Cerulean Sins (28 page)

He let me go, and the absence of his hands almost staggered me, as if he'd taken away a shelter, and I was lost in the storm.

He began to walk backwards towards the door. “I thought I would do anything to be with Jean-Claude and his new servant. I thought I would do
anything to be back in the safety of the arms of two people who loved me. But I understand now that your love will always come with conditions and that no matter how good your intentions, something holds you back, Anita. Something will not allow you to give yourself completely to the moment, to that shining thing called love. You hold yourself back, and you hold back those who love you. I cannot live being offered your love one moment and denied it the next. I cannot live being punished for what I cannot change.”

“It's not punishment,” I said, and my voice sounded strange, strangled.

He gave a sad smile and flung his hair over the scarred side of his face, so he stared at me with nothing but that perfect profile showing. “To quote you,
ma cherie,
the hell it is not.” He turned and strode for the door.

I called after him. “Asher, please . . .” But he didn't stop. The door closed behind him, and the room filled with a profound silence.

Jean-Claude spoke into that silence, and his soft voice made me jump. “Gather your things, Anita, and go.”

I looked at him, then, and my pulse was in my throat, and I was afraid, really afraid. “Are you kicking me out?” My voice didn't even sound like me.

“
Non,
but at this moment I need to be alone.”

“You haven't fed, yet.”

“Are you saying you would willingly feed me, now?” He didn't look at me as he asked it. He was staring at the floor.

“Actually, I'm sort of not in the mood anymore,” I said, and my voice was fighting to get back to normal. Jean-Claude wasn't kicking me out of his life, but I didn't like that he wouldn't look at me.

“I will feed, but it will be only for food, and you are not food. So, please, go.”

“Jean-Claude . . .”

“Just go, Anita, go. I need you not to be here right now. I need to not have to look at you, right now.” The first stirrings of anger had trickled into his voice, like a fuse freshly lit and running with fire, but not truly burning up, not yet.

“Would saying I'm sorry help?” My voice was small when I asked.

“That you understand that you have something to apologize for is a beginning, but it is not enough, not today.” He looked at me then, and his eyes glistened in the lights, not with power, but with unshed tears. “Besides, it is not me that you owe the apology to. Now go, before I say something that we will both regret.”

I opened my mouth, drew a breath to reply, but he held up a hand and said, simply, “No.”

I gathered my gun and shoulder holster from the bathroom. The wet clothes I left on the floor of the bathroom. I didn't look back, and I didn't
try to kiss him good-bye. I think if I'd tried to touch him, he'd have hurt me. I don't mean struck me, but there are a thousand ways to hurt someone you love that have nothing to do with physical violence. There were words trapped in his eyes, a world of pain shining there. I didn't want to hear those words. I didn't want to feel that pain. I didn't want to see it, or touch it, or have it rubbed in the wounds in my own heart right that moment. I believed I was right, and a girl's got to have some standards. I don't let the vamps fuck with my mind, they just get my body. It had seemed a good rule an hour ago.

I shut the door behind me, leaned into it, and fought to take a breath that didn't shake. My world had been more solid an hour ago.

I
WAS STILL
leaning against the door, shaking, when Nathaniel came up to me. I didn't see him at first, even though he was standing right in front of me. I was staring at the floor, and I saw his jogging shoes, his legs, his shorts, before I looked slowly up and found his face. It felt like it took a long time to look up his body, and find that familiar face with those lilac eyes.

“Anita . . .” his voice was soft.

I held out a hand, because if anyone was nice to me, I was going to fall apart. I couldn't afford that right now. If Asher was up, then probably so was Musette. Normally, the thought would have been enough to let me check on a nearby vampire. Today, it was empty. I was empty. I was what Marianne, my psychic teacher, called head blind. It happens sometimes if you've had a shock; physical, emotional, whatever. I wouldn't be worth shit for metaphysical stuff until this wore off—if it wore off. Right that second it felt like the world should open up at my feet and swallow me down the great black hole that was eating through my heart.

“What is it, Nathaniel?” My voice was a bare whisper. I cleared my throat, sharply, to repeat it, but he'd heard.

“The two men that were following us in the blue Jeep are outside watching the back parking lot. They've got a different car, but it's still them.”

I nodded, and the black hole at my feet began to close. I still hurt, and I was still head blind, but for this it didn't matter. Guns don't care if you're psychically gifted. Guns don't care about anything. They don't bitch at you about the rules in your personal life, either. Of course, neither does a dog, but I don't have to use a pooper-scooper after I'm through shooting my gun. Sometimes a body bag is needed, but that's not usually my job.

I was feeling better. Steadier. This I could do. “Find Bobby Lee, I want the best people he's got for car work.”

“Car work?” Nathaniel made it a question.

“We're going to box them in and find out why they're following us.”

“What if they don't want to tell us?” he asked.

I looked at him as I slipped into the shoulder holster and unthreaded my belt, so I could rethread the holster. I didn't say anything as I readied the gun, got it exactly where I wanted it. I had to carry the butt of the gun a little lower than I might have wanted for speed, but hitting your breast with the edge of the gun slows your fast draw even more. So a little lower angle, to avoid the chest. Legends say that the Amazons chopped off a breast to make them better at archery. I don't believe that. I think it's just another example of men thinking a woman can't be a great warrior without cutting away her womanhood, symbolically, or otherwise. We can be great warriors; we just got to pack the equipment a little differently.

Nathaniel was looking very solemn. “I didn't bring a gun.”

“That's great, because you're not coming.”

“Anita . . .”

“No, Nathaniel. I taught you about guns so you wouldn't hurt yourself, and so in an emergency you could defend yourself. This isn't an emergency. I want you to stay inside out of the line of fire.”

Something flitted over his face, something that might have been stubbornness. It faded, but stubborn wasn't something that I'd ever seen on Nathaniel. I wanted him more independent, but not stubborn. He was about the only person in my life that did what I asked, when I asked. Right that second, I valued that.

I hugged him, and I think it caught us both by surprise. I whispered in his ear, against the sweet vanilla scent of his cheek, “Please, just do what I say.”

He was quiet for a heartbeat, then his arms wrapped around me, and he whispered, “Yes.”

I drew back from him, slowly, searching his face, wanting to ask him if he found my “rules” a burden, if I'd taken half the pleasure out of his life, too? I didn't ask, because I didn't really want to know. It wasn't that my courage failed me, it was more that my cowardice overwhelmed me. I'd had about all the truth I could stand for one day.

I kissed him on the cheek and left to find Bobby Lee. Him, I trusted to be in the line of fire. But it was more than that; I wasn't sleeping with Bobby Lee. I didn't love him. Sometimes love makes you selfish. Sometimes it makes you stupid. Sometimes it reminds you why you love your gun.

I
WAS LOOKING
through a pair of binoculars at a car parked at the far corner of the Circus of the Damned employee parking lot. Nathaniel was right, it was the same two men, but now they were in a large gold Impala dating to the 1960s, or some such. It was big, old, but in good shape. It was also very different from the shiny new blue Jeep that they'd been in before. They'd switched so the blond was driving. With the binocs I could see that he looked youngish, under forty, over twenty-five. He was clean shaven, wearing a black mock turtleneck and silver frame glasses. His eyes were pale, gray, or grayish blue.

The dark-haired man had put a billed cap on and changed to a larger pair of sunglasses. His face was thin, clean shaven, with a good-sized mole at one corner of his mouth. What they used to call a beauty mark.

I watched them sitting there and wondered why they weren't at least reading a newspaper, or drinking coffee, something, anything.

They'd done everything they were supposed to do, according to Kasey Krime Stoppers 101. They'd changed vehicles. They'd made small changes to their appearances. All this might have worked, if they weren't sitting outside Circus of the Damned, doing nothing. No matter how clever you disguise yourself, very few people sit in a car in the middle of the morning and do nothing. Also the employee parking lot was almost empty before noon. Once darkness fell, they could probably have parked and not been noticed so quickly, but this time of morning there was no hiding.

Bobby Lee was explaining all the Kasey Krime Stoppers tips and more to me. “If they hadn't changed cars, and they hadn't done anything to change their appearance, it might mean they didn't care if you spotted them. Or
even that they wanted you to spot them. But they've changed enough I think they really are trying to follow you.”

I handed him back the binoculars. “Why are they following me?”

“Usually, when people start following you around, you know why.”

“I thought they might be Renfields working for Musette and company, but I don't think Renfields would have taken the trouble to change their appearance like this. Most Renfields aren't the brightest of people.”

Bobby Lee grinned at me. “How can you be friends with so many bloodsuckers, and still be so damn disdainful of them?”

I shrugged, and my shrug wasn't graceful. It never had been. “Just lucky, I guess.”

The smile stayed, but the eyes began to go serious. “What do you want to do about these two?”

For a second, I thought he meant Asher and Jean-Claude, then I realized he meant the two yahoos in the Impala. The fact that even for a second I thought he meant something else said just how bad my concentration was. Concentration like that will get you killed in a fire fight.

I took a deep breath, another, let them out slowly, trying to clear my head. I needed to be here, now, not worrying about my increasingly complex personal life. Here and now with men and women with guns, about to risk their lives because I asked them to do it. Maybe the two men in the car weren't dangerous at all, but we couldn't count on that. We had to treat them like they were. If we were wrong, no harm done. If we were right, well, we'd be as prepared as we could be.

I couldn't shake the feeling of impending disaster. I looked up at Bobby Lee's tall frame. “I don't want to get any of you guys killed.”

“We'd kind of like to avoid that ourselves.”

I shook my head. “No, that's not what I mean.”

He looked at me, face suddenly very serious. “What's wrong, Anita?”

I sighed. “I think I'm losing my nerve for this shit. Not for my own safety, but for everyone else's. The last time the wererats helped me I got one of you killed, and another one cut up pretty badly.”

“I healed up pretty good.” Claudia walked towards us all six feet six and serious muscle. Her long black hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail leaving her face clean and unadorned. I'd never seen her wear makeup, and maybe because I'd never seen her in any, she didn't need it.

She wore a navy blue sports bra and a pair of dark blue jeans. She usually wore sports bras, I think because she had trouble finding shirts that fit over the spectacular spread of her shoulders and chest. She was a serious weight lifter, but not to that point where you'd ever mistake her for masculine. No, Claudia was definitely all girl.

The last time I'd seen her she'd had her arm damn near shot off. There
was a faint tracery of scars on her right shoulder, pale pink and white. Silver shot will scar even a shape-shifter. There'd even been a faint possibility that the silver could have lost her the use of her arm. But the right arm looked as whole and muscular as the left.

“You look great, how's the arm?” I asked, smiling. One of my favorite things about hanging with the monsters is the healing. Straight humans seemed to get killed on me a lot, monsters survived. Let's hear it for the monsters.

Claudia flexed the arm, and muscles rippled under her skin. It was downright impressive. I lift weights, but not like that. “Not all the way back to full strength. I still can't curl more than one hundred and forty pounds with it.”

I could bench-press my own body weight, plus a few pounds, and until now I'd been pretty impressed with doing reps with forty pounds for curls. Suddenly I felt inadequate.

I wanted to ask her if she was okay with putting her life, and that impressive body, on the line for me again, but I didn't. Some questions you just don't ask. Not out loud.

I stood there pressed against the black-mirrored glass that, from the outside, looked like part of the wall. I'd always wondered how someone was usually there to meet me at the back door. Now I knew—they had a lookout. We could have watched the bad guys all day, and they'd never have seen us.

It was part of a narrow loft area up above the main part of the Circus of the Damned, but this one small nook was equipped with binocs, comfortable chairs, and a little table. The rest of the loft area was mostly cables, wires, stored equipment, like the backstage areas at a theater. Most of the ceiling of the Circus was open to girders and beams like the warehouse it originally was, but now that I knew the loft was here, I realized that there was a narrow band of enclosed space that went around the entire top of the building. I'd asked if there were other hidden lookouts, and gotten the answer
of course
. Ask an obvious question, and you get the obvious answer.

“Claudia's going to drive one of the cars for our little plan,” Bobby Lee said.

“I thought the plan was for someone who looked harmless and normal to drive both cars.”

Claudia gave me a flat unfriendly look.

“No offense, but you look anything but ordinary.”

“She'll throw a shirt on over the muscles, take out the ponytail, and look like a girl,” Bobby Lee said.

I looked at him and her. She was taller than he was, hell she was as broad
through the shoulders as he was, and she had more bulk. “You know Bobby-boy if I had to choose between arm-wrestling you, or Claudia, I'd pick you.”

He blinked at me, totally not getting it.

Claudia got it. “You're wasting your breath, Anita. No matter how much I work out, I'm still a girl to even the best of them.”

Bobby Lee was looking from one to the other of us. “What are you two talking about?”

I tried being very clear, using small words. “Claudia is more muscled and taller than most of the other wererats you have here today. Why are you putting her out in the first car to look normal and harmless? She looks anything but harmless.”

He blinked at me, frowning. “You won't see the muscles under the shirt.”

“She's six-freaking-feet and six-fucking-inches tall, with a pair of shoulders as broad as yours. You're not going to hide that under a shirt.”

“I'm aware of that, Anita.”

“Then why put her out in front to look harmless?”

Bobby Lee tried to wrap his mind around it, but in the end he was a man that had spent most of his life being muscle—smart muscle, but still muscle. “She's the only girl we have here today, except you, and they'd recognize you.”

“Are you really telling me that the bad guys would feel less threatened by Claudia than by a short, less-powerfully built man?”

That was clear enough that Bobby Lee finally got it. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, smiled, and gave a small laugh. “I see your point, but truthfully, yeah, they'll be less intimidated. Men just don't see women as a threat, no matter how big they are, and all men are suspect no matter how small.”

I shook my head. “Why, because we have breasts and you don't?”

“Give it up, Anita,” Claudia said, “just give it up. They're men, they can't help it.”

Since I wasn't a man, I took Bobby Lee's word that the bad guys would panic less if one of the people involved in our mock accident was a woman. I had to admit that even I was less physically afraid of another woman, but it seemed wrong somehow. Claudia threw a man's pale blue shirt over her jeans and buttoned it up, even the sleeves. She left enough buttons undone in front to flash some cleavage, then she took the tie out of her hair. She shook her hair out, and it fell around her face, over her shoulders, in a slick, brunette flood. The hair softened the strong lines of her face, and I suddenly had a glimpse of what she might look like if she put any effort into being a traditional girl.
Spectacular
was the word that came to mind.

Bobby Lee watched the hair cascade with nearly openmouthed attention.
I think I could have shot him twice before he reacted. Shit. I'd thought better of him than that.

Claudia met my eyes and crooked one shapely eyebrow. It said it all. We had one of those moments of perfect understanding between girls, and I think that for her, like for me, there weren't that many of them. We both spent far too much time hanging out with the men. But no matter how many times you saved their lives, and they saved yours, no matter how much you could bench-press, no matter how tall, or strong, or competent—you were still a girl. And the fact that you were a girl overshadowed everything else for most men. It wasn't good or bad, it just was. A woman will forget that a man is male, if they are good enough friends, but men rarely forget that a woman is feminine. Most of the time it bugged the crap out of me, but today we'd use it against the bad guys, because they'd see all that hair, those breasts, and they'd underestimate her, because she was a girl.