Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  18

  I WAS DRESSED by the time Jean-Claude knocked on the bathroom door. His “Ma petite, may I come in?” was uncertain of its welcome. I guess he thought I’d blame him for the ardeur having addicted Graham. There’d been a time, not too long ago, that I might have. But it was too late for blame. Blame wouldn’t fix it, and I wanted it fixed. I wanted Graham free of the ardeur, if we could manage it. I’d freed others of the ardeur, but they’d been completely rolled by it. I’d never had anyone this addicted from such a small piece of it. Or maybe I had, and they were hiding it, too? God, I wish I hadn’t thought of that.

  “Ma petite?”

  “Yes, I mean, come in. God, please come in.”

  The door opened. He stood framed for a moment before I flung myself onto him, burying my face against the furred lapels of his robe. I clutched at the heavy black brocade, pressing myself tight against him. His arms enfolded me, lifted me off the ground and moved us both inside the room. One arm held me close, the other hand reached back and closed the door behind us. The move was so fast I didn’t have time to protest or think about it.

  He let my feet touch the floor. “Ma petite, ma petite, what is so very wrong?”

  “Me,” I said. “I’m wrong.” I spoke calmly, I didn’t yell, I just happened to be talking with my face against his robe.

  He drew me away from him enough for him to see my face. “Ma petite, I felt your distress, but I do not know what has caused it.”

  “Graham is addicted to the ardeur.”

  “When did this happen?” he asked, his face gone to careful blankness. He was probably unsure what expression wouldn’t upset me.

  “I don’t know.”

  He studied my face, and even that careful blankness could not hide his concern. “When did you give Graham a stronger taste of the ardeur?”

  “I didn’t. I swear, I haven’t touched him again. I’ve worked really hard not to touch him.” The words came faster and faster, until even to me it sounded hysterical, but I couldn’t stop.

  Jean-Claude put a finger on my lips and stopped all the protest. “If you have not touched him again, ma petite, then he cannot be addicted to the ardeur.”

  I tried to say something, but he kept his finger touching my mouth. “The fact that Graham wants you is not proof of addiction, ma petite. You underestimate the pull of your sweet self.”

  I shook my head and moved my face back so I could speak. “He’s addicted, damn it. I know the difference between lust and addiction. Ask Clay if you don’t trust me.” I pulled away from him; it didn’t feel comforting to touch him anymore.

  “I trust you, ma petite.” He was frowning now.

  “Then take my word for it. Graham is addicted, and I don’t know when it happened. Do you understand? I’ve avoided him. I’ve done everything I can to keep him away from the ardeur and still let him be a bodyguard. Today I tried to fire him from my guard detail.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He was panic stricken. He was nearly in tears. I’ve never seen him like that. He only calmed down when I told him I wouldn’t replace him on my detail.”

  “The ardeur is not so easily caught, ma petite. The few touches that Graham has had are not enough to addict him.”

  “I saw it!” I was pacing the room now.

  “I think you need a cross, ma petite.”

  “What?” I asked.

  He went to the door, opened it. “Could you please get one of the extra crosses out of the bedside table?”

  I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror. The red shirt seemed to blaze against my pale skin and dark hair. The scarlet seemed to be some sort of accusation like a scarlet woman, the scarlet letter. The last thought stopped me, as if the hysteria had hit a stumbling block. I could think for a second. Scarlet woman, the Scarlet Letter; this wasn’t me thinking. Shit. I was being messed with.

  My gun and holster were still beside the sink; I hadn’t had time to put it on before Jean-Claude came. I put my hand on the butt of the gun and squeezed. That was me; I was me. The gun wasn’t a magical talisman, but sometimes all you need to get someone out of your head is to remind yourself who you are—who you really are, not who they think you are, or who they think you think you are, but you, the real you. The gun in my hand was me.

  “Ma petite, I would prefer you step away from the gun until you are wearing a cross.”

  I nodded. “I’m being messed with, aren’t I?”

  “I believe so.”

  “It’s daylight, early daylight. If the vampires that are messing with us are in town, they shouldn’t be able to do this.”

  “They are the Harlequin, ma petite; now you begin to see what that means.”

  I nodded again, clutching at the gun as I’d cluthced at Jean-Claude earlier.

  “Ma petite, if you would step away from the gun?”

  “The gun is helping, Jean-Claude. It’s reminding me that all the hysterics isn’t me.”

  “Humor me, ma petite.”

  I looked at him. His face was still that beautiful blankness, but there was a tension to his shoulders, the way he held his body. Clay was behind him in the doorway, and he wasn’t even trying to hide that he was worried. “I’ve got the cross,” he said.

  I nodded again. “Give it to me.”

  He glanced at Jean-Claude, who nodded. Clay walked forward with his hand in a fist. “You may want to step outside, Jean-Claude,” he said.

  “I cannot leave you alone with her.”

  “Won’t the cross react to you?”

  “Non, for I am doing nothing to her.”

  I held my left hand out toward Clay. “Just give me the cross.”

  “By the chain,” Jean-Claude said.

  “Good thinking,” I said. “I don’t need another cross-shaped burn scar.”

  Clay held his fist out to me, then opened it so that the cross dangled from a thin gold chain. If a vampire had been in the room causing trouble, that would have been enough to make the cross glow. Hell, even in Clay’s hand, it might have glowed. The cross just hung there. Were we wrong? Was I wrong?

  “Touch only the chain, ma petite. Caution is better.”

  If he hadn’t repeated that, I might have just grabbed the cross, but at the last second I touched the chain. Clay let it go, and it swung, delicate and golden, in my hand. For a heartbeat, I thought we’d been wrong. Then the cross burst into a brilliant yellow glow. I had to turn my eyes away from it. I had a thought of what it might be doing to Jean-Claude, but I could see nothing past the golden light. I called to him. “Jean-Claude!”

  A male voice that I wasn’t sure of said, “He’s out of the room. He’s safe.”

  I yelled, “Clay, Claudia!” I wanted a voice I knew out of the brilliant yellow light.

  Claudia’s voice, a little farther away. “Clay got Jean-Claude out.”

  With that worry out of the way, I could concentrate on the other problem. If the vampire that had been messing with me was in the room, then the cross would have driven him away. Hell, when Marmee Noir messed with me, a cross like this had driven her away. So why wasn’t this working on the Harlequin?

  The chain grew warm in my hand. If this kept up it would get hot. Shit. If I threw the cross down, it would stop glowing, but would the vampire attack again? Would he enter my mind again, without my knowing it? God, these guys were good. Scary good.

  “Anita, what can I do to help?” The man’s voice again. I recognized the voice now: Jake, one of our newer bodyguards.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I yelled it, as if the light were sound and I was having trouble hearing over it. I prayed, Help me, help me figure this out. I don’t know if it was the prayer, or if the prayer helped me think; chicken/egg, I think, but I knew what to do. With the cross blazing in my hand I could feel the vampire, now that I thought to look for it. I was a necromancer, and that meant I had an affinity with the dead. I could feel the other’s power like a seed in my back. As if he’d mark
ed me somehow. That seed had let him inside me over and over since the movies last night. I wanted that seed gone.

  I thrust my power into that spot, but I should have known better. With Jean-Claude’s power I might have just ripped it out of me, cast it aside, but my power was different. My power liked the dead.

  I touched the mark the vampire had made in my body. I didn’t understand how he’d done it, and I didn’t care. I wanted it gone. But the moment my necromancy touched it, it was as if a door blew open inside my head. I caught a glimpse of stone walls and a male figure. I smelled wolf. I tried to see clearly, but it was as if darkness ate at the edges of the picture. I concentrated on that image, willed it to be clear. Willed the man to turn and show me…He turned, but there was no face. I was looking at a black mask with a huge false nose. I thought for a moment I could see his eyes, then the eyes filled with silver light, almost a soft light. Then that soft, silver light shot out of the mask and slammed into me. I came back to myself airborne, falling. I didn’t even have time to be afraid.

  19

  I HAD A blurred image of black marble, glass. A second to realize that I was about to hit the mirrors around Jean-Claude’s tub. I tried to both tense and relax for the impact. A dark blur passed me, and when I smacked into the mirrors, there was a body behind me. A body that wrapped itself around me and took the impact as we hit the glass and the wall underneath. I heard the glass break, and we slid in a heap at the edge of the tub. I lay there, stunned, breath knocked out of me. It suddenly seemed very important to hear my own heartbeat. I blinked at nothing for a moment or two. Only when the body under me groaned did I turn my head enough to see, in the mirrors that weren’t cracked, who I’d landed on. Jake lay in a heap against the spiderweb cracks of the glass. He was one of the newest members of Richard’s pack, though not new to being a werewolf, and had only been a bodyguard for a few weeks. His eyes were closed; blood trickled down from his short, dark curls. He wasn’t moving. I gazed up, past us, and saw that some of the jagged pieces were missing. There was a huge piece that sparkled as it moved away from the wall and begin to fall toward us. I grabbed Jake and pulled with everything I had. I pulled like I didn’t expect him to move, but I forgot that I was more than human strong. I pulled, and he moved, moved so hard and sudden that we ended up in the bathtub. I was suddenly underwater with his weight on top of me. Before I could panic, he startled awake, grabbing my arms, and jerked us both to the surface. We came up gasping, as the glass tinkled like sharp raindrops where we’d just been lying.

  “Shit!” This from the doorway.

  I blinked water out of my eyes to see Claudia in the room. There were more guards crowding in behind her. Claudia strode into the room and lifted me bodily out of the tub. Other hands lifted Jake. He fell to his knees when they got him out. It took two of them to carry him into the bedroom. I walked on my own, but Claudia kept her hand on my arm. I think she expected me to collapse, too. Other than being wet, everything seemed to be working. But I didn’t bother telling her to let go of me, with the grip she had…. Call it a hunch, but she wouldn’t have done it anyway. I’d learned to argue carefully with Claudia; it upped my chances of winning the arguments.

  Claudia half-led, half-pulled me into the bedroom. The room was nearly black with bodyguards. A handful of red shirts stood out like berries in a muffin—though “muffin” didn’t quite cover the level of adrenaline-charged readiness. There was so much tension it felt as if I should have been able to walk across it. Some of them had guns out, pointed at the floor or ceiling.

  I stood there dripping wet, searching the crowd for Jean-Claude. As if she understood what I was doing, Claudia said, “I sent Jean-Claude outside. He’s safe, Anita, I promise.”

  Graham stepped out from the crowd. “We thought it might be a plot to hurt him.” He looked and sounded fine now. There was no sign of the earlier panic.

  “How you feeling?” I asked.

  He gave me a puzzled grin. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

  A chill ran through me that had nothing to do with standing wet in the colder air. “You don’t remember, do you?”

  “Remember what?” he asked.

  “Shit,” I said.

  Claudia turned me toward her. “What’s going on, Anita?”

  “Hang on a minute, okay?”

  Her grip on my arm tightened enough that it hurt. She probably could have crushed it if she’d been this muscled and human, but combine the workout with being a wererat and she was very strong.

  “Watch the grip, Claudia,” I said.

  She let me go and wiped her hand against her jeans to get rid of the water. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. A sound of ripping cloth took my attention from Graham. Jake was on his knees by the armoire. Someone had ripped his shirt down the back. The bare back was bleeding, a lot. Cisco, one of the youngest of the wererats, was picking glass out of that once-smooth skin. Jake was a werewolf, and he was this hurt. It meant that if it had been my back, I’d be going to the hospital.

  “Thanks, Jake,” I said.

  “Just doing my job, ma’am.” His voice hesitated at the end as Cisco and another guard started picking glass out of him.

  “Did anyone check his scalp for glass?” Claudia asked.

  No one said yes. She called out, “Juanito, check him for glass.”

  Juanito was another newer guard. I’d been introduced to some of them when the word went out that we needed more men, but the tall, dark, handsome man was a stranger to me. I’d nodded at him, that was about it. At least Jake had been here a few weeks. Juanito meant “little Juan,” but he didn’t match his name. He was six feet at least, slender but muscular. He was not a little anything, as far as I could tell.

  “I’m not a medic,” he said.

  “I didn’t ask,” Claudia said.

  He just stood there staring at her, clearly not happy.

  “I gave you an order. Follow it,” she said. I hadn’t heard that tone in Claudia’s voice often. If I’d been him I’d have done what she said.

  He moved to the kneeling werewolf and started picking through the wet curls. He didn’t do it like his heart was in it, though. Cisco and the other guard seemed to be taking their job seriously.

  Graham brought a large towel from the bathroom and started picking up the bloody pieces of glass that were already on the floor. Cisco and the others started dropping the glass onto the towel. It looked like red rain and sharp little pieces of hail.

  “How bad is Jake hurt?” I asked Claudia.

  “Not bad, but we don’t want the skin healing over the glass.”

  “That happen often?” I asked.

  “Often enough,” she said.

  I looked back at the men and found that Jake’s back was smoothing even as I watched. “Is it just me or is he healing fast even for a shapeshifter?”

  “It’s not just you,” Claudia said. “He heals faster than almost anyone I’ve ever met.”

  The three guards were searching frantically along his body, trying to stay ahead of his skin as it flowed over the wounds. Juanito had gotten over his reluctance and was now searching Jake’s hair with fumbling fingers, desperately searching through the curls. “I’m not going to get them all! He’s healing too fast!”

  “The glass you miss, you get to cut out,” Claudia said.

  “Shit,” he said, and worked faster.

  Jake made almost no sound while everyone picked at his wounds. He stayed silent and motionless under their hands. I’d have been cursing and at least flinching.

  Graham had apparently picked up all the stray glass he could find, because he wiped his fingers on the towel and stood up.

  “Graham, you wearing a holy item?” I hoped he’d say no.

  “No,” he said.

  Relief flooded through me, and I shivered. I was cold from the wet clothes and the reaction to the accident. No, not accident. The Harlequin had tried to kill me. Fuck. I hadn’t understood; even with every
one’s warnings, I hadn’t understood. I was like a kid who’d poked a kitten with a stick and found a tiger staring at me.

  “Talk to us, Anita,” Claudia said.

  There were so many people in the room that they couldn’t all know about the Harlequin. How to explain without overexplaining? “The bad guys messed with Graham, a lot, and he doesn’t remember it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Graham asked. “No one’s messed with me.”

  “Ask Clay,” I said. “He saw it, too.”

  Claudia hit the radio in her hand and called for Clay to join us when he could. Then she turned to me. “From the top, Anita, all of it.”

  “I can’t give you all of it until I talk to Jean-Claude.”

  “This cloak-and-dagger shit is getting old.” This from Fredo: slender, not too tall, and dangerous. He was the only wererat who carried a gun sometimes but preferred knives, lots of them.

  “For me, too,” I said, “but you guys have to know about Graham now, not later.”

  “We’re listening,” Claudia said. She was very serious, almost threatening. She didn’t like the cloak-and-dagger stuff either. I didn’t blame her.

  I told them, though I toned it down for Graham’s embarrassment’s sake.

  Claudia said, “A vampire, in daylight, from a distance, messed with Graham?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “That shouldn’t be possible,” she said.

  “Not in daylight, from a distance, no, it shouldn’t be.”

  “You’re telling me as a vampire executioner that you’ve never seen anything like this?”

  I started to say no, then stopped. “I’ve had a few Masters of the City mess with me from a distance when I was sleeping, and in their territory.”

  “But that was at night,” she said.

  “True,” I said.