The Harlequin (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 15)

Chapter Forty

"HEY, PETER," I said.

He turned his head so he was looking up at the ceiling. Apparently he didn't trust himself not to stare at my chest and wasn't sure how I'd react. I wasn't sure either. "I thought you were hurt," he said.

"I was."

He turned to look at me, frowning. "But you're up. I feel awful."

I nodded. "I'm a little surprised myself, truthfully."

His gaze had drifted down again. Olaf was crazy and mean, but he was right about one thing. Men would stare, some on purpose to be rude, but not all. Some like Peter, well, it was as if my chest were a magnet and their gaze iron; it just attracted it. I was sooo going to have to talk to Nathaniel about what clothes to pack next time. Next time I got so hurt I ended up unconscious in the hospital. I simply assumed there'd be a next time. Unless I changed jobs, there would be. The thought startled me. Was I thinking about giving up the vampire hunting? Was I really, truly considering it? Maybe, maybe I was. I shook my head and pushed the thought into that cage with all the other thoughts. The cage was getting awfully damn full.

"Anita?" Peter made it a question.

"Sorry, thinking too hard."

"What about?" He was managing eye contact. I felt like I should pet his head and give him a cookie, good boy. God, I was in a strange mood tonight.

"Truthfully, wondering if I want to keep hunting vampires."

His eyes went wide. "What are you talking about? This is what you do."

"No, I raise zombies; the vampire hunting is supposed to be a sideline. Sometimes the zombie thing gets me hurt, but the vampire and rogue lycanthrope hunting are more likely to put me in the hospital. Maybe I'm just tired of waking up with new scars."

"Waking up is good, though," he said, and his voice sounded fragile. He wasn't staring at my face or my chest now. He was looking into the distance, with that look on the face that says you're seeing something unpleasant, reliving it, just a little.

"You didn't think you were going to wake up," I said, and kept my voice gentle.

He looked at me, eyes wide, looking lost, frightened. "No, I thought this was it. I thought..." He stopped and he wouldn't meet my eyes.

"You thought you were going to die," I finished for him.

He nodded, then winced as if the movement hurt.

"I knew I wouldn't die, or you. Stomach wounds hurt like hell and they can take a lot of healing, but they're rarely fatal with modern antibiotics and prompt medical attention."

He looked at me, uncomprehending. "Were you really thinking all that as they put you under?"

I thought about it. "Not exactly, but I've been hurt a lot, Peter. I've lost count of the number of times I've lost consciousness and woken up in a hospital, or somewhere worse."

I thought his eyes were on my chest again, but he said, "The scar on your collarbone, what did that?"

Another interesting sideline of wearing this much of my chest in full view was that some of my scars were on display. I'd been more worried about my modesty than about the scars. "Vampire."

"I thought it was a shapeshifter bite."

"Nope, vampire." I showed him my arms with all their scars. "Most of these are from vampires." I touched one on my left arm: claw marks. "This one was a shapeshifted witch, which means her shapeshifting was a spell and not a disease."

"I didn't know there was a difference."

"Well, the spell isn't contagious, and it's not tied to the full moon at all. In fact, strong emotions don't cause you to shift, or any of that. You don't shift until you put on the item, usually a fur belt or something."

"Do you have any scars from shapeshifters?"

"Yes."

"Can I see?"

Truthfully, the most permanent scars were claw marks on my ass. They were almost delicate marks. Gabriel, the wereleopard who had done it, had considered it foreplay before he tried to rape me on film. He'd been the first person I'd ever killed with the big knife in its spine sheath. I was going to have to figure out a different way to wear the knife until I could get the shoulder rig remade. But I had new scars now, ones I was willing to show Peter.

It took a little work to get the T-shirt out of the pants, but somehow I didn't want to unbuckle or unzip anything. I got the shirt up and raised it over my belly, exposing the new wounds.

Peter made a surprised sound. "That can't be real." He whispered it. He reached out as if he'd try to touch, then drew his hand back, as if he wasn't sure what I'd say.

I stepped closer to the bed. He took it as the invitation it was, and ran his fingertips across the new pink scars. "The scars may disappear altogether, or they may stay. I won't know for a few days, or weeks," I said.

He drew his fingers back, then put his whole hand across the biggest wound. The one where it looked as if she had tried to take a chunk of flesh. His hand was big enough to cover the mark and leave his fingers splayed out beyond the scars. "You can't have healed this in less than, what... twelve hours. Are you one of them?"

"You mean a shapeshifter?" I asked.

"Yes." He whispered it as if it were a secret. He slid his hand along my stomach, tracing the ragged marks of claws.

"No."

He ran his hand over my skin until he came to the edge of the scars where they dribbled away just past my belly button. "They just changed my dressing. I look like shit. You're healed." He curved his hand around to the side of my waist that wasn't scarred. His hand cupped my waist, and his hand was big enough to do it. That one gesture caught me off guard. The only man I was dating whose hand was big enough to do that was Richard. It seemed wrong that Peter's hand was that big. It made me move back from him and let my shirt drop over my stomach. Which embarrassed him, which wasn't my intent. I just suddenly realized I probably shouldn't let him touch me that much. It hadn't moved me or made me uncomfortable until that moment.

He took his hand back, and again wasted blood that he didn't have in blushing. "Sorry," he mumbled, and wouldn't look at me as he said it.

"It's okay, Peter. No harm, no foul."

He gave me a quick upward glance of his brown eyes. "If you're not a shapeshifter, how could you have healed like that?"

Truthfully, it was probably because I was Jean-Claude's human servant, but since Dolph was wanting to know that, I just didn't want to share it with people who didn't know. "I'm carrying four different kinds of lycanthropy. So far I don't turn furry, but I'm carrying."

"The doctors told me you can't get more than one kind of lycanthropy. That's the point of the shot. The two different kinds of lycanthropy cancel each other out." He stopped at the end of the speech and took a deeper-than-normal breath, as if talking too much hurt.

I patted his shoulder. "Don't talk if it hurts, Peter."

"Everything hurts." He seemed to try to settle into the bed, then stopped as if that had hurt, too. He looked up at me, and the angry, defiant face was like an echo of almost two years ago. The kid I'd met was still in there, he'd just grown up. It made my heart hurt. Would I ever get to see Peter when he wasn't getting hurt? I guess I could just go visit Edward sometime, but that was just weird. We did not just visit each other. We weren't that kind of friends.

"I know it hurts, Peter. I didn't always heal this fast."

"Micah and Nathaniel have been talking to me about weretigers and being a lycanthrope."

I nodded, because I didn't know what else to say. "They'd know."

"Do they all heal as fast as you do?"

"Some, no. Some faster."

"Faster," he said. "Really?"

I nodded.

His eyes filled with something I couldn't decipher. "Cisco didn't heal."

Ah. "No, he didn't."

"If he hadn't thrown himself between me and the... weretiger, I'd be dead now."

"You couldn't have taken the damage that Cisco took, that's true."

"You're not going to argue about it. Tell me it wasn't my fault."

"It wasn't your fault," I said.

"But he did it to save me."

"He did it to keep both my guards alive longer. He did it to give us time for other guards to come and help us. He did his job."

"But..."

"I was there, Peter. Cisco did his job. He didn't sacrifice himself to save you." I wasn't entirely sure that was true, but I kept talking. "I don't think he meant to sacrifice himself at all. Shapeshifters don't usually die that easily."