The Harlequin (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 15)

Chapter Nineteen

I HAD A blurred image of black marble, glass. A second to realize that I was about to hit the mirrors around Jean-Claude's tub. I tried to both tense and relax for the impact. A dark blur passed me, and when I smacked into the mirrors, there was a body behind me. A body that wrapped itself around me and took the impact as we hit the glass and the wall underneath. I heard the glass break, and we slid in a heap at the edge of the tub. I lay there, stunned, breath knocked out of me. It suddenly seemed very important to hear my own heartbeat. I blinked at nothing for a moment or two. Only when the body under me groaned did I turn my head enough to see, in the mirrors that weren't cracked, who I'd landed on. Jake lay in a heap against the spiderweb cracks of the glass. He was one of the newest members of Richard's pack, though not new to being a werewolf, and had only been a bodyguard for a few weeks. His eyes were closed; blood trickled down from his short, dark curls. He wasn't moving. I gazed up, past us, and saw that some of the jagged pieces were missing. There was a huge piece that sparkled as it moved away from the wall and begin to fall toward us. I grabbed Jake and pulled with everything I had. I pulled like I didn't expect him to move, but I forgot that I was more than human strong. I pulled, and he moved, moved so hard and sudden that we ended up in the bathtub. I was suddenly underwater with his weight on top of me. Before I could panic, he startled awake, grabbing my arms, and jerked us both to the surface. We came up gasping, as the glass tinkled like sharp raindrops where we'd just been lying.

"Shit!" This from the doorway.

I blinked water out of my eyes to see Claudia in the room. There were more guards crowding in behind her. Claudia strode into the room and lifted me bodily out of the tub. Other hands lifted Jake. He fell to his knees when they got him out. It took two of them to carry him into the bedroom. I walked on my own, but Claudia kept her hand on my arm. I think she expected me to collapse, too. Other than being wet, everything seemed to be working. But I didn't bother telling her to let go of me, with the grip she had... Call it a hunch, but she wouldn't have done it anyway. I'd learned to argue carefully with Claudia; it upped my chances of winning the arguments.

Claudia half-led, half-pulled me into the bedroom. The room was nearly black with bodyguards. A handful of red shirts stood out like berries in a muffin - though "muffin" didn't quite cover the level of adrenaline-charged readiness. There was so much tension it felt as if I should have been able to walk across it. Some of them had guns out, pointed at the floor or ceiling.

I stood there dripping wet, searching the crowd for Jean-Claude. As if she understood what I was doing, Claudia said, "I sent Jean-Claude outside. He's safe, Anita, I promise."

Graham stepped out from the crowd. "We thought it might be a plot to hurt him." He looked and sounded fine now. There was no sign of the earlier panic.

"How you feeling?" I asked.

He gave me a puzzled grin. "Shouldn't I be asking you that?"

A chill ran through me that had nothing to do with standing wet in the colder air. "You don't remember, do you?"

"Remember what?" he asked.

"Shit," I said.

Claudia turned me toward her. "What's going on, Anita?"

"Hang on a minute, okay?"

Her grip on my arm tightened enough that it hurt. She probably could have crushed it if she'd been this muscled and human, but combine the workout with being a wererat and she was very strong.

"Watch the grip, Claudia," I said.

She let me go and wiped her hand against her jeans to get rid of the water. "Sorry."

"It's okay," I said. A sound of ripping cloth took my attention from Graham. Jake was on his knees by the armoire. Someone had ripped his shirt down the back. The bare back was bleeding, a lot. Cisco, one of the youngest of the wererats, was picking glass out of that once-smooth skin. Jake was a werewolf, and he was this hurt. It meant that if it had been my back, I'd be going to the hospital.

"Thanks, Jake," I said.

"Just doing my job, ma'am." His voice hesitated at the end as Cisco and another guard started picking glass out of him.

"Did anyone check his scalp for glass?" Claudia asked.

No one said yes. She called out, "Juanito, check him for glass."

Juanito was another newer guard. I'd been introduced to some of them when the word went out that we needed more men, but the tall, dark, handsome man was a stranger to me. I'd nodded at him, that was about it. At least Jake had been here a few weeks. Juanito meant "little Juan," but he didn't match his name. He was six feet at least, slender but muscular. He was not a little anything, as far as I could tell.

"I'm not a medic," he said.

"I didn't ask," Claudia said.

He just stood there staring at her, clearly not happy.

"I gave you an order. Follow it," she said. I hadn't heard that tone in Claudia's voice often. If I'd been him I'd have done what she said.

He moved to the kneeling werewolf and started picking through the wet curls. He didn't do it like his heart was in it, though. Cisco and the other guard seemed to be taking their job seriously.

Graham brought a large towel from the bathroom and started picking up the bloody pieces of glass that were already on the floor. Cisco and the others started dropping the glass onto the towel. It looked like red rain and sharp little pieces of hail.

"How bad is Jake hurt?" I asked Claudia.

"Not bad, but we don't want the skin healing over the glass."

"That happen often?" I asked.

"Often enough," she said.

I looked back at the men and found that Jake's back was smoothing even as I watched. "Is it just me or is he healing fast even for a shapeshifter?"

"It's not just you," Claudia said. "He heals faster than almost anyone I've ever met."

The three guards were searching frantically along his body, trying to stay ahead of his skin as it flowed over the wounds. Juanito had gotten over his reluctance and was now searching Jake's hair with fumbling fingers, desperately searching through the curls. "I'm not going to get them all! He's healing too fast!"

"The glass you miss, you get to cut out," Claudia said.

"Shit," he said, and worked faster.

Jake made almost no sound while everyone picked at his wounds. He stayed silent and motionless under their hands. I'd have been cursing and at least flinching.

Graham had apparently picked up all the stray glass he could find, because he wiped his fingers on the towel and stood up.

"Graham, you wearing a holy item?" I hoped he'd say no.

"No," he said.

Relief flooded through me, and I shivered. I was cold from the wet clothes and the reaction to the accident. No, not accident. The Harlequin had tried to kill me. Fuck. I hadn't understood; even with everyone's warnings, I hadn't understood. I was like a kid who'd poked a kitten with a stick and found a tiger staring at me.

"Talk to us, Anita," Claudia said.

There were so many people in the room that they couldn't all know about the Harlequin. How to explain without overexplaining? "The bad guys messed with Graham, a lot, and he doesn't remember it."

"What are you talking about?" Graham asked. "No one's messed with me."

"Ask Clay," I said. "He saw it, too."

Claudia hit the radio in her hand and called for Clay to join us when he could. Then she turned to me. "From the top, Anita, all of it."

"I can't give you all of it until I talk to Jean-Claude."

"This cloak-and-dagger shit is getting old." This from Fredo: slender, not too tall, and dangerous. He was the only wererat who carried a gun sometimes but preferred knives, lots of them.

"For me, too," I said, "but you guys have to know about Graham now, not later."

"We're listening," Claudia said. She was very serious, almost threatening. She didn't like the cloak-and-dagger stuff either. I didn't blame her.

I told them, though I toned it down for Graham's embarrassment's sake.

Claudia said, "A vampire, in daylight, from a distance, messed with Graham?"

"Yes," I said.

"That shouldn't be possible," she said.

"Not in daylight, from a distance, no, it shouldn't be."

"You're telling me as a vampire executioner that you've never seen anything like this?"

I started to say no, then stopped. "I've had a few Masters of the City mess with me from a distance when I was sleeping, and in their territory."

"But that was at night," she said.

"True," I said.

We stared at each other. "Are you saying these guys..." She stopped herself.

I waited for her to finish; when she didn't, I said, "Holy objects need to be mandatory for everyone."

"It didn't help you much just now," she said.

"It kept them from messing with my head as bad as they messed with Graham's. He doesn't even remember."

"I know you wouldn't lie," Graham said, "but because I don't remember, I don't believe it."

"That's what makes vampire mind tricks so dangerous," I said. "That very thing. The victim doesn't remember so it didn't happen."

Jake's voice came with only a slight edge of strain to it. "What did you do to get the cross to do that?"

"It wasn't the cross," I said.

There was a flash of blade as Juanito searched Jake's dark curls for the right spot. Apparently they were going to have to cut some of the glass out. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't let myself do that. Jake had gotten hurt because of me. The least I could do was watch the cleanup.

"What was it, then?" he asked, the last word hissed as the blade cut into his scalp.

"I... I'm not sure how to explain it."

"Try," he said, through gritted teeth.

"I tried to fight back with my necromancy and they, he, didn't like it."

Juanito shook the piece of glass onto the bloody towel, then turned back to search through the now-bloody curls.

"He?" Claudia asked.

"Yeah, definitely he."

"Did you see him?" Jake asked, and his breath went out sharp as another piece of glass went on the towel.

"Not exactly see, but I felt him. The energy was definitely male."

"How was it male?" Jake asked, his voice thin with pain.

I thought about it. "I thought I saw a male figure for an instant, and the..." I almost said mask and stopped myself. "But that could have been illusion. Except that the power felt male."

"What else did you get?" His body shuddered as Cisco worked on his back, apparently finding more glass he'd missed. Crap.

I answered, though I probably shouldn't have, but he'd taken my hit. I felt like I owed him. "Wolf, I smelled wolf."

He cried out under the knives. "That hurt!"

"I'm sorry," Cisco muttered. "I'm really sorry."

Juanito said, "Got it." He raised bloody fingers from Jake's hair. Something glittered in his hands that wasn't the knife. "That's the last of it, all I can find."

"Hope I can return the favor sometime," Jake said.

"If I apologized like Cisco, would you be less pissed?"

"Yes," Jake said.

"Fine, I apologize."

"I accept it."

Cisco moved back from him and laid something that looked like solid blood on the towel. "That's it for your back, too."

"Thanks," Jake said. He tried to get to his feet, but fell against the armoire so hard it shuddered. Hands reached to help him, covering his arms in bloody prints of his own blood.

He pushed them away. "I'm all right." Then he fell to his knees.

"Help him," Claudia said.

Cisco and Juanito reached for him again. Jake waved them away.

I walked the few feet to them. I knelt in front of Jake, so that I could meet his eyes without him straining. He rolled brown eyes up to me. His normally handsome face seemed strained and tired. He was a little too masculine handsome for my tastes. I liked men a little softer looking, but I could still appreciate the view. Except now the view was hurting too badly to be admired.

"I'd be in the hospital or worse now, Jake. Thank you."

"Like I said, it's my job," but his voice was strained.

"Let them help you, please."

He looked at me for a long moment. "What do you think the wolf smell meant?"

"I think it was the vamp's animal to call. Some vamps smell like their animal."

"Most vampires smell like vampires to me," he said.

"I've met a couple that smelled like their animals to call." I didn't add out loud that those had been Auggie, Master of Chicago, and Marmee Noir. Auggie was about two thousand years old, and Mommie Dearest was older than dirt. Which put this vampire in very powerful company.

"You're thinking something, what is it?" he asked.

I might not have answered him, except he'd gotten himself hurt protecting me. It made me feel guilty. "That the only two vamps I've ever known who smelled that much like their animals were Auggie, Master of Chicago, and the Mother of All Darkness."

"I've heard of Augustine, but the Mother of All Darkness, I'm not sure who that is."

"She's the Mother of All Vampires," I said.

His eyes widened, then flinched. "Powerful shit."

"Yeah," I said, "powerful shit. Let them take you to the doc, okay?"

He gave a small nod. "Okay."

Cisco and Juanito picked him up under the arms. They did it like he wasn't tall and muscled, and weighed at least two hundred pounds. Super-strength did come in handy. He got his feet sort of under him as the guards parted and let them through. By the time they had the door, Jake was almost walking upright. Almost.