Anita Blake 22 - Affliction (62 page)

I stared at him with the phone half-dialed in my hand. ‘Who wants it?’ I asked, but I knew.

‘He does – the vampire. It was a zombie that bit me, but somehow it was him, Anita. Somehow the vampire was using the zombie’s body just like the Traveller and the Dark Mother used vampires. He bit me, do you understand, Anita?’

‘I understand,’ I said, and put my phone back in its pocket.

‘I am Harlequin, and I am bound to my master. It helps me fight the compulsion, but I do not know if I will win this battle.’

I drew in a deep breath and let it out slow. I didn’t feel anything. I was numb, as if I’d been numb for a while and just hadn’t known it.

‘The compulsion is that strong?’ I asked.

‘It should not be. I am fully bonded to my master. I should be proof against all vampires except for my master. The only one who could tamper with such bonds was the Dark Mother, and she is gone.’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘This master should not be this strong; no wonder Ares fell to him.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked.

‘If you kill me, then my master may die and never wake, but you cannot allow me to shift forms. If I do that, then you must kill me, because there is something in this power that wants me to kill things, not just you, but everything. He likes death, Anita, in all its forms.’

‘Does the vampire have a name?’ I asked.

‘He does not tell me. I am an animal and he does not owe me his name,’ Seamus said, and shuddered, his eyes fluttering closed.

‘Is that your thought, or his?’ I asked.

‘Both.’

‘You are not an animal,’ I said, ‘and he does owe you his name.’

Seamus smiled at me. ‘I like your modern ideals, but it is too late for me to enjoy them.’

‘No,’ I said. I touched his arm, bare skin to bare skin, and a flash of warmth passed between us. I could feel his beast, could see it behind my eyes where dreams show themselves. The werehyena looked up at me, and I felt something stir inside me that was new. I had a new beast.

Seamus’s brown hyena eyes stared up at me. ‘You cannot be one of us.’

‘A bullet went through Ares’ body and into mine. I didn’t think it would be enough.’

‘His call is softer now,’ Seamus said.

‘Just from my touching your arm?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

I wanted to call out to Edward, because I wanted someone to be able to shoot Seamus if it needed doing, but I wanted to keep touching him, and if he went apeshit I didn’t want to be this close to him while I was trying to shoot him. Out of reach would be really good. But I didn’t want to distract Edward in case he needed all his concentration to stay away from the zombies that were probably trying to climb up the stairs and into the bedroom. I did the only thing could; I kept my left hand on his arm and drew the Browning with my right.

Seamus looked at the gun and then back at my face. ‘Shoot me if you have to.’

I just nodded. I had every intention of it. I’d failed Ares by not shooting him sooner. I wouldn’t fail again, not like that.

Someone called out, ‘Police, hello in the house!’

I called back, ‘Living room!’

Deputy Al walked in from the kitchen. The smile on his face changed when he saw us. ‘What happened?’

‘Zombies in the basement,’ I said. More shots sounded, as if to make the point.

He drew his sidearm. He looked in the direction of the shots and then back to us. ‘He’s another shifter, isn’t he?’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

He started to point the gun in Seamus’s direction. Sirens sounded in the distance. The rest of the backup was finally here. Al lowered his gun and looked uncomfortable, bordering on embarrassed. Until he’d made that movement toward Seamus, I might have asked him to help me guard the shapeshifter, but now … I wasn’t sure Al wouldn’t be a little trigger happy. I couldn’t really blame him, because I knew he’d seen the damage that Ares had done, but that wasn’t Seamus’s fault, and yet … if I had to this time I would shoot him. I would not let another of my guards hurt anyone else. I couldn’t. The cynical part of me thought,
Well, at least I’m not as attached to this one
. I hated that I thought it, but Ares had been my friend; I barely knew Seamus.

Seamus suddenly grabbed my left arm, too tight, his eyes flared wide. ‘He doesn’t want to burn.’

Edward and the others came running toward us, and only then did I smell the burning flesh. Nicky and Lisandro caught one arm and the opposite leg of Seamus as they moved through, lifted him, got him balanced, and kept going for the door. I followed them, because when the people blowing shit up start running, you try to keep up, just a rule.

Edward unlocked the door from this side and they carried Seamus through. Hatfield went after them. Edward said, ‘Outside, now.’ He followed his own instructions and I ran to comply. Al didn’t ask questions, he just ran with me. The two of us were on the grass of the front yard when the first explosion rocked the world and staggered us. I kept moving away from the house, and when he got his footing Al followed. The second explosion was even bigger and made us all cower from the blast wave and the rush of heat.

‘What the hell did you do?’ Al asked.

‘They had extra propane tanks in the basement. One of the grenades must have hit them.’ He made it sound like an accident.

I looked at him, but his face was mild and unreadable. He held out a hand to wave at our backup with their lights and sirens. I wondered if they’d stop a safe distance back or drive up to the house. Another explosion made the ground shiver and the air smack into us like a giant hand. Al fell to the ground on all fours.

‘You okay?’ I asked.

He nodded.

A third explosion rained down burning bits and pieces.

‘How many tanks were down there?’ I asked.

‘Enough,’ he said.

Then Nicky yelled, ‘Anita!’

Seamus was beginning to writhe on the ground. I still had the Browning naked in my hand. Damn it, the vampire should have been blown up, dead, and when he died Seamus should have been free. Which meant the vampire wasn’t dead. Fuck!

‘The vampire isn’t dead,’ I said, and went to put my hand on Seamus. Either I’d help him control his beast until the vampire burned up, or I’d shoot him before he could change. Either way, my place was beside Seamus. Edward had his rifle up and was watching the house. If anything crawled out, he’d shoot it. Enough of the house had blown up that we could see if anything went out the back now, but the vampire could have run out that back basement door before the biggest explosion. Shit, if we’d waited for backup they could have had men back there to shoot him as he ran.

Seamus cried out. Nicky and Lisandro were holding him down, pinning him to the ground. I jogged the last few yards and fell to my knees beside them. I laid my hand on his arm again. His skin was hot to the touch, and his beast snarled up at me. It wanted to come out and play. My new beast growled up at me, or maybe at him.

‘If he shifts we have to kill him,’ I said.

Nicky said, ‘Understood.’

Lisandro said, ‘There’s got to be another way.’

Seamus spoke through gritted teeth. ‘She’s right.’

‘You smell like hyena,’ Lisandro said, ‘but you don’t carry that beast.’

‘I do now.’

‘Let him smell your skin,’ Nicky said.

I had to stop touching his arm to put my arm in front of his face. His eyes rolled back into his head, and his energy calmed. When he opened his eyes they were peaceful, he was in there again.

‘He’s not trying to control me anymore.’

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. It’s like he’s gone. I would have said dead, but I don’t think that’s it.’

‘Gone is good enough,’ I said.

Al said, ‘You’ve set a fire over in the trees there. It’s been a dry year; we need to put that out.’ He looked tired, as if something about the last few minutes had taken a lot out of him.

‘You okay?’ Hatfield asked.

‘I knew the couple who lived here. I don’t want to tell their kids in town that their folks got eaten alive.’

‘Tell them they were murdered,’ I said.

‘The families always ask how, always, as if that will make them feel better.’ Al shook his head. ‘Some truths don’t make you feel better. Some truths just hurt more.’

No one argued with him; we’d all been around violence and death too long to argue with something that true.

If Seamus hadn’t been injured we’d have had to stay at the scene longer, but they let us take him to get patched up. I wasn’t risking him in the ambulance; it was too close to the scenario with Ares in the chopper. No one argued with us. I think they thought the same thing. The EMTs put a dressing on his wound to keep him from bleeding all over the car and then let us go. We implied, though didn’t state, that we were taking him to the hospital; we didn’t. I called Claudia from the car and had some of the guards waiting to help take him upstairs. They’d help him shift form and if he went apeshit they’d kill him. If he was calm, they’d let him heal in animal form for a few hours.

We dropped Hatfield at the station for her to pick up her own car and drive home to clean up. The rest of us went to our rooms to shower with the industrial-strength cleaner that Edward and I had both started carrying in our go bags. It smelled like bad fake orange, but it was better than smelling like corpses. It was weird that zombies didn’t smell as bad as plain dead people, but they almost never did. Metaphysics was weird that way.

Edward went to his room across the hall from Nicky and me. Lisandro had a room farther down the hall. The guards on hall duty informed me that Nathaniel was asleep in the room. I asked, ‘And Micah?’ but was told no, just Nathaniel. I had a moment to wonder how Micah and his family were doing and why Nathaniel wasn’t plastered to his side, but then I wasn’t plastered to Micah’s side either and I was his ‘fiancée.’ I opened the door with his key card and tried to be as quiet as possible. The room was dark, the blackout curtains pulled except for that rim of sunlight. If they hadn’t told me Nathaniel was in the bed, at first glance it would have looked like just a pile of covers. When he slept alone he cuddled down like he was making a nest. It was always impressive how invisible he could be in a bed by himself.

Nicky and I threaded our way through all the coffins and past the bed. I might have kissed him if I hadn’t smelled like rotting corpse. I did not want the smell on the sheets. Nathaniel was a heavy sleeper, but to sleep through both the noise and the smell meant he was exhausted. I tried to remember if he and Micah had slept at all in the last twenty-four hours and couldn’t remember, which probably meant, no.

Someone had tidied the bathroom since the last shower that Nicky and I had taken. We had fresh towels, but no soap or shampoo that the hotel had would take care of this smell. I got the bottle of the same all-around body cleanser that they used in morgues, which was actually where I’d first used it on my hands. We’d use Febreze on the body armor vests and bag the clothes and talk to the hotel about laundry. They wouldn’t be happy with us if we let them put the clothes in with any other guest laundry. It was definitely a separate load for all five of our clothes. Of course, Seamus had bled all over his, so they might be a loss anyway.

Nicky and I made two separate piles of our weapons, then stripped. Much like last time, there was no teasing or foreplay, it was just strip as quickly as possible. He got the water as hot as we could stand it and then we did a quick cleanup with the heavy-duty orange-smelling stuff top to bottom. It was hell on my hair, but it was about the only thing that worked for certain occasions. When we both smelled like overdone orange something, I got the conditioners for my hair, because otherwise it would do its best imitation of a white-girl Afro, which was so not a good look for me. Nicky got his own shampoo and conditioner. His straight hair would be more forgiving except for the extreme triangle-cut one-sided bangs; it meant that he had to baby his hair more than he would have otherwise. If he didn’t, the bangs didn’t lie right over his eye.

We stood in the shower waiting for the conditioner to sit for a minute or two, and Nicky grinned at me.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Do we have to go back and play detective after we get cleaned up?’

‘Yeah, I need to make sure they don’t vacate my warrant because they think the big bad vampire got burned up.’

‘The body he was using probably did get fried,’ Nicky said.

‘Maybe, but we couldn’t see the back door from the basement until after the house blew up. He was in a zombie body; he could move in daylight without frying in the light.’

‘Shouldn’t he have not been able to do that, take over a zombie body, I mean?’

‘No, he shouldn’t have,’ I said.

He touched my face, turned me to look up at him. ‘I didn’t mean to make you look all serious.’

‘It’s a first for me, Nicky. This vampire is breaking all the rules.’

‘When you and Edward don’t know what’s going on, it’s bad, isn’t it?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, it’s bad.’

‘So no time for more sex,’ he said.

I smiled, then laughed. ‘You aren’t tired yet?’

‘I’m a werelion, Anita. Natural lions can fuck every fifteen to thirty minutes for days.’

‘Yeah, for about ten seconds at a shot. Your stamina is much greater, and the lions do nothing but sleep and fuck for days. We’ve been busier than that.’

He laughed. ‘I love that you research the animal side of us.’

‘Hey, biology degree; once I thought I’d be a field biologist specializing in preternatural creatures. Some of the stuff I knew going in, but yeah, I research my guys, um, people.’

‘It still weirds you out that Jade is a girl.’

I shrugged. ‘Yeah, but when I’m around her I like her; I just never saw myself with a girlfriend.’

‘The
ardeur
overwhelms you as much as your people sometimes,’ he said.

‘Yeah, let’s get the conditioner out and get changed.’

He suddenly wrapped me in his arms. ‘I’m sorry I keep bringing up things that take your smile away.’

I hugged him back, and even naked in the shower it was more comfort than anything else. It felt incredibly good to simply hold him and be held as close in return. He laid his cheek on top of my head, and I snuggled in against him. That was enough to make his body begin to respond.