His midnight blue eyes filled with fire. He swept my hair to one side and said, "Open for me, ma petite, open for us both."
I did, sweeping my mind open, dropping every guard I'd ever had. I fell forward, impossibly forward, down a long, black tunnel towards a burning blue fire. Pain cut the darkness like a white knife, and I heard myself gasp. I felt Jean-Claude's fangs sink into me, his mouth sealing over my flesh, sucking me, drinking me.
A wind swept through the falling darkness, catching me like a net before I touched that blue fire. The wind smelled of growing earth and the musty scent of fur. I felt something else: sorrow. Richard's sorrow. His mourning. Not of his death, but of my loss. Dead or alive, he'd lost me, and among his many faults was a loyalty that went beyond reason. Once in love, he was a man to stay there, regardless of what the woman did. A knight errant in every sense of the word. He was a fool, and I loved him for it. Jean-Claude I loved in spite of himself. Richard I loved because of who he was.
I wouldn't lose him. I wrapped his essence like winding myself in a sheet, except that I had no body. I held him in my mind, my body, and let him feel the love, my sorrow, regret. Jean-Claude was there, too. I half-expected him to protest, to sabotage it, but he didn't. That blue fire spilled upward through the tunnel to meet us, and the world exploded into shapes and images that were too confusing. Bits and pieces of memory, sensations, thoughts, like three separate jigsaw puzzles shaken and tossed into the air, and every piece that touched formed a picture.
I padded through the forest on four feet. The smells alone were intoxicating. I sank fangs into a dainty wrist, and it wasn't mine. I watched the pulse underneath a woman's neck and thought of blood, warm flesh, and far-off and distant sex. The memories came fast, then faster, flowing like some sort of carnival ride. Blackness gained on the images, like ink filling water. When the darkness ate everything, I floated for an impossible second, then went out like a candle flame. Nothing.
I didn't even have time to be scared.
45
I woke in a pastel pink hospital room. A nurse in a matching pink smock smiled down at me. Fear pumped like fine champagne. Where was Richard? Where was Jean-Claude? What I finally managed to ask, was, "How did I get here?"
"Your friend brought you." She motioned with her head.
Edward sat in a chair by the far wall, leafing through a magazine. He looked up and our eyes met. His face gave away nothing.
"Edward?"
"My friends call me Ted, Anita, you know that." He had that good of boy smile that could only mean he was pretending to be Ted Forrester. It was his only legal identity that I'd ever met. Even the cops thought he was this Ted person. "Nurse, can we have a few minutes alone?"
The nurse smiled, looked curiously from one to the other of us, and left, still smiling.
I tried to grab Edward's hand and found my left hand was taped to a board and stuck with an IV. I grabbed at him with my right hand, and he held it. "Are they alive?"
He smiled, a mere twitch of lips. "Yes."
A relief like I'd never known flowed through my body. I collapsed back against the bed, weak. "What happened?"
"You came in suffering from lycanthrope scratches and a very nasty vampire bite. He almost drained you dry, Anita."
"Maybe that's what it took to save us."
"Maybe," Edward said. He sat on the edge of the bed. His jacket gaped enough to flash his shoulder holster and gun. He caught me looking. "The police agree that the monsters might hold a grudge. There's even a cop outside your door."
We weren't holding hands now. He stared down at me and something very cold passed over his face. "Did you have to kill Harley?"
I started to say yes, but I stopped myself. I replayed it in my mind. Finally. I looked up at him. "I don't know, Edward. When you were knocked out, he couldn't see you anymore. I tried to talk to him, but he couldn't hear me. He started to raise the machine gun." I met Edward's empty blue eyes. "I shot him. You saw the body. I even put one through his head. A coupe de grace."
"I know." His face, his voice gave nothing away. It was like watching a mannequin talk, except that this mannequin was armed and I wasn't.
"It never occurred to me not to shoot, Edward. I didn't even hesitate."
Edward took a deep breath through his nose and let it out through his mouth. "I knew that's what had happened. If you'd lied to me, I'd have killed you." He walked away to stand at the foot of the bed.
"While I'm unarmed?" I tried to make light of it, but it didn't work.
"Check your pillow."
I slid my hand under and came up with the Firestar. I held it in my lap, laying it on my sheet-covered legs. "What now?"
"You owe me a life."
I looked up at that. "I saved your life last night."
"Our lives don't count, we'd back each other up, no matter what."