Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

I looked at him, trying to read behind those cop eyes. “Serial killer, what are you talking about? This is the first kill, to my knowledge.”

  He nodded. “Yeah.” He started to turn away.

  I caught his sleeve, lightly. I had to be careful how I touched him lately. He took so many things as aggression. “Cops do not use the phrase serial killer unless they have to. One, you don’t want it to be true. Two, the reporters will get hold of it and report it like it’s truth.”

  He looked down at me, and I let go of his sleeve. “There aren’t any reporters here, Anita. It’s just another dead stripper in Sauget.”

  “Then why say it?”

  “Maybe I’m psychic.”

  “Dolph,” I said.

  He almost smiled. “I got a bad feeling, that’s all. This is either their first kill, or the first kill we’ve found. It was awful damn neat for a first kill.”

  “Someone meant for us to find her, Dolph, and find her tonight.”

  “Yeah, but who? Was it the killer, or killers? Or was it someone else?”

  “Like who?” I asked.

  “Another customer that couldn’t afford to let his wife know where’d he been.”

  “So he opens her coat, draws out her hair, tries to make her more visible?”

  Dolph gave one small nod, down.

  “I don’t buy it. A normal person couldn’t touch a dead body, not enough to open the coat, mess with the hair. Besides, that flash of pale flesh was done by someone who knew that it would be as visible as it is. A normal person might drag her out from behind the Dumpster, maybe, but they wouldn’t mess with her, not like that.”

  “You keep saying, ‘normal,’ Anita; don’t you know yet, there is no normal. There’s just victims and predators.” He looked away when he said the last, as if he didn’t want me to see whatever was in his face.

  I let him look away, let him keep that moment to himself. Because, Dolph and I were trying to rebuild a friendship, and sometimes you need your friends to pry, and sometimes you need them to leave you the fuck alone.

  5

  I DIDN’T WANT to go back to the reception. First, I wasn’t in the mood to be merry. Second, I still didn’t know how to answer Arnet’s questions. Third, Micah had made me promise I’d dance with him. I hated to dance. I didn’t think I was good at it. In the privacy of our home, Micah, and Nathaniel, and hell, Jason, had told me I was wrong. That I actually danced very well. I did not believe them. I think it was a throwback to a rather horrible junior high school dance experience. Of course, it was junior high, is there any experience except horribe for those few years? In Hell, if you’re really bad, you must be fourteen forever, and be trapped in school, and never get to go home.

  So I walked into the reception, hoping I could say I was tired, and we could leave, but I knew better. Micah had dragged a promise out of me that I’d dance with him, and he’d gotten me to promise a dance for Nathaniel, as well. Damn it. I don’t promise things often, because once I do, I keep my word. Double damn it.

  The crowd had thinned out a lot. Murder scenes take so much time out of your night. But I knew that the boys would be there, because I had the car. Nathaniel was at the table where I’d left them, but it was Jason with him, not Micah. Jason and Nathaniel were leaning so close together that their heads nearly touched. Jason’s short blond hair seemed very yellow against Nathaniel’s dark auburn. Jason wore a blue dress shirt that I knew was only a shade or two bluer than his eyes. His suit was black, and I knew without seeing him standing that it was tailored to his body, and probably Italian in cut. Jean-Claude had paid for the suit, and he was fond of Italian-cut designer suits for his employees. When he wasn’t dressing them like they were extras in a high-class porno movie, anyway. For a mainstream wedding, the suit worked. Jason also worked at Guilty Pleasures as a stripper, and Jean-Claude did own the club, but it wasn’t that type of employment that let Jason rate designer clothes tailored to his body. Jason was Jean-Claude’s pomme de sang. Jean-Claude did not think I treated Nathaniel with enough respect for his position as my pomme de sang. I had let Micah and Nathaniel go shopping with Jason for dress clothes, and I footed the bill for my two boys. It had been outrageous, but I couldn’t let Jean-Claude be nicer to his kept man than I was to mine. Could I?

  Technically, Micah wasn’t a kept man, but the salary he drew from the Coalition for Better Understanding Between Lycanthrope and Human Communities didn’t cover designer suits. I made enough money to pay for designer suits, so I did.

  I had time to wonder what Jason and Nathaniel were up to, talking so close together, like conspirators. Then I felt, more than saw, Micah. He was across the room talking to a group of men, most of them cops. He shook his head, laughed, and started across the room, toward me. I didn’t get much chance to see Micah from a distance. We were always so close to one another, physically. Now I was able to watch him walk toward me, able to admire how the suit clung to his body, how it flattered the broad shoulders, the slender waist, the tightness of his hips, the swell of his thighs. The suit fit him like a roomy glove. Watching him move toward me, I realized the suit was suddenly worth every penny.

  The music stopped before he reached me, some song I didn’t recognize. I had a moment of hope that we could just sit down and find out what the other two men were finding so fascinating. But it was a vain hope, because another song came on. A slow song. I still didn’t want to dance, but as Micah got close enough to touch, I had to admit that an excuse to touch him in public was not a bad thing.

  He smiled, and even with the sunglasses in place, I knew what his eyes would look like with that smile. “Ready?”

  I sighed, and held out my arms. “As I’m ever going to be.”

  “Let’s shed the leather jacket first.”

  I unzipped it, but said, “Let’s keep it, I’m a little cold.”

  His hands slid around my waist. “Is it getting colder outside?”

  I shook my head. “Not that kind of cold.”

  “Oh,” he said, and he pulled back his hands, which had been sliding up my back underneath the leather jacket. He went back to my waist and slid his hands underneath the tux jacket, so that only the thin cloth of the dress shirt separated my skin from his.

  I shuddered under that touch.

  He leaned his mouth in close to my ear, before he’d finished the long, slow slide of his hands that would have pressed our bodies together. “I’ll warm you up.” His arms pressed me into the curve and swell of his body, but not so tight as to make me uncomfortable in public. Close, but not like we were glued together. But even this close, I could feel the swell of him under the cloth of his pants. The barest brush of touch, which let me know that there was more than one reason he didn’t hold me as tight as he could. He was being polite. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure whether this politeness was really Micah’s idea, or if he’d picked up my discomfort. He was always very, very careful around me. In fact, he mirrored back so exactly what I wanted, what I needed, that it made me wonder if I knew him at all, or if all I saw was what he wanted me to see.

  “You’re frowning, what’s wrong?” He was close enough that just turning his head in against my face allowed him to whisper.

  What was I supposed to say? That I suspected him of lying to me, not about anything in particuliar, but about nearly everything. He was too perfect. Too perfectly what I needed him to be. That had to be an act, right? Nobody was perfectly what you needed them to be, everybody disappointed you in some way, right?

  He whispered against my ear, “You’re frowning harder. What’s wrong?”

  I didn’t know what to say. Why was I left so often this night with a dozen things to say and nothing I wanted to share out loud? I decided for partial truth, better than a lie, I guess. “I’m wondering when you’re going to spoil everything.”

  He drew away enough to see my face clearly. He let his puzzlement show. “What have I done now?”

  I shook my head. “That’s the problem, you haven’t
done anything, nothing wrong anyway.”

  I looked at him and wanted to see his eyes. I finally reached up and moved his dark glasses just enough to glimpse his chartreuse eyes. But, of course, that was a mistake, because I found myself gazing into those eyes, marveling at how green they looked tonight. I shook my head again. “Damn it.”

  “What is wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing, and that’s what’s wrong.” Even to me it made no sense, but it was still true. Still how I felt.

  He gave me that smile that was part puzzlement, part irony, part self-deprecation, and part something else. Nothing about that smile was happy. He’d come with that smile, and I still didn’t understand it, but I knew that he used it less and less, and usually only when I was being silly. Even I knew I was being silly, but I couldn’t seem to help it. He was too perfect, so I had to poke at it. Our relationship worked too well, so I had to see if I could break it. Not really break it, but see how far it would bend. I had to test it, because what good was something that couldn’t be tested? Oh, hell, that wasn’t it. The truth was that if I let myself I could be happy with Micah, and it was beginning to get on my nerves.

  I leaned my forehead against his chest. “I’m sorry, Micah, I’m just tired and feeling grumpy.”

  He walked me a little to one side, off the dance floor, not that we’d been dancing. “What is wrong?”

  I tried to think what was wrong. I was taking something out on him, but what? Then, part of it hit me. “It didn’t bother me to see the dead woman. I felt nothing.”

  “You have to divorce yourself from your emotions, or you can’t do your job.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, but once I had to work at it. Now I don’t.”

  He frowned down at me, his eyes still peeking over his partially lowered glasses. “And that bothers you, why?”

  “Only sociopaths and crazy people can look at the violently dead and feel absolutely nothing, Micah.”

  He hugged me to him, suddenly, fiercely, but was careful to keep part of his body away. It was the kind of hug you’d give a friend in need. Maybe a little tighter, a little more intimate, but not much. He always seemed to know just what I needed, just when I needed it. If we weren’t in love, then how did he do that? Hell, I’d been in love with people that didn’t even come close to meeting this many of my needs.

  “You are not a sociopath, Anita. You have given up pieces of yourself so you can do your job. You told me once, it’s the price you pay.”

  I wrapped my arms around him, held him tight, rested my forehead in the bend of his neck, rubbed my face against the incredible smoothness of his skin. “I’m trying not to lose more pieces of myself, but it’s like I can’t stop. I felt nothing tonight, except guilt that I felt nothing. How crazy is that?”

  He kept hugging me. “It’s only crazy if you think it’s crazy, Anita.”

  That made me draw back enough to see his face. “What’s that mean?”

  He touched my face, gently. “It means that if your life works, and you work in it, then it’s okay, whatever is happening is okay.”

  I frowned, then laughed, then frowned again. “I’m not sure a therapist would agree with that.”

  “All I know is that since I met you, I’ve felt safer, happier, and better than I have in years.”

  “You said safer; funny, I’d think that would be how Nathaniel would order it, safer, then happy.”

  “I may be your Nimir-Raj and a dominant, but, Anita, I spent years at the mercy of Chimera. He was crazy and a sociopath. I’ve seen the real thing, Anita, and you are neither of those things.” He smiled when he said it and gave a little duck of his head, almost like an old gesture that he’d nearly outgrown. It showed his profile for a moment, and because I was in the mood to pick, I asked something I’d been debating on for weeks.

  I traced the bridge of his nose. “When I first met you, your nose looked like it had been badly broken. I assumed that meant it had happened when you were human, but your nose is getting straighter, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” and his voice was soft when he said it. There was no smile now, not even the confusing one. His face had closed down. I’d begun to realize that this was how he looked when he was sad. I’d met Chimera, hell, I’d killed him. He’d been one of the most insane beings I’d ever met. This from a list that included self-deluded would-be gods and millenia-old master vampires, not to mention wereanimals that were both sexual sadists and sexual predators, in the truest sense of the word. So, that I would put Chimera near the top of my crazy-bad-guy list said just how awful he had been. I could not imagine being at his mercy for any length of time. I hadn’t enjoyed a few hours. Micah and his pard had been with Chimera for years. I’d avoided this topic, because it was so obviously painful for all of them, but especially for Micah. But tonight, for so many reasons, I needed to know. I needed, almost, to cause him some pain. Ugly, but true.

  Sometimes you fight what you are, and sometimes you give in to it. And some nights you just don’t want to fight yourself anymore, so you pick someone else to fight.

  6

  WE ENDED UP standing at the far side of the parking lot, where trees grew in a tall, thin line. Fast-growing maples, with their yellow leaves, dancing in the October wind. My hair was so tight in its French braid that the wind could do little with it, but Micah’s hair streamed around his face, like a thick, dark cloud. He’d taken off his glasses, and the streetlights made his eyes very yellow, even with the green shirt on, as if they reflected the light differently than they should have, or would have, if they’d been human eyes.

  The wind was cool and held that crisp autumn scent. What I wanted to do was take his hand and walk out into the night until we found some woods. I wanted to go walking out into the darkness and let the wind take us where it wanted us to go. My bad mood seemed to have faded on the cool night wind, or maybe it was the sight of him, his face nearly lost in a cloud of his own hair. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to fight anymore.

  “You’re right, my nose is healing.” His voice held that hint of bitter laughter to it. That tone that matched that confusing smile.

  I touched his arm. “If this is hard, you don’t have to.”

  He shook his head and put a hand up at his hair, impatient, angry, as if he was mad at the hair for getting in his face. I thought he was probably angry at me, but I didn’t ask. I didn’t really want to know if the answer was yes.

  “No, you asked, I’ll answer.”

  I took back my hand and let him talk, let him open the bag that I’d wanted opened, so badly, only minutes ago. Now, I’d have let it go to wipe that look off his face.

  “Do you know why my hair’s long?”

  It was such an odd question, that I answered it. “No, I guess I thought you liked it that way.”

  He shook his head, one hand caught in the hair near his face, so he could keep the wind from chasing it across his face. “When Chimera took over a group of shapeshifters, he used torture, or the threat of torture, to control us. If the head of the group could withstand the torture, then he’d torment weaker members. Use their harm as a way to control the alphas in the group.”

  He was quiet for so long that I had to say something. “I know he was a sadistic bastard. I remember what he did to Gina and Violet, to keep you and Merle under control.”

  “You only know part of it,” he said, and his eyes had a distant look, so far away. He was remembering, and it wasn’t pretty.

  I hadn’t meant to bring this on. I hadn’t. “Micah, I didn’t mean . . .”

  “No, you wanted to know. You can know.” He took in a breath so deep it made him shudder. “One of his favorite torments was gang rape. Those of us who wouldn’t participate, he made us grow our hair long. Said, if we wanted to act like women, we should look like women.”

  I thought about that for a second. “You and Merle are the only men in your pard that have long hair.”

  He nodded. “I think Caleb enjoyed it, and Noah, well,” he shrugg
ed. “We all did things that we didn’t like, just to stay alive. To stay whole.”

  I couldn’t think much less of Caleb, but it made me think less of Noah. I didn’t know what to say out loud. But Micah didn’t need me to talk anymore. The story was started, and he would tell it now, whether I wanted to hear it or not. It was my own damn fault, so I listened and gave him the only thing I could at this point—my attention. Not horror, not pity, just my attention. Horror was redundant, and pity—no one likes pity.

  “You talked to Chimera, to more than one of his faces. You know how conflicted he was.”

  I nodded, then said, “Yes.”

  “Part of him was the ultimate male bully, and that part raped women. Part of him was gay, and the two parts hated each other.”

  Chimera had given the idea of split personality a whole new meaning, because each personality had had a different physical form. Until I’d met him, seen it for myself, I’d have said it was impossible.

  “I remember that part of him wanted me to be his mate, and part of him didn’t seem much interested in girls.”

  Micah nodded. “Exactly.”

  I was almost afraid of where this was going, but I’d started it. If he could tell the story, I could hear it, all of it.

  “He didn’t just rape women,” Micah said, “but strangely, he would only rape a man if he were already gay. It was as if he only wanted the sex the person enjoyed to be used against them.” He shrugged, but it turned into a shiver. “I didn’t understand it. I was just grateful to not be on his list of victims.” He shivered again.

  “Do you want my jacket?” I asked.

  He gave a small smile. “I don’t think it’s that kind of cold.”

  I reached out to touch him, and he stepped back, out of reach. “No, Anita, let me finish. If you touch me, I’ll get distracted.”

  I wanted to say, let me touch you, let me distract you, but I didn’t. I did what he asked. No one to blame but myself. If I’d kept my mouth shut, we’d be inside dancing, instead . . . when was I going to learn to leave well enough alone? Probably never.