Anita Blake 22 - Affliction (71 page)

We turned and found Little Henry looking at us with big brown eyes.

‘Us, who?’ I asked.

‘People,’ he said. His eyes went a little wider, lips parting as his breathing sped up.

‘What people?’ I asked.

Henry opened his mouth and screamed, ‘God! God! God!’ He sat up in bed, clawing at the tubes and wires.

My cross flared to white-hot fire. I got out my gun, because when the cross flared it meant a vampire was nearby and doing bad things. Nicky had his gun out, too, so we were armed as the nurse and doctor came through the door.

‘What did you do?’ Dr Aimes demanded as he shielded his eyes from my cross and ran for his patient.

‘It’s a vampire,’ I said. I’d known vampires that could be invisible in plain sight even to me.

Dr Aimes and a small blond nurse were trying to hold Henry so he didn’t yank any more tubes out of himself, but it’s hard to hold down someone that big. I’d have had Nicky help, but we had other things to do.

‘Search the corners of the room by walking along the wall,’ I said.

‘You think the vamp has been here all along?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know, but my cross says it’s here.’

Nicky and I walked the perimeter of the room, guns out and ready, shoulder scraping the wall so even if it tricked our eyes we’d run into it. Invisible doesn’t make you less solid.

I was half-blinded by the glow of my own cross. I thought about going for my sunglasses, but I didn’t want to let go of the gun with either hand. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, but it was the nurse being tossed across the room. Henry was still screaming, wordless, ragged, and frantic. Cops and more nurses came in to try to help hold him down, but their holy objects flared to blue-white light, too. The cops pulled their guns.

It was Deputy Al who asked, ‘Where’s the vampire?’

I explained what we were doing, and we had almost too many people searching the room while the medics fought to hold down Henry and he threw them around like toys. We finished our perimeter walk of the room. Nicky had gotten to the bathroom before I had, and he and another uniformed officer had checked it and called it clear. My cross was still white and blue and glowing, but there was nothing here.

‘It’s not here, Anita,’ Nicky called to me over the screaming.

‘There’s nothing here,’ Al said.

I glanced up at the ceiling; vampires could do that, but not while invisible. It took too much concentration to levitate and use mind tricks to that degree. If there’d been more shadows in the room, maybe a vampire could have done both, but the lights were full on and it was bright as day.

‘Then help hold down Henry,’ I said.

Nicky put up his gun, because I’d said so, and went to help the doctor and battered nurses. When he moved to help, so did a couple of the other bigger officers, and as soon as they touched Little Henry their holy objects flared brighter, going from blue-white to a pure burning incandescent white. His screams intensified, and he almost threw all that muscle off him, but one of them was almost as big as Nicky; they had enough strength to pin him to the bed.

I saw Dr Aimes pick up a syringe through the glow of the holy objects.

I yelled, ‘Aimes, don’t do it!’

Dr Aimes turned and looked at me. His glasses were gone, lost in the struggle. His cheek was already swelling a little. ‘We have to calm him down. He’s going to hurt himself, or someone else.’

‘I know where the vampire is,’ I said.

‘What are you talking about?’ He turned toward the IV tube with the syringe.

The room was small enough that I was there in time to grab his arm. ‘It’s in Henry.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Look at the holy objects when they touch him.’

He blinked at the bed as if he hadn’t noticed, and maybe he hadn’t. It looked like he’d gotten a good hit to the face. That can ring your bells and disorient you for a while. He turned back to me, looking puzzled. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I think I do,’ I said, ‘but it’s going to be unpleasant.’

‘More unpleasant than this?’ Aimes said.

‘Maybe,’ I said.

‘Will it help my patient?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Then do it.’

He should have asked more questions, or maybe I should have waited for him to recover from the blow that he’d had to the side of his head, but I didn’t. Because he might get all cautious and reconsider and I didn’t want that.

Nicky called to me from the bed, where he was still helping hold down Little Henry. ‘What are you going to do?’ Nicky was having to work at holding just one arm and part of the upper body. He could bench-press small cars if they had a balance point. He shouldn’t have been having to work that hard to hold a human down, not even a really strong one.

I didn’t know how to explain it to a room full of people with no psychic or vampire experience, so I said, ‘I’m going to find the vampire.’

‘How?’ Deputy Al asked.

‘Little Henry’s going to help me.’

‘How?’ Al asked again.

‘Easier if I just show you,’ I said, and I started stripping off my weapons. All the men by the bed should have done the same, but there hadn’t been time; now there was. I’d take off anything that Henry could grab and use against us, and then I’d have the men do the same one by one, and when we were as safe as we could manage, I’d go exploring. I’d go exploring inside Little Henry Crawford’s mind.

They wrestled Little Henry into handcuffs on the metal bed rails, but he continued to thrash and jerk so much that Nicky said, ‘The railings aren’t going to hold; hurry.’

There was no beast inside Little Henry for me to call to mine. He wasn’t a vampire that I could call with my necromancy. I’d broken ties between both types of preternaturals and their vampire masters, but I’d never tried to break a human free. I wasn’t exactly sure how to do it, but Nicky was right; whatever I was going to do I needed to hurry.

I started with touch, because all vampire powers are greater with skin on skin. The moment I touched him I felt the power of the vampire. My cross flared white, hot, incandescent white just like the police officers’ crosses had. Henry screamed louder, his voice growing ragged with the abuse. I tried to trace the power backward, but it was like I got lost inside Henry, like the very warmth and humanness of him somehow confused my power.

‘Shit,’ I said.

‘What’s wrong?’ Dr Aimes asked, hovering close.

‘If he were a lycanthrope or a vampire I could do this, but human is harder.’

‘Do what? What are you trying to do?’

‘Break him free of the vampire that’s possessed him.’

‘That’s not possible,’ Deputy Al said.

‘I’ve done it before,’ I said.

‘It’s impossible; once a vampire has you, they have you,’ Al said.

I shook my head. ‘Not to me, it’s not impossible to me.’

I thought about shoving the cross into his skin. It would chase the vampire back for a few moments, but it wouldn’t free someone who was already this deeply entrenched.

I walked around the bed to Nicky. ‘Help me get into the bed.’

Nicky didn’t question it, just picked me up.

Dr Aimes said, ‘What are you going to do, Marshal?’

‘I need to see his eyes, and I’m too damn short.’

Nicky helped lift me over those long, muscled arms that were still straining against the cuffs and the narrow metal bars of the bed. Two officers were still holding down his legs, or he would have bucked me off the bed. I tried to stay high on my knees above his body, but he was thrashing too much; I knelt over his chest, using both hands to grab his head. He was still shrieking, the sound so loud with me above his face that it was almost painful. My cross flared so bright that I was nearly blinded by it. I needed to see his eyes, and I couldn’t. Did I dare take off the cross? But the other holy objects were so bright I wasn’t sure it would make that much difference.

The skin of his face was cool against my hands, and I could feel the vampire inside him. I decided to treat him as if he weren’t human, as if I had every right to expect him to respond to my power. ‘Henry Crawford, Henry, look at me!’ I put energy and power into my words.

He stopped struggling and blinked up at me through the edge of the lighted cross. ‘Henry, Henry, can you hear me?’

He blinked, staring up at me as if he didn’t know what I was.

‘Henry, can you hear me?’

‘I hear you,’ he whispered.

‘I’m going to set you free.’

‘You can’t. He told me I’m his forever.’

‘He lied,’ I said. ‘They all lie.’

‘Who?’ he asked.

‘Vampires.’

The cross light faded a little so I could see how green and brown his eyes were. Most people with hazel eyes really have brown eyes with a hint of gray, or green, but Little Henry’s eyes really were green and brown all mixed together. I watched the pain and confusion in those eyes, and then I saw it, like a reflection of something dark. I would never know if I’d truly ‘seen’ it, or if it was my mind translating the untranslatable. The next moment the vampire threw its power into Henry and tried for me, but vampire was something I could understand. I’d fought two other necromancers that had come back from the dead; one had almost killed me, but that was before I accepted what I was, who I was, and what that meant.

The vampire filled Henry with terror, and he drew breath to scream again, but I sent love in the place of fear. I sent the soft warmth of welcome and friendship; I offered a hand in the darkness. I offered Henry Crawford hope and a way out. I shone a light into the darkness that the vampire offered, and Henry turned to it the way humans always do; we need hope almost more than anything else, for without it we are lost. I helped Henry find his way back from the hell that the vampire had trapped him in, and I saw what he’d done to him. This vampire fed on fear and he’d kept Henry in perpetual terror during the day so he could feed off Henry’s fear.

‘You evil bastard,’ I whispered.

His voice came out of Henry’s mouth, but it wasn’t Henry’s voice. ‘I am not evil, Anita Blake; he is mine, my slave to do with as I wish.’

‘No, I say you cannot have him.’

‘It is too late, he is mine!’

‘Bullshit!’ I threw my power into Henry, threw my necromancy into him like a guided missile seeking its target. Henry was just the sky that I was flying through, searching for the vampire, and Henry wanted to help me, because I had offered him the first peace and hope that he had since the vampires took him. Henry helped me, by wanting me to win. He opened himself up and didn’t fight me as I sent a psychic gift into him that had no business being in a human being. I tried to make it a gentle passing, but in honesty I wanted the vampire more.

‘He is mine, Anita Blake, mine!’

‘NO!’ I saw the vampire’s body wrapped in dark cloth in what looked like a cave, or bare stone at least. It turned its head, and it was emaciated, skeletal, but the eyes – the eyes were alive, burning with fire as dark as the night itself.

‘Yes, necromancer, the Mother of All Things breathed her power into me when you drank her down. She tried to escape to my body, but you would not let her go; thus I have her power but am free of her control. She did not control all the vampires merely for her own enjoyment. Some of us she controlled so we did not destroy all that is.’

‘You can’t destroy all that is,’ I said.

‘I can destroy all humans, with my power and hers combined. I am free from this body and free to enter others. The Mother took me with her when she tried to possess you and Jean-Claude and your others, but now I do not need anyone’s help to ride the bodies of others.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Do you not recognize the feel of me, Anita? You and your lovers have tasted my power before. You denied me deaths once, but you and the police fed me in the mountains, and again in the hospital; with every death, I fed and grew stronger.’

‘You are not the Lover of Death, you can’t be.’

‘Why can I not?’

‘Your power feels completely different.’

‘I was reborn when you slew our Mother; she filled me with her darkness, and I felt you filled with it, too. We are all that is left of her, Anita Blake, you and I.’

I stared into Henry’s eyes and saw a body so ravaged by time that if he hadn’t opened his eyes and moved I’d have taken him for a corpse, a long-dead corpse. ‘You were in the basement. You just entered one of the zombies so you could move better in daylight. How did you get your body out in time and not burn?’

‘I am the creator of my line; you know that rotting vampires do not burn in the sun. The flesh eaters are swift and strong; I carried myself to safety and hid in the woods while you killed all my hard work.’

‘Apparently, you got some of Marmee Noir’s necromancy that I didn’t, but I got something you didn’t get.’

‘Lies.’

‘You can only take over zombies you raise from the dead. I’ll admit it’s impressive that they don’t have to be in the grave first, just three days or so dead for the soul to move on and you can raise them. Bully for you.’

‘My vampires are more powerful than your master’s.’

‘Because you inhabit them and share some of your own power with them somehow, but you only take over the newly made ones; why is that? You were trying to take over your older bloodline vamps not that long ago; something about the Mother’s power keeps you out.’

‘I have no limits, Anita; I will prove that to you tonight.’

‘Not with Henry you won’t.’

‘And how will you stop me?’ It was Henry’s face, but the sneering arrogance wasn’t; it was like a stranger using the other man’s face.

‘Like this.’ I called the
ardeur
, and I prayed that I could use it like a gentle scalpel to cut away only what needed to be gone but save the rest. I wanted to free Henry, not enslave him to me. My cross flared bright and brighter as I leaned down and laid the gentlest of kisses on his mouth. I thrust my power through that kiss and into him. The Lover of Death fought back, and if it had been night maybe he could have kept Henry, but it was daylight and I was a creature of the day, I had slain the Father of the Day, and taken over his powers as the Queen of Tigers, and from the Mother of All Darkness I had inherited the ability to break the unbreakable bonds between animal to call and master vampire, between vampire and their blood-oathed Master of the City, and between human servant and vampire master. It had been her gift and she had tried to use it on me more than once, and any vampire power that was used on me had a percentage chance of becoming mine forever. I was the weapon that the vampires had created, the perfect nemesis that the Mother of All Darkness, the Living Night, had forged simply by hitting me often enough and hard enough with the fires of her insane power.