The Harlequin (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 15)

"Easily? He had his throat ripped out."

"I've seen both vampires and wereanimals heal from wounds like that."

He gave me a disbelieving face.

I crossed my heart and gave the Boy Scout salute.

That made him smile. "You were never a Boy Scout."

"I wasn't even a Girl Scout, but I'm still telling the truth." I smiled, hoping to encourage him to keep doing it.

"Healing like that would be cool."

I nodded. "It is cool, but it's not all cool. There are some serious downsides to being a wereanimal."

"Micah told me some of it. He and Nathaniel have answered a lot of questions."

"They're good at that."

He glanced past me at the door. I glanced where he looked. Micah and Nathaniel had given us as much privacy as they could without leaving the room. They were talking softly together. Cherry had actually left the room. I hadn't heard her go.

"The doctors want me to get the shot," Peter said.

I looked at him. "They would."

"What would you do?" he asked.

I shook my head. "If you're old enough to have saved my life, then you're old enough to decide this on your own."

His face crumbled around the edges, not like he was going to cry, but as if the child was peeking out. Did all teenagers do that? One minute grown-up, the next so fragile like a dream of their younger selves? "I'm just asking your opinion."

I shook my head. "I'd say call your mom, but Edward doesn't want to. He says Donna will vote for the shot."

"She would." He sounded resentful, face sullen. He'd been pretty moody at fourteen; apparently that hadn't changed completely. I wondered how Donna was coping with this new, more grown-up son.

"I'll tell you what I told Edward; I won't give an opinion on this one."

"Micah says that I might not get the tiger lycanthropy even if I don't get the shot."

"He's right."

"He said fifty-five percent of the people who get the shot don't get lycanthropy, but that forty-five percent get lycanthropy. They get what's in the shot, Anita. If I get the shot and catch what's in there, it means if I'd just left it alone I wouldn't have gotten anything."

"I didn't know the stats broke down that nicely, but Micah would know."

"He says it's his job to know."

I nodded. "He takes his job at the coalition as seriously as Edward and I take ours."

"Nathaniel said he's an exotic dancer, is that true?"

"It's true," I said.

He actually lowered his voice to say, "So he's a stripper?"

"Yes," I said and fought not to smile. With everything that was going wrong in his life, he was weirded out that my boyfriend was a stripper. Then I realized that he might not know that Nathaniel was my boyfriend. No, we'd kissed when I came through the door. But then, Cherry had joined the hug. Oh, hell, now was not the time to try to explain my love life to him.

"Micah told me some of the jobs that other lycanthropes have. Nurses, doctors, but only if they don't find out. I might not be able to join the armed forces, any branch."

"They consider lycanthropy a contagious disease, so probably not." In my head I remembered a talk Micah and I had had about a rumor. A rumor about the armed forces looking into deliberate recruiting of shapeshifters. But it was a rumor. He couldn't trace anyone who had actually been approached. It was always a friend of a friend's cousin.

"Did you get the shot?"

"They didn't offer. It's too late for me, Peter. I'm carrying already."

"But you're not a shapeshifter?" He made it a question.

"I don't turn furry once a month, or at all, so no."

"But you're carrying four different kinds at once. The whole shot thing is based on the idea that that's impossible."

I nodded and shrugged. "I'm a medical miracle, what can I say?"

"If I could heal like that and not turn furry, that would be amazing."

"You still wouldn't pass blood screenings for some jobs. You'd still hit the radar as a lycanthrope."

He frowned. "I guess so." Then he gave me that young face again, that echo of before, and it was a frightened face. "Why won't you help me decide?"

I leaned closer. "This is what it means to be grown-up, Peter. This is the bitch of it. If you're playing eighteen, then you have to decide. If you want to fess up to your real age, then everyone will treat you like a kid. They'll make decisions for you."

"I'm not a kid," he said, and he frowned, going sullen on me.

"I know that."

His frown slipped to puzzlement. "What do you mean?"

"You stood your ground today. You didn't panic, or lose it. I've seen grown men lose it around lycanthropes when the situation wasn't as desperate. Most people are afraid of them."

"I was afraid," he said softly. "I've been afraid since I was a kid."

I had one of those moments of, shit and aha. "The attack on your father," I said. How could I have forgotten that this wasn't the first lycanthropy attack he'd survived?

He gave a small nod.

"You were what, eight?"

"Yes." His voice was soft, his eyes staring into the distance again.

I didn't know what to say. I cursed Edward for not being here. In that moment I might have traded a talk with Olaf for this talk with Peter. I could always shoot Olaf, but no weapon would help me deal with Peter's pain.

"Anita," he said.

I looked at him, met his eyes. His eyes reminded me of Nathaniel's eyes when I first met him. Eyes that were older than they should have been. Eyes that had seen things that older men would never see.

"I'm here, Peter," I said, because I couldn't think what else to say. I met his gaze and fought my face not to show how much it hurt me to see his eyes like that. Maybe they'd been that way years ago, but it took dating Nathaniel to teach me what eyes like that meant in a face that hadn't seen twenty yet.

"I thought if I trained with Edward that I wouldn't be so scared, but I was. I was scared just like last time. It was like I was little and watching my dad die again."

I wanted to touch his shoulder, take his hand, but wasn't sure it was what he needed me to do, so I kept my hands still. "I lost my mom when I was eight to a car wreck."

His eyes changed, lost a little of that awful look. "Were you there? Did you see?"

I shook my head. "No. She drove away and just never came back."

"I saw my dad die. I used to dream about it."

"Me, too."

"But you weren't there; what did you dream about?"

"Some well-meaning relative took me to see the car she died in. I used to dream about touching the bloodstains." I realized I'd never told anyone that.

"What?" he said. "What's wrong?"

I could have said so many things, many of them sarcastic, like I'm talking about my mothers death, why wouldn't something be wrong? I settled for the truth, which crosses the lips like jagged glass, as if you should bleed when you say it. "Just realizing I've never told anyone about that dream."

"Not even Micah and Nathaniel?"

Apparently, he did know they were my boyfriends. "No, not even them."

"Mom made me go to therapy afterward. I talked about it a lot."

"Good for Donna," I said.

"Why didn't your dad send you?"

I shrugged. "I don't think it occurred to him."

"I thought I could face my fears, and I wouldn't be so afraid, but I was afraid." He looked away from me again. "I was so scared." He whispered the last.

"So was I," I said.

He gave me a startled look. "You didn't look it."

"Neither did you."

It took him a moment, but he finally smiled and looked down in that pleased way that young men do. They seem to grow out of it, but it was strangely charming. "You really think so?"

"Peter, you saved me today when you jumped on us in the hallway. She was going to kill me as soon as she was out of sight of you guys."

"Edward told me that if a bad guy wants to remove you from the scene, and is already threatening or has a weapon, that most of the time they mean to kill you, but if you go with them, you die slower and more painfully."

I nodded. "I thought that's what you meant when you repeated the rule in the hallway."

"You understood," he said.

"I encouraged you, remember?"

He searched my face, as if trying to read something there. "You did, didn't you?"

"Edward and I know a lot of the same rules."

"He said you think like him."

"Sometimes," I said.

"Not always," Peter said.

"Not always," I said.

"I won't get the shot," he said, and his voice sounded firm.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Do you think I should get it?"

"I didn't say that, I just want your reasoning."

"If I don't get it, and I turn into a weretiger, well, then I did it saving you. If I don't get the shot, and I don't turn into a weretiger, then it's good. If I get the shot and I wasn't going to be a weretiger, I'll get whatever's in the shot, and I'll have turned into a shapeshifter because I was scared to be a shapeshifter. That sounds stupid."

"But if you are going to be a weretiger, then the shot would stop it from happening."

"You think I should take it," he said.

I sighed. "Honest?"

"Honest would be good," he said.

"I didn't like the way you said that if you turn into a weretiger, it's good because you did it saving me. I don't want you to think about me in this equation. I want you be a selfish son of a bitch, Peter. I want you to think about yourself and yourself alone. What do you want to do? What feels right to you?"

"Honest?" he said.

"Yeah, honest," I said.

"I think I've made up my mind, then I go back and change it. I think if I decided, and they had the shot here and ready, I'd just take it, but they won't bring it until I say so." He closed his eyes. "Part of me wants to call my mom and let her decide for me. Part of me wants someone to blame if it goes wrong, but a man doesn't do that. A man makes his own decisions."

"In this situation, yes. But don't imprint that whole lone gunman mentality too deep on your psyche."

"Why?" he asked.

I smiled. "I know from experience that it's hard to be part of a couple when you're so damned independent. I've had to learn how to share my decisions. Balance is what you're looking for."

"I don't know how to balance anything anymore," and his eyes were shiny.

"Peter, I..."

"Go, okay?" he said, in a voice that was too thick. "Just go, please."

I almost reached out and touched his shoulder. I wanted to comfort him. Hell, I wanted to go back in time and put his ass back on a plane home as soon as he showed up in St. Louis. I wished I had humiliated him and sent him packing. Wasn't a bruised ego better than this?

Hands came and touched me, drew me back from the bed. Micah and Nathaniel drew me away so Peter could cry without me watching. My throat was so tight it hurt to breathe. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

They got me outside in the hallway before the first tear slid hot and almost painful down my own face. "Damn it," I said.

Micah tried to hug me, but I pushed him away. "I'll cry if you hug me."

"Anita, just let it out."

I shook my head. "No, don't you understand. We have to kill her first. I'll cry when Mercia's dead."

"You blame her for Peter being hurt," he said.

"No, I blame me, and Edward, but I can't kill us, so I'll kill who I can."

"If you're going to talk about killing people, Anita, you might not want to do it in front of a policeman." Zerbrowski walked down the hallway with his usual smile. He looked as he always did, like he'd slept in his suit, though I knew he hadn't. His dark curly hair had more gray in it, but it was still the careless curls. Katie, his wife, hadn't made him cut it recently. He was cheerfully messy, and Katie was one of the neatest people I'd ever met. Opposites attract.

I had a horrible urge to hug him. He just looked so nicely normal coming down the hallway. Which made me turn to Micah and Nathaniel. If I was thinking about falling into Zerbrowski's arms, I was badly in need of a hug. All three of them had seen me cry before, including Zerbrowski.

I threw an arm around Micah, then held the other one out to Nathaniel. I let them hold me, but I didn't cry. My face felt hot, but no more tears came. I clung to them, let them hold me. I had this horrible urge to simply collapse, to just fall apart in their arms, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't let myself do it.

"I'll give you some privacy," Zerbrowski said.

I shook my head and drew back from the men. "No, we have to catch this bitch."

"No one's seen her, Anita. Her or the man who we assume is her human servant."

"He has to be her human servant to share her mind powers, Zerbrowski." I tried to move farther away, but Nathaniel's arm slipped around my shoulders, drawing me back. I patted his arm and said, "I'm okay now."

He whispered, "Liar, but maybe it's me who needs to touch you." He squeezed me tight, his other arm sliding around my waist. "You've got to stop almost dying, Anita; it's hard on the heart."

Somehow I didn't think he meant hard as in a heart attack. There were so many more ways for a heart to break. I let him press me back against his body. I stroked my hands down his arms.

Zerbrowski shook his head, smiled. "You know, Katie feels the same way after I get hurt, but she's too cool to do it in public."

I looked at him, and it wasn't an entirely friendly look.

He held up his hands. "It wasn't a criticism, Anita, Nathaniel. It's just, well, hell, I mean it's interesting watching people be as open as you guys are. Is it a shapeshifter culture thing?"