Affliction (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,157

at least keeping enough power over them to keep them from rotting.’

Nicky leaned over us, talking into the roar of water and flame. ‘But the vamps and zombies in the mountains were rotting. Bits fell off them.’

‘I’ve seen rotting zombies lose bits off, but when they changed to their human form the parts they’d lost were still there, and whole.’

‘How does that work?’ Yancey asked.

I told the truth. ‘I don’t know. I just know it works that way, or can.’

‘Are you saying sometimes it doesn’t work that way?’ he asked.

I wiped water and something thicker off my face before I answered. ‘Rotting vampires are special; a lot of vamp rules don’t apply to them.’

‘So is the vampire that possessed the vamps in the mountains the one raising the zombies?’ Nicky asked.

I started to say yes, then stopped myself. ‘I don’t know.’ If Yancey hadn’t been with us I’d have just brainstormed out loud, but I wasn’t sure where the thoughts would go, so …

Dev called out, ‘The elevator won’t work.’

‘Once the alarms are triggered, it goes to the lobby and waits for the firemen to use a key to override it,’ Yancey said.

‘You could have said something before he went and pushed the button,’ I said.

Yancey shrugged.

‘I knew, too,’ Edward said.

‘And you didn’t say something, why?’ I asked.

Edward just looked at me. It was an eloquent look.

I looked at Nicky. The water had plastered his hair to the right side of his face like it had been glued in place. ‘And your excuse?’ I asked.

‘I’m a sociopath; I don’t have to be nice,’ Nicky said.

I gave him a look.

‘You’re mad at him. I can feel it, which means I really don’t have to be nice to him.’

‘I thought you were friends.’

‘What part of sociopath didn’t you understand?’ he asked.

The water stopped pouring down and the sudden absence of it seemed loud, as if my body had gotten used to the pounding cold of it. I actually heard myself gasp; that meant my hearing wasn’t permanently damaged, which was nice to know.

Dev leaned against the wall and slowly slid down it until he was sitting with his knees drawn up, and tears shone in the overhead lights. I looked at the men standing around me and realized that though they’d all help me kill monsters and burn the bodies later, they were so not helping me do the emotional stuff.

‘Well, fuck,’ I said, softly, and went to give what comfort I could. I spent a lot of that short distance trying to make my face more neutral, instead of irritated. I also upped my psychic shields, because Dev could feel my emotions sometimes, not all the time, but this was one moment I didn’t want him to feel with me, just like I didn’t want to feel his emotions with him.

I stood over him, debating what to do with him. He spoke without looking at me. ‘You knew I was going to shoot at them. How did you know?’

It took me a minute to realize he meant SWAT. ‘I’ve been in these kinds of battles before. It was Edward who saved me.’

‘I’m good with a gun, and hand-to-hand, but I don’t think I can do this, Anita. This isn’t being a bodyguard, this is war.’

‘Yeah, sometimes that’s what I do.’

He looked up at me, fresh tears shining in his eyes. ‘I didn’t understand.’

I knelt beside him and debated on whether he wanted a hug, or if it would undo him completely, but he decided for me. He reached for me and I wrapped my arms around him. He buried his face against me and wept huge, racking sobs that shook every inch of that six-foot, three-inch body. He was strong and fast and brave, but I would never take him out again as my bodyguard. This had been killing zombies; what would he have been feeling if it had been humans, or shapeshifters, or vampires? Our Devil wasn’t hard enough for my job.

Movement made me look up from murmuring sweet, comforting nothings into Dev’s silky blond hair. Nicky was standing, talking to Edward and Yancey. He met my eyes and that one look was enough. He wasn’t shaken. He’d been through battles like this before on his own job back when he was a mercenary, before the ardeur helped me tame him. We had the long look, and then he went back to talking to the other men, and I went back to holding Dev. Nicky and I both knew that