Obsidian Butterfly (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 9)

43

EDWARD CAME IN the door before it had time to swing closed. He was wearing one of those short-sleeved shirts with little pockets on the front. If it had been tan, I'd have said he looked dressed for a safari, but the shirt was black. So were his freshly pressed jeans, the belt that encircled his narrow waist, down to the black-over belt buckle, so it wouldn't shine in the dark and give you away. The belt buckle matched the shoulder holster and gun that outlined his chest. There was a line of white undershirt at the open neck of the shirt, but other than that it was unrelieved blackness. It made his hair and eyes look even paler. It was the first time I'd seen him without the cowboy hat out of doors since I arrived.

"If you're dressed for my funeral, it's too casual. If it's just street clothes, then you must be scaring the tourists."

"You're alive. Good," he said.

I gave him a look. "Very funny."

"I wasn't being funny."

We looked at each other. "Why so serious, Edward? I asked the doc, and he said there hadn't been any more murders."

He shook his head and came to stand at the foot of the bed, near the makeshift altar. I ended up looking down the length of the bed at him, and it was awkward. I found the button controls with my right hand and raised the head of the bed slowly. I'd been in enough hospital beds to know where everything was.

"No, there haven't been any more murders," he said.

"Then what's with the long face?" I was paying attention to my body while the bed raised, waiting for it to hurt. I ached all over, which you tend to do after being thrown into walls. My chest hurt, and it wasn't just the burns. I stopped when I was sitting up enough to see him without straining.

He gave a very small smile. "You nearly die, and you ask what's wrong?"

I raised eyebrows at him. "I didn't know you cared."

"More than I should."

I didn't know what to say to that, but I tried. "Does this mean you won't kill me just for sport?"

He blinked, and the emotion was gone. Edward was standing there staring at me, his usual amused blankness showing on his face. "You know I only kill for money."

"Bullshit," I said. "I've seen you kill people when you weren't getting a paycheck."

"Only when I'm with you."

I'd tried to play it tough and guylike. He wasn't having any of it. I tried for honesty next. "You look tired, Edward."

He nodded. "I am."

"If there haven't been any more murders, why do you look so beat?"

"Bernardo only got out of the hospital yesterday."

I raised eyebrows at him "How bad was he hurt?"

"Broken arm, concussion. He'll heal."

"Good," I said.

There was still an air to him of strangeness, more than normal Edward strangeness, as if there was more to tell and he didn't want to tell it. "Drop the other shoe, Edward."

His eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

"Tell me what's got you all bothered."

"I tried to see Nicky Baco without you or Bernardo."

"Bernardo tell you about the meet?" I asked.

"No, your detective friend, Ramirez, told me."

That surprised me. "Last time I talked to him, he was sort of insisting that he go along with me to meet Baco."

"He still wanted to come along, but Baco wouldn't see any of us. He insisted that you and Bernardo, or at least you, had to be there."

"You're not upset just because Nicky wouldn't dance with you," I said. "Just tell me."

"Do you really need Baco, Anita?"

"Why?"

"Just answer the question." I knew Edward well enough to know he meant it. I answered his question or he wouldn't answer mine.

"Yeah, I need him. He's a necromancer, Edward, and whatever this thing is, it is just a form of necromancy."

"But you're a better necromancer than he is, stronger."

"Maybe, but I don't know much about ritual necromancy. What I do is actually closer to voodoo than traditional necromancy."

He gave a dim smile, shaking his head. "And what exactly is traditional necromancy, and how are you so sure that Baco practices it?"

"If he was an animator, I'd have heard of him. There just aren't that many of us. So he doesn't raise zombies. But you and everyone else in the metaphysical community in and around Santa Fe say that Baco works with the dead."

"I only know his reputation, Anita. I've never seen him do shit."

"Fine, but I've met him. He doesn't do vaudun, voodoo. I've seen that enough to know the trappings and the feel of it. So if he's not a zombie raiser or a vaudun priest, and people still call him a necromancer, then he must do ritual necromancy."

"Which is?" Edward said.

"To my knowledge it's raising the spirits of the dead for sort of divination purposes or to get questions answered."

Edward shook his head. "Whatever Baco does, it has to be worse than raising a few ghosts. People are scared of him."

"Nice of you to mention that before I met him the first time,"' I said.

He took a deep breath, hands on hips, not looking at me. "I was careless."

I looked at him. "You're a lot of things, Edward. Careless isn't one of them."

He nodded and looked up at me. "How about competitive?"

I frowned at him, but said, "Competitive, I'll give you. But what does that have to do with Baco?"

"I knew that his bar was the hangout for the local werewolves."

I stared at him, just stared at him. When I closed my mouth, I said, "You competitive shit. You let Bernardo and me walk in there unprepared. You could have gotten us killed."

"You're not even going to ask why I let you walk in blind?" he asked,

"Let me take a wild guess. You wanted to see how I'd handle it cold, maybe how Bernardo would handle it, or maybe both."

He nodded.

"Fuck, Edward. This isn't a game."

"I know that."

"No you don't. You've been keeping things from me from the moment I stepped off the plane. You keep testing my nerve to see if it's better than yours. It is so junior high, so damned ... " I struggled to find the right word " ... such a guy thing to do."

"I'm sorry," he said, and his voice was soft.

The apology stopped me, drained some of the righteous indignation. "I've never heard you apologize for anything, Edward, not to anyone."

"It's been a long time since I said I was sorry to anyone."

"Does this mean the games are over, and you'll quit trying to see who is the biggest, baddest person?"

He nodded. "That's what it means."

I lay there and looked at him. "Is it just being with Donna, or is something else starting to open you up?"

"What do you mean?"

"If you don't stop all this sentimental shit, I'll begin to think you're just a mere mortal like the rest of us."

He smiled. "Speaking of immortals," he said.

"We weren't," I said.

"I'm changing the subject," he said.

"Okay."

"If this monster really is an Aztec boogey-man, then it is a hell of a coincidence that the Master of the City, who just happens to be an Aztec, doesn't know anything about it."

"We talked to her, Edward."

"Do you think a vamp, even a master vamp, could do all the things we've been seeing?"

I thought about it, but finally said, "Not just from vampiric powers, no, but if she were some kind of Aztec sorcerer in life, she might retain her powers after death. I just don't know that much about Aztec magic. It doesn't come up a lot. She was different from any vampire I've ever met. It could mean that she was a sorcerer in life."

"I think you need to see her again."

"And what, ask her if she's involved in the murder and mutilation of some twenty people?"

He grinned. "Something like that."

I nodded. "Okay. When I get out of the hospital, a visit to vampire central goes up to the head of my list."

His face went very blank.

"What is it, Edward?"

"Do you really need Baco?" he said.

"I sensed this thing the first night I arrived or first day. It sensed me right back, and it shielded itself. I haven't picked it up that strongly since, and I've driven past the spot where I felt it. Baco can sense it, too, and he's afraid of it. So yeah, I want to talk to him."

"You don't think he's behind it?"

"I've felt this thing's power. Baco is powerful, but he's not that powerful. Whatever this thing is, it's not human."

He sighed. "Fine." He said it like he'd made a decision. "Baco says you have to meet him before ten this morning or don't bother coming."

I searched the room until I found the clock on the wall. It was eight. "Shit," I said.

"The doc says you need at least another twenty-four hours in here. Leonora Evans that if the monster tries for you again, you won't make it."

"You have a point to make," I said.

"I almost didn't tell you."

I was beginning to get pissed. "I don't need you to protect me, Edward. I thought you of all people knew better than that."

"Are you sure you're up to it?"

I almost just said yes, but I was so tired. It was a bone weariness that had nothing to do with lack of sleep. I was hurt, and it went beyond the bruises and cuts that I could feel. "No," I said.

He blinked. "You must feel like shit to admit that."

"I've felt better, but something's scaring Baco. If he says meet before ten this morning, we meet. Maybe the great bad thing is coming to get him at eleven today. Can't miss that, can we?"

"I've got a bag of fresh clothes out in the hall for you. They cut your shoulder holster off of you in the emergency room, and the spine sheath."

"Shit," I said, "that spine sheath was a custom job."

He shrugged. "You can order a new one." He went to the door, stepped out a moment, then came back in with a small overnight bag. He came around to the side of the bed that Leonora's chair was on. The other side of the bed was a little too crowded with equipment for visitors to stand.

He opened it and started laying out the clothes. His button-down black shirt didn't fit perfectly smoothly around his ribs. He laid out the clothes in neat piles: black jeans, black polo shirt, black socks, even the underwear and bra matched the theme. "What's with the funerary color scheme?"

"The dark blue polo shirt and jeans were trashed. All you had left was black, red, and purple for shirts. We need something dark today, authoritative."

"Why are you in black, then?" I was watching the way the shirt lay when he moved. It wasn't a gun. I didn't think it was knives. What was under his shirt?

"White shows blood."

"What's under your shirt, Edward?"

He smiled and unbuttoned the middle buttons. He had what looked like a modified belly band holster strapped across his upper body. But it wasn't a gun. It was metal pieces, too big to be ammo, and too oddly shaped on the end I could see. They looked like teeny-tiny metal darts ... "Are those some sort of itty-bitty throwing knife?"

He nodded. "Bernardo said that if you took out an eye the flayed ones didn't like it."

"I poked out eyes on them twice, and each time it seemed to hurt and disorient them. Truthfully, I didn't think Bernardo noticed what I was doing."

He smiled and started buttoning his shirt up. "You shouldn't underestimate him."

"Could you really hit an eye throwing one of those things?" He slipped one out of its little holster and threw it into the wall in one flick of his hand. He pierced one of the tiny designs on the wallpaper across the room.

"I can't hit shit with something like that."

He retrieved it from the wall and replaced it on his chest, and walked back to me. "You can even have your very own flamethrower, if you want it."

"Gee, and it isn't even Christmas."

He smiled. "Not Christmas, more like Easter."

I frowned up at him. "I don't get the Easter reference."

"You came back from the dead, or didn't anyone tell you?"

I shook my head. "Tell me what?"

"Your heart stopped three times. Ramirez kept it going with CPR until the doctors got to you. But they lost you twice. You were going down for the third time when Leonora Evans convinced them to let her try and save you with some of that good old time religion."

My heart was suddenly beating too hard, and I could have sworn that the inside of my ribs hurt with each beat. "Are you trying to scare me?"

"No, just explaining the Easter reference. You know, Christ rose from the dead."

"I get it, I get it." I was suddenly scared and angry. I am rarely one without being the other.

"If you still believe in it, I'd light a candle or two," he said.

"I'll think about it," I said, and my voice sounded defensive even to me.

He was smiling again, and I was beginning to distrust his smile almost as much as the rest of him. "Or maybe you should talk to Leonora and ask her who she asked for help to get you back. Maybe it's not a church candle you need to light. Maybe you need to slaughter a few chickens."

"Wiccans do not kill things to raise power."

He shrugged. "Sorry, they don't teach comparative religion or metaphysics in assassin school."

"You've scared me, reminded me how hurt I am, and now you're yanking my chain, teasing me. Do you want me to get up out of this bed and meet Baco or not?"

His face was all serious, the last of the humor draining away like ice melting down a hot plate. "I want you to do whatever you need to do, Anita. I thought I wanted to get this son of a bitch at any price." He touched my right hand where it lay on the sheet. He didn't hold it, just touched it, then pulled away. "I was wrong. Some things I'm not willing to pay."

Before I could think of anything to say, he turned and left. I wasn't sure which was confusing me more: this case, or the new and more emotional Edward. I caught sight of the clock. Shit. I had an hour and forty minutes to get dressed, check out of the hospital against doctor's orders, and drive to Los Duendos. I was betting arguing with Doctor Cunningham was going to take longer than either of the other two.