Affliction (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,235

eyes went a little wider, lips parting as his breathing sped up.

‘What people?’ I asked.

Henry opened his mouth and screamed, ‘God! God! God!’ He sat up in bed, clawing at the tubes and wires.

My cross flared to white-hot fire. I got out my gun, because when the cross flared it meant a vampire was nearby and doing bad things. Nicky had his gun out, too, so we were armed as the nurse and doctor came through the door.

‘What did you do?’ Dr Aimes demanded as he shielded his eyes from my cross and ran for his patient.

‘It’s a vampire,’ I said. I’d known vampires that could be invisible in plain sight even to me.

Dr Aimes and a small blond nurse were trying to hold Henry so he didn’t yank any more tubes out of himself, but it’s hard to hold down someone that big. I’d have had Nicky help, but we had other things to do.

‘Search the corners of the room by walking along the wall,’ I said.

‘You think the vamp has been here all along?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know, but my cross says it’s here.’

Nicky and I walked the perimeter of the room, guns out and ready, shoulder scraping the wall so even if it tricked our eyes we’d run into it. Invisible doesn’t make you less solid.

I was half-blinded by the glow of my own cross. I thought about going for my sunglasses, but I didn’t want to let go of the gun with either hand. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, but it was the nurse being tossed across the room. Henry was still screaming, wordless, ragged, and frantic. Cops and more nurses came in to try to help hold him down, but their holy objects flared to blue-white light, too. The cops pulled their guns.

It was Deputy Al who asked, ‘Where’s the vampire?’

I explained what we were doing, and we had almost too many people searching the room while the medics fought to hold down Henry and he threw them around like toys. We finished our perimeter walk of the room. Nicky had gotten to the bathroom before I had, and he and another uniformed officer had checked it and called it clear. My cross was still white and blue and glowing, but there was nothing here.

‘It’s not here, Anita,’ Nicky called to me over the screaming.

‘There’s nothing here,’ Al said.

I glanced up at the ceiling; vampires could do that, but not while invisible. It took too much concentration to levitate and use mind tricks to that degree. If there’d been more shadows in the room, maybe a vampire could have done both, but the lights were full on and it was bright as day.

‘Then help hold down Henry,’ I said.

Nicky put up his gun, because I’d said so, and went to help the doctor and battered nurses. When he moved to help, so did a couple of the other bigger officers, and as soon as they touched Little Henry their holy objects flared brighter, going from blue-white to a pure burning incandescent white. His screams intensified, and he almost threw all that muscle off him, but one of them was almost as big as Nicky; they had enough strength to pin him to the bed.

I saw Dr Aimes pick up a syringe through the glow of the holy objects.

I yelled, ‘Aimes, don’t do it!’

Dr Aimes turned and looked at me. His glasses were gone, lost in the struggle. His cheek was already swelling a little. ‘We have to calm him down. He’s going to hurt himself, or someone else.’

‘I know where the vampire is,’ I said.

‘What are you talking about?’ He turned toward the IV tube with the syringe.

The room was small enough that I was there in time to grab his arm. ‘It’s in Henry.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Look at the holy objects when they touch him.’

He blinked at the bed as if he hadn’t noticed, and maybe he hadn’t. It looked like he’d gotten a good hit to the face. That can ring your bells and disorient you for a while. He turned back to me, looking puzzled. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I think I do,’ I said, ‘but it’s going to be unpleasant.’

‘More unpleasant than this?’ Aimes said.

‘Maybe,’ I said.

‘Will it help my patient?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Then do it.’

He should have asked more questions, or maybe I should have waited for him to recover from the blow that he’d had to the side of his head, but I didn’t. Because he