but I managed to get out, “I—am—not pregnant.”

  She stood and turned her back on me. “Damn you for not sharing.”

  I tried to say something, I wasn’t even sure what, but she left, leaving the door open behind her. I wasn’t sure being left alone was a good thing, the shivering was getting worse, like I was freezing to death from the inside. Larry Kirkland was off being trained to be a federal marshal. He didn’t have four years as a vamp executioner yet, so he couldn’t get grandfathered in. I wondered if the pregnancy was making it harder for him to be away from Tammy, or easier. Damn it, anyway.

  Perry brought Jason up to me. He touched me. “God, you’re cold.” He picked me up in his arms like I weighed nothing. “I’m taking her home.”

  “We’ll give you an escort through the press,” Perry said.

  Jason didn’t argue. He carried me down the stairs. We waited for a few minutes, while Perry rounded up enough warm bodies to act as a sort of living gauntlet to try and keep the press at bay.

  The door opened, the sunlight hit my eyes and the headache roared to life. I buried my face against Jason’s chest. Jason seemed to know what was wrong, because he raised an edge of Tammy’s jacket across my eyes.

  “Are you ready?” Perry’s voice.

  “Let’s do it,” Jason said.

  Normally, I’d have felt humiliated to be carried out of a murder scene like a wilting flower, but I was working too hard on keeping the shivering under control. It took all my concentration not to let my body shake itself apart. What the hell was wrong with me?

  We were outside, and moving at a good pace. I could judge how close we were to the press by how loud the yelling was getting. “What’s wrong with Ms. Blake?” “What happened to her?” “Who are you?” “Where are you taking her?” There were more questions, lots more. They all melded into a noise like the ocean against the shore. The crowd surged around us. There was a moment when I felt them closing like a fist around us, but Merlioni’s voice rose to a shout, “Back up, back up now, or we’ll clear this area!”

  Jason got me inside the Jeep, leaning his shoulder into me, so he could fasten the seat belt. The jacket was across my face now, and strangely it felt claustrophobic.

  “Close your eyes,” he said.

  I was already doing what he’d asked, but I didn’t say anything. The jacket moved away, and the sun was bright against my closed eyelids. I felt the sunglasses slip over my eyes, and I opened them cautiously. Better.

  There was a line of detectives and uniforms in front of the Jeep, keeping the pack of reporters back, so we could make our getaway. Every camera they had was pointed our way. God knew what the captions would read once they were done with it.

  Jason gunned the engine and backed up with a screech of tires. He was a ways down the street before I could chatter out, “you’ll get a ticket.”

  “I’ve called Micah. He’s waiting. You and Nathaniel can share the bathtub.”

  I managed to get out, “What?”

  “I don’t know exactly what’s wrong, Anita, but you’re acting like a shape-shifter that’s been badly hurt. Like your body’s trying to heal some deep wound. You need heat, and the touch of your group.”

  “I,” teeth chattering so hard I couldn’t finish, “haven’t . . .” I stopped trying for a sentence and settled for, “Not hurt.”

  “I know that you’re not hurt that badly. But even if it was the vampire bite, you’d be warm to the touch, hot, cooking to heal yourself. You shouldn’t feel cold.”

  My ears started ringing. It sounded like someone was hitting a chime over and over. The ringing drowned out Jason’s voice, the sound of the engine, and finally everything. I passed out for the second time in less than two hours. This was not turning out to be one of my better days.

  22

  I W
AS FLOATING in water, warm, warm water. Arms held me in place, a man’s body brushed against mine in the water. I opened my eyes to the flickering light of candles. Was I back at the Circus of the Damned? Two things happened to let me know exactly where I was: pale tile gleamed on the edge of the bathtub, and the arms around my shoulders tightened, drew me closer. The moment the back of my body settled firmly against the front of his, I knew it was Micah.

  I knew the curve of his shoulder, the way my body seemed to slide into every line and hollow of his body. His tanned arms were delicate for a man’s, but as he snuggled me against him, muscles moved under his skin. I knew how much strength there was in his slender body. He was like me, a lot more than met the eye.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked, voice so close to my ear that a whisper seemed loud.

  My voice came distant and hollow the way I’d been feeling all day. “Better.”

  “At least you’re warmer,” he said. “Jason said you were sick, dizzy. Has that passed?”

  I thought about it, trying to feel my body, and not just the comforting warmth and closeness. “Yeah, I do feel better. What the hell was wrong with me?”

  He turned me in his arms, so that he held me across him, and we could look at each other. He smiled down at me. The tan that he’d come with had started to fade a little, but he was still dark, and that darkness framed his most startling feature. His eyes were kitty-cat eyes. I’d originally thought they were yellow green, but they were yellow, or green, or any combination of either, depending on his mood, the light, the color of shirt he wore.

  His pupils had spread like black pools, and the thin line of color that chased round them was a pale true green. Human eyes weren’t really green, not really. Grayish green, maybe, but a true clear green, rarely. But Micah’s eyes were.

  Those eyes sat in a face that was beautiful in the way a woman’s face was beautiful. Delicate. There was a line to the jaw, a chin that was male, but gently so. His mouth was wide, with the bottom lip thicker than his upper, giving him a permanent pout.