Blue Moon (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 8)

31

Two hours later, Richard, Shang-Da, and I were tramping through the woods in search of biologists and trolls. We had until dark to get out of town, and since we really weren't getting out of town, we might as well continue with our original plans. We left everyone else behind scurrying like ants, packing, packing, packing. We would pack and leave. In fact, we were supposed to call the sheriff when we were ready to leave. Wilkes had kindly offered us an escort out of town -¨C before dark. After dark, I think the offer was a bullet and a hole somewhere.

I followed Richard through the woods. He moved among the trees like he could see the openings or as if, as he moved forward, the trees moved around him. I knew that wasn't true. I'd have felt the presence of that much preternatural energy, but Richard made it look easy. It wasn't being a werewolf. It was being Mr. Outdoorsman. His hiking boots were nicely broken in. His T-shirt was blue green with a picture of a sea cow, a manatee, swimming on front and back. I had the identical T-shirt at home, a gift from Richard. He'd been disappointed that I hadn't packed mine. Even if I had, I wouldn't have worn it. I wasn't much into the Bobbsey Twin look for couples. Besides, I was still angry with him in a vague sort of way. I should not have been the only one of the three of us who didn't know what it would mean for Richard and me to have sex. I should have been told that it would bind us all closer.

Of course, it was hard to be mad at him when the T-shirt clung to his body like a thin, second skin. His thick hair was tied back in a loose ponytail. Every time he passed through a bar of sunlight, his hair glowed with streaks of copper and gold. It was hard to be angry when the sight of him made my chest tight.

Richard moved smoothly ahead of us. I followed in my Nikes, not doing too bad a job. I'm okay in the woods. Not as good as Richard, but not bad.

Shang-Da, on the other hand, was not a woodsman. He moved through the woods almost daintily, as if afraid of stepping in something. His black dress slacks and fresh white shirt seemed to catch on things that didn't bother either Richard or me. Shang-Da's shoes had started the trip black and polished to a fine sheen. They didn't stay that way. Dress shoes, even men's dress shoes, aren't meant for walking in the woods. I'd never met a city werewolf before, but no amount of physical grace made up for his total lack of familiarity with the out-of-doors.

There was a breeze today. The trees rustled and hushed with the wind. It was a cool sound high up in the trees, but the wind never came near the ground. We moved through a world of green heat and solid brown tree trunks. Sunlight glittered on the leaves, hitting the ground in shining yellow patches before we moved into heavier shade. The shade was a few degrees cooler but still heavy with heat. It was almost dead-up noon, and even the insects had fallen quiet with the heat.

Richard stopped just ahead of us. "Do you hear that?" he asked softly.

Shang-Da said, "Someone crying. A woman."

I didn't hear a damn thing.

Richard nodded. "Maybe a woman." He eased through the trees in a movement that was almost a run. Crouched, hands almost touching the ground. His power spilled back from him like the bubbling wake of a ship.

I followed him. I tried to look where I was going, but I stumbled and fell. Shang-Da helped me to my feet. I jerked away from him and ran. I stopped looking at my feet or the trees. I stared only at Richard's back, his body. I mimicked his movements, trusting that if he could make the openings, so could I. I leaped over logs that I didn't see until he moved over them. It was almost hypnotic. The world narrowed down to his body speeding through the trees. Again and again I almost careened into trees, pushing my body to move too fast. I was moving faster than my mind could work. If Richard had jumped off a cliff, I'd have followed, because I was just moving. It was like I'd given up everything to my body. I was just muscles working, legs running. The world was a blur of green and light and shade and Richard's body sliding at a run through the trees.

He stopped like a switch had been thrown. One minute running, the next stopped, no in between. But I didn't bump into him. I was stopped, too. It was like a part of my brain I couldn't access had known he would stop.

Shang-Da was at my back. He stepped close enough for me to smell his faint, expensive aftershave. He whispered, "How did you do that, human?"

I glanced at him. "What?"

"Run."

I knew that runmeant more to the lukoi than the word said. I stood there, covered in a light dew of sweat, barely breathing hard, and knew that something had happened that hadn't before. Richard and I had tried to jog together before, and it hadn't worked. He was two inches shy of being an entire foot taller than me. A lot of that was leg. His speed for jogging was running to me, and even then, I couldn't keep up with him. Add the fact that he was a lycanthrope, and, well, he was too fast for me. The only other time I'd kept up with him had been with him holding my hand, with him pulling me along with the marks and his power.

I turned to look at Shang-Da. There must have been something on my face, some soft astonishment, because his expression softened to something almost like pity.

Richard moved away from us, and we both turned back to follow his progress. As my pulse slowed, I could hear what they had heard ages ago: crying -¨C though that was too soft a word for it. Someone was sobbing as if their heart were breaking.

Richard moved toward the sound, and we followed him. There was a huge sycamore in the middle of a clearing. On the other side of the tree's large, (patchy) trunk, a woman huddled. She had squeezed herself down into a small, tight ball, her arms hugging her knees. Her face was thrown up to the sparkling sunlight, eyes squeezed shut, blind.

She had brunette hair so dark it could have passed for black, cut very short. She was white with a fringe of dark lashes pasted to her pale cheeks. Her face was small and triangular, but beyond that I couldn't describe it. Her face was ravished with tears, eyes swollen, skin reddened. She was small, dressed in heavy khaki shorts, thick socks, hiking boots, and a T-shirt.

Richard knelt in the leaves beside her. He touched her arm before he said anything, and she screamed, eyes flying wide. There was a moment of utter panic on her face, then she threw herself against his chest, wrapped her arms around him, and fell into a fresh bout of sobbing.

He stroked her hair, murmuring, "Carrie, Carrie, it's all right. It's all right."

Carrie. Could it be Dr. Carrie Onslow? It seemed likely. But what was the head biologist on the troll project doing having hysterics in the woods?

Richard had slid completely down into the leaves. He'd pulled her into his lap like she was a child. It was hard to judge, but she seemed tiny, smaller than I was.

The crying eased. She lay cuddled in his lap, held in his arms. They'd dated. I tried to feel jealous, but I couldn't manage it. Her distress was too extreme.

Richard stroked the side of her face. "What's wrong, Carrie? What's happened?"

She took a deep breath that shuddered as it escaped her lips, then she nodded and blinked up at Shang-Da and me.

"Shang-Da." Her eyes turned to me. She seemed embarrassed that we'd seen her lose control. "I don't know you."

"Anita Blake," I said.

Her cheek rested against Richard's chest, so all she had to do was roll her eyes upward to look at him. "You're his Anita?" She made it a question.

He looked up at me. "When we're not mad at each other, yes."

I watched her rebuild herself, gathering her personality back around her like layering clothes against winter weather. Her eyes filled while I watched until her face burned with intelligence, with a force, commitment, a determination that shone so fiercely it seemed to thrum through her skin. I watched her and knew instantly why Richard had dated her. Staring down at her, I was glad she was human, glad he wouldn't be having sex with her. Because just a few moments in her presence, and I knew that this one, this one could be trouble. That was the real danger with not being monogamous. It wasn't really the sex, though that bugged me a lot. It was the fact that it meant the other person wasn't satisfied, that they were still looking. If you're still looking, sometimes you find it, whatever it is.

I didn't like staring down at this woman who was obviously in pain and thinking about my own problems. I didn't like the fact that I was a little afraid of her. I mean, I was human, and he'd had sex with me. I hated that this was what I was thinking before anything. Hated it a lot.

She started to push away from Richard's arms.

I said, "Don't move on my account." It came out dry and sarcastic. Good, better than wounded and confused.

Richard looked up at me. I couldn't read his expression, and I made sure mine was pleasant and gave him nothing.

Dr. Carne Onslow glanced up at Richard, frowned, then finished pushing away. She slid out of his lap to lean against the tree trunk. Small frown lines had formed between her eyes, and she kept glancing from Richard to me, as if she were confused and didn't like it.

"What's happened, Carrie?" Richard asked again.

"We went out today just before dawn, as usual." She stopped talking, staring at her lap, then took a deep, shaking breath. Three breaths and she seemed better. "We found a body."

"Another hiker?" I asked.

Her eyes flicked to me, then back to her lap, as if she didn't want any eye contact for the story. "Maybe, it was impossible to tell. It was a woman, beyond that ... " Her voice failed her. She looked up at us, small eyes shimmering with fresh tears. "I have never seen anything so horrible in my life. The local police are saying that our trolls did it. That this is proof that that hiker was a troll kill."

"Lesser Smokey Mountain trolls don't hunt and kill humans," I said.

She looked at me. "Well, something did. The state police wanted my expert opinion on what could have done it if it wasn't trolls." She buried her face in her hands, then raised her face like someone coming out of deep water. "I looked at the bites. They were made by something with a primate jaw structure."

"Human?" I offered.

She shook her head. "I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think a human mouth could do that kind of damage." She hugged herself, shivering in the heat. "They'll use this to try and call in some bounty hunters and kill our trolls, if they can prove that the trolls did this. I don't see how we can stop them from either killing them all or shipping them to zoos."

"Our trolls did not kill a human being," Richard said. He touched her shoulder when he said it.

"Something did, Richard. Something that wasn't a wolf or a bear or any large predator that I've ever seen."

"Did you say that the state cops are on site?" I asked.

She looked up at me. "Yes."

"Did you call them?"

She shook her head. "They arrived shortly after the local police."

I'd have loved to know who called them, though if the local cops suspected it was either a homicide or a preternatural kill, it was standard op for them to call either the staties or the local vampire hunter, though admittedly only if they thought the kill was some form of undead.

"Was the body found near a cemetery?" I asked.

Dr. Onslow shook her head.

"Why?" Richard asked.

"It could have been ghouls. They're cowards, but if she'd fallen and knocked herself unconscious, ghouls would have fed on her. They are active scavengers."

"What's that mean?" Dr. Onslow asked. "Active scavenger?"

"It means if you're wounded and reduced to crawling, you don't want to be in a ghoul-infested cemetery."

She stared up at me, then finally shook her head. "No graves. Just in the middle of our land. In the middle of the trolls' territory."

I nodded. "I need to go see the body."

"Do you think that's a good idea?" Richard asked. He kept his voice as neutral as he could.

"They're expecting her," Dr. Onslow said.

It surprised us all. "What do you mean?" I asked.

"The state police found out you're in the area. Evidently, your reputation is good enough that they wanted you to see the body. They were trying to reach you at your cabin when I left."

How convenient. How weird. Who had called the staties? Who had put my name in front of them? Who, who, who?

"I'll go look at the body then."

"Take Shang-Da with you," Richard said.

I looked up at the tall man's face. The claw marks were still red and sort of gruesome looking on his face. I shook my head. "I don't think so."

"I don't want you going alone," Richard said.

Funny how he wasn't offering to come with me himself. He was going to stay here and comfort Dr. Onslow. Fine. I was a big girl.

"I'll be okay, Richard. You stay here with the good doctor and Shang-Da."

Richard stood. "You're being childish."

I rolled my eyes and motioned him over away from Dr. Onslow. When I was sure she couldn't overhear us, I said, "Look at Shang-Da's face."

He didn't glance back. He knew what it looked like. "What about it?"

I stared up at him. "Richard, you should know as well as I do that if you have someone eaten to death by a mysterious critter, werewolves are always top of the hit list to blame."

"They try to blame a lot of things on us," he said.

"So far, Wilkes and his men don't know what you are. If we show up with Shang-Da cut up like this and then he turns up healed, they'll figure it out. With a body on the ground, you don't want them to figure it out."

"Shang-Da won't be healed by nightfall," Richard said.

"But he'll be more healed than he is right now. It isn't human to heal that fast. If Wilkes finds out that we haven't really left town, he'll use everything he has. He'll out you or charge you with this crime."

"What could have killed this woman?"

"Won't know until I see the body."

"I don't want you going there alone. I'll go with you."

"The police don't like it when you bring your civvie boyfriends to crime scenes, Richard. Stay here; comfort Dr. Onslow."

He frowned at me.

"I'm not being catty, Richard." I smiled. "All right, not very catty. She's shook. Hold her hand. I'll be okay."

He touched my face gently. "You don't need much hand-holding, do you?"

I sighed. "One night with you and I nearly eat Verne's neck. One night, and I just ran through the woods like ... like a werewolf. Just one lovemaking session, and you say you knew it was a possibility. You should have at least tried to tell me last night, Richard."

He nodded. "You're right, I should have. I don't have any excuse good enough. I'm sorry, Anita."

Staring up into his so-sincere face, it was hard to be angry. But it wasn't hard to be distrustful. Maybe Richard had been learning more from Jean-Claude than just how to control the marks. Maybe lying by omission was contagious.

"I need to go see a body, Richard."

Dr. Onslow pointed me in the right direction. I started off through the woods. Richard caught up with me. "I'll walk you."

"I'm armed, Richard. I'll be okay."

"I want to go with you."

I stopped and turned and stared up at him. "I don't want you with me. Right this moment, I need you to be somewhere else."

"I didn't mean to hide things from you. Everything happened so fast last night. I just didn't have time. I didn't think."

"Tell it to someone who cares, Richard. Tell it to someone who cares." I walked away into the trees, and he stayed where I'd left him. I felt him watch me as I moved through the trees. I could feel the weight of his gaze like a hand on my back. If I looked back, would he be waving? I didn't look back. I loved Richard. He loved me. I was sure of those two things. The one thing I wasn't sure of was whether that love would be enough. If he slept with other women, it wouldn't be. Fair or not, I wouldn't survive it.

Richard said he hadn't asked me to give up Jean-Claude. He hadn't. But as long as I shared my bed with Jean-Claude, Richard would sleep with other women. As long as I wasn't monogamous, he wouldn't be, either. He hadn't asked me to give up Jean-Claude. He'd just made sure that I wasn't going to be happy in either bed. I could have them both as long as Richard slept around. I could have Richard all to myself, as long as I gave up Jean-Claude. I wasn't ready to make the second choice, and I couldn't live with the first. Unless there were a third choice, we were in trouble.