Anita Blake 20 - Hit List (12 page)

I ran my hand over the smooth ridges of his stomach. “Hmm, a six-pack, that takes work.”

His breath came out in a shuddering sigh, from just that innocent caress. “All I am to my clan is muscle, so I have to be the best muscle I can be.”

I curved my hands on either side of his waist, following along all that lean, hardworking muscle.

Such a small touch, but it made him close his eyes and sigh. That reaction alone let me know just how long it had been since someone touched him. It made me sad for him. And then I felt something in the hallway, something hot and powerful, and angry . . . I turned back and went for my gun in its holster, but like Ethan’s gun it was under my shirt. I was on one knee, my shirt still in the air as I raised my gun up to aim at the door. Ethan was going for his gun, but he wouldn’t reach it in time.

MY FINGER WAS starting to pull the trigger as the door burst open, and I had a second to see that it was Alex in human form. If I’d been truly human I’d have shot him, but I had the reflexes to stop in time and aim the gun at the ceiling, though a moment later I wasn’t sure I’d made the right choice.

I had a heartbeat to see him, a second to have that moment of frozen, crystal-hard vision, when adrenaline and violence slow everything down as if you have all the time in the world to do something, to see it coming. It’s an illusion—if you see the same moment later on film, it’s all so fast. But it let me see bits of things so clearly and the rest was lost. Alex’s dark red hair was shorter than last time I’d seen him, almost shaved. He flashed yellow tiger eyes at me, his human face set in a snarl of rage as he rushed in a blur of speed and power at Ethan, who had his gun in his hand, but no time to aim, and if he had, would he have shot his prince?

Alex’s body hit Ethan’s and sent the other man back against the machinery behind us. Metal snapped, and groaned, as it broke underneath them. A harsh, coughing roar came out of Alex’s human throat as he snarled into Ethan’s face.

I was yelling, “Alex! No! Alex! No! Stop!” I aimed the gun at him, and moved with it aimed so that I had a clear head shot while he snarled into Ethan’s face. I had the shot, but I couldn’t take it. I’d kill Alex at this distance, and he was my tiger to call, which meant when he died, I might die too, and so might everyone that I was metaphysically tied to. Fuck!

I holstered the gun and let it fall to the floor, and went to them. I had the angle now and could see that one of the metal pipes had pierced Ethan’s side. There was blood all over that nice upper body. Fuck! I couldn’t risk shooting Alex, but I wouldn’t stand there and watch him tear Ethan apart either. I went back to my pile of weapons for a blade. But I’d forgotten what Ethan was, all he was to his clan: muscle.

His fist moved in a pale blur and Alex staggered back, blood flying from his face. Alex fell to the floor, catching himself on one hand. Ethan began to drag himself down the pipe. The sight of it twisted my stomach; God, it had to hurt. His power rolled off him in waves, and three of my tigers loved the taste of it, the heat of it, the disaster of it, because just watching Ethan force his body down that pipe in his side, I knew that when he got off that pipe the fight would be on.

I stepped between them, which if I’d meant to fight either of them would have been stupid, but I wasn’t planning on slugging it out with either of them. I didn’t so much drop my metaphysical shields as just find the anger that always seemed to be bubbling right below the surface of me.

Feeding on sex was Jean-Claude’s vampire line, the line that descended from Belle Morte, Beautiful Death, but anger, that was mine. The anger came to me as if it were a warm shower to touch and caress my skin. It felt so good to feed on it, to draw in all that rage. I had a moment of feeling that I had a choice whether to swallow it, or use it to be angry myself. That was new; usually it was just food. I “ate” the anger, letting it soak into me.

Alex stared up at me, still on the floor, on his knees, one arm braced. “What just happened?” he asked. His energy had completely changed; he felt normal, felt like himself.

“I ate your anger. Why are you so pissed?”

“I have no idea.”

Movement made me look back at Ethan. He shuddered with the pipe halfway out of his side.

That one movement let me know how hurt he was. Yes, he’d heal if it wasn’t silver, but that didn’t stop having a pipe shoved through your side from hurting like hell. I couldn’t imagine trying to drag my body down it. I was thinking about it too hard, and my stomach clenched with nausea.

“What do you mean you have no idea, Alex?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. He looked up at me, and then called out, “George, come help us.” I turned and found another guard in the white T-shirt and khaki pants that passed as their uniform.

His short, thick hair was the traditional deep, almost-black red, his eyes like orange and yellow pinwheels of fire. There was a slight gold tinge that just added to the exotic effect that some of the reds had.

“My prince,” he said, and literally dropped to one knee, his fist coming back to touch his chest. I raised an eyebrow at that, because I’d never seen anything that formal at any of the other clans. It was like medieval formal.

“Help Ethan.”

“As my prince wills,” George said, and stood.

I heard a gasp of pain behind me, and the sound of a body falling. I turned to find Ethan on the floor, on his knees, his hands catching him from falling. His skin was almost gray and beaded with sweat from the pain and shock. But even as I watched, the blood flow was lessening. His body was beginning to heal itself. A wave of relief that I hadn’t known I needed swept through me. It wasn’t that Ethan meant that much to me yet, but getting him killed for plain stupid jealousy would have just been so unfair.

George, the guard, was only partway to Ethan when the anger came back. One minute Alex was standing, wiping the blood off his face, his usual calm self, and the next he was snarling and hit the wounded man twice before Ethan could defend himself. They came up off the floor in a snarling, pounding mass.

I tried to eat the rage again, but it was as if I slid off it. I couldn’t reach the anger. Something was blocking me. The men began to beat on each other in a snarling, pounding mass.

I turned to the guard. “Stop them.”

“If my prince wishes to discipline him, it is not my place to interfere.”

“Seriously?” I asked.

George gave a little smile, shrugged, and said, “Seriously, I’m not crossing the Red Queen just for Ethan.”

“You are a useless piece of shit,” I said.

He frowned at me. “‘Off with your head’ isn’t just forAlice in Wonderland ’s Red Queen, Anita Blake.”

I had a second to think about the fact that this Red Queen beheaded her guards for disobedience, and then the fight took all our attention. If Ethan had been well, he’d have just kicked Alex’s ass; it showed in the fact that he was beginning to win even as hurt as he was. Alex was strong, fast, in good shape, but his day job was as a reporter. He had a chance to hit the gym and probably even took some kind of fighting class, but Ethan did nothing but train. He did nothing but make himself a better fighting machine, and as his body began to knit together, he began to hit back with more force, block more of Alex’s blows. It was the difference between an amateur and a professional in a fight; unless the amateur gets lucky early, he will lose.

Alex took another hit to the face and it spun him around. He tried to turn back, but Ethan kicked out and took his knee. I heard the meaty pop of it. Alex screamed and went down. Ethan kicked him in the face. Blood sprayed, and the screaming stopped. Alex fell to the floor unconscious. If he’d been human I’d have worried about a broken neck, but he wasn’t human; no one in the room was, not really. And yeah, I included myself on that list.

Ethan turned toward us, his breathing harsh. His chest rose and fell with it. The sick sweat had turned into just sweat. He wiped at the blood still on his side, and the wound was almost closed.

The guard beside me drew his gun and pointed it at him. “You know the punishment for hurting any of the queen’s family.”

“In a battle over a female, that rule doesn’t count,” Ethan said, his voice barely showing his breathing. He was already recovering, controlling his body.

I saw George’s hand tense, and I reacted, not really expecting to get there in time, but I did. I swept his hand and the gun to the ceiling. The shot was thunder in the small room. The echoes were deafening.

He relaxed his arm against my hand, not trying to lower the gun. It made me look away from the center of his body to his face. I saw his lips work and heard his voice distant with the ringing in my ears: “You’re faster than I thought.” Then he tensed, and I had less than the blink of an eye to know that his other hand was coming for me. There wasn’t even time for me to see it, let alone judge where it would land; there was just him tensing and the feel of his body moving.

His arm slammed across the side of my body. It was just a straight arm into my waist, but it raised me a few inches off my feet and sent me falling. Years on the mat in judo helped me fall as well as I could, taking most of the momentum with a slap of my hands and arms on the rough floor. Even then, I had a moment of blinking and being half-stunned on the floor. Another shot rang out, sharp, and hurting, like a blow to my ears. My brain was screaming,Get up, get up, or you’ll die! I got up.

I GOT TO my feet in time for a third shot to whirr over my head and make me crouch back down. Ethan got the gun away from George as I watched, but George punched him at the same time, and the gun went spinning across the floor. A knife flashed in George’s other hand as I moved toward the fallen gun. I had it up and aimed it at the fight, but they were too fast. Ethan was fast, but George was faster, not fast enough to cut him, but fast enough that it was all Ethan could do to keep George from cutting him. They moved in a blur, circling and punching, and using their knees against each other’s lower bodies, because they were too close in to use the whole leg to kick. I couldn’t get a clean shot. Every time I thought I had it, Ethan was in my way.

I realized that George was purposefully moving Ethan around so he spoiled my shot, which meant that George was even better. I realized he had openings to punch Ethan, and I knew he had the strength to knock him back, but if he did that then he wouldn’t have Ethan as a shield against the gun. He could have won the fight, but he needed Ethan in front of him, and close to him.

Fuck, but he was good.

Did Ethan think he was holding his own, or did he understand what the other man was doing? I heard footsteps running in the hallway. I hoped it was help coming.

“I’m not here to hurt you, Anita Blake,” George said in a voice that showed no strain.

I ignored him and waited for a shot to open up.

Ethan stopped trying to fight and let George cut his arm. It gave him an opening to push back and let himself fall to the floor and give me a clear shot. I aimed at George’s center and squeezed the trigger, but he was already moving, impossibly fast, a blur that I tried to follow with my hands and the gun as I fired. The gun was a Glock 21, which was a .45ACP, and it took my hands up toward the ceiling so that by the time I had the gun back down and ready to aim again he was through the door and out of sight.

I said, “Motherfucker!” and got to my feet, gun held up, elbows bent, so if I had another shot I would be able to take it. But the hallway was a mass of people in white T-shirts and khaki pants.

Most of them had the same short, dark red hair, so that there was no target to aim at, or there were too many.

Some of the figures were on the ground, white shirts blossoming crimson with blood. I prayed that one of them was George, but somehow I knew he wouldn’t be.

I felt movement behind me and started to bring the gun around, but Ethan said, “It’s me.” I stopped in midmotion, telling the beating of my pulse in my throat that of course it was Ethan; no one else in the room was conscious. That made me think about Alex, and wonder why his being hurt hadn’t hurt me. I’d taken damage when some of my other animals to call had been hurt, so why hadn’t it hurt me?

I glanced behind to see that Alex was still motionless on the floor. I’d check on him after I knew what had happened to the bad guy.

Ethan moved in front of me, and I realized he’d taken the time to get his weapons. His T-shirt was untucked so that it didn’t all fit back as neatly as it had started, but shoulder holsters chafe without a shirt. I had time to see that his wound was bleeding freely and starting to get all over his white shirt, as he put me at his back and did what a good guard will do: be a meat shield.

When all else fails, that’s the last duty of any bodyguard, to literally put his body between you and harm.

I started to say I didn’t need it, but honestly, I couldn’t have held my own against the other man as long as Ethan had. I could admit that he was not only stronger than I was, but better at slugging it out. I didn’t like it, but I admitted it in my head, and I let him wade out into the fight in the hallway first. Did it hurt my pride? Yes. Was my pride worth dying for? No.

But when I started moving out behind him from the doorway, Ethan put a hand back and stopped me. “Wait,” he said. There was a time when I wouldn’t have listened, but the speed . . . the speed at the end had been too fast even for a shapeshifter. He’d been as fast as the masked shapeshifter who had injured Karlton. He wasn’t tall enough, but he was fast enough. He had to be one of the Harlequin. I still wasn’t certain if I’d hit him, or if he truly had been faster than a speeding bullet.

It had all happened too damned fast.

I picked out words from the babble of voices in the hallway: “He was too fast . . . dead . . . help me stop the bleeding . . . it’s too late, he’s dead . . . get the doctor.”

Ethan motioned that I could move forward. I pointed the gun down at the floor, but kept it in a two-handed grip. There were two men down in a pool of blood. A guard with yellow hair was holding his hands on one man’s throat, trying to stop the bleeding, but blood gushed out from between his fingers. I’d known shapeshifters powerful enough to heal a wound like that, and I’d seen one die from an almost identical wound. He’d been killed by one of the Harlequin’s animals to call, too. Were they trained to go for the throat?