Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10

by Laurell Hamilton

  I stared at the smirking vamp in the back of my Jeep. “She betrayed us?”

  “Yes,” he said softly. He touched my shoulder. “Do not kill her, ma petite. The bullet would enter, but the Traveler would not allow her death. You would simply waste a bullet.”

  I shook my head. “She betrayed you, all of you.”

  “If they could not have bribed someone, they would have tortured someone else into betraying us. I much prefer this method,” he said.

  I stared down the barrel of the gun at Liv’s smiling face. I could have pulled the trigger and not worried about it. She’d done all the damage she could do. It wasn’t like I’d be killing her to save us. I didn’t want, or not want, to pull the trigger. I simply thought she deserved to die for betraying us. Not anger, or even outrage, just good business. It was a bad precedent to allow anyone to betray you and survive. It set a bad example. I realized with an almost physical jolt that killing her meant nothing to me. Just good business. Sweet Jesus. I put up the gun. I didn’t want to kill anyone that coldly. Killing didn’t bother me, but it should mean something.

  Liv leaned back in the seat, grinning, pleased I’d seen the futility of shooting her. If she only realized why I hadn’t done it, she might still have been scared of me, but she was hiding behind the power of this Traveler. Confident that it was shield enough against anything. If she pissed me off enough tonight, maybe we’d test the theory.

  I shook my head. If I was going to meet the bogeymen of vampirekind I needed more weapons. I had my wrist sheaths, complete with silver knives, in the glove compartment. I often carried them in the Jeep when I wore something I couldn’t wear them with, like the dress. Never knew when you’d need a good knife.

  “I’ll tell them about any weapons I see,” she said.

  I finished buckling the knives in place. “Yvette and Balthasar know I have the gun. I’m not trying to be subtle here, just prepared.” I opened the door and stepped out. I scanned the darkness for more company, though the really old ones could hide almost in plain sight. Some vampires had chameleons beat all to hell when it came to blending with their surroundings. I’d seen one that could wrap himself in shadows, then fling them aside like a cloak. It had been impressive.

  Liv scooted out of the car to stand near me. She’d lifted a few too many weights to cross her arms comfortably but she was trying. Trying for that nonchalant bodyguard look. She was six feet tall and built like a brick outhouse; she didn’t have to try hard to look intimidating.

  Jean-Claude got out of the car on my side, putting himself between the two of us. I wasn’t sure who he was protecting; her or me.

  He had Asher’s long coat in his arms. “I suggest, ma petite, that you wear this to cover the weapons.”

  “I’ll tell them about the knives,” Liv said.

  “If the weapons are in plain sight, it is more of a challenge,” Jean-Claude said. “Someone might feel compelled to take them from you.”

  “They can try,” I said.

  Jean-Claude handed me the coat, draped across his arms. “Please, ma petite.”

  I took it from him. He didn’t say “please” often.

  I slipped the black coat on. I was reminded of two things. One, it was too damn hot to wear a coat. Two, Asher was six foot or more, the coat was huge. I started rolling up the sleeves.

  “Anita,” Liv said.

  I glanced at her.

  She looked serious now, her strong Nordic face blank and unreadable. “Look into my eyes.”

  I shook my head. “What do you guys do, sit around watching old Dracula movies and stealing the dialogue?”

  Liv took a threatening step forward. I just stared up at her. “Save the big-bad-vampire routine, Liv. We’ve done this and you can’t roll me with your eyes.”

  “Ma petite,” Jean-Claude said, “do as she asks.”

  I frowned at him. “Why?” Suspicious, who me?

  “Because if the Traveler’s extra power can bespell you through Liv’s eyes, it would be better to know here in relative safety than inside among our greater foes.”

  He had a point, but I didn’t like it. I shrugged. “Fine.” I stared at her face, into her blue eyes, though the color was a little washed out from the streetlight.

  Liv turned; a spill of yellow light from the open car door hit her eyes and made them that amazing violet-blue, almost purple. Her eyes were her best feature and I’d never had any trouble meeting that flower-petal gaze.

  I still could. Not even a twinge.

  Liv’s hands balled into fists. She spoke, but I didn’t think she was talking to either of us, “You promised me. Promised me enough power to roll her mind.”

  There was a rush of wind, cold enough to make me shiver and huddle into the long coat.

  Liv laughed, a loud bray of sound. She raised her arms to the cold wind as if it were wrapping her around like drapes in the breeze.

  The cold wind raised the hairs on the back of my neck, but it wasn’t the temperature, it was the power in it.

  “Now,” Liv said, “look into my eyes, if you dare.”

  “Little better on the dialogue,” I said.

  “Are you afraid to meet my gaze, Executioner?”

  The cold wind that had come from nowhere died, then faded, a last icy caress. I waited until the summer heat slid over me like plastic wrap, waited until sweat trailed down my spine; then I looked up.

  Once upon a time I’d avoided looking any vamp in the eyes. I’d had some natural immunity, but even the lesser vamps were dangerous. Their gaze was one trick that almost all of them had to a lesser, or greater, extent. My powers had grown, and the vampire marks had cinched it. I was pretty much immune to vampire gaze. So why was I afraid now?

  I met Liv’s violet gaze solid, no flinching. At first there was nothing but their extraordinary color. A tension went out of me, my shoulders loosened. They were just eyes. Then it was as if the violet of her eyes was water, and I was something that skated over the surface tension, until something rose from her eyes and pulled me down. Always before it had been like falling, but now something had me, something dark, and strong. It sucked me under like water under ice. I screamed, and lashed out. Lashed out against that cold film of ice, reached for a surface that wasn’t physical, wasn’t even metaphorical, but I fought to rise. Fought against the pull of that darkness.

  I came to myself, kneeling on the parking lot with Jean-Claude’s hand grasped in mine. “Ma petite, ma petite, are you all right?”

  I just shook my head. I didn’t trust my voice yet. I’d forgotten how much I hated being rolled by their gaze. Forgotten how helpless I felt. My own power was making me careless around the damn things.

  Liv leaned against the side of the Jeep. She seemed tired, too. “I almost had you.”

  I found my voice. “You didn’t have anything. It wasn’t your eyes I was being sucked into. It was his.”

  She shook her head. “He promised me the power to do you, Anita. To take your mind.”

  I let Jean-Claude help me to my feet, which tells you how shaky I was feeling. “Then he lied, Liv. It’s not your power, it’s his.”

  “You fear me now,” she said. “I can feel your fear in my head.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I’m scared. If that makes you happy, then laugh it up.” I started backing away from her. More weapons. I needed more weapons.

  “It does make me happy,” she said. “You’ll never know how happy it makes me.”

  “His power has left you, Liv,” Jean-Claude said.

  “It will return,” she said.

  I was on the other side of the Jeep. I was headed for the back of it, but I didn’t want to be within touching range of Liv right this second. I’d broken free, but I didn’t want to keep pushing my luck.

  “The power may return, Liv, but Anita has broken his bond with you. She has pushed his power aside.”

  “No,” Liv said. “He has chosen to let her go.”

  Jean-Claude laughed and it chased alon
g my body, and I knew that Liv felt it, too. “The Traveler would have kept ma petite, if he could have held her. But he could not. She is too big a fish even for his net.”

  “Liar!” Liv said.

  I left Liv and Jean-Claude to argue between themselves. I’d broken free of the Traveler’s power, but it hadn’t been pretty, or easy. Though come to think of it, as soon as I started to struggle, it had broken. The sad truth was I hadn’t tried to shield myself. I’d stared into Liv’s eyes empty and waiting, confident that she couldn’t roll me. It had been stupid. No—arrogant. Sometimes there isn’t a whole lot of difference between the two.

  I walked to the rear of the Jeep. I crawled in the cargo area. Edward, assassin of the undead, had persuaded me to let an acquaintance of his remodel my Jeep. The wheel well on one side was now a secret compartment. Inside was my extra Browning and extra ammo. I’d felt silly when he’d talked me into it. I didn’t feel silly now. I opened the compartment and found a surprise. A mini-Uzi complete with shoulder strap. There was a note taped to the gun.

  “You can never have too much firepower.”

  He hadn’t signed it, but it was Edward. He’d started his career as a normal assassin, but humans became too easy so he switched to monsters. He did love a challenge. I had another mini-Uzi at home. It had been a gift from Edward, too. He had the best toys.

  I took off the coat and slid the Uzi’s strap across my chest. When I slipped the coat back on, the Uzi hung at my back. Not perfect but not too noticeable. The second Browning Hi-Power was in the compartment, too. I put it in my pocket and two extra clips of ammo in the other pocket. When I slid to the ground, the coat hung funny, but it was so big on me that it wasn’t conspicuous.

  The vampires weren’t arguing anymore. Liv leaned against the Jeep looking sullen, as if Jean-Claude had had the last word, or won the argument.

  I stood watching her. I wanted to shoot her. Not because she’d betrayed us, but because she’d scared me. Not a good enough reason. Besides, it had been my own carelessness that let her scare me. I tried not to punish other people for my mistakes.

  “I can’t let you go unpunished, Liv,” Jean-Claude said. “The council would see it as a weakness.”

  She just looked at him. “Hit me if it will make you feel better, Jean-Claude.” She pushed away from the Jeep and crossed the distance between them with three long strides. She lifted her chin like a bully daring you to take the first swing.

  He shook his head. “No, Liv.” He touched her face gently. “I had something else in mind.” He caressed her face, rubbing his hand along her cheek.

  She sighed, rubbing her face against his palm. Liv had been trying to get into Jean-Claude’s pants since she hit town. She’d never hidden her plan to sleep her way to the top. She’d been very…frustrated that he wouldn’t cooperate.

  She laid a gentle kiss on his palm. “Things could have been so different if it weren’t for your pet human.”

  I walked up behind them and it was like I wasn’t there. They were in some private place that just happened to be in plain sight.

  “No, Liv,” Jean-Claude said, “it would not have been different. It was not Anita that kept you from my bed, it was you.” His hand closed on her throat. His fingers convulsed in her flesh. He made a sharp movement and tore the front of her throat out.

  Liv collapsed to the pavement, choking, blood flowing in a crimson wash down her front, out of her mouth. She rolled onto her back, hands clawing at her throat.

  I came to stand beside him and stared down at her. I caught a glimpse of her spine deep in the wound. Her eyes were wide, pain-filled, frightened.

  Jean-Claude was wiping his hand off on a silk handkerchief he’d pulled from somewhere. He’d flung the gobbets of flesh to the pavement, where they lay looking small and not important enough to die over.

  We both watched her writhing on the pavement. Jean-Claude’s face was that empty mask he wore, beautiful and distant, like trying to draw comfort from the moon. I didn’t have a mirror, and my face would never be his lovely perfection, but it was just as empty. I watched Liv flop on the pavement and felt no pity.

  No cold wind came to save her. I think that surprised Liv, because she reached for Jean-Claude. Reached for him, begging with her eyes for him to help her. He was motionless, sunk into that great waiting stillness, as if he was willing himself to vanish. Maybe it did bother him to watch her die.

  If she’d been human, it would have been pretty fast. But she wasn’t human, and it wasn’t fast. She wasn’t dying. I wasn’t sure it was pity, but I couldn’t just stand there and watch anyone in such pain, such terror.

  I pulled the Browning out of the coat pocket and pointed it at her head. “I’m going to end this.”

  “She will heal, ma petite. It is a wound that her own vampire body will heal, in time.”

  “Why isn’t her new master helping her?” I asked.

  “Because he knows she will heal without his aid.”

  “No wasted energy, huh?”

  “Something like that,” he said. It was hard to tell through the blood, but it did look as if the wound was filling in; there was just so much to fill in.

  “We offer our throat, or wrist, or the bend of our elbow to each other as a formal greeting. The lesser offer up their flesh to the greater as an acknowledgment of power. It is a pretty thing, a polite thing, but this is the reality, ma petite. Liv offered me her throat and I took it.”

  I stared into her wide, wide eyes. “Did she know this was a possibility?”

  “If she did not, then she is a fool. Such violence is never condoned unless the lesser vampire questions the authority of the greater vampire. She questioned my dominance over her. This is the price.”

  Liv turned onto her side, coughing. Her breath rattled in her throat in a painful gasp. Things were re-forming. She was breathing again. When she had enough air to speak, she said, “Damn you, Jean-Claude.” Then she coughed blood. Yummy.

  Jean-Claude held his hand out to me. He’d wiped it off, but you never get the blood out from around the fingernails without soap and water. I hesitated, then took his hand. We’d get bloodier before the night was over, it was almost guaranteed.

  We walked towards the Circus. The coat billowed behind me like a cape. The Uzi bounced lightly against my back. I’d added one extra thing from the glove compartment. A long silver chain with a cross on it. I’d gotten longer chains when I started dating Jean-Claude. The shorter ones spilled out of my clothing at awkward moments. I was loaded for bear, uh, vampire, and ready to go kill something. Edward would have been proud.

  13

  THE SIDE DOOR of the Circus has no handle. The only way in is if someone opens the door. Security measures. Jean-Claude knocked, and the door swung inward at his touch. Open, waiting, expecting us. Ominous.

  The door opened into a small storage room with a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. A stark room with a few boxes against one wall. A door to the right led into the main part of the Circus, where people were usually riding the Ferris wheel and eating cotton candy. A smaller door led off to the left. There were no bright lights and cotton candy in that direction.

  The light swung back and forth as if someone had just hit it. The naked bulb made the shadows thicker, and the light danced until it was hard to tell shadow from light. Something glinted on the left-hand door. Something attached to its surface. I didn’t know what it was, except it glinted dully in the strange light.

  I shoved the door flat against the wall just to make sure no one was behind it. Then I put my back to the door and trained the Browning on the room.

  “Stop the bulb from swinging,” I said.

  Jean-Claude reached up and touched the bulb. He had to stand on tiptoe to do it. Whoever had set it swinging was over six feet.

  “The room is empty, ma petite,” Jean-Claude said.

  “What’s on the door?” It was flat and thin, and my mind couldn’t make a shape out of it. Whatever it was, it was h
ammered to the door with silver nails.

  Jean-Claude let out a long sigh. “Mon Dieu.”

  I crossed the room with the Browning pointed two-handed at the floor. Jean-Claude said the room was empty. I trusted that, but I trusted me more.

  Liv staggered to the door. The front of her body was covered with blood, but her throat was perfect. I wondered if the Traveler had helped her after we walked away. She coughed, and cleared her throat so violently it sounded painful. “I wanted to see your faces when you saw the Master of Beasts’ compromise,” she said. “The Traveler refused to let him and his people greet you in person. This is the Master of Beasts’ calling card. How do you like it?” She sounded eager in a predatory, unpleasant sort of way. What the fuck was on the door?

  Even standing next to it, I didn’t know what it was. Thin rivulets of blood were seeping down the door from it. The sweet metallic scent of blood warmed the stale air. The thing was almost paper thin, but had a consistency more like plastic. It curled at the edges, straining against the five silver nails.

  I suddenly had an awful idea. So awful, my eyes couldn’t see it even after I’d thought it. I took three steps back from the thing and tried to see the silhouette. There; there; two arms, two legs, shoulders. It was a human skin. Once I found the shape of it, I couldn’t stop seeing it. I knew that when I closed my eyes tonight that it would haunt me. That thin stretched thing that used to be a person.

  “Where are the hands and feet?” I asked. My voice sounded strange, distant, almost unattached. My lips and fingertips tingled with the pure horror of it.

  “It is merely the back of someone’s body, not the entire skin, ma petite. Besides, it is hard to take the living skin off of fingers and toes when your victim is still struggling,” Jean-Claude said. His voice was utterly flat, carefully empty.

  “Struggling? You mean whoever this was, was alive?”

  “You are the police expert, ma petite.”

  “It wouldn’t be bleeding this much if they hadn’t been alive,” I said.