Obsidian Butterfly (ab-9) (46 page)

Newt swallowed, and said, "N -- nothing. Thought I saw a snake."

I whispered, "Good boy, Newt. If you want to keep the family jewels intact, very quietly hand me your gun." He let the .45 fall into my hand. I was close enough to whisper to Edward, "What do you want me to do?"

"Call Harold over."

"You heard him, Newt," I said.

The man never argued. "Hey, Harold, can you come over here a second?"

Harold sighed, snapping the cell phone shut. "What is it now, Newt?" He was almost even with Edward when he noticed that Newt's gun was gone. I was still hidden behind the larger man's body; even the blade was hidden in the cloth of his pants. "What the hell?"

Bernardo pulled one of the gold chopsticks out of his hair, and it was a blade that ended in Harold's arm. Edward hit him in the gut, doubled him over, and disarmed him. He stood over him with the rifle. Olaf and Bernardo were on their feet. I don't know what the plan would have been next because we heard the sirens. Police sirens.

"Did you call the cops, Harold?" Edward asked.

"Don't be an ass," Harold said.

"Anita," Edward said.

"I didn't call them. I've still got a .45 pointed at you, Newt. Don't get cute." But I withdrew the blade very carefully and stood up. I kept his gun pointed at his back, but I was beginning to doubt I'd have to shoot anybody. The sirens were almost here.

The three guys came out of the house with their guns in plain sight. They looked to Harold, saw him on the ground, and Edward had the rifle to his shoulder and was sighting down the barrel at them. Their eyes flicked to the cops coming at a fast pace, and back to Edward. They threw their guns down and laced their fingers on their heads without being told. I doubted it was the first time they'd had to do it.

It was an unmarked car with a marked car following it. They skidded to a stop on opposite sides of the black truck and four cops spilled out. Lieutenant Marks, Detective Ramirez, and two uniforms I didn't know. They had guns pointed but looked a little unsure who the bad guys were. Couldn't blame them. We had all the guns.

"Detective Ramirez," I said. "Thank God."

"What's going on?" Marks said, before Ramirez could answer me.

Edward told them that Harold and his men had jumped us and were trying to question us about the mutilation murders. Marks found that fascinating. Edward had known he would. Yes, Ted Forrester would press assault charges. Any good citizen would. There were enough handcuffs to go around, barely.

"There are two more out there somewhere," Edward said in his best helpful voice.

"There's one unconscious in the wash that way," I said.

Everyone looked at me. I didn't have to pretend to be uncomfortable. "He was chasing me. I thought they were going to kill the others." I shrugged and winced. "He's alive." It sounded like an excuse even to me.

They called for more men to search the area. They called for an ambulance for Harold, Newt, and Russell, when they found him. I'd sat down on the ground, waiting for everyone to do their jobs. I was using both hands to prop myself up. Now that the emergency seemed to be over, I wasn't feeling so good.

Marks was yelling at me. "You left the hospital against doctor's orders! I don't give a damn, but I want a statement. I want to know exactly what happened at that hospital."

I looked up at him, and he seemed to be taller than he was, further away somehow. "Are you saying that all the lights and sirens were because you were mad at me for not giving a statement before I left the hospital?"

A flush spread up his face, and I knew that that was exactly it. One of the uniforms called, "Lieutenant."

"I want that statement today." He turned and walked away. I hoped he stayed there.

Ramirez knelt beside me. He was wearing his usual, shirtsleeves rolled back, a striped tie at half-mast, around an open collar. "You all right?"

"No," I said.

"I went to the hospital today, and you were already gone. That night, the elevator had been turned off because of the fire alarms. I had to double back and get the stairs, and come up behind you. That's why I was late. That's why I wasn't there for you." For it to be almost the first thing out of his mouth, it must have been bugging him. I liked that.

I managed something close to a smile. "Thanks for telling me." I was so hot. The yard seemed to be swimming in heat, as if I were looking at the world through rippling glass.

He touched my back, I think to help me up. He drew his hand away from my shirt. His hand was bloody. He went on all fours, using one hand to raise my shirt. It was so blood-soaked that he had to peel it away from my skin. "Jesus, and Joseph, what the hell have you done to yourself?"

"It doesn't even hurt anymore." I heard myself saying it from a long way away, then I was sliding over into his arms, his lap. I heard someone call my name, and I finally passed out.

I woke up in the hospital. Doctor Cunningham was bending over me. I thought, "We have to stop meeting like this," but didn't even try to say it out loud.

"You've lost blood and had your stitches redone. Do you think you can stay in here long enough for me to actually release you this time?"

I think I smiled. "Yes, Doctor."

"Just in case you got any funny ideas about leaving, I've doped you up with enough pain killers to make you feel really good. So sleep, and I'll see you in the morning."

My eyes fluttered shut once, then opened. Edward was there. He bent over me and whispered, "Crawling through bushes on your belly, threatening to cut off a man's balls. Such a hard ass."

My voice came faintly even to me. "Had to save your ass."

He bent over me and kissed on my forehead, or maybe I dreamed that part.

SOME TIME DURING the second day in the hospital they lowered the meds, and I started having the dreams. I was wandering in a maze made up of high green hedges. I was wearing a long, heavy dress, made of white silk. There were heavy things under it, weighting it down. I could feel the tightness of a corset under the dress, and I knew it wasn't my dream. I would never dream of clothing that I had never worn. I stopped running through the green maze looked up into a flawless blue sky, and shouted, "Jean-Claude!"

His voice came, rich, seductive. He could do things with his voice that most men couldn't do with their hands. "Where are you, ma petite? Where you?"

"You promised to stay out of my dreams."

"We felt you dying. We felt the marks open. We worried." I knew who "we" was. "Richard isn't invading my dreams, just you."

"I have come to warn you. If you had picked up a phone to call us, this would not be necessary."

I turned and there was a mirror in the middle of the grass and the hedges. It was a full-length mirror with a gilt edged frame. Very antique, very Louis XIV. My reflection was startling. It wasn't just the clothes. My hair was in some kind of complicated mound, with thick curls hanging down here and there. There was also more of it, and I knew at least some of it was a wig or at least hairpieces. There was even one of those beauty marks on my cheek. I expected to look ridiculous, but I didn't. I looked delicate, like a china doll, but it wasn't ridiculous. My reflection wavered, then grew taller, and it was Jean-Claude in the mirror, and my reflection had vanished.

He was tall, slender, dressed head to foot in white satin, in a suit that matched my dress. Gold brocade glittered down his sleeves, the seams of the pants. White boots rode over his knees tied with huge white and gold ribbons. It was a foppish outfit, sissy to use a modern word, but he didn't look foppish. He looked elegant and at ease like a man who'd pulled off his tie and slipped into something more comfortable. His hair fell in long black banana curls. Only the delicate masculinity of his face and his midnight blue eyes looked normal, familiar.

I shook my head, and the weight of the hair made it awkward. "I am so out of here," and I started to reach out to shred the dream.

"Wait, please, ma petite. Truly, I have a warning for you." He looked up as if seeing the mirror as a sort of prison. "This is to let you know that I will not touch you. I come only to talk."

"Then talk."

"Was it the Master of Albuquerque who harmed you?"

It seemed an odd question. "No, Itzpapalotl didn't hurt me."

He winced at her name. "Do not use her name aloud within this dream."

"Okay, but she didn't hurt me."

"But you have seen her?" he asked.

"Yes."

He looked puzzled, and he lifted a white hat and slapped it against his leg like it was a habitual gesture, though I'd never seen him do it before. But then I'd only seen him in clothes like this once before, and we'd been fighting for our lives, so there really hadn't been time to notice the small stuff.

"Albuquerque is taboo. The high council has declared the city off limits to all vampires and their minions."

"Why?"

"Because the Master of the City has slain every vampire or minion that has entered her city in the last fifty years."

I stared at him. "You're joking."

"No, ma petite, I do not joke." He looked worried, no, scared.

"She didn't try anything hostile, Jean-Claude, honest."

"Then there was a reason for it. Were the police with you?"

"No."

He shook his head, slapping the hat against his leg again. "Then she wants something from you."

"What could she want from me?"

"I do not know." He slapped the hat against his leg again and stared out at me through the glass wall.

"Has she really killed any vampire that just happened to be passing through?"

"Oui."

"Why hasn't the council sent someone to kick her ass?"

He looked down, then up, and the fear was in his eyes again. "The Council fears her, I believe."

Having met three of the council members personally, that raised my eyebrows as far as they would go. "Why? I mean I know she's powerful, but she's not that powerful."

"I do not know, ma petite, but I do know they decreed her territory taboo, rather than fight her."

That was just plain scary. "It would have been nice to know that before I got here."

"I know you value your privacy, ma petite. I have not contacted you in all these long months. I have respected your decision, but it is not merely our romance, or lack of it, that is important between us. You are my human servant whether you will or no. It means that you cannot simply enter another vampire's territory without some diplomacy."

"I'm here on police business. I thought I could enter anyone's territory as long as it was police business. I'm here as Anita Blake, preternatural expert, not as your human servant."

"Normally, that is true, but the Master whose lands you are in does not obey council decrees. She is a law unto herself."

"What does that mean for me here and now?"

"Perhaps she fears human law. Perhaps she will not harm you for fear of the humans destroying her. Your authorities can be very effective at times. Or she simply wants something from you. You've met her. What do you think?" he said.

It came to my lips before I thought about it. "Power, she's attracted to power."

"You are a necromancer."

I shook my head, and again the hairpieces made it awkward. I closed my eyes in the dream, and when I opened them, my hair just hung around my shoulders like normal. "The hair was heavy."

"It could be," he said, "I am happy that you left the dress. I cannot tell you how long I have wished to see you in something like it."

"Don't push it, Jean-Claude."

"My apologies," and he did a sweeping bow, using the hat in the gesture, so that it swept across his chest.

"I think it's more than the necromancy. She figured out that I was part of a triumvirate the first moment she met me. I felt her sift through the three of us, like unwinding a string. She knew. I think that's what she wants. She wants to figure out how it works."

"Could she repeat it?" he asked.

"She's got a human servant and jaguars are her animal to call. Theoretically, I guess she could, though can you make it a three-way when you've already got marks on a human, and no animal?"

"If the marks are recent, perhaps."

"No, not recent. They've been a couple a long time."

"Then no, her human's marks will be too entrenched to stretch for a third."

"So she may be interested in me for a power she can't have? If she finds out that I can't be of help to her?" I said.

"It would perhaps be best if she did not learn that, ma petite."

"You think she'd kill me."

"She has killed all that crossed her path for half a century. I do not see why she should change her ways now."

I was standing very close to the mirror now. Close enough that I could see the gold buttons on his jacket, and the rise and fall of his chest as he drew breath. This was the closest I'd been to him in months. It was just a dream, but we both knew it wasn't just a dream. He'd put the mirror barrier between us because once we'd used our dreams to enter each other's fantasies. He'd come like a demon lover in my dreams, in my sleep. We'd done the real thing, too, but the dreams had been sweet, sometimes a prelude to the real thing, sometimes an end in themselves.

The glass grew thinner, as if the glass were wearing away. It was like a thin pane of spun sugar. He touched fingertips to it, and the glass moved like clear plastic, giving at his touch.

My fingertips touched his, and the thin barrier vanished. Our fingers touched, and it was startling, electric. His fingers slid over mine, entwining, our palms touching, and even that one chaste touch sent my breath racing.

I stepped back but didn't let go of his hand, so the movement drew him out of the mirror. He stepped out of the golden frame and was suddenly standing in front of me, our hands still raised in front of us. I could feel his heart beating through his palm, feel the rise and pulse of his body through my hand as if all of him were contained in that one pale hand where it lay pressed against mine.

He leaned down towards me, as if to kiss me, and I started to pull away, afraid, but the dream shattered, and I was suddenly awake, staring up at the hospital ceiling. A nurse was in the room, checking my vitals. She'd woken me. I wasn't sure whether I was glad or sad.

The marks had been open for less than a week, and Jean-Claude was already pushing me. Okay, okay, I needed the warning, but ... Oh, hell. My teacher, Marianne, had told me that I couldn't just ignore the boys, that that would be dangerous. I thought she meant ignoring the power that bound us, but maybe she meant more than that. I was Jean-Claude's human servant, and that made things complicated when I traveled. Each vampire's territory was like a foreign country. Sometimes you had diplomatic treaties between them. Sometimes you didn't. Occasionally, you just had a couple of master vamps that were enemies pure and simple, so if you belonged to one, you stayed the hell out of the other one's lands. By refusing to contact Jean-Claude, I could screw up, get myself killed or held hostage. But I'd thought I was safe as long as I was on police business or animating zombies. That was work. It had nothing to do with Jean-Claude and vampire politics. But I could always be wrong, like now.

Why, you may ask, did I believe Jean-Claude and his warning? Because it gained him nothing to lie about it. I'd also felt his fear. One of the things about the marks, you could usually tell what the other person was feeling. Sometimes that bugged me. Sometimes it was helpful.

The nurse shoved a thermometer with a little plastic sheath on it under my tongue. She took my pulse while we waited for the thermometer to beep. What really bugged me about the dream was how attracted to him I was. When I had the marks closed off, I'd have never touched him in the dream. Of course, I hadn't let him enter my dreams when I had the marks blocked off. With the barriers up, I'd policed my dreams, kept him and Richard out. I could still keep them out, but it took more work to do it. I was out of practice. I was going to have to get back into practice, fast.

The thermometer beeped. The nurse read the little monitor on her belt, gave me an empty smile that could have meant anything, and made a note. "I hear you're getting out of here today."

I looked up at her. "I am. Great."

"Doctor Cunningham will be in to see you before you leave." She smiled again. "He seems to want to oversee your release personally."

"I'm one of his favorite patients," I said.

The nurse's smile slipped just a touch. I think she knew exactly what Doctor Cunningham thought of me. "He should be in to see you soon."

"But I am definitely getting out of here today?" I asked.

"That's what I hear."

"Can I call a friend to come pick me up?"

"I can call them for you."

"If I'm getting out today, can't I have a phone?" The good doctor had made sure there was no phone in my room because he didn't want me trying to do work, any work, not even business phone calls. When I'd promised not to use the phone if he'd just give me one, he'd just looked at me, made some kind of note in his file, and left. I don't think he trusted me.

"If the doctor says you can have a phone, I'll bring you one, but just in case, give me the number and I'll contact your friend."

I gave her Edward's number. She wrote it down, smiled, and left.

There was a knock on the door. I expected Doctor Cunningham, but it was Detective Ramirez. His shirt today was a pale tan. The half-mast tie was deep brown with a small white and yellow design on it. But he'd also kept a brown suit jacket that matched his pants. It was the first time I'd seen him with an entire suit on at once. I wondered if the sleeves were rolled up underneath the jacket sleeves. He had a bouquet of shiny Mylar balloons with cartoon characters on them. The balloons said things like "get well soon," and "oh, bother." That was the Winnie the Pooh balloon.

I had to smile. "You already sent flowers." There was a small, but nice arrangement running long to daisies and miniature carnations on the bedside table.

"I wanted to bring something in person. I'm sorry I wasn't here sooner."

My smile wilted around the edges. "This level of apology is usually reserved for boyfriends or lovers, detective. Why are you feeling so guilty?"

"I keep having to remind you to call me Hernando."

"I keep forgetting."

"No, you don't. You keep trying to distance yourself."

I just looked at him. It was probably true. "Maybe."

"If I was your lover, I'd have followed you to the hospital and been by your side every minute," he said.

"Even with a murder investigation going on?" I asked.

He had the grace to shrug and look sheepish. "I'd have tried to be here every minute."

"What's been happening while I've been in here? My doctor has made sure I haven't found out anything."

Ramirez put the balloons beside the flowers. The balloons had one of those little weights on them to keep them from drifting away. "The last time I tried to see you, your doctor made me promise not to talk about the case."

"I didn't know you were here before."

"You were pretty out of it."

"Was I awake?"

He shook his head.

Great. I wondered how many other people had paraded through here while I was passed out cold. "I'm getting out today, so I think it's safe to talk about the case."

He looked at me, and the expression was enough. He didn't believe me.

"Doesn't anyone trust me?"

"You're like most of the cops I know. You never really get off work."

I raised my hand in the Boy Scout's salute. "Honest, the nurse told me I'm being released today."

He smiled. "I saw your back, remember. Even if you're being let out, you won't be going back on the case, not in person anyway."