Jason raised his face slowly. The shotgun tapped his cheek almost gently. “My brother Mel sends his regards.”
I rolled my eyes to look past the shotgun. The man was wearing a black T-shirt with a Harley logo on it. His belly hung out over his belt. There was a family resemblance.
I said very calmly, each word careful but not scared, “What do you want?”
Mel’s brother laughed.
The first man joined him.
They stood over us with the guns and laughed. Not a good sign. Where the fuck was Jamil?
“Get off of her real slow,” the first man said. The rifle was at his shoulder now, snuggled against his chin like he knew what he was doing.
Jason leaned over me until I was as hidden as I could get under his body. Being short made it hard for him to shield me completely.
I told him. “Get off of me.”
“No,” he said. He’d seen the shotgun, too. And I realized he understood what it meant. I was not going to let him die a hero. I was certainly not going to let him die by spattering his brains all over me. Some things you recover from. Some things you don’t. Wiping Jason’s brains off my face might be one of the latter.
I let go of the knife in my right hand, letting the blade lie in the leaves. It took everything I had not to tighten my grip on the one in my left. I tried to keep my hand very still. In the dark, they might not notice. They hadn’t, so far.
“Get off of her,” the man repeated, “or I will shoot you both where you lay.”
“Off, Jason,” I said softly.
He moved enough so we could see each other’s eyes. I looked to my right at the rifleman. Then I touched my chest and looked at Mel’s brother. I was trying to tell him that the rifle was his problem and the shotgun was mine. I hoped he understood. Either he did, or he had his own plan, because he raised very slowly and got to his knees. I sat up, not too fast, not too slow. I kept my left hand in the leaves, knife gripped tightly.
The rifleman said, “Hands on your head, boy.”
Jason didn’t argue. He just clasped his hands on his head like he’d done it before.
No one told me to put my hands on my head, so I didn’t. If we were lucky, they’d treat me like a girl. The rifleman had been unconscious when I hurt Mel. The one with the shotgun hadn’t been there. What had Mel told them?
The rifleman said, “Remember me, asshole?”
“Is he asking you or me?” I asked. I scooted in the leaves a little closer to the guy with the shotgun.
“Don’t get cute, chickie,” the rifleman said. “We came here for both of you, but I want my piece of this one first.”
Jason flicked his eyes to me. “You must be losing some of your charm, Anita. He wants a piece of me instead of you.”
The rifleman had the rifle aimed very steadily at the middle of Jason’s chest. If it were silver ammo, he was gone. The rifleman said, “Chuck.”
Chuck, the one with the shotgun, grabbed my left arm. I opened my hand and let the knife fall before he raised my hand free of the leaves. The rifle was too steady on Jason for me to try stabbing Chuck. If I were lucky, I’d get another chance. If I wasn’t, I was going to come back and haunt Jamil.
Chuck’s hands were big and meaty. Thick fingers dug into my arm enough that if I lived, I’d be bruised.
“If you don’t do exactly what I say, your girlfriend gets it.”
I wanted to say, “Who writes your dialogue?” but I didn’t. The shotgun hovered about an inch from my cheek. Pretty clear what it was. I could smell the oil in the gun barrels. It had been cleaned recently. Nice to know ol’ Chuck took care of his weapon.
The rifleman did two things almost at once: He stepped forward and reversed his gun. The rifle butt smashed into Jason’s chin. Jason swayed but didn’t fall.
The rifle stabbed at him again, catching him high on one cheekbone. Blood spilled in a black line.
I must have moved, because the shotgun was suddenly pressed against my cheek. “Don’t do it, bitch.”
I swallowed and spoke very carefully with the cool metal against my face. “Do what?”
“Anything,” he said. He jerked my arm for emphasis, grinding the shotgun into my cheek.
The rifleman said, “The doc said you could have broken my spine. Said I was lucky. I am going to hurt you, asshole, then I’m going to kill you. If you take it like a man, I’ll let the girl go. You wimp out, and I do you both.” He smashed the rifle into Jason’s mouth. Blood and something heavier flew shining in the moonlight. The beating began in earnest.
I’d seen people hurt on the judo mat. I’d gone to martial arts tournaments. I’d even been knocked out a couple of times for real by bad guys. But I’d never seen a real beating, not like this. It was methodical, thorough, professional.
Jason made no move to protect himself. He never cried out. He just knelt in the leaves and took it. His face was covered in blood. His eyes fluttered, and I knew he was close to passing out. I had to do something before he lost it.
Through it all, Chuck had kept the shotgun pressed to my face so hard I knew I’d have the imprint of it on my skin. He never wavered, never gave me any chance to do anything. I was beginning to think that Chuck wasn’t an amateur. I’d given up on Jamil or anyone else. It was just the four of us in the darkened woods. Just the smack of the rifle hitting flesh. The sound of the rifleman’s grunt of effort as he tried to make Jason cry out.
Jason finally slipped to his side. He tried to keep his hands up, but he couldn’t. He leaned on his arms in the leaves. There was a fine, visible trembling in his upper body. He was fighting to stay upright.
“Beg me to stop,” the rifleman said. “Beg me, and maybe I’ll just shoot you. Beg me to stop, or I will fucking beat you to death.”
I believed him. I think Jason did, too, because he just shook his head. He knew if he gave the man what he wanted, he would finish it.
I felt something, a prickling rush of warmth. It was Richard. He was out there somewhere. He opened the mark inside my body. It flowed over my skin and across Chuck’s hand. “What the fuck was that?” he asked.
I didn’t move or say anything.
“Answer me, bitch, you trying some magic shit on me?” He pushed the shotgun in even harder. If he kept it up, he was just going to shove it through my cheek.
“Wasn’t me,” I said.
He jerked me to my knees, and the shotgun wasn’t pressed into me anymore. It was pointed out into the darkness for just a second. It was one of those moments. Everything slowed down, as if I had all the time in the world to draw the big knife down my back. The knife cleared the sheath. The shotgun and Chuck turned back towards me. I used the momentum of drawing the blade to swing it down and across. I felt the tip catch Chuck’s throat, and knew it wasn’t a killing blow. Something fell from the trees above us. A shadow only a little more solid than the rest. The shotgun’s barrels were like two dark tunnels pointed at my face.
I heard the rifle behind me, but there was no time to look for Jason. There was just the gun pointed at my face, the shadow that I didn’t have time to look up and see.
The shadow fell between us. The shadow had fur. The shotgun exploded on the other side of that furred shadow. The lycanthrope staggered backwards but didn’t fall. The shotgun exploded again, both barrels. Before the echoes died, I was scrambling through the leaves, around the lycanthrope. Chuck’s eyes were wild, showing white, but he had the shotgun broken down across his left arm. The two spent shells were gone and two more were being shoved into the breech. He was good.
I shoved the blade just under his big shiny belt buckle. A shudder ran through him, but he slid the shells inside the breech. I shoved the blade in until it grated on bone, spine or pelvic girdle, who knew. He slapped the breech closed against his arm like he was skeet shooting. I pulled the blade out of his body in a gout of blood.
He fell in slow motion, straight down to his knees. I lifted the newly loaded shotgun from his hands, and he didn�
�t fight me. He knelt in the leaves and blinked out into the darkness. He didn’t seem to be seeing me now.
Someone was screaming, high and wild. I glanced behind me, and it was the rifleman. He was sitting on the ground with one arm pointed up in the moonlight. The arm was missing from the elbow down. Jason was lying very still in the leaves. Zane was sitting beside him with blood on the back of his yellow T-shirt.
I stood and moved away from Chuck. He fell face forward into the leaves. He was alive enough to put his face to one side, but not to catch himself with his hands. The werewolf that had saved me was lying on his back, gasping for air. There was a hole in his gut bigger than my two fists. There was a bitter smell almost like vomit but ranker. His intestines had been perforated. The smell told me that. The gut wound wouldn’t kill him. Even if it was silver shot, it wouldn’t kill him right away.
The second wound was higher up in the deep, broad chest. His black fur was wet to the touch, soaked with blood. I could have shoved my hands in the dark, wet hole, but I couldn’t see shit. I couldn’t see if the heart was damaged.
His breathing was wet, sloppy, almost strangled. I could hear bubbling coming from the wound. At least one lung had been compromised, that’s what I was hearing. He was still struggling to breathe, so his heart had to be working, didn’t it?
Real werewolves look sort of like movie wolfmen, but the movies never quite capture it. He, very definitely a he, lay on his back, gasping. It was like watching a dream breathe, except this dream was dying. I thought it was one of Verne’s wolves, that I didn’t know him. Then I saw the remnants of a white T-shirt caught on one shoulder like a bit of forgotten skin. I pulled gently on the cloth, and saw the smiley face on it. I stared into yellow wolf eyes. Stared down at Jamil. He’d done what a bodyguard is supposed to do. He’d taken my bullet. I took off my shirt and packed it into the hole in his chest. It took both my hands to cover the wound, to try and make a seal so he could breathe again. So he wouldn’t bleed to death.
I whispered, “Don’t die on me, damn it,” then I started screaming for help.
26
MY HANDS WERE wet with blood. The shirt had soaked up what blood it could, but more was pouring out. It was soaking into my jeans, covering my forearms. He stared at me with yellow eyes, mouth open, trying desperately to keep breathing. Long-clawed hands made small convulsive movements in the leaves. A prickling warmth spread under my hands. His skin moved under my hands like warm, furry water.
Shapes appeared out of the darkness. They looked like people, but I knew it was a lie. Werewolves—I was eyeball deep in werewolves.
“He needs a doctor,” I said.
A dark-haired man with small, round glasses knelt on the other side of Jamil. He opened a large brown satchel and pulled out a stethoscope. I didn’t question it. Most packs had a doctor. Never knew when you’d need some confidential medical care.
He pushed my hands from the wound. “It’s healing. It wasn’t silver shot.” He shone a penlight into the wound. “What the hell is in there?”
“My shirt.”
“Get it out before the skin heals around it.”
The wound was healing. My hand barely squeezed into the opening. I got a handful of blood-soaked shirt and pulled. It came out in a long wet sloppy mess. Blood poured in a steady stream from one corner of the shirt. I let the shirt fall to the leaves. I would not be wearing it tonight. I had a thought that I was wearing nothing above the waist except a black bra. I didn’t care.
“Is he going to live?” I asked.
“He’ll live.”
“Promise,” I said.
He stared at me and nodded. Stray moonlight made his glasses look like blank silver mirrors. “I promise.”
I looked down into Jamil’s wolfish face. I stroked the fur across his forehead. The fur was both rough and thick and soft. “I’ll be right back.”
There were other people with Jason and Zane. Cherry with Zane, cradling him. Nathaniel was kneeling by them, but his eyes were for me. There was even a man leaning over the rifleman. He was tying a belt off on the stump of his arm. Good. I wanted him alive. I had questions for him but not yet.
I knelt by Jason. He lay in the leaves on his side. A woman was tending his wounds. She was dressed in short shorts and a halter top, dark hair tied back in a loose ponytail. It wasn’t until she turned her head that I realized it was Lucy. She held a penlight between her teeth and was searching Jason’s wounds with sure hands, as if she knew what she was doing.
She answered my question before I asked. “He’ll heal, but it’s going to take a couple of days.” Which meant if Jason had been human, the beating would have been fatal.
She looked at me then. Our eyes met from inches away. The makeup was a little less severe, but the face was still pretty by moonlight.
I turned away from her first. I didn’t want to see what was in her eyes. I just didn’t want to know. I knelt over Jason, started to touch his face, then stopped because the blood was still wet on my hands.
He said something very soft. I had to lean over him to hear it. “Let me lick the blood,” he said.
I stared down at him, eyes just a little wide. “You’re not dying, Jason,” I said. “Don’t get cute.”
Verne said, “It’s fresh blood, Anita. It’s pack blood. It will help him heal.”
I stared at him. The local Ulfric stood off to one side, tall and straight and slender, letting his medical personnel do their jobs. I started to ask him where the hell he had been while we got cut up, but Zane made a sound.
Zane seemed to be healing just fine from a rifle blast that would have cost a human his arm. But it hurt, and he made small pain sounds while the doctor worked on him.
“The blood will help them heal,” Verne said. “Especially blood from someone as powerful as you are. Marianne feeds the pack sometimes.”
Lucy said, “It really will help him.” Her face was neutral as she said it.
I looked down at Jason. His face was a mask of blood. One eye was swollen completely shut. He tried to smile at me, but his lips were so badly swollen that the smile didn’t work. It was like part of his face just didn’t work right now.
I touched those wounded lips with my fingertips, brushed the fresh blood across his lower lip. He rolled his lip under, tasting the blood. But the movement made him wince. It hurt.
I laid two fingers against his lips and slid them gently into his mouth. He tried to suck them, but his mouth wouldn’t work right. He licked the blood, swallowing almost convulsively. I drew the fingers out, and his hand came up to grab my wrist. I let him guide two new fingers into his mouth.
Richard spilled into the clearing, going to his knees in the leaves. Shang-Da was at his back like a good bodyguard. Richard’s gaze met mine, and just the glance opened me up to him a little more. Without Jean-Claude to act as a buffer, the marks between Richard and I were stronger. He knelt there, his breathing coming in near-painful gasps. I could feel his chest rising and falling, almost as if I were breathing for him. I felt him look at the woman beside me. I saw Lucy for a second as he saw her. I saw the rise of her breasts swelling under the halter top. The line of her cheek half in shadow, half in moonlight. She raised her face to meet my eyes like she could feel me looking.
“He still wants you,” I said.
She gave a very small smile. “But not as much as he wants you.”
The marks between Richard and I quieted. I couldn’t feel him breathe or what he was thinking. He had cut me off. Afraid of what I’d see, maybe. “What happened, Verne? They were supposed to be safe in your lands,” Richard said.
Cherry answered, “Jamil sent the three of us for help. He”—she pointed to a shadowy figure on the other side of the clearing—“wouldn’t let us pass into the lupanar. He wouldn’t take our request for aid to Verne.”
The man stepped forward so a patch of moonlight showed him: tall, muscular, dark-haired, pale. “They are not pack. They have no right to demand passage.”
Verne was just suddenly there, and the tall werewolf was on the ground. I hadn’t seen him move. It was a speed that was dreamlike, impossible. But I’d almost seen it.
“I am Ulfric. I decide who is worthy and who is not, Eric. You are only Freki, third in the pack. You have one more battle before you can even challenge me.”
Eric touched his hand to his face and came away with something dark and liquid. “I am not challenging you.”
There was movement behind me in the leaves. Zane was crawling towards me, the wounded arm held close to his chest with a makeshift sling. “I came back to help while Cherry and Nathaniel argued with their watchwolf.” I could feel an intensity to his gaze, even in the dark. “The blood’s going to dry before he gets to it all.” He stayed there in the leaves, just out of touching distance. His shirt had been ripped off one side of his slender chest. It hung in rags to one shoulder. He stared at me and even by scattered moonlight, I could see the need, not in his face but in his body, the way he held himself. He was asking for more than the healing of his body. If he hadn’t been there, Jason would be dead now. Even a lycanthrope has a limit to the damage he can take.
Jason held the palm of my hand to his mouth, licking with long, lingering movements.
“You need the other hand?” I asked.
“It will be dried before he can use it,” Lucy said.
I stared at her and hated her just a little. Hated her for having been in Richard’s bed. Hated her for doing things with him that I’d never allowed myself to do.
“The wereleopard doesn’t need the blood,” Richard said. “He’ll heal without it.”
I just stared at him and held my hand out to Zane. He crawled to me on his knees and his good arm. I stared at Richard while Zane took my fingers into his mouth. He sucked on them like a hungry child licking the last bit of cake from a spoon.
“He’s mine, Richard, mine as much as Jason is. I am Nimir-ra and lupa.”
Richard stood. “I know what you are, Anita.”
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10 Page 109
