[Anita Blake 15] - The Harlequin

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “We will kill them for you.” Olaf’s voice from the door. He must have arrived in time to hear the last few comments. I hadn’t heard him come in; not good. Not good that I hadn’t heard Olaf, but not good that it could have been someone else, something else. I trusted Edward to see me safe, but I was usually more help to myself than this. Admittedly, I was having a bad day.

  The dull ache in my stomach was beginning to have twinges of something sharp. It was like a promise of what the pain would be in a little while. I looked down my body; I couldn’t help it. Cherry blocked my view with her arm, turned my face to her. “Don’t look. You’ll sleep. The doctor will look at you. You’ll wake up better.” She smiled at me; it was a gentle smile, but it left her eyes haunted. When had Cherry gotten that look in her eyes?

  Someone found a cell phone. I dialed Zerbrowski directly. The Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, RPIT, was who I should have called, and I should have probably started by talking to Lieutenant Rudolph Storr, but I just wasn’t feeling well enough to argue with Dolph about who, and what, was or wasn’t a monster. Zerbrowski answered with his usual, “Zerbrowski.”

  “It’s Anita,” I said.

  “Blake, what’s shaking?” There was a thread of laughter to his voice, the beginnings of his usual teasing. I didn’t have time today.

  “I’m about to get sewed back up.”

  “What happened?” The teasing note was gone.

  I gave him the shortest version I could, and left out lots. But I gave him the important parts; two vamps, maybe with more servants, masquerading as two upstanding vampire citizens to get us to kill the two upstanding citizens. “They must have thought I was close, because they sent one of their animals to kill me.”

  “How hurt are you?”

  “I’m not hunting any vampires today.”

  “What do you need from me?”

  “I need you to get cops around the hotel. I need you to make sure these two don’t get outside.”

  “Shouldn’t they be dead to the world, no pun intended?”

  “They should, but after what I saw in the servant, I wouldn’t bet anyone’s life on it. Call in Mobile Reserve; if it goes wrong you’ll want the firepower.”

  Dr. Chris came to stand over me. He was a little under six feet but seemed taller because he was so thin, one of those men who just couldn’t seem to put on muscle mass. I’d have called him willowy if he’d been a girl. He said, “Get off the phone, Anita. I need to look at your wounds.”

  “I’m almost done,” I said.

  “What?” Zerbrowski said.

  “The doc’s here. He’s wanting me off the phone.”

  “Tell me who’s going to be processing your warrants and do what the doctor says. You’ve got to be healed by the time we do the barbecue at my house. I finally got the wife talked into letting you bring both your live-in boyfriends. Don’t make me waste all that persuasion.”

  I almost laughed but thought it might hurt, so I swallowed it. That sort of hurt, too. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Off the phone, Anita,” Dr. Chris said again.

  “Ted Forrester will have the warrants,” I said.

  “We didn’t know he was in town.”

  “Just got here.”

  “Funny how it all goes pear-shaped when he blows into town.”

  “I only call him in when it’s already gone to hell, Zerbrowski; you’re reversing cause and effect.”

  “Says you.”

  “He’s a federal marshal, just like me.”

  A hand scooped the phone out of my hand. Dr. Chris was a lycanthrope, but still…I should have at least seen it coming. “This is Anita’s doctor; she needs to go now. I’m going to put the other marshal on. You two play nice. I’m going to make Ms. Blake go night-night.” He hesitated, then said, “She’ll be fine. Yes, guaranteed. Now let me tend my patient.” He handed the phone to Edward.

  Edward put on his Ted Forrester good-ol’-boy voice. “Sergeant Zerbrowski, Ted Forrester here.”

  Dr. Chris shooed Edward farther away so I couldn’t hear what he was saying. He turned the knob on the IV and said, “You’re going to sleep now, Ms. Blake. Trust me, you’ll enjoy the examination more that way.”

  “But…”

  “Let it go, Ms. Blake. You’re hurt. You have to let someone else hunt the vampires today.”

  I started to say something, probably to argue, but I never finished the thought. One minute I was staring up at Dr. Chris, the next—nothing. The world went poof.

  34

  I WOKE UP, which was nice. I was blinking up at a ceiling I’d seen before, but couldn’t quite place. I was not in the room that I remembered last. This room was painted an off-white, and there were pipes in the ceiling. Pipes…that should have meant something, but I was still a little fuzzy around the edges.

  “‘She wakes; and I entreated her come forth, and bear this work of heaven with patience.’”

  I knew who it was before he stepped beside the bed. “Requiem.” I smiled up at him, and reached out to him with my right hand; the other one was full of needles. Reaching for him made my stomach ache a little, but not that bad. It made me wonder how long I’d been out, or what drugs were coming through the IV tube. Requiem took my hand in his and bent over it to lay a kiss on the back. I was happy to see him. Hell, I was happy to see anyone. “I don’t know the quote,” I said.

  “The words of a worthless friar,” he said.

  “Sorry, still a little fuzzy,” I said.

  He held my hand underneath his cloak, against his chest. His blue, blue eyes glittered in the overhead fluorescents. “Perhaps this will help: ‘A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun for sorrow will not show his head. Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished; For never was a story…’”

  I finished with him. “‘…of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.’”

  He laughed then, and it transformed his face from a thing of cold beauty to something livable, lovable, more touchable. “You should laugh more often, it becomes you,” I said.

  The laughter leeched away, as if the two reddish tears that slid down the white perfection of his cheeks stole his joy away as they fell down his face. By the time the tears melted into the dark line of his beard, his face had its usual melancholy handsomeness.

  I’d been happy to take his hand. Happy to touch someone I cared for, but there was something in the weight of that ocean-blue-and-green gaze that made me take my hand back. I had other lovers who would look at me that way, but the look in his eyes was one that Requiem had not earned, or that our relationship didn’t deserve. He was Requiem, he wasn’t a light comedic sort of person; no, he was definitely a lover of tragedies.

  “Where’s Jean-Claude?”

  “Did you expect him to wait by your bedside?”

  “Maybe.”

  “He and Asher are busy elsewhere, together. I was left to tend you while they had more important things to do.”

  I stared at him. Was it on purpose? Was he trying to make me doubt them? I’d nearly died, and was still hooked up to tubes; fuck it, I’d ask. “Are you implying that they’re having sex together somewhere, and that that is more important to them than me?”

  He looked down; I think he was trying to be coy. “They are off together, and they left me to tend you. I think the situation speaks for itself.”

  “You really shouldn’t try to play coy, Requiem. You’re not good at it.”

  He gave me the full weight of those blue, blue eyes, with that swimming shadow of green around the iris. Eyes you could sink into and swim away in, or be drowned in. I actually looked down, rather than meet his gaze. Normally he wasn’t a problem, but I was hurt, weak, and I didn’t like his mood.

  “My evening star, you are thinking too hard. Let us rejoice that you live, that we all live.”

  That gave me other questions to ask; maybe since they weren’t about Jean-Claude, he’d answer them.
“Then Peter is all right?”

  His face went blank, even that pressing need in his eyes fading away. “He is in a room nearby.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “He will heal.”

  “I don’t like how you’re saying that, Requiem.”

  I heard the door open as a male voice said, “God, you are a gloomy bastard.” Graham strode into the room.

  I watched him for signs that the Harlequin were messing with his mind, signs of that panicked false addiction. He was his usual smiling self. Okay, his usual self when he wasn’t feeling grumpy about me not fucking him.

  “Are you wearing a cross?” I asked.

  He drew a chain out of his shirt, and on the end of it was a tiny Buddha. I stared at it. “You’re a Buddhist?”

  “Yep.”

  “You do violence, you can’t be a Buddhist,” I said.

  “So I’m a bad Buddhist, but it was still the way I was raised, and I do believe in the chubby little guy.”

  “Will it work if you’re not following the tenets of the faith it represents?” I asked.

  “I could ask you the same question, Anita.”

  Did he have a point, or not? “Fine, I just wouldn’t have pegged you for a Buddhist.”

  “Neither would my parents, but when Claudia told us to get a holy item, I realized I didn’t believe in the Jewish carpenter, never raised in that faith.” He shook the little Buddha at me. “This I believe in.”

  I gave a small nod. “Okay, whatever works.”

  He grinned at me. “First, Peter will be fine, but he heals human-slow.”

  “How hurt is he?”

  “About as hurt as you were, but not healing as fast.”

  Graham came to stand beside Requiem. He was still in the red shirt and dark pants, but somehow it didn’t bug me now. Graham would answer questions better than Requiem. He also seemed to be himself, while the vampire was being weird even for him.

  I started to ask how fast I was healing, but I wanted to know about Peter before I asked questions about me. I felt amazingly well. “I’m going to ask this again, and I want a straight answer. How hurt is Peter?”

  Graham sighed. “He got a lot of stitches—like the-doctor-lost-count stitches. He’s going to be fine, honest, but he’s going to have some manly scars.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Tell her the rest,” Requiem said.

  I glared at Graham. “Yeah, tell me the rest.”

  “I was getting to it.” He flashed an unfriendly look at the vampire. Requiem gave a small nod, almost a bow, and moved back from the bed.

  “Then get to it, Graham,” I said.

  “The doctors are offering him the chance for the new antilycanthropy therapy.”

  “You mean the inoculation they offer?”

  “No, something brand new.” He said “brand new” as if he had a bad taste in his mouth.

  “How new?”

  “St. Louis is one of only a handful of cities that are experimenting with it.”

  “They can’t experiment on an underage kid.”

  “Underage?” He made it a question. “I thought Peter was eighteen.”

  Shit, I thought. Apparently Peter Black was holding up as a secret identity. “Yeah, I mean, shit, fine.”

  “If he’s eighteen, then he can give permission for it.” Graham gave me a funny look as he said it, as if he wanted to ask why I didn’t believe Peter was eighteen, or maybe he didn’t either.

  “Give permission for what exactly?” I asked.

  “They’re offering him a vaccine.”

  “Like I said, Graham, they’ve been offering a vaccine against lycanthropy for years.

  “Not the one that they used to offer in college. Not since that bad batch turned a lot of nice upper-class college students into monsters about ten years back.” He said it without referencing Richard—who had been one of those college students. I wondered if Graham didn’t know. Not my place to share, so I let it go.

  “The vaccine’s a dead organism now, not live and kicking,” I said.

  “Did you get it?” he asked.

  I had to smile. “No.”

  “Most people won’t volunteer for it,” he said.

  “Yeah, there’s a bill wandering around Washington, D.C., right now to force inoculation against lycanthropy on teenagers. They claim it’s safe now.”

  “Yeah, they claim.” Graham’s face said how much he believed in the “claim.”

  I shook my head, moved a little too much in the bed, and found that my stomach gave a twinge. However healed I was, it wasn’t perfect yet. I took in a deep breath, let it out, and forced myself not to move around so much. There, that was better. “But Peter has already been attacked. The inoculation is only effective before an attack.”

  “They want to give him a live shot.”

  “What?” I said, and it was almost a yell.

  “Yeah,” Graham said.

  “But that will give him whatever lycanthropy is in the shot.”

  “Not if he’s already got tiger lycanthropy,” Graham said.

  “What?”

  “Apparently, they had some people who were attacked by more than one beast in a single night. The two different strains canceled each other out. They came up clean and completely human.”

  “But it’s not dead certain that he’ll get tiger lycanthropy,” I said.

  “No, most of the feline strains are harder to catch than canine.”

  “You can’t even reliably test for cat-based lycanthropy for at least seventy-two hours. If they give him this shot and he’s not going to be a tiger, then he will be whatever the shot is,” I said.

  “And therein lies the problem,” Graham said.

  “Therein,” Requiem said, his voice softly mocking.

  Graham flashed him another unfriendly look. “I try to improve my vocabulary and you make fun of me; what kind of encouragement is that?”

  Requiem gave a full bow, graceful, with one hand sweeping outward. That hand always seemed to cry out for a hat with a plume, as if the gesture was only half finished without the right clothing. He stood. “I beg pardon, Graham, for you are quite right. I do wish to encourage you in your improvements. It was churlish of me, and I apologize.”

  “Why is it that when you apologize, you never seem to mean it?” Graham asked.

  “Back to the main problem, boys,” I said. “What’s happening with Peter?”

  “Ted Forrester, federal marshal”—he said it the way you’d say “Superman, Man of Steel”—“is with him. He seems to be helping him choose.”

  “But he may be fine, and the shot will guarantee the very thing they don’t want to happen.”

  Graham shrugged. “Like I said, it’s a new thing.”

  “It’s an experimental thing,” I said.

  He nodded. “That, too.”

  “What kind of lycanthropy is in the shot?” I asked.

  “They don’t want to say, but it’s probably one of the cat-based lycanthropies, and it won’t be tiger.”

  “Let’s hope not,” I said. “They make vaccines in big batches. Are they positive what kind of kitty they’ve got in the shot?”

  Graham looked at me as if that hadn’t occurred to him. “You aren’t saying that they’d give him tiger twice? I mean, that wouldn’t work at all. That would guarantee that he’d be tiger.”

  “Yeah. Has anyone asked them what flavor of kitty it is?” The look on Graham’s face said no one had asked in his hearing. I looked at Requiem.

  “I have been in attendance upon your bedside. I have not seen the boy.”

  “Graham, go ask, and make sure Ted knows I wanted to know.”

  Graham actually didn’t argue. He just nodded and went for the door. Good. Because I knew where I was now. I was in the basement of what used to be a hospital, but the lower levels had been turned into a place where you kept suspected vampire corpses if you didn’t think you’d get to them before nightfall, and where you held
lycanthrope victims, or injured shapeshifters themselves until they were well enough to leave. Or you could force them into one of the government prisons—oh, “safe houses.” The ACLU was about to be heard by the Supreme Court on just how many constitutional rights the “safe houses” violated. Being admitted was voluntary—if you were eighteen or over, anyway. They told shapeshifters that they’d let them out once they learned to control their beast, but somehow people went in and never came out. Most hospitals had an isolation ward for shapeshifters and vampires who got injured, but this was the place they sent you if they were truly worried. How the hell did we end up here?

  “Requiem,” I said.

  He came to the side of the bed, his hooded cloak back to being tight around him. Only a pale glimpse of face was visible. “Yes, my evening star?”

  “Why does that sound more and more sarcastic when you say it?”

  He blinked so that those vivid blue eyes were shielded for a moment. “I will endeavor to say it as I mean it, my evening star.” This time it was soft, and romantic. I didn’t like that either. But I didn’t say so out loud. I’d complain later when I figured out how to get any use out of it.

  “I asked you once where Jean-Claude is; now I’ll ask again. Where is he and what’s he doing?”

  “Can you not sense him?”

  I thought about it and shook my head. “No, I can’t.” A spurt of fear ran through me like fine champagne. It must have shown on my face because Requiem touched my arm. “He is well, but he is shielding mightily to keep the Harlequin from reading him, or you, or the wolf king.”

  “So there were more than just the two of them in town,” I said.

  “Why would you assume only two?”

  “It’s all I saw,” I said.

  “Saw how?”

  Again, I didn’t like the question and how he asked it. “Does it matter?”

  “Perhaps not, but yes, Jean-Claude has detected more than two in your fair city.”

  “I’m impressed that Jean-Claude can keep them out of us all,” I said.

  Requiem’s hand tightened on my arm. “As are we all.” He took his hand back, and it vanished under the black cloak again.

  “Tell me what I’ve missed of the vampire end of things. Wait, how long have I been out?”