Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  She said, “Nothing I can do over there.” She said it almost to herself, as if she were trying to convince herself.

  She put on a fresh pair of gloves before she looked at my stomach. There was blood on the sleeve of the white coat she was wearing. She seemed to see it at about the same time I did. She just stripped off the coat, tossed it in the little hamper they had for washables. Threw the clean gloves away, got another pair of clean gloves, and came back to me. Her eyes stared at the wound, not at me. Her face had gone to concentrating on her job. If she just concentrated on her job then she wouldn’t fall apart. I knew the look, I had one like it.

  I tried to do something else while she looked at the wounds. Somehow I didn’t want to see my insides on the outside again. But it was like a train wreck; you couldn’t quite look away. “What is that?” I asked.

  “Intestine,” she said, in a voice that held no emotion.

  I heard someone shout, “Clear!”

  The crowd around Cisco cleared, and I saw Lillian using the crash cart on his chest. She was about to try to jump-start his heart. Fuck.

  Micah was in the crowd. He turned and looked at me, his mouth and chin covered in blood. As if Nathaniel read my mind, he said, “He was trying to call flesh and help Cisco heal the wound.”

  Micah could help a healing wound heal faster by licking it. He’d done it for me once. He wiped the blood off his face as he looked at me across the room. The look on his face was anguish. He’d tried.

  Lillian hit Cisco’s chest three times, four, but that high-pitched alarm sound just kept going. Flatline.

  I didn’t hear the door open, but Richard came through leaning so heavily on Jamil, one of his bodyguards, that he was being half-carried. Jamil put him by the gurney. Their bodies blocked me from seeing what was happening.

  Cherry was swabbing my hand; she had a covered IV needle in her other hand. I looked away. Richard’s power ran over my skin like heat. Nathaniel shivered where he held my hand. I glanced at him. His body was covered in goose bumps.

  “You feel it?” I asked.

  “We all do,” Cherry said, and the needle bit home in my hand. I squeezed Nathaniel’s hand hard and kept staring at Richard’s broad back.

  Micah came to stand at the head of my gurney. He’d wiped most of the blood off, but his eyes held defeat. If I’d had a spare hand I would have offered it. He laid his face against the top of my head. It was the best we could do.

  Jamil stumbled away from Richard, leaving him to half-collapse across the gurney. Jamil’s body exploded; one second he was tall, dark, handsome, the next he was the black-furred werewolf that had saved my life once. Lillian fell to the floor, her body writhing, twisting. She was suddenly gray-furred. She lay on the floor with her newly ratty face turned up to the gurney. The other doctors and nurses kept their distance. Richard was trying to bring Cisco’s beast, trying to help him heal by forcing him to shift. But the alarm was still screaming, still letting us know that Cisco’s heart wasn’t beating.

  Richard clutched at the gurney with one hand and Cisco with the other. His power spread through the room as if someone had forgotten to turn off some invisible hot bath, and it was filling up the room. Micah stood up, put his hand against my head. I felt his power spring to life, felt him throw it around the four of us like a shield, keeping Richard’s power out. Most of the time Micah could protect the other wereleopards, but my ties to Richard were too strong. It worked today. Today, Micah held me in the calm of his power along with Nathaniel and Cherry.

  Richard screamed, a long, loud, anguished sound. He collapsed to his knees, one hand still clinging to Cisco’s arm. The arm flopped limp, dead. Richard’s back rippled as if some giant hand were pushing out from the inside. He threw his head back and screamed again, but before the echo had died, the scream turned into a howl. Fur poured over Richard’s body. It was as if his human body were ice, melting to reveal fur and muscle. His human form just melted into a wolf the size of a pony. I’d never seen him in full wolf form, only the half-and-half. The wolf threw its head back and howled, long and mournful. It turned a head as big as my entire chest to look at me. The eyes were all wolf, amber and alien, but the look in them was not a wolf’s look. It held too much understanding of the loss that lay on the gurney.

  One of the other white coats started turning off the machines. The scream of the alarm went silent. Except for the ringing in my one ear the room was deathly quiet. Then everyone began to move. The doctors and nurses started pulling things out of Cisco’s body. He lay on his back, eyes closed. I remembered seeing spine in the throat wound; now the bone was covered. He’d been healing, but not fast enough.

  Jamil climbed to his furry feet and put a half claw, half hand on the wolf’s back. He said in a voice gone to growl, “I’ll take us to feed.”

  One of the doctors helped Lillian to her feet. She seemed more shaken than Jamil was, but then I’m not sure she’d ever had someone rip her beast from her human form. Jamil had been on the wrong end of Richard’s anger more than once. “Come with us, Lillian,” he said, and the wolfish muzzle had trouble with the double L sound.

  She nodded and took the hand he offered. The dark-haired man who had turned off the alarm said, “We’ll take care of the other patients, Lillian.”

  Her own voice sounded high-pitched and nasal. “Thank you, Chris.” The three of them walked out together, leaving the others to begin to clean up.

  “Why did he die?” I asked.

  “He bled out faster than his body could heal,” Cherry said.

  “I’ve seen you guys heal from worse,” I said.

  “You hang around with too many big dogs, Anita,” Cherry said. “We don’t all heal like Micah and Richard.” She had the IV on its little metal hat rack. She reached up for the knob that would start the drip.

  “Wait, will that put me out?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Then I need to make some phone calls first.”

  “You’re not hurting too much yet, then?” She made it half question, half statement.

  “No, not yet. It aches, but it doesn’t exactly hurt.”

  “It will,” she said, “and when it does you’ll want the painkillers.”

  I nodded, swallowed, nodded again. “I know, but we still have Soledad’s masters out there. We need them dead.”

  “You aren’t slaying any vamps today,” she said.

  “I know, but Ted Forrester still can.”

  Edward looked at me at the mention of his alter ego. His hand was on Peter’s hair, as if he were a much younger boy and Edward had just come in to tuck him in for the night.

  “I need you to take over my warrants,” I said.

  He nodded. His eyes weren’t cold, they were rage-filled. I wasn’t used to seeing this much heat from Edward; he was a cold creature, but what blazed in his eyes now was hot enough to burn a hole through me. “How is Peter?” he asked Cherry.

  “Now that he’s out, we’ll sew him up. He should be fine.”

  Edward looked at me. “I’ll kill the vampires for you.”

  “We will kill them for you.” Olaf’s voice from the door. He must have arrived in time to hear the last few comments. I hadn’t heard him come in; not good. Not good that I hadn’t heard Olaf, but not good that it could have been someone else, something else. I trusted Edward to see me safe, but I was usually more help to myself than this. Admittedly, I was having a bad day.

  The dull ache in my stomach was beginning to have twinges of something sharp. It was like a promise of what the pain would be in a little while. I looked down my body; I couldn’t help it. Cherry blocked my view with her arm, turned my face to her. “Don’t look. You’ll sleep. The doctor will look at you. You’ll wake up better.” She smiled at me; it was a gentle smile, but it left her eyes haunted. When had Cherry gotten that look in her eyes?

  Someone found a cell phone. I dialed Zerbrowski directly. The Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, RPIT, was who I s
hould have called, and I should have probably started by talking to Lieutenant Rudolph Storr, but I just wasn’t feeling well enough to argue with Dolph about who, and what, was or wasn’t a monster. Zerbrowski answered with his usual, “Zerbrowski.”

  “It’s Anita,” I said.

  “Blake, what’s shaking?” There was a thread of laughter to his voice, the beginnings of his usual teasing. I didn’t have time today.

  “I’m about to get sewed back up.”

  “What happened?” The teasing note was gone.

  I gave him the shortest version I could, and left out lots. But I gave him the important parts; two vamps, maybe with more servants, masquerading as two upstanding vampire citizens to get us to kill the two upstanding citizens. “They must have thought I was close, because they sent one of their animals to kill me.”

  “How hurt are you?”

  “I’m not hunting any vampires today.”

  “What do you need from me?”

  “I need you to get cops around the hotel. I need you to make sure these two don’t get outside.”

  “Shouldn’t they be dead to the world, no pun intended?”

  “They should, but after what I saw in the servant, I wouldn’t bet anyone’s life on it. Call in Mobile Reserve; if it goes wrong you’ll want the firepower.”

  Dr. Chris came to stand over me. He was a little under six feet but seemed taller because he was so thin, one of those men who just couldn’t seem to put on muscle mass. I’d have called him willowy if he’d been a girl. He said, “Get off the phone, Anita. I need to look at your wounds.”

  “I’m almost done,” I said.

  “What?” Zerbrowski said.

  “The doc’s here. He’s wanting me off the phone.”

  “Tell me who’s going to be processing your warrants and do what the doctor says. You’ve got to be healed by the time we do the barbecue at my house. I finally got the wife talked into letting you bring both your live-in boyfriends. Don’t make me waste all that persuasion.”

  I almost laughed but thought it might hurt, so I swallowed it. That sort of hurt, too. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Off the phone, Anita,” Dr. Chris said again.

  “Ted Forrester will have the warrants,” I said.

  “We didn’t know he was in town.”

  “Just got here.”

  “Funny how it all goes pear-shaped when he blows into town.”

  “I only call him in when it’s already gone to hell, Zerbrowski; you’re reversing cause and effect.”

  “Says you.”

  “He’s a federal marshal, just like me.”

  A hand scooped the phone out of my hand. Dr. Chris was a lycanthrope, but still…I should have at least seen it coming. “This is Anita’s doctor; she needs to go now. I’m going to put the other marshal on. You two play nice. I’m going to make Ms. Blake go night-night.” He hesitated, then said, “She’ll be fine. Yes, guaranteed. Now let me tend my patient.” He handed the phone to Edward.

  Edward put on his Ted Forrester good-ol’-boy voice. “Sergeant Zerbrowski, Ted Forrester here.”

  Dr. Chris shooed Edward farther away so I couldn’t hear what he was saying. He turned the knob on the IV and said, “You’re going to sleep now, Ms. Blake. Trust me, you’ll enjoy the examination more that way.”

  “But…”

  “Let it go, Ms. Blake. You’re hurt. You have to let someone else hunt the vampires today.”

  I started to say something, probably to argue, but I never finished the thought. One minute I was staring up at Dr. Chris, the next—nothing. The world went poof.

  34

  I WOKE UP, which was nice. I was blinking up at a ceiling I’d seen before, but couldn’t quite place. I was not in the room that I remembered last. This room was painted an off-white, and there were pipes in the ceiling. Pipes…that should have meant something, but I was still a little fuzzy around the edges.

  “‘She wakes; and I entreated her come forth, and bear this work of heaven with patience.’”

  I knew who it was before he stepped beside the bed. “Requiem.” I smiled up at him, and reached out to him with my right hand; the other one was full of needles. Reaching for him made my stomach ache a little, but not that bad. It made me wonder how long I’d been out, or what drugs were coming through the IV tube. Requiem took my hand in his and bent over it to lay a kiss on the back. I was happy to see him. Hell, I was happy to see anyone. “I don’t know the quote,” I said.

  “The words of a worthless friar,” he said.

  “Sorry, still a little fuzzy,” I said.

  He held my hand underneath his cloak, against his chest. His blue, blue eyes glittered in the overhead fluorescents. “Perhaps this will help: ‘A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun for sorrow will not show his head. Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished; For never was a story…’”

  I finished with him. “‘…of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.’”

  He laughed then, and it transformed his face from a thing of cold beauty to something livable, lovable, more touchable. “You should laugh more often, it becomes you,” I said.

  The laughter leeched away, as if the two reddish tears that slid down the white perfection of his cheeks stole his joy away as they fell down his face. By the time the tears melted into the dark line of his beard, his face had its usual melancholy handsomeness.

  I’d been happy to take his hand. Happy to touch someone I cared for, but there was something in the weight of that ocean-blue-and-green gaze that made me take my hand back. I had other lovers who would look at me that way, but the look in his eyes was one that Requiem had not earned, or that our relationship didn’t deserve. He was Requiem, he wasn’t a light comedic sort of person; no, he was definitely a lover of tragedies.

  “Where’s Jean-Claude?”

  “Did you expect him to wait by your bedside?”

  “Maybe.”

  “He and Asher are busy elsewhere, together. I was left to tend you while they had more important things to do.”

  I stared at him. Was it on purpose? Was he trying to make me doubt them? I’d nearly died, and was still hooked up to tubes; fuck it, I’d ask. “Are you implying that they’re having sex together somewhere, and that that is more important to them than me?”

  He looked down; I think he was trying to be coy. “They are off together, and they left me to tend you. I think the situation speaks for itself.”

  “You really shouldn’t try to play coy, Requiem. You’re not good at it.”

  He gave me the full weight of those blue, blue eyes, with that swimming shadow of green around the iris. Eyes you could sink into and swim away in, or be drowned in. I actually looked down, rather than meet his gaze. Normally he wasn’t a problem, but I was hurt, weak, and I didn’t like his mood.

  “My evening star, you are thinking too hard. Let us rejoice that you live, that we all live.”

  That gave me other questions to ask; maybe since they weren’t about Jean-Claude, he’d answer them. “Then Peter is all right?”

  His face went blank, even that pressing need in his eyes fading away. “He is in a room nearby.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “He will heal.”

  “I don’t like how you’re saying that, Requiem.”

  I heard the door open as a male voice said, “God, you are a gloomy bastard.” Graham strode into the room.

  I watched him for signs that the Harlequin were messing with his mind, signs of that panicked false addiction. He was his usual smiling self. Okay, his usual self when he wasn’t feeling grumpy about me not fucking him.

  “Are you wearing a cross?” I asked.

  He drew a chain out of his shirt, and on the end of it was a tiny Buddha. I stared at it. “You’re a Buddhist?”

  “Yep.”

  “You do violence, you can’t be a Buddhist,” I said.

  “So I’m a bad Buddhist
, but it was still the way I was raised, and I do believe in the chubby little guy.”

  “Will it work if you’re not following the tenets of the faith it represents?” I asked.

  “I could ask you the same question, Anita.”

  Did he have a point, or not? “Fine, I just wouldn’t have pegged you for a Buddhist.”

  “Neither would my parents, but when Claudia told us to get a holy item, I realized I didn’t believe in the Jewish carpenter, never raised in that faith.” He shook the little Buddha at me. “This I believe in.”

  I gave a small nod. “Okay, whatever works.”

  He grinned at me. “First, Peter will be fine, but he heals human-slow.”

  “How hurt is he?”

  “About as hurt as you were, but not healing as fast.”

  Graham came to stand beside Requiem. He was still in the red shirt and dark pants, but somehow it didn’t bug me now. Graham would answer questions better than Requiem. He also seemed to be himself, while the vampire was being weird even for him.

  I started to ask how fast I was healing, but I wanted to know about Peter before I asked questions about me. I felt amazingly well. “I’m going to ask this again, and I want a straight answer. How hurt is Peter?”

  Graham sighed. “He got a lot of stitches—like the-doctor-lost-count stitches. He’s going to be fine, honest, but he’s going to have some manly scars.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Tell her the rest,” Requiem said.

  I glared at Graham. “Yeah, tell me the rest.”

  “I was getting to it.” He flashed an unfriendly look at the vampire. Requiem gave a small nod, almost a bow, and moved back from the bed.

  “Then get to it, Graham,” I said.

  “The doctors are offering him the chance for the new antilycanthropy therapy.”

  “You mean the inoculation they offer?”

  “No, something brand new.” He said “brand new” as if he had a bad taste in his mouth.

  “How new?”

  “St. Louis is one of only a handful of cities that are experimenting with it.”