Obsidian Butterfly (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 9)

28

IT WAS AFTER FIVE when I finally closed my eyes. Sleep sucked me under like a roll of black water, dragging me deep, and instantly into a dream. I stood in a dark place. There were small stunted trees everywhere, but they were dead. All the trees were dead. I could feel it.

Something crashed over to my right, something large moving through the trees, and a sense of dread rode before it like a wind. I ran, hands up to protect my face from the dry branches. I tripped over a root and went sprawling. There was a sharp pain in my arm. It was bleeding. Blood poured down it, but I couldn't find a wound.

The thing was getting closer. I could hear tree trunks snapping with sharp explosions. It was coming. It was coming for me. I ran, and ran, and ran, and the dead trees stretched out forever and there was no escape.

A typical chase dream, I thought, and the moment I thought it, I realized it was a dream, and the dream changed, faded into another dream. Richard standing in nothing but a sheet, one tanned muscled arm reaching out to me. His brown hair falling in a froth of waves around his face. I reached for him, and as my fingertips brushed his, a smile curving his lips, the dream shattered, and I woke.

I woke, blinking into a patch of sunlight that spilled across the bed. But it hadn't been the light that had woken me. There was a light tapping on my door. A man's voice. "Edward says get up."

It took me a moment to realize it was Bernardo's voice. It didn't take Freud to analyze the dream at the end with Richard in a sheet. I was going to have to be careful around Bernardo. Embarrassing, but true.

I sat up in bed, yelling through the door, "What time is it?"

"Ten."

"Okay, I'm coming."

I listened but didn't hear him walk away. Either the door was more solid than it looked, or Bernardo was quiet. If it had just been Edward, I'd have thrown on a pair of jeans under the over-sized T-shirt, and had some coffee. But there was company in the house and it was all male. I managed to get into the bathroom and dress without meeting anyone in the hallway. I was wearing dark blue jeans, a navy blue polo shirt, white jogging socks, and in black Nikes. Normally, I'd left the guns off until I went out into the big bad world, but at Edward's house the big bad world was staying in the next room so I put the Firestar 9 mm in an inner pants holster, set for a right-handed cross draw. Brushed, cleaned, and armed, I wandered toward the smell of bacon.

The kitchen was small and narrow and white. But all the appliances were black, and the starkness of the contrast was almost too much first thing in the morning. There was another bouquet of wild flowers in the middle of a small white wooden table. Donna had struck again, but truthfully I agreed with her. The kitchen needed something to soften it.

The two men sitting at the table did nothing to humanize the room. Olaf had shaved so that the only hair left were the black lines of his eyebrows. He wore a black tank top, black dress slacks. Couldn't see the shoes, but I was betting on a monochrome look. He was also wearing a black shoulder rig with a big automatic of some kind. I didn't recognize the brand. A black-hilted knife was in a holster under his left arm.

Shoulder holsters chaff when you wear them with tank tops, but hey, it wasn't my problem.

Bernardo wore a white short-sleeved T-shirt and black jeans. He'd pulled the top layer of his hair back on either side with a large multi-colored barrette, There was still plenty of hair to fall down past his shoulders, stark and black against the pure whiteness of his shirt. He was wearing a ten mil Beretta just in back of his right hip. I couldn't see a knife on him, but I was betting it was there.

Edward was at the stove, emptying a pan of scrambled eggs onto two plates, He was also wearing black jeans with matching cowboy boots, and a white shirt that was a twin of the one he'd worn yesterday.

"Gee, guys, do I have to go back to my room and change?"

They all looked at me, even Olaf. "What you're wearing is fine," Edward said. He carried the plates to the table and put one in front of each of the empty chairs. There was a plate of bacon in the center of the table beside the flowers.

"But I don't match," I said.

Edward and Bernardo smiled. Olaf didn't. Big surprise. "You guys look like you're in uniform," I said.

"I guess we do," Edward said. He sat down in one of the empty chairs.

I sat in the other one. "You should have told me there was a dress code."

"We didn't do it on purpose," Bernardo said.

I nodded. "Which is what makes it funny."

"I am not changing clothes," Olaf said.

"No one's asking you to," I said. "I was making an observation." My eggs had bits of green and red things in them. "What's in the eggs?"

"Green peppers, red chilies, and diced ham," Edward said.

"Gee, Edward, you shouldn't have." I liked my scrambled eggs the way God intended them, plain. I pushed the eggs around with my fork, and reached for the bacon. Half the plate was barely cooked, the other half done to a crisp. I went for the crisp.

The bacon on Olaf's plate was the crispy kind, too. Oh, well.

I said grace over the food. Edward kept eating, but the others hesitated, uncomfortable with their mouths full. It's always fun to say grace at a table with people who don't. That uncomfortable silence. The panic while they wonder whether to keep chewing or to stop. I finished praying and took a bite of bacon. Yum. "What's the game plan for today?" I asked.

"You haven't finished looking at the files," Edward said.

Bernardo groaned.

"I think it is a waste of time," Olaf said. "We have gone over the files. I do not believe that she will find anything new."

"She's already done that," Edward said.

Olaf looked at him, a piece of bacon half way to his mouth. "What do you mean?"

Edward told them.

"That is nothing," Olaf said.

"It's more than you came up with," Edward said, quietly.

"If I am such a burden on this job, maybe I should leave," Olaf said.

"If you can't work with Anita, maybe you should."

Olaf stared at him. "You would rather have her as backup instead of me?" He sounded astonished.

"Yes," Edward said.

"I could break her in half over my knee," Olaf said. The astonishment was turning to anger. I suspected that most emotions turned into anger for Olaf.

"Maybe," Edward said, "but I doubt she'd give you the chance."

I held up my hand. "Don't make this a competition, Edward."

Olaf turned to me, slowly. He spoke very slowly, very clearly. "I do not compete with women."

"Afraid you can't measure up?" I asked. The moment I said it, I wished I hadn't. The momentary satisfaction wasn't worth the look on his face as he rose from his chair. I leaned into the table and drew the Firestar, pointing it in his general direction under the table.

Olaf stood, looming over me, like a muscular tree. "Edward has spent the morning talking to me about you. Trying to convince me that you are worth listening to." He shook his head. "You are a witch and I am not. The thing we hunt may be magical and we need your expertise. Maybe this is all true, but I will not be insulted by you."

"You're right," I said, "I'm sorry. It was a cheap shot."

He blinked at me. "You are apologizing?"

"Yes, on the rare, rare occasions when I'm wrong, I can apologize."

Edward was staring at me across the table.

"What?" I asked.

He just shook his head. "Nothing."

"Olaf's hatred of women is sort of a handicap, and I try not to make fun of people with handicaps."

Edward closed his eyes and shook his head. "You just couldn't leave it alone, could you?"

"I am not a cripple."

"If you hate anyone or anything with an unreasoning, uncompromising hatred, then you are blind where that hatred is concerned. The police kicked me out of a crime scene yesterday because the cop in charge is a right-winger squeaky-clean Christian, and he considers me devil spawn. So he'd rather more people get killed and mutilated than have me help him solve the case. He hates me more than he wants to catch this monster."

Olaf was still standing, but some of the tension had drained way. He seemed to actually be listening to me.

"Do you hate women more than you want to catch this monster?"

He looked at me, and for once his eyes weren't angry. They were thoughtful. "Edward called me because I am the best. I have never walked away from a job until the quarry was dead.

"And if it takes my preternatural expertise to help kill the monster, can you deal with that?"

"I don't like it," he said.

"I know that, but that's not what I asked. Can you handle my expertise helping you kill the monster? Can you take my help if it is the best thing for the job?"

"I don't know," he said. At least he was being honest, even reasonable. It was a start.

"The question, Olaf, is which do you love more: the kill or your hatred of women?"

I could feel Edward's and Bernardo's stillness. The room held its collective breath waiting for the answer.

"I would rather kill than do anything else," Olaf said.

I nodded. "Great, and thank you."

He shook his head. "If I take your help, it does not mean that I consider you my equal."

"Me either," I said.

Someone kicked me under the table. I think it was Edward. But Olaf and I nodded at each other, not exactly smiling, but I think we had a truce. If he could control his hatred, and I could control my smart-ass impulses, the truce might last long enough for us to solve the case. I managed to reholster the Firestar without him noticing, which made me think less of him. Edward had noticed, and I think, so had Bernardo. What was Olaf's specialty? What good was he if he didn't know where the guns were?