The Harlequin (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #15)

The Harlequin (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #15) Page 18

Chapter Thirty-three

EDWARD HIT THE door to the main trauma room with his shoulder. We were inside, but there was no one to pay attention to me. There was a white wall of doctors and nurses, and some of them in civilian clothes, but they were all around one gurney. Their voices held that frantic calm that you never want to hear when you're on your back looking up at doctors.

A spike of fear got through the shock - Peter. It had to be Peter. The adrenaline rush of it stabbed through my stomach like a fresh blow. Edward turned, and I could see more of the room. It wasn't Peter. He was lying on a different gurney, not that far away from the one that had everyone's interest. Who the fuck was it? We didn't have any more humans on our side.

The only person with Peter was Nathaniel. He was holding the boy's free hand. The other hand was hooked up to an IV. Nathaniel looked at me, and his face showed fear. Enough that Peter fought to turn and see what was coming through the door.

Nathaniel touched his chest, held him down. "It's Anita and your... Edward." I think he'd been about to say your dad.

I heard Peter's voice as we got closer. "Your face, what's wrong with them?"

Nathaniel said, "I didn't think there was anything wrong with my face." He tried to make a joke of it, but the noises from the other side of the room made humor sort of hard.

I couldn't see past all the white coats. "Who is it?" I asked.

Nathaniel answered, "It's Cisco."

Cisco. He wasn't hurt that badly. I'd seen shapeshifters heal throat wounds that bad. Were there more bad guys in here with us? "How did he get hurt?" I asked.

Peter actually tried to sit up, and Nathaniel kept him down with that hand on his chest, as if he'd been having to pin Peter to the gurney for a while. "Anita," Peter said.

Edward put me on the nearest empty gurney, and the movement didn't so much hurt as let me know that it was going to hurt. It was as if things shifted around that I shouldn't have been able to feel. I had a moment of nausea and knew that that was just me thinking too hard, or hoped it was. Edward moved me so Peter could see me without moving. It meant that I could see Peter. His jacket and shirt were gone, but bulky bandages were taped across his stomach; more of them were on his left shoulder and upper arm. His weapons and jacket and the remains of his bloody shirt were on the floor under his gurney. It'd be my turn next.

"What happened to Cisco?" I asked.

Peter said, "You're both hurt."

"I'm fine," Edward said, "it's not my blood."

Peter looked at me, his eyes too wide, face sickly pale. "He got his throat torn out."

"I remember, but he should be able to heal that," I said.

"Not all of us are that good at healing, Anita," Nathaniel said.

I looked at him now. The fact that I hadn't truly looked at him said clearly how much I was hurt. He was wearing one of his pairs of jogging shorts that left very little to the imagination. His hair was back in a tight braid. I met his eyes, and I still loved him, but for once my body didn't react to the sight of him.

Edward came to stand by Peter, and Nathaniel came to me, an exchange of emotional prisoners. Nathaniel took my hand and gave me as chaste a kiss as we'd ever exchanged. His lavender eyes held the worry that he'd been hiding from Peter, or trying to hide from him. He leaned over my body, and I heard him draw in a big breath of air. "Nothing's perforated," he whispered.

Until he said it, I hadn't thought about it. My intestines could have been perforated, or hell, my stomach. If I'd had to get clawed up, it wasn't a bad place for it. It wasn't a fatal hit, not right away, not if things weren't spilling out of me. They were bulging out, not spilling. There was a difference.

"Is Peter..."

"Not perforated either, you were both lucky."

I knew he was right, but... The voices had risen in pitch across the room. When the doctors start sounding that panicked, things are very bad. Cisco, shit.

It was Cherry who peeled away from the crowd around him and came to me. She had thrown a white coat over the usual black Goth outfit. Her heavy eyeliner had run down her face like black tears. She touched Peter's shoulder as she went past, and said, "Let the drugs work, Peter. You can't help him by fighting to stay awake."

"She was trying for me," he said. "She was reaching for me. He put himself in her way. He saved me."

She patted his shoulder and checked the IV almost automatically, but she also adjusted the little knobby thing on it. The liquid began to drip a little faster. She patted him again and came to the other side of the gurney so that she could look at Nathaniel across me, or maybe so she could keep an eye on what was happening to Cisco. There were so many people around him that it looked like they were getting in each other's way.

She said, "Nothing I can do over there." She said it almost to herself, as if she were trying to convince herself.

She put on a fresh pair of gloves before she looked at my stomach. There was blood on the sleeve of the white coat she was wearing. She seemed to see it at about the same time I did. She just stripped off the coat, tossed it in the little hamper they had for washables. Threw the clean gloves away, got another pair of clean gloves, and came back to me. Her eyes stared at the wound, not at me. Her face had gone to concentrating on her job. If she just concentrated on her job then she wouldn't fall apart. I knew the look, I had one like it.

I tried to do something else while she looked at the wounds. Somehow I didn't want to see my insides on the outside again. But it was like a train wreck; you couldn't quite look away. "What is that?" I asked.

"Intestine," she said, in a voice that held no emotion.

I heard someone shout, "Clear!"

The crowd around Cisco cleared, and I saw Lillian using the crash cart on his chest. She was about to try to jump-start his heart. Fuck.

Micah was in the crowd. He turned and looked at me, his mouth and chin covered in blood. As if Nathaniel read my mind, he said, "He was trying to call flesh and help Cisco heal the wound."

Micah could help a healing wound heal faster by licking it. He'd done it for me once. He wiped the blood off his face as he looked at me across the room. The look on his face was anguish. He'd tried.

Lillian hit Cisco's chest three times, four, but that high-pitched alarm sound just kept going. Flatline.

I didn't hear the door open, but Richard came through leaning so heavily on Jamil, one of his bodyguards, that he was being half-carried. Jamil put him by the gurney. Their bodies blocked me from seeing what was happening.

Cherry was swabbing my hand; she had a covered IV needle in her other hand. I looked away. Richard's power ran over my skin like heat. Nathaniel shivered where he held my hand. I glanced at him. His body was covered in goose bumps.

"You feel it?" I asked.

"We all do," Cherry said, and the needle bit home in my hand. I squeezed Nathaniel's hand hard and kept staring at Richard's broad back.

Micah came to stand at the head of my gurney. He'd wiped most of the blood off, but his eyes held defeat. If I'd had a spare hand I would have offered it. He laid his face against the top of my head. It was the best we could do.

Jamil stumbled away from Richard, leaving him to half-collapse across the gurney. Jamil's body exploded; one second he was tall, dark, handsome, the next he was the black-furred werewolf that had saved my life once. Lillian fell to the floor, her body writhing, twisting. She was suddenly gray-furred. She lay on the floor with her newly ratty face turned up to the gurney. The other doctors and nurses kept their distance. Richard was trying to bring Cisco's beast, trying to help him heal by forcing him to shift. But the alarm was still screaming, still letting us know that Cisco's heart wasn't beating.

Richard clutched at the gurney with one hand and Cisco with the other. His power spread through the room as if someone had forgotten to turn off some invisible hot bath, and it was filling up the room. Micah stood up, put his hand against my head. I felt his power spring to life, felt him throw it around the four of us like a shield, keeping Richard's power out. Most of the time Micah could protect the other wereleopards, but my ties to Richard were too strong. It worked today. Today, Micah held me in the calm of his power along with Nathaniel and Cherry.

Richard screamed, a long, loud, anguished sound. He collapsed to his knees, one hand still clinging to Cisco's arm. The arm flopped limp, dead. Richard's back rippled as if some giant hand were pushing out from the inside. He threw his head back and screamed again, but before the echo had died, the scream turned into a howl. Fur poured over Richard's body. It was as if his human body were ice, melting to reveal fur and muscle. His human form just melted into a wolf the size of a pony. I'd never seen him in full wolf form, only the half-and-half. The wolf threw its head back and howled, long and mournful. It turned a head as big as my entire chest to look at me. The eyes were all wolf, amber and alien, but the look in them was not a wolf's look. It held too much understanding of the loss that lay on the gurney.

One of the other white coats started turning off the machines. The scream of the alarm went silent. Except for the ringing in my one ear the room was deathly quiet. Then everyone began to move. The doctors and nurses started pulling things out of Cisco's body. He lay on his back, eyes closed. I remembered seeing spine in the throat wound; now the bone was covered. He'd been healing, but not fast enough.

Jamil climbed to his furry feet and put a half claw, half hand on the wolf's back. He said in a voice gone to growl, "I'll take us to feed."

One of the doctors helped Lillian to her feet. She seemed more shaken than Jamil was, but then I'm not sure she'd ever had someone rip her beast from her human form. Jamil had been on the wrong end of Richard's anger more than once. "Come with us, Lillian," he said, and the wolfish muzzle had trouble with the double L sound.

She nodded and took the hand he offered. The dark-haired man who had turned off the alarm said, "We'll take care of the other patients, Lillian."

Her own voice sounded high-pitched and nasal. "Thank you, Chris." The three of them walked out together, leaving the others to begin to clean up.

"Why did he die?" I asked.

"He bled out faster than his body could heal," Cherry said.

"I've seen you guys heal from worse," I said.

"You hang around with too many big dogs, Anita," Cherry said. "We don't all heal like Micah and Richard." She had the IV on its little metal hat rack. She reached up for the knob that would start the drip.

"Wait, will that put me out?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Then I need to make some phone calls first."

"You're not hurting too much yet, then?" She made it half question, half statement.

"No, not yet. It aches, but it doesn't exactly hurt."

"It will," she said, "and when it does you'll want the painkillers."

I nodded, swallowed, nodded again. "I know, but we still have Soledad's masters out there. We need them dead."

"You aren't slaying any vamps today," she said.

"I know, but Ted Forrester still can."

Edward looked at me at the mention of his alter ego. His hand was on Peter's hair, as if he were a much younger boy and Edward had just come in to tuck him in for the night.

"I need you to take over my warrants," I said.

He nodded. His eyes weren't cold, they were rage-filled. I wasn't used to seeing this much heat from Edward; he was a cold creature, but what blazed in his eyes now was hot enough to burn a hole through me. "How is Peter?" he asked Cherry.

"Now that he's out, we'll sew him up. He should be fine."

Edward looked at me. "I'll kill the vampires for you."

"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.

Chapter Thirty-four

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?"

"It is only the night of the day you were injured. You have been out, as you put it, for only a few hours."

"A few hours, not days?" I asked.

"No."

I touched my stomach, and it didn't hurt the way it should have. I started to raise the hospital gown I was wearing. I hesitated, glancing at the man. He was my lover, but... there was always something about Requiem that made me less than perfectly comfortable around him. Micah, Nathaniel, Jean-Claude, Asher, even Jason, I would have simply looked at the wound. Richard, maybe I wouldn't have. But Requiem made me hesitate for different reasons.

"Look at your wound, Anita. I will not ravish you from the sight of your nakedness." He sounded like I'd insulted him. Since he was an old vampire, that I could hear that much emotion in his voice meant one of two things: either he allowed me to hear the emotion, or he was so upset he couldn't control himself.

I compromised. I raised the gown and kept the sheet over my lower extremities.

"I am not an animal, Anita; I can bear your nakedness without being affected." The anger and disdain were so thick in his voice that I knew it was lack of control.

"I never doubt your control, Requiem, but there's no way to be nude in front of you and have it be casual. I need to just look at my body and see what's wrong and right with the wound. I don't want to make a big deal out of it, or a romantic deal out of it."

"Would it not be a big deal if Jean-Claude were here in my stead?"

"Jean-Claude would concentrate on business and worry about the romance later."

"Is he that cold?"

"He's that practical," I said. "I like that in a man."

"I know you do not like me, my evening star." Again the emotion was thick on the ground.

I did the only thing I could: I ignored him. Once I saw my stomach it wasn't that hard to ignore him. I had pinkish scars where she'd clawed me open. It was weeks' worth of healing. I ran my hands over the skin, and it felt smoother, almost as if the shininess of it could be a texture. "How many hours?" I asked.

"It is now nine o'clock in the evening."

"Ten hours." I said it soft, like I didn't believe it.

"About that, yes."

"All this healing in ten hours?"

"It would seem so," he said. There was still a thread of anger to his voice, but it was less.

"How?"

"Should I quote to you, 'There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' Or should I simply say I do not know?"

"The 'I don't know' would be fine, but at least I know you're quoting from Hamlet. Now tell me, what's been happening while I slept?"

He glided to the bedside, a slight smile curving his lips. "Your friends slew a member of the Harlequin while she slept. Though the tall one, Olaf, or Otto, complained that she was dead when they arrived. He wanted her to be squirming when they cut her up."

I shivered and put my gown back in place. I tried to ignore the whole creepy Olaf thing and concentrate on business. "There should have been two members dead."

"You admit it," he said. "You admit that you sent them to slay members of the Harlequin."

"Admit it, hell, yes."

"Jean-Claude is locked in arguments with the council, even now, on whether the Harlequin are within their rights to slay us all for what you have done."

"If they don't give a black mask first, but they kill, not in self-defense, then it's a death sentence for them."

"Who told you that?"

I debated on whether to admit it, but finally shrugged and said, "Belle Morte."

"When has our beautiful death spoken to you?"

"She came to me in a vision."

"When?"

"When the three of us were dying. She helped feed me enough energy to come back and keep us all alive."

"Why would she help Jean-Claude?"

If it had been Jean-Claude, I'd have told the truth, all of it, but it wasn't. Requiem was, well, being his usual weird self. I wasn't certain that Belle would want her reasoning blabbed around. "Why does Belle do anything?"

"You are lying. She told you her reason."

Great, he knew I was lying. "The shapeshifters say that I don't smell like I'm lying anymore; my respiration rate doesn't even change."

"I am not smelling or listening to your body, Anita. I simply feel the lie. Why do you not tell me the truth?"

"I'll tell Jean-Claude, and if he says it's okay to tell everyone, then I will."

"So you will keep secrets from me."

"You know, Requiem, we have a lot of bad shit happening, and you seem more interested in your own hurt feelings than in the life-and-death stuff."

He nodded. "I feel raw tonight, undone. I have felt that way since earlier in Jean-Claude's office."

"We were being messed with then," I said.

"But there is no holy object that I can wear, my evening star, no refuge that I can take from what the Harlequin have done to me."

"Are they messing with you now?"

"No, but they showed me certain truths about myself, and I cannot seem to unknow what I have learned."

"You don't sound like yourself, Requiem."

"Do I not?" he said, and again there was too much emotion in his voice. I wanted Graham back here, or someone back here. Requiem thought they weren't messing with his head, but I was betting the Harlequin were playing Scrabble with his thoughts right now.

He undid his cloak and flung it backward onto the floor. I'd seen him do a similar gesture on stage at Guilty Pleasures near the end of his strip act. He was fully clothed in elegant gray dress slacks and a shirt that was a clear cornflower blue that turned his eyes as blue as blue could be. I'd looked into a lot of blue eyes, but none quite the color of his. It was a startling blue, a color that had made Belle Morte try to collect him and add him to her collection of blue-eyed lovers. He flung his long straight black hair behind his shoulders.

"I would not have left your side for any business, my star. If you would but love me as I love you, nothing would be more important to me than you."

I called, "Graham!" It wasn't a yell but it was close to one. Was I afraid? A little. Maybe I could use necromancy to knock the Harlequin out of Requiem, but last time I tried I nearly got myself killed. I'd like to heal from one attack before I got hurt again - selfish, but there you go.

The door opened, but it wasn't Graham. It wasn't even Edward. It was Dolph, Lieutenant Rudolph Storr, head of the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, and paranoid hater of all things monster. Shit.