“I can kill Jacob, but I can’t do what you’re asking. I can’t do something so terrible that the entire pack would fear me.” He looked at me, and there was a wildness, a panic in his face, like a trapped thing that finally realizes there is no escape.
I could feel my face grow calm, and I felt myself sinking into that place where there is nothing but white noise and the solid, almost comforting surety that I felt nothing. I said, softly, “I can.”
He turned away from me, as if I hadn’t spoken, and called up for them to lower the harness. We slid the harness around Gregory, talking only about the task at hand—no metaphysics, no politics. There was a second harness on the rope, and Richard made me put it on. I’d get to cradle Gregory, protecting him with my body so he didn’t get scraped up too badly.
“I’ve never done this before,” I said.
“I’m too broad through the shoulders to add Gregory’s bulk to mine. It has to be you. Besides, you’ll keep him safe, I know you will.” There was something in his eyes that made me want to say something, but he jerked on the rope and we started rising into the air.
Richard watched us, face upturned, his flashlight casting odd shadows around the small room as he knelt on the bones. Then we were up inside the tunnel, and I couldn’t see him anymore. I had my arms full, literally and figuratively, trying to keep Gregory from crashing into the walls. His arms and legs were still almost useless. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the long confinement or the drugs he’d been given, or both. Probably both.
Gregory kept saying “thank you, thank you, thank you” under his breath.
By the time we reached the top, there were tears drying on my cheeks. Regardless of what Richard decided, someone was going to pay.
Jacob was there, already bound in silver chains, carried like a piece of struggling luggage between three werewolves. They let him keep his cutoff shorts. No nudity for the good guys. I guess there has to be some differences, or how do you tell which side you’re on?
Cherry was already checking Gregory over. She had to keep chasing the other leopards back. They kept trying to touch him.
I stared across the clearing at Jacob. The look in his eyes was enough. Richard could be squeamish if he wanted to be, but if I let what had been done to Gregory stand unchallenged, then Jacob and his followers would see it as weakness. They’d turn and destroy us once Jacob secured his power base. Because there was one way for Jacob to avoid a civil war, and that was by doing what I was encouraging Richard to do. If he did something so terrible that the others were afraid to fight, then he could be Ulfric without a bloodbath. I’d seen what he’d done to Gregory. Call it a hunch, but I was willing to bet Jacob would do what needed doing. He didn’t strike me as the squeamish sort.
Richard climbed out of the hole. “Put him in.”
“Do you want the drugs used?” Sylvie asked.
Richard nodded.
“What about the blindfold and the rest?”
Richard shook his head. “Not necessary.”
Jacob started struggling again. “You can’t do this!”
Richard knelt in front of him, holding him by his thick hair. The grip looked painful. “Who showed you where these were?” He held his hand out with the silver-tipped earplugs in his palm.
“Oh, my God,” Sylvie whispered.
Others asked, “What is it?”
“Who, Jacob? Who told you our dirty little secrets?”
Jacob just stared at him.
“I could have them used on you,” Richard said.
Jacob paled a little, but he didn’t answer. His jaw was so tense that I could see the muscles pulsing, but he didn’t give up who’d helped him. He didn’t even ask if answering the question would save him from the oubliette. I had to admire that, at least, but I didn’t have to like it.
“You wouldn’t do that.” It was Paris, looking a lot less confident than she had by the throne. She looked downright unsure of herself in her skintight dress.
Richard looked at her for a long time, or maybe it just seemed long, and something in his eyes made her look away.
“You’re right, I can’t use them on Jacob, or anyone.” He looked around the clearing at the scattered wolves and at the ones waiting in the trees beyond. “But hear me, if there are anymore of these things around, I want them destroyed. When Jacob comes out of the oubliette, it is to be sealed up forever. You have learned nothing from me, if any of you could do this, you have learned nothing.” He signaled Sylvie, and she came forward with a syringe.
The three werewolves had to hold Jacob against the ground for her to give him the shot. They held him until his limbs went limp and his eyes fluttered shut.
“He’ll wake up in the oubliette,” Richard said. His voice held not just tiredness, but defeat. He turned to me as they carried Jacob towards the hole. “Take your leopards, and your allies, and go home, Anita.”
“I’m lupa, remember, you can’t kick me out of pack business.”
He smiled, but it left his eyes empty and tired. “You’re still lupa, but for tonight you’re also Nimir-Ra, and your leopards need you. Take care of Gregory, and for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about all of this.”
“Sorry is worth something, Richard, but it doesn’t change things.”
“It never does,” he said.
I couldn’t read his mood. He wasn’t sad exactly, or worried, or, anything I had a name for, except defeated. It was like he’d already lost the battle.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I’m going to find out who helped Jacob do this.”
“How?” I asked.
He smiled and shook his head. “Go home, Anita.”
I stood and looked at him for a heartbeat or two, then turned back to my leopards. Gregory was on a stretcher, and Zane and Noah were carrying it. Cherry was talking to the werewolf doctor that had packed Jacob’s nose. She was doing a lot of nodding. Instructions, maybe.
Micah was standing at the edge of the group watching me. I met his eyes, but neither of us smiled. I looked back but Richard was already moving off through the trees with Jamil and Shang-Da at his back. Micah’s face was very neutral as I walked towards him. I wasn’t hopeful anymore. I could have played it cool, but I didn’t want to. I was tired, so terribly tired. My clothes smelled like an outhouse, and probably so did my skin. I wanted a shower, clean clothes, and to make the lost look in Gregory’s eyes go away. The shower and clothes were the easy part. I didn’t even know how to begin to make Gregory’s pain go away.
I held out my hand to Micah, not because of otherworldly energy, apparently depression dampens that, but because I wanted the touch of another hand. I wanted the comfort, and I didn’t want to have to think about it. I just wanted to be held.
He widened his eyes, but took my hand, squeezing it gently. I started walking towards the trees, leading him by the hand. The others followed us. Even the swan king and the wererats. Anita Blake, preternatural pied piper. The thought should have made me smile. But it didn’t.
28
TWO HOURS LATER I’d had a shower and Gregory had had a bath, though I’d showered by myself, and Gregory had had company. He still didn’t have complete use of his arms and legs. I didn’t think that Cherry, Zane, and Nathaniel needed to get naked and in the tub with him, but, hey, I wasn’t offering to help, so who was I to complain? Besides, it never became sexual; it was as if the touch of their flesh on his was necessary, part of the healing process. Maybe it was.
I was sitting at my new kitchen table. My old two-seater table just hadn’t been roomy enough for all the wereleopards to have bagels and cream cheese at the same time. The new table was pale pine, varnished to a golden glow. There still wasn’t enough room at the table for everyone to sit and drink coffee, but it was closer. I’d have needed a banquet table to have that much room, and the kitchen wasn’t long enough for it. There was more than one reason that feudal lords had had great big castles—you needed the room just to fe
ed and care for all your people.
The only person sitting in the dimly lit kitchen was Dr. Lillian. Elizabeth had been transported to the secret hospital that the shapeshifters kept in St. Louis. All my other leopards were tending to Gregory. Micah and his cats wandered around the periphery of it all. Caleb had tried to include himself in the bath and had been refused. The rest of Micah’s pard seemed unsettled, nervous, not knowing what to do with themselves. I had my priority for the evening—taking care of Gregory. Everything else could wait. One disaster at a time, or you lose your way, and your mind.
Dr. Lillian was a small woman with gray hair cut straight just above her shoulders. Her hair was longer than the first time I met her, but everything else was the same. I’d never seen her wear makeup, and her face still looked pleasant and attractive in a fifty-plus sort of way—though I’d discovered she was actually well over sixty. She certainly didn’t look it.
“The drugs are still in his system,” Dr. Lillian said.
“Drugs, plural?” I asked.
She nodded. “Our metabolism is so fast that it takes quite a cocktail of chemicals to keep us sedated for any length of time.”
“Gregory wasn’t sedated. He seemed very much aware of everything that was happening,” I said.
“But his heart, his breathing, his involuntary reflexes were all subdued. If you can’t access the full effects of an adrenaline rush, you can’t change shape.”
“Why not?’
Lillian shrugged, taking a small sip of her coffee. “We don’t know, but there is something in the extremes of the fight or flight response that opens the way for our beast. If you can deprive a shapeshifter of that response, then you can keep them from shifting.”
“Indefinitely?” I asked.
“No, the full moon will bring it on, no matter what drugs you pump into someone.”
“How long until Gregory’s back to normal?”
Her eyes flicked downward, then up, and I didn’t like that she’d needed that second to school her eyes, as if something bad were coming.
“The drugs will probably wear off in about eight hours, maybe more, maybe less. It depends on so many things.”
“So he stays here until the drugs wear off, then he shapeshifts and he’s fine, right?” I put a lilt at the end, making it a question, because I knew the atmosphere was too serious for it to be that easy.
“I’m afraid not,” she said.
“What’s wrong, doc, why so solemn?”
She gave a small smile. “In eight hours the damage to Gregory’s ears may be permanent.”
I blinked at her. “You mean he’ll stay deaf?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not acceptable,” I said.
Her smile widened. “You say that as if by sheer will you can change things, Anita. It makes you seem very young.”
“Are you telling me that there’s nothing we can do to heal him?”
“No, I’m not saying that.”
“Please, doc, just tell me.”
“If you were truly Nimir-Ra, then you might be able to call his beast out of his flesh and force the change, even with the drugs in his system.”
“If someone can tell me how to do it, I’m willing to give it a shot.”
“So you believe that you will be Nimir-Ra in truth come full moon?” Lillian asked.
I shrugged and sipped my coffee. “Not a hundred percent sure, no, but the evidence is sort of mounting up.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“Being Nimir-Ra for real?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I’m trying really hard not to think too much about it.”
“Ignoring it won’t make it go away, Anita.”
“I know that, but worrying about it won’t change things either.”
“Very practical of you, if you can pull it off.”
“What, not worrying?”
She nodded again.
I shrugged. “I’ll worry about each disaster as it happens.”
“Can you really compartmentalize to that degree?”
“How do we fix Gregory?”
“I take that as a yes,” she said.
I smiled. “Yes.”
“As I said, if you were a Nimir-Ra in full power, you might be able to call his beast, even through the drugs.”
“But since I haven’t shifted yet, I can’t?”
“I doubt it. It’s a rather specialized skill, even among full shapeshifters.”
“Can Rafael do it?”
She smiled, the smile that most of the wererats got when you asked about their king. It was a smile that held warmth and pride. They liked and respected him. Let’s hear it for good leadership.
“No.”
That surprised me, and it must have shown on my face.
“I told you, it is a rare talent. Your Ulfric can do it.”
I looked at her. “You mean Richard?”
“Do you have another Ulfric?” she asked, smiling.
I almost smiled back. “No, but we need someone who can call leopards, right?”
She nodded.
“How about Micah?”
“I’ve already asked him. Neither he nor Merle can call another’s beast. Micah did offer to try and heal Gregory by calling flesh, but the injuries are beyond him.”
“When did Micah try and heal Gregory?”
“While you were cleaning up,” she said.
“I took a quick shower.”
“It didn’t take long for him to be certain that Gregory’s injuries were above his abilities.”
“You wouldn’t be belaboring the point if there wasn’t some hope.”
“I can use other drugs to try and overcome the effects.”
“But . . .” I said.
“But the mix of the drugs could explode his heart or rupture enough blood vessels in other major organs to kill him.”
I stared at her for a heartbeat or two. “How bad are the odds?”
“Bad enough that I need his Nimir-Ra’s permission before trying.”
“Has Gregory given his permission?”
“He’s terrifed. He wants to be able to hear again. Of course he wants me to try, but I’m not sure he’s thinking clearly.”
“So you’re coming to me like you’d go to a parent for a child,” I said.
“I need someone who is thinking clearly to make a decision on Gregory’s behalf.”
“He has a brother.” I frowned, because I realized I hadn’t seen Stephen at the lupanar. “Where is Stephen?”
“I’ve been told that the Ulfric ordered Gregory’s brother not to attend tonight. Something about it being unfair for him to watch his own brother be executed. Vivian has gone to get him.”
“My, that was big of Richard.”
“You sound bitter.”
“Do I?” And that sounded bitter even to me. I sighed. “I’m just frustrated, Lillian. Richard is going to get people I care about slaughtered, not to mention himself.”
“Which risks both you and the Master of the City.”
I frowned at her. “I guess everyone does know that part.”
“I think so,” she said.
“Yeah, he’s risking us all for his high moral ideals.”
“Ideals are worth sacrifice, Anita.”
“Maybe, but I’m not a hundred percent sure I’ve ever held an ideal close enough to trade the people I love for it. Ideals can die, but they don’t breathe, they don’t bleed, they don’t cry.”
“So you would trade all your ideals for the people you care about?” she asked.
“I’m not sure I have any ideals anymore.”
“You’re still Christian, aren’t you?”
“My religion isn’t an ideal. Ideals are abstract things that you can’t touch or see. My religion isn’t abstract, it’s very ‘stract,’ very real.”
“You can’t see God,” she said. “You can’t hold Him in your hand.”
“How many angels can dance on the h
ead of a pin, huh?”
She smiled. “Something like that.”
“I’ve held a cross while it flared so bright it blinded me until all the world was just white fire. I’ve seen a copy of the Talmud go up in flames in a vampire’s hands, and even after the book had burned to ash, the vampire kept burning until it died. I’ve stood in the presence of a demon and recited holy script, and the demon could not touch me.” I shook my head. “Religion isn’t an abstract thing, Dr. Lillian, it is a living, breathing, growing, organic thing.”
“Organic sounds more Wiccan than Christian,” she said.
I shrugged. “I’ve been studying with a psychic and some of her Wiccan friends for about a year, hard not to soak some of it up.”
“Doesn’t studying Wicca put you in an awkward position?”
“You mean because I’m a monotheist?”
She nodded.
“I have God-given abilities and not enough training to control those abilities. Most denominations of the church frown on psychics, let alone someone who raises the dead. I need training, so I’ve found people to train me. The fact that they’re not Christian I see as a failing of the church, not a failing of theirs.”
“There are Christian witches,” she said.
“I’ve met some of them. They all seem to be zealots, as if they have to be more Christian than anyone else to prove that they’re good enough to be Christian at all. I don’t like zealots.”
“Neither do I,” she said.
We looked at each other in the darkened kitchen. She raised her coffee mug. I’d given her the one with a tiny knight and a large dragon that said, “No guts, no glory.”
Lillian said, “Down with zealots.”
I raised my own mug in the air. It was the baby penguin mug, still a favorite. “Down with zealots.”
We drank. She set her mug on the coaster and said, “Do I have your permission to try the drugs on Gregory?”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then nodded. “If he agrees, do it.”
She pushed back from the table and stood. “I’ll get everything ready.”
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