The Scoundrel

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "So what exactly does this mean to me personally?"

  Jean-Claude smiled, but there was an edge of tiredness to it. Was he bored? Or angry? Or just tired? "You must fight Marguerite. If you win, then Yasmeen is yours. If you lose, Yasmeen is Marguerite's."

  "Wait a minute," I said. "What sort of fight, pistols at dawn?"

  "No weapons," Yasmeen said. "My Marguerite is not skilled in weapons. I don't want her hurt."

  "Then stop tormenting her," I said.

  Yasmeen smiled. "It is part of the fun."

  "Sadistic bitch," I said.

  "Yes, I am."

  Jesus, some people you couldn't even insult. "So you want us to fight bare-handed over Yasmeen?" I couldn't believe I was even asking this question.

  "Yes, ma petite."

  I took a deep breath, looked at my gun, looked back at the screaming woman, then holstered my gun. "Is there any way out of this, besides fighting her?"

  "If you admit you are my human servant, then there will be no fight. There will be no need for one." Jean-Claude was watching me, studying my face. His eyes were very still.

  "You mean this was a setup," I said. The first warm rumblings of anger chased up my gut.

  "A setup, ma petite? I had no idea Yasmeen would find you so enticing."

  "Bullshit!"

  "Admit you are my human servant and all ends here."

  "And if I don't?"

  "Then you fight Marguerite."

  "Fine," I said. "Let's do it."

  "What would it cost you to admit what is true, Anita?" Jean-Claude asked.

  "I am not your human servant. I will never be your human servant. I wish you'd just accept that and leave me the fuck alone."

  He frowned. "Ma petite, such language."

  "Fuck off."

  He smiled then. "As you like, ma petite." He sat up on the edge of the couch, maybe so he could see better. "Yasmeen, any time you are ready."

  "Wait," I said. I took off my jacket and wasn't sure where to lay it.

  The man who had been sleeping on the black-canopied bed reached a hand through the black gauze. "I'll hold it for you," he said.

  I stared at him for a minute. He was naked from the waist up. His arms, stomach, chest showed signs of weightlifting, just enough, not too much. He either had a perfect tan or was naturally dark complected. Hair fell in a wavy mass around his shoulders. His eyes were brown and very human. That was nice to see.

  I handed him my jacket. He smiled, a quick flash of teeth that chased the last signs of sleep from his face. He sat up with the jacket in one hand, arms encircling his knees that were still hidden under the black and red covers. He laid his cheek on his knees and managed to look winsome.

  "Are you quite done, ma petite?" Jean-Claude's voice was amused, with an edge of laughter that wasn't humor at all. It was mockery. But whether he was mocking me or himself, I couldn't tell.

  "I'm ready, I guess," I said.

  "Put her down, Yasmeen. Let us see what happens."

  I heard Stephen say, "Twenty on Marguerite."

  Yasmeen said, "No fair. I can't bet against my own human servant."

  "I'll spot you both twenty that Ms. Blake wins." That came from the man in the bed. I had a second to glance at him, to see him smile at me; then Marguerite was coming.

  She slapped at my face, and I blocked it with my forearm. She fought like a girl, all open-handed slaps and fingernails. But she was fast, faster than a human. Maybe she got that from being a human servant, I don't know. Her fingernails raked down my face in a sharp, painful line. That was it: no more Ms. Nice Guy.

  I held her off with one hand. She dug her teeth into that hand. I hit her with my right fist as hard as I could, turning my body into it. It was a nice solid hit to the solar plexus.

  Marguerite stopped biting my hand and bent over, hands covering her stomach. She was gasping for breath. Good.

  My left hand had a bloody imprint of her teeth in it. I touched my left cheek and came away with more blood. Damn, that hurt.

  Marguerite knelt on the floor, relearning how to breathe. But she was staring up at me. The look in her blue eyes said the fight wasn't over. As soon as she got her breath back, she would start again.

  "Stay down, Marguerite, or I'll hurt you."

  She shook her head.

  "She can't give up, ma petite, or you win Yasmeen's body, if not her heart."

  "I don't want her body. I don't want anyone's body."

  "Now, that is simply not true, ma petite," Jean-Claude said.

  "Stop calling me ma petite."

  "You bear two of my marks, Anita. You are halfway to being my human servant. Admit that, and no one else need suffer tonight."

  "Yeah, right," I said.

  Marguerite was getting to her feet. I didn't want her on her feet. I moved in before she could stand, and foot-swept her legs out from under her. I forced her shoulders backwards at the same time, and I rode her down. I got her right arm in a joint lock. She tried to get up. I increased the pressure, and she lay back down.

  "Give up the fight."

  "No." It was only the second coherent thing I'd heard her utter.

  "I will break your arm."

  "Break it, break it! I don't care." Her face was wild, enraged. God. There was no way to reason with her. Great.

  Using the joint lock as a lever, I turned her over on her stomach, increasing the pressure to almost breaking, but not quite. Breaking her arm might not stop the fight. I wanted it over with.

  I used my leg and one arm to keep the joint lock on but knelt over her upper body, until my weight would keep her pinned. I took a handful of yellow hair and pulled her neck back. I released her arm and brought my right arm across her neck, with my elbow in front of her Adam's apple and the arm squeezing the arteries on both sides of her neck. I put my right hand on my left wrist and squeezed.

  She scratched at my face, but I buried my eyes in her back and she couldn't reach me. She was making small, helpless sounds because she didn't have enough air to make big ones.

  Her hands scratched at my right arm, but the sweater was thick. She pushed the sleeve up, exposing my bare arm, and began to shred the skin with her nails. I buried my face deeper into her back and squeezed until my arms shook and I was gritting my teeth. Everything I had was in that one arm, pressing into her slender throat.

  Her hands stopped scratching me. They beat against my arm like dying butterflies.

  It takes a long time to choke someone into unconsciousness. The movies make it look easy, quick, clean. It isn't easy, it isn't quick, and it sure as hell isn't clean. You can feel the pulse on either side of the neck pounding against your arm while you squeeze the life out of it. The person struggles a lot more than in the movies. And as far as choking someone to death, you better hold on for a long time after they stop moving.

  Marguerite went slowly limp, a body part at a time. When she was just dead weight in my arms, I let her go, slowly. She lay on the floor unmoving. I couldn't even see her breathe. Had I squeezed too long?

  I touched her neck and found the carotid pulse strong and even. Just out of it, not dead. Good.

  I stood and walked back towards the bed.

  Yasmeen went to her knees beside Marguerite's still form. "My love, my only one, has she hurt you?"

  "She's just unconscious," I said. "She'll come to in a few minutes."

  "If you had killed her, I would have torn your throat out."

  I shook my head. "Let's not start this shit again. I've had about all the grandstanding I can take for one night."

  The man in bed said, "You're bleeding."

  Blood was dripping down my right forearm. Marguerite may not have been able to do any real damage, but the scratches were deep enough that some of them might leave scars. Great; I already had a long, thin scar on the underside of my right arm from a knife. Even with the scratches, my right arm had fewer scars than my left. Work-related injuries.

  Blood was dripping down my arm r
ather steadily. The blood didn't show on the black carpeting. A good color if you planned to bleed much in a room.

  Yasmeen was helping Marguerite to her feet. The woman had recovered very quickly. Why? Because she was a human servant, of course. Sure.

  Yasmeen walked towards the bed, towards me. Her lovely face had thinned until the bones showed through. Her eyes were bright, almost feverish. "Fresh blood, and I haven't fed tonight."

  "Control yourself, Yasmeen."

  "You have not taught your servant good manners, Jean-Claude," Yasmeen said. She was looking very unkindly at me.

  "Leave her alone, Yasmeen." Jean-Claude was standing now.

  "Every servant must be tamed, Jean-Claude. You have let it go far too long."

  I looked over Yasmeen's shoulder at him. "Tamed?"

  "It is an unfortunate stage in the process," he said. His voice was neutral, as if he were talking about taming a horse.

  "Damn you." I pulled my gun. I held it two-handed in a teacup grip. Nobody was taming me tonight.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone stand up on the other side of the bed. The man was still under the covers. It was a slender woman, her skin the color of coffee with cream. Her black hair was cut very close to her head. She was naked. Where the hell had she come from?

  Yasmeen was about a yard from me, tongue playing over her lips, fangs glistening in the overhead light.

  "I'll kill you, do you understand that, I'll kill you," I said.

  "You'll try."

  "Fun and games aren't worth dying for," I said.

  "After a few hundred years, that's all that is worth dying for."

  "Jean-Claude, unless you want to lose her, call her off!" My voice was higher than I wanted it to be, afraid.

  At this range the bullet should take out her entire chest. If it worked, there would be no resurrecting her as the undead; her heart would be gone. Of course, she was over five hundred years old. One shot might not do it. Lucky I had more than one bullet.

  I caught movement from the corner of my eye. I was half-turned towards it when something flattened me to the ground. The black woman was on top of me. I brought the gun around to fire, not giving a damn if she was human or not. But her hand grabbed my wrists, squeezing. She was going to crush my wrists.

  She snarled in my face, all teeth and a low growl. The sound should have had fur around it and pointy teeth. Human faces weren't supposed to look that way.

  The woman jerked the Browning out of my hands like taking candy from a baby. She held it wrong, like she didn't know which end of the gun went where.

  An arm came around her waist and pulled her backwards off me. It was the man on the bed. The woman turned on him, snarling.

  Yasmeen leapt for me. I scooted backwards, putting the wall at my back. She smiled. "Not so tough without your weapon, are you?"

  She was suddenly kneeling in front of me. I hadn't seen her come, not even a blur of motion. She appeared beside me like magic.

  She had her body up against my knees, pinning me to the wall. Yasmeen dug her fingers into my upper arms and jerked me towards her. Her strength was incredible. She made the black shapeshifter seem fragile.

  "Yasmeen, no!" It was Jean-Claude coming to my aid at last. But he was going to be too late. Yasmeen bared her teeth, raised her neck back for the strike, and I couldn't do a damn thing.

  She pulled me in tight against her, arms locked behind my back. If I'd been pressed any tighter I'd have come out on the other side.

  I screamed, "Jean-Claude!"

  Heat; something was burning inside my sweater, over my heart. Yasmeen hesitated. I felt her whole body shudder. What the hell was happening?

  A tongue of blue-white flame curled up between us. I screamed and Yasmeen echoed it. We screamed together as we burned.

  She fell away from me. Blue-white flame crawled over her shirt. Flames licked around a hole in my sweater. I shrugged out of the shoulder holster and pulled the burning sweater off.

  My cross still burned with an intense blue-white flame. I jerked the chain and it snapped. I dropped the cross to the carpet, where the flames smoldered, then died.

  There was a perfect cross-shaped burn on my chest, just above my breast, over the beat of my heart. The burn was covered in blisters already. A second-degree burn.

  Yasmeen had ripped her own blouse off. She had an identical burn, but lower down between her breasts because she was taller than I was.

  I knelt on the floor in just my bra and jeans. Tears were trailing down my face. I had a bigger cross-shaped burn scar on my left forearm. A vampire's human followers had branded me, thinking it was funny. They'd laughed right up to the minute I killed them.

  A burn is a bitch. Inch for inch, a burn hurts worse than any other injury.

  Jean-Claude stood in front of me. The cross glowed a white-hot light, no flames, but then he wasn't touching it. I looked up to find him shielding his eyes with his arm.

  "Put it away, ma petite. No one else will harm you tonight, I promise you that."

  "Why don't you just back off and let me decide what I'm going to do?"

  He sighed. "I was childish to let it get so far out of hand, Anita. Forgive me for my foolishness." It was hard to take the apology seriously while he cowered behind his arm, not daring to look at my glowing cross. But it was an apology. From Jean-Claude, that was a lot.

  I picked the cross up by its chain. I had broken the clasp getting it off. I'd need a new chain before it could go around my neck again. I picked my sweater up in my other hand. There was a melted hole bigger than my fist in it. Right over the chest area. The sweater was ruined. No help there. Where do you hide a glowing cross when you aren't wearing a shirt?

  The man in the bed handed my leather jacket to me. I met his eyes and saw in them concern, a little fear. His brown eyes were very close to me, and very human. It was comforting, and I wasn't even sure why.

  The shoulder holster was flopping down around my waist like suspenders. I shrugged back into the straps. They felt strange next to my bare skin.

  The man handed me my gun, butt first. The black shapeshifter stood on the other side of the bed, still naked, glaring at us. I didn't care how he'd gotten my gun from her. I was just glad to have it back.

  With the Browning in its holster, I felt safer, though I'd never tried wearing a shoulder holster over bare skin. I suspected it was going to chafe. Oh, well, nothing's perfect.

  The man held out a handful of Kleenex to me. The red sheets had slid down, exposing a long nude line of his body to about mid-thigh. The sheet was perilously close to failing off him all together. "Your arm," he said.

  I stared down at my right arm. It was still bleeding a little. It hurt so much less than the burn, I had forgotten about it.

  I took the Kleenex and wondered what he was doing here. Had he been having sex with the naked woman, the shapeshifter? I hadn't seen her in the bed. Had she been hiding under it?

  I cleaned up my arm as best I could; didn't want to bleed too heavily on the leather jacket. I slipped the jacket on, and put the stillglowing cross in my left pocket. Once it was hidden, the glow would stop. The only reason Yasmeen and I had gotten in trouble was that the sweater had a loose weave and her top had left a lot of bare flesh. Vampire flesh touching a blessed cross was always volatile.

  Jean-Claude stared down at me, now that the cross was safely hidden. "I am sorry, ma petite. I did not mean to frighten you tonight." He held one hand down towards me. The skin was paler than the white lace that covered it.

  I ignored his outstretched hand and used the bed to help me stand.

  He lowered his hand slowly. His dark blue eyes were very still, looking at me. "It never works as I want it to with you, Anita Blake. Why is that?"

  "Maybe you should take the hint, and leave me alone."

  He smiled, a bare movement of lips. "I'm afraid it is too late for that."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  The door swung open, banging ag
ainst the wall and bouncing back. A man stood in the doorway, eyes wide, sweat running down his face. "Jean-Claude . . . the snake." He seemed to be having trouble breathing, as if he had run all the way up the stairs.

  "What about the snake?" Jean-Claude asked.

  The man swallowed, his breathing slowing. "It's gone crazy."

  "What happened?"

  The man shook his head. "I don't know. It attacked Shahar, its trainer. She's dead."

  "Is it in the crowd?"

  "Not yet."

  "We will have to finish this discussion later, ma petite." He moved for the door, and the rest of the vampires followed at his heels. Stephen went with them. Well trained.

  The slender black woman slipped a loose dress, black with red flowers on it, over her head. A pair of red high heels and she was out the door.

  The man was out of the bed, naked. There was no time to be embarrassed. He was struggling into a pair of sweats.

  This wasn't my problem, but what if the cobra got into the crowd? Not my problem. I zipped the jacket up enough to hide the fact I was shirtless but not so high up I couldn't draw my gun.

  I was out the door and into the bright open space of the tent before the nameless man had slipped on his sweat pants. The vampires and shapeshifters were at the edge of the ring, fanning out into a circle around the snake. It filled the small ring with black-and-white coils. The bottom half of a man in a glittering loincloth was disappearing down the cobra's throat. That's what had kept it out of the crowd. It was taking time to feed.

  Sweet Jesus.

  The man's legs twitched, kicking convulsively. He couldn't be alive. He couldn't be. But the legs twitched as they slid out of sight. Please, God, let it just be a reflex. Don't let him still be alive. The thought was worse than any nightmare I could remember. And I have a lot of material for nightmares.

  The monster in the ring wasn't my problem. I didn't have to be the bloody hero this time. People were screaming, running, arms full of children. Popcorn bags and cotton candy were getting crushed underfoot. I waded into the crowd and began pushing my way down. A woman carrying a toddler fell at my feet. A man climbed over them. I dragged the woman to her feet. taking the baby in one arm. People shoved past us. We shuddered just trying to stand still. I felt like a rock in the middle of a raging river.