Anita Blake 22 - Affliction (8 page)

‘Should I be insulted?’ Alfie asked.

I said, ‘No.’

Ares said, ‘Yes.’

Micah said, ‘No.’

Alfie looked from one to the other of us, smiling slightly. ‘I don’t know what I expected from you, Ms Blake, Mr Callahan, but this easy camaraderie is unexpected.’

‘Pleasant, I hope,’ Micah said.

‘Yes,’ the vampire said, ‘most illuminating.’

‘Illuminating, why illuminating?’ I asked.

‘To shed light upon something; I thought it was a very appropriate word.’

I would have asked more, but Micah’s cousin chose that moment to come up and say, ‘Who’s riding with me?’

‘Juliet, this is Anita and Nathaniel.’

I offered a hand to forgo any thought of hugging. I didn’t like hugging people I didn’t know, and some families just hugged willy-nilly. Her hand was as small as mine, but more callused to match the working cowboy boots. She took Nathaniel’s hand, too, and he wasted a smile on her. She smiled back, but it didn’t reach her eyes. They were blue, and the frown between them made them look less the shape of Micah’s.

‘Aunt Bea said you were Mike’s fiancée; is that true, or are you just living together? I ask, because if it’s just Aunt Bea’s way of dealing with her issues about living in sin, I can help head off some of the wedding talk.’

It made me half-smile and half-laugh. It was blunt and I liked it. ‘No wedding plans; can’t we just introduce me as his girlfriend?’

‘Nope, believe me. I lived with my husband before marriage, and
fiancée
is the family’s nice, hopeful double-talk for living in sin.’

I looked at Micah, and he knew my expressions, too, because he answered the unvoiced question. ‘Some of my relatives are religious in a …’ He seemed to fumble for words, and finally settled on, ‘It’s going to be awkward.’

Juliet laughed and shook her head. ‘Awkward. Oh, cousin, how I’ve missed you. You always were the peacekeeper and the master of understatement. You should be able to come home and see your dad and not worry about this other crap, but you know it never works that way. I’m sorry.’

Micah nodded. ‘Me, too.’

I was beginning to get a bad feeling that maybe Micah hadn’t gotten back in touch with his family after Chimera’s death for more than one reason. He and Nathaniel had moved in at the same time; we had always been a threesome, never just a twosome.

‘We can call Anita your fiancée and the family will let it pass, but you can’t introduce them together like you just did to me, you know you can’t.’

‘I could,’ Micah said, and there was something in those two quiet words that held way more emotion than it should have.

‘Micah should be able to just see his dad and not worry about anything else,’ Nathaniel said. ‘I can just be a friend.’

‘No,’ Micah said, and he took Nathaniel’s hand in his and shook his head. ‘No, you can’t just be a friend.’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Juliet said, ‘you’re going to force the issue. You haven’t changed; you were always so quiet, the perfect son, until you weren’t. You’d get something you believed in and you would never back down, no matter what.’ She sighed and shook her head. She looked at Nathaniel. ‘It’s nothing personal. You have to be a wonderful person for Micah to feel this strongly, but I do not want to be in the shitstorm that is going to happen when he introduces you to our family as his … what?’ She looked at Micah. ‘What do you say?’

‘Significant other,’ Micah said, and his voice was very firm.

Nathaniel said, ‘I love that you say that, but honestly, Micah, this has to be about you and your dad. It’s just words; I don’t want to make this harder on you.’

I saw Micah squeeze his hand and shake his head again. ‘It’s not just words, Nathaniel, or if it is, words are important, they have meaning and truth to them.’ He turned to Juliet still holding Nathaniel’s hand. ‘I’ll let the
fiancée
stand with Anita, because if we could figure out how to marry as a group, we would, but since we can’t do that legally,
fiancée
and
significant other
will do.’

Nathaniel looked at him. ‘Do you mean that? That if we could marry as a group, you would?’

Micah looked at him. ‘Yes.’

Nathaniel threw his arms around Micah, and they hugged. They hugged like they meant it, and I didn’t have to see Nathaniel’s face to know he was crying. I realized I was, too. Damn. I went to them and wrapped my arms around them both, my two men. And just like that the lines were drawn; Micah wouldn’t back down or make Nathaniel mean any less to him, not even to smooth things over with his family. If he could do it, so could we.

The three of us rode with Juliet, but the guards insisted on at least one guard riding with us. Since they were here to keep us safe, it was hard to argue with the logic, so we didn’t try. What did surprise me was that Dev ended up riding with us and not Nicky. If it was just one of the four I’d expected it to be him. Honestly, I felt odd without Nicky in the car. It wasn’t a matter of trust or skill. I trusted Dev to do the job and guard us just fine, but I hadn’t traveled out of town with Nicky and Dev since they started being partners so often, and I just plain preferred Nicky’s company. I couldn’t have put it into words, because God knew Dev was the better conversationalist and traditionally charming, but Nicky … was Nicky. He fit better. Micah, Nathaniel, and I rode in the back middle seat and we put the last row of seats down so there’d be more room for luggage. The rest of the luggage had actually fit into one of the black SUVs, so Alfie was driving Ares, Bram, and most of the luggage to our hotel so they could unload the regular luggage. Nicky was following us in the other SUV that Alfie had given to us as ‘our’ car for the time we spent in town. Most of the weapons we’d packed were divided between us and Nicky’s follow car. As a U.S. Marshal of the Preternatural Branch, I was duty-bound to keep most of my arsenal at hand, because as a federal officer I could be called up anywhere I traveled. The ruling had come down after a case when another marshal had been unable to perform his duties to the degree necessary to help out a fellow marshal who put out a call for aid. At least they’d changed the ruling that had forced me to either carry most of the ‘equipment’ with me or have it in a secure lockup at all times. That ruling had come down after an executioner had his bag of dangerous goodies stolen from the trunk of his car and one of the guns was used in a holdup. The ruling had been overturned when a fellow executioner had taken in all his equipment and challenged the judges to carry it. These weren’t laws most of the time, but ‘rulings,’ basically emergency actions taken from some knee-jerk reaction to a tragedy. Since my branch of law enforcement was never called in until people were dead, there was a lot of tragedy to go around. Worse yet, the ‘rulings,’ even most of the laws that I acted under, were made by people who had never used a gun for real, worn a badge, or had to make a life-and-death decision, let alone that decision in the split second of a vampire hunt or while tracking a rogue shapeshifter.

Juliet asked, ‘Do I need to drive slow so your other guard won’t lose us?’

‘You couldn’t lose Nicky if you tried,’ Dev said. ‘You won’t lose him by accident.’

‘The roads are tricky after dark.’

‘Juliet,’ Micah said, ‘it’s okay; all our people know their jobs.’

Nathaniel and I had put Micah in the middle without talking about it. It was partly just because I knew that Nathaniel would want to keep touching him after the marriage statement and partly because Micah was like most wereanimals in that physical touch made him feel better, and no matter how brave he was being, he needed the comfort. He held on to both of our hands, and I wondered how much hand holding he was going to do in front of his family. In public the two men usually kept the touching to a minimum, depending on where they were; some places were more user-friendly for male-on-male affection than others. Or did Micah intend to shove Nathaniel down his family’s throat? I wasn’t sure that was the best thing, but I’d support his decision.

A streetlight gleamed onto Dev’s hair, bringing out the different shades of blond in his shoulder-length hair. It barely touched his shoulders and was as long as he wanted to grow it.

‘Don’t take this wrong, Dev, but I’m surprised Nicky didn’t argue with you being the guard that rode with us.’

‘I stayed with the luggage and made sure the people helping with it did their jobs.’

‘I’m surprised you stayed with the luggage,’ Nathaniel said.

He turned in his seat to look back at us. ‘Nicky pulled rank,’ he said.

‘He doesn’t outrank you,’ I said.

Dev gave a wide grin. ‘He’s a better fighter than I am. He reminded me of that.’

I studied his face for a moment, trying to see if he was offended, but there was nothing but the usual good humor in his face.

‘Bram says you could be better than Nicky if you’d work harder in training,’ Micah said.

Dev’s grin gleamed white in the semidarkness. ‘I don’t want to work that hard.’

‘You’re so used to being faster and stronger just naturally that it makes you lazy in practice,’ I said, but I smiled when I said it. It was almost impossible to be really upset with Dev.

‘I’m faster, stronger, and I practice hard at what I have to do.’

‘But only what you have to do,’ I said. ‘Nicky puts in the extra time to get better, and you don’t.’

‘No, and I’m not going to.’

‘You are a lazy cat,’ I said, smiling.

‘But I’m
your
lazy cat,’ he said.

Juliet said, ‘Is there something I should know about Dev, too?’

‘He’s a bodyguard,’ Micah said.

‘Are you sure? I’ll run what interference I can about you and Nathaniel, but I can’t help if I don’t know what to protect.’

‘Dev isn’t my lover,’ Micah said.

Dev turned around, his face alight with mischief. The next pool of darkness came and he spoke out of the dimness, ‘Oh, but I so would be if only you would say yes.’ His tone of voice was teasing.

But Juliet took it seriously, sort of. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus, please don’t tease in front of the family at the hospital.’

Dev turned to her. ‘I know how to behave. Promise.’

‘He does,’ I said. ‘He just doesn’t bother most of the time.’

‘Well, please, please, bother this time.’

‘I may tease in private with Micah, but I would never do anything to make this ordeal worse.’ He turned a very serious face to Micah. ‘If I haven’t said it out loud, I am sorry about your father.’

‘Thank you, Dev,’ Micah said.

‘You are a lazy cat, but a good one,’ I said.

‘Don’t tell. You’ll ruin my reputation with the other guards.’

It made us all smile, which may have been part of his purpose. That, and it was Dev. There was more than one reason that his childhood nickname had been Devil and a reason that it was still his name. Of course, when your legal first name is Mephistopheles, almost anything is an improvement.

Micah leaned in against me so that he could bury his face against the side of my neck. Nathaniel moved his free hand up to stroke along the line of neck that Micah had bared by snuggling into me. Juliet talked to us as she drove. We found out that she and her husband did run a working farm. They had two kids. Most of his generation of cousins were either married or in the military, and a lot of them had kids. Being introduced as the fiancée was going to mean a lot of wedding and kid questions. Peachy. Micah asked questions and replied to her, but mostly we petted him, and felt his tension rise, until we pulled into the hospital parking lot, and I could suddenly taste his pulse on my tongue as if the emotion were mine. I redid my shields between me and my leopard king and prepared to go meet the rest of his family. The only concession we made was that Micah took my other hand. It meant I couldn’t go for my gun if bad guys jumped us, but Dev was with us, and bad guys were the least of our worries tonight. I’d take a nice straight-up firefight to families and hospitals any night.

Juliet pulled into the parking lot with Nicky in the second SUV like a shadow behind hers. ‘See,’ Dev said, ‘you didn’t lose Nicky.’

‘No one likes an I-told-you-so,’ she said, and began to drive up and down the lanes looking for a parking spot. She passed a lot of police cars of every flavor in the parking lot. ‘My job just got easier. What’s with all the police?’ Dev asked.

Juliet pulled into a parking space with a county sheriff car on one side. Nicky had to drive past us. There were no other parking spots as far as the eye could see. ‘One of their own is inside,’ I said. ‘We always come like this.’ I unbuckled my seat belt.

Dev turned in his seat, belt free, and said, ‘I understand his friends and coworkers, but some of these marked cars are from towns away. There’s even one from Wyoming.’

‘Dad’s been the county sheriff for a long time,’ Micah said. ‘He knows a lot of people.’

But it was Nathaniel who said the truth. ‘There’ll be officers here who don’t know Sheriff Callahan, but once the word goes out that there’s an officer down for any reason, they come to make sure the family has everything they need and that the officer is never alone. They do vigil.’

Juliet turned in her seat so she could see Nathaniel. ‘How do you know that? Your dad a cop, too?’

‘No, but I’ve been with Anita for years. I’ve been at the hospital when she was hurt and visited when other officers were injured.’

‘And they accept you as family?’ Juliet asked.

‘Most of the local police do.’

‘They’re sort of used to my domestic arrangements,’ I said.

Juliet shook her head hard enough to make her curls bounce. ‘Well, I don’t know about the other cops, but our family is probably going to be embarrassing the hell out of us about your domestic arrangements. I’ll just apologize now and get it over with.’

‘Appreciated,’ I said. Micah squeezed my hand. I gave him a smile. ‘If I kiss you, you’ll be having to wipe lipstick off.’

‘I’ll risk it, if we’re careful,’ he said, and smiled.

We kissed gently, and it left a stripe of scarlet in the middle of his lips. Nathaniel said, ‘Share the go-faster stripe, because I may not be able to kiss you for a while.’