Obsidian Butterfly (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 9)

44

I PRESSED THE BUTTON to slowly raise the bed. The closer I got to a sitting position, the more I hurt. My chest ached as if the muscles around my ribs had been overused. The cuts on my back did not like sitting up and would probably like walking even less. There was a certain tightness to the skin, like a shoe laced too tightly, that said I had stitches on my back. They would be a pain all their own when I insisted on moving. Nothing feels quite like stitches. I wondered how many I had in my back. It felt like a lot.

When I was in a sitting position, I waited for a few seconds listening to my body complain. I usually don't get this hurt until the end of a case. I hadn't even met the great-bad-thing face to face yet. It had nearly killed me from a nice supposedly safe distance.

I let myself think about that for a few minutes. I'd almost died. Seems like I should get a few days of grace before having to crawl back into the trenches. But crime and tide wait for no woman, or something like that. I'll admit I thought about just staying put, just letting someone else be heroic for a change. But the moment I seriously thought it, I flashed on the nursery and those red-splashed cribs. I couldn't just lie here and trust that everyone would muddle through without me. I just couldn't do it.

I had my gown halfway down my arms when I realized I couldn't just yank the sticky pads that connected me to the heart monitor. Just yanking them off would give the hospital staff just a little too much excitement.

I finally pressed the nurse call button. I had to get unplugged from all the drips and machines.

The nurse came almost immediately, which either meant the hospital had more nurses on staff than most hospitals could afford these days, or I was really hurt and they were paying extra attention to me. I was hoping for a surplus of nurses, but wasn't betting on it.

The nurse was shorter than I am, very petite, with blond hair cut short and sort of bouncy. Her professional smile wilted when she saw me sitting up with the gown obviously coming off.

"What are you doing, Ms. Blake?"

"Getting dressed," I said.

She shook her head. "I don't think so."

"Look, I'd prefer help getting all the tubes and wires off me, but it is all coming off because I'm checking out."

"I'll get Doctor Cunningham." She turned and walked out.

"You do that," I said to the empty room. I got a death grip on the little wires that attached to the sticky pads and pulled. It felt like I'd pulled a foot worth of skin off with them, a sharp, grinding ache, like it would hurt to touch the skin. The high pitched scream of the machine let people know my heart was no longer going pitty-pat on the other end of the wires. The sound reminded me uncomfortably of the fire alarm, though it was much less obnoxious.

The pads had left large circular welts on my skin, but they were not nearly as big as they felt. The fact that the welts hurt enough to rise above all the other aches and pains lets you know how raw my skin felt.

Doctor Cunningham came through the door while I was still working on the tape that bound my hand to the IV board. He turned the screaming heart monitor off.

"What do you think you're doing?" he asked.

"Getting dressed."

"Like hell you are."

I looked up at his enraged face and just didn't have any anger to throw back at him. I was too tired and too hurt to waste energy on anything but the process of getting up and getting out of this bed.

"I have to go, Doctor." I kept picking at the tape and wasn't making much progress. I needed a knife. "Where are my weapons?"

He ignored the question, and asked one of his own. "Where could you possibly need to go badly enough to climb out of this bed?"

"I need to get back to work."

"The police can handle things for a few days, Ms. Blake."

"There are people who will talk to me that won't talk to the police." I'd gotten an edge of tape up.

"Then your friends in the hallway can talk to them." Doctor Cunningham got points for realizing that Edward and company were the kind of men that people who avoided the police might talk to.

"This particular person won't talk to anyone but me." I finally stopped picking at the tape. "Can you please get this off of me?"

He took a breath, to argue, I think, but what he said was, "I'll help you check out if you let me show you something first."

I must have looked as suspicious as I felt, but I nodded.

"I'll be right back," and he left the room. Everyone seemed to be doing that today. He was gone long enough that Edward came in to see what the hold up was. I lifted the taped arm, and he produced a switchblade from his pocket. The blade cut through the tape like paper. Edward always did take good care of his tools.

I was still left with having to peel the tape off my arm, and the IV itself had to come out, mustn't forget that.

"If you want it fast, I'll do it," Edward said.

I nodded, and he ripped the tape off my arm along with the IV. "Ow!"

He smiled. "Sissy."

"Sociopath."

Doctor Cunningham came in carrying a large hand mirror. His gaze flicked to Edward and my now free arm. It was not a friendly look. "If you'll step back for a moment, Mr. Forrester?"

"You're the doctor," Edward said, moving back to the foot of the bed.

"Nice of you to remember that," Doctor Cunningham said. He held the mirror in front of my face.

I looked startled, eyes too wide and so dark they looked black. I'm naturally pale, but my skin was ghost-white, ethereal like flexible ivory. It was what made my eyes look even darker than normal, or maybe it was the bruise.

I'd known my face hurt, and I'd even known why. Being hit hard enough to slam into a wall should leave a mark.

The bruise went up to the edge of my cheek, just under the eye, and catty-corner down to my jaw line just under the ear. My skin was a rainbow of purple-black with a core of red skin with darker red scattered across it. It was one of those really deep bruises that probably hadn't even shown much of a mark for the first day, but it would go through all the color changes once it started. I had shades of green, yellow, and brown to look forward to. If I hadn't had three vampire marks on me, I'd have had at least a broken jaw, or maybe a broken neck.

There were moments when I'd give almost anything to be free of the marks, but staring at the bruise, knowing that I healed faster than normal for a human and it still looked this bad, was not one of them. I was grateful to be alive.

I said a brief silent prayer while I stared at my face. "Thank you, dear God, for me not being dead." Aloud, I said, "Nasty," and handed the mirror to the doctor.

He frowned; obviously it wasn't the reaction he'd wanted. "You've got over forty stitches in your back."

My eyes went wide before I could stop them. "Gee, that's a record even for me."

"This isn't a joke, Ms. Blake."

"It might as well be funny, doctor."

"If you start moving around, you're going to rip the stitches open. Right now, if you're careful, the scars won't be bad, but if you start moving around, you'll scar."

I sighed. "It'll have plenty of company, doctor."

He stood there, shaking his head slowly, face set in harsh lines. "Nothing I can say is going to make any difference, is it?"

"No," I said.

"You're a fool," he said.

"If I stay in here until I'm healed, what am I going to say to myself when I'm staring down at the next round of bodies?"

"Saving the world is not your job, Ms. Blake."

"I'm not that ambitious," I said. "I'm just trying to save a few lives."

"And you truly believe that only you can solve this case?"

"No, but I know that I am the only one that ... this man will talk to." I'd almost said Nicky Baco, but I didn't want Doctor Cunningham calling the police and telling them where we were going. Not that he would do that, but better safe than sorry.

"I told you that I'd check you out if you looked at your injuries. I keep my word."

"I appreciate that in a person, Doctor Cunningham. Thank you."

"Don't thank me, Ms. Blake. Don't thank me." He moved towards the door, giving both the makeshift altar and Edward a medium-wide berth, as if both made him uncomfortable. At the door he turned. "I'll send a nurse in to help you dress because you will need the help." He walked out before I could say thank you again. Probably just as well.

Edward stayed until the nurse arrived. It was a different nurse, tall, light brunette, if that wasn't an oxymoron. Her gaze stayed on my bruised face longer than was politic, and when she helped me slip out of the gown, she gave a low hiss at my back. It was unprofessional and sort of unnurselike. They were usually blankly cheerful to the point of nausea when you were hurt or blunt. Anything to cover that what had happened to you bothered them.

"You'll never be able to wear a bra over the stitches in your back," she said.

I sighed. I hated to go without a bra. It always made me feel underdressed no matter what else I was wearing. "Let's just get the shirt on."

She held it and helped me slip it over my head. Putting my arms up to go through the sleeves made the pain in my back sharp and immediate, as if the skin would pull apart if I moved too quickly. I wondered if that would have been the analogy that I'd chosen if Doctor Cunningham hadn't warned me about the stitches pulling apart. I'd have shrugged if I hadn't been sure it would hurt.

"I normally work in the nursery," the nurse said as she helped me straighten the shirt, buttoning the first two buttons.

I looked up at her, not sure what to say. But I didn't need to worry. She knew exactly what to say. "They called me in after you destroyed the monster. For the ... cleanup." She helped me sit on the edge of the bed. I sat there for a few seconds with my legs dangling off the edge, letting my body adjust to the fact that we were getting dressed, we were going to stand ... in just a second.

"I'm sorry you had to see it," I said, because I had to say something, I wasn't even comfortable with her saying I'd "destroyed" the monster. It made it sound entirely too heroic, and what it had felt like was desperate. Desperation is the true mother of invention, at least for me.

She started to help me into the black panties, but I took them from her hands. If I couldn't even put on my own underwear, I was in serious trouble. And if I was truly that hurt, I needed to know it. It would cut down on my urge to be heroic.

I started to simply bend at the waist, but it just wasn't that easy. I lowered myself downward a little bit at a time, and I was still nowhere near low enough.

"Let me start them up your legs, so you don't have to bend all the way down," the nurse said.

I finally let her, and even pulling them only part way up my body turned my back into one great big hurt. I leaned against the bed when they were on, and didn't even argue when she bent down to put on my socks. She never argued that I was too hurt to be leaving. It was too obvious to argue about it.

"I'd worked with Vicki for two years. It was Meg's first job." Her eyes were dry, wide, and I noticed the dark circles under them like purplish smudges, as if she hadn't slept much in the last three days.

I remembered the body that had blocked the door into the nursery, and the nurse that had been thrown through the window. Vicki and Meg, though I'd probably never know which had been which, not that it mattered. They were dead and didn't care, and the nurse helping me slip into a pair of black jeans looked too fragile for questions. My job was to listen, and make encouraging noises where needed.

I slipped the jeans over my butt without help, buttoned them and zipped them all by myself. Things were looking up. I'd tried tucking the shirt into my pants out of habit, but that required more back movement than I thought.

Besides, untucked, my braless state would be alittle less noticeable. I was really too well endowed to go without, but my modesty wasn't worth the pain, not today.

"Every time I close my eyes, I see the babies." She was kneeling with one of my shoes in her hands, when she looked up. "I keep thinking I should be dreaming about my friends, but I only see the babies, their little bodies, and they cry. Every time I close my eyes, I hear the babies screaming. I wasn't there, and I hear them, every night." The tears were finally there, sliding soundlessly down her face as if she didn't know she was crying. She slid the shoe on my foot and looked down, paying attention to what she was doing.

"See a councilor or a priest or whoever you trust," I said. "You'll need help."

She got my other shoe off the bed, and gazed up at me, the tears drying in tracks down her pale cheeks. "I heard that there's some sort of witch making these corpses, causing them to attack people."

"Not a witch," I said. "What's behind all this isn't human."

She slipped the shoe on me, frowning. "Is it immortal like a vampire?"

I didn't do my usual lecture about how vamps aren't immortal, only hard to kill. She didn't need that particular lecture. "I don't know yet."

She laced my shoe solid, but not too tight, as if she did this regularly. She looked up at me with those strange empty eyes of hers, tear tracks still visible on her face. "If it's not immortal, kill it."

Her face held that absolute trust that is usually reserved for small children or people that are not quite all there. There was no questioning in her shocked eyes, no doubt in that pale face. I answered that trust. Reality could wait until she was ready for it. I said what she needed to hear. "If it can die, I'll kill it."

I said it because she needed to hear it. I said it because after what I'd seen it do, that was the plan. Maybe it had been the plan all along. Knowing Edward it probably had been. He said solve the case when what he usually meant was kill them, kill them all. As a plan, I'd heard worse. As a way of life, it lacked a certain romance. As a way to stay alive, it was just about perfect. As a way to keep your soul intact, it sucked. But I was willing to trade a piece of my soul to stop this thing. And that was perhaps my biggest problem. I was always willing to compromise my soul if it would take out the great evil. But there always seemed to be another great evil coming down the road. No matter how many times I saved the day and took out the monster, there was always another monster, and there always would be. The monster supply was unlimited. I was not. The parts of myself that I was using up to slay the monsters was finite, and once I used it all up, there would be no going back. I'd be Edward in drag. I could save the world and lose myself.

And staring down into the woman's face, watching that perfect faith fill her lost eyes, I wasn't sure the bargain was a good one, but I was sure of one thing. I couldn't say no. I couldn't let the monsters win, not even if it meant becoming one of them. God forgive me if it was arrogance. God protect me if it wasn't. I got up out of bed and went in search of monsters.