Лорел Гамильтон - The Harlequin

«Why is it that when you apologize, you never seem to mean it?» Graham asked.

«Back to the main problem, boys,» I said. «What's happening with Peter?»

«Ted Forrester, federal marshal»—he said it the way you'd say «Superman, Man of Steel»—«is with him. He seems to be helping him choose.»

«But he may be fine, and the shot will guarantee the very thing they don't want to happen.»

Graham shrugged. «Like I said, it's a new thing.»

«It's an experimental thing,» I said.

He nodded. «That, too.»

«What kind of lycanthropy is in the shot?» I asked.

«They don't want to say, but it's probably one of the cat-based lycanthropies, and it won't be tiger.»

«Let's hope not,» I said. «They make vaccines in big batches. Are they positive what kind of kitty they've got in the shot?»

Graham looked at me as if that hadn't occurred to him. «You aren't saying that they'd give him tiger twice? I mean, that wouldn't work at all. That would guarantee that he'd be tiger.»

«Yeah. Has anyone asked them what flavor of kitty it is?» The look on Graham's face said no one had asked in his hearing. I looked at Requiem.

«I have been in attendance upon your bedside. I have not seen the boy.»

«Graham, go ask, and make sure Ted knows I wanted to know.»

Graham actually didn't argue. He just nodded and went for the door. Good. Because I knew where I was now. I was in the basement of what used to be a hospital, but the lower levels had been turned into a place where you kept suspected vampire corpses if you didn't think you'd get to them before nightfall, and where you held lycanthrope victims, or injured shapeshifters themselves until they were well enough to leave. Or you could force them into one of the government prisons—oh, «safe houses.» The ACLU was about to be heard by the Supreme Court on just how many constitutional rights the «safe houses» violated. Being admitted was voluntary—if you were eighteen or over, anyway. They told shapeshifters that they'd let them out once they learned to control their beast, but somehow people went in and never came out. Most hospitals had an isolation ward for shapeshifters and vampires who got injured, but this was the place they sent you if they were truly worried. How the hell did we end up here?

«Requiem,» I said.

He came to the side of the bed, his hooded cloak back to being tight around him. Only a pale glimpse of face was visible. «Yes, my evening star?»

«Why does that sound more and more sarcastic when you say it?»

He blinked so that those vivid blue eyes were shielded for a moment. «I will endeavor to say it as I mean it, my evening star.» This time it was soft, and romantic. I didn't like that either. But I didn't say so out loud. I'd complain later when I figured out how to get any use out of it.

«I asked you once where Jean-Claude is; now I'll ask again. Where is he and what's he doing?»

«Can you not sense him?»

I thought about it and shook my head. «No, I can't.» A spurt of fear ran through me like fine champagne. It must have shown on my face because Requiem touched my arm. «He is well, but he is shielding mightily to keep the Harlequin from reading him, or you, or the wolf king.»

«So there were more than just the two of them in town,» I said.

«Why would you assume only two?»

«It's all I saw,» I said.

«Saw how?»

Again, I didn't like the question and how he asked it. «Does it matter?»

«Perhaps not, but yes, Jean-Claude has detected more than two in your fair city.»

«I'm impressed that Jean-Claude can keep them out of us all,» I said.

Requiem's hand tightened on my arm. «As are we all.» He took his hand back, and it vanished under the black cloak again.

«Tell me what I've missed of the vampire end of things. Wait, how long have I been out?»

«It is only the night of the day you were injured. You have been out, as you put it, for only a few hours.»

«A few hours, not days?» I asked.

«No.»

I touched my stomach, and it didn't hurt the way it should have. I started to raise the hospital gown I was wearing. I hesitated, glancing at the man. He was my lover, but… there was always something about Requiem that made me less than perfectly comfortable around him. Micah, Nathaniel, Jean-Claude, Asher, even Jason, I would have simply looked at the wound. Richard, maybe I wouldn't have. But Requiem made me hesitate for different reasons.

«Look at your wound, Anita. I will not ravish you from the sight of your nakedness.» He sounded like I'd insulted him. Since he was an old vampire, that I could hear that much emotion in his voice meant one of two things: either he allowed me to hear the emotion, or he was so upset he couldn't control himself.

I compromised. I raised the gown and kept the sheet over my lower extremities.

«I am not an animal, Anita; I can bear your nakedness without being affected.» The anger and disdain were so thick in his voice that I knew it was lack of control.

«I never doubt your control, Requiem, but there's no way to be nude in front of you and have it be casual. I need to just look at my body and see what's wrong and right with the wound. I don't want to make a big deal out of it, or a romantic deal out of it.»

«Would it not be a big deal if Jean-Claude were here in my stead?»

«Jean-Claude would concentrate on business and worry about the romance later.»

«Is he that cold?»

«He's that practical,» I said. «I like that in a man.»

«I know you do not like me, my evening star.» Again the emotion was thick on the ground.

I did the only thing I could: I ignored him. Once I saw my stomach it wasn't that hard to ignore him. I had pinkish scars where she'd clawed me open. It was weeks' worth of healing. I ran my hands over the skin, and it felt smoother, almost as if the shininess of it could be a texture. «How many hours?» I asked.

«It is now nine o'clock in the evening.»

«Ten hours.» I said it soft, like I didn't believe it.

«About that, yes.»

«All this healing in ten hours?»

«It would seem so,» he said. There was still a thread of anger to his voice, but it was less.

«How?»

«Should I quote to you, 'There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Or should I simply say I do not know?»

«The 'I don't know' would be fine, but at least I know you're quoting from Hamlet. Now tell me, what's been happening while I slept?»

He glided to the bedside, a slight smile curving his lips. «Your friends slew a member of the Harlequin while she slept. Though the tall one, Olaf, or Otto, complained that she was dead when they arrived. He wanted her to be squirming when they cut her up.»

I shivered and put my gown back in place. I tried to ignore the whole creepy Olaf thing and concentrate on business. «There should have been two members dead.»

«You admit it,» he said. «You admit that you sent them to slay members of the Harlequin.»

«Admit it, hell, yes.»

«Jean-Claude is locked in arguments with the council, even now, on whether the Harlequin are within their rights to slay us all for what you have done.»

«If they don't give a black mask first, but they kill, not in self-defense, then it's a death sentence for them.»

«Who told you that?»

I debated on whether to admit it, but finally shrugged and said, «Belle Morte.»

«When has our beautiful death spoken to you?»

«She came to me in a vision.»

«When?»

«When the three of us were dying. She helped feed me enough energy to come back and keep us all alive.»

«Why would she help Jean-Claude?»

If it had been Jean-Claude, I'd have told the truth, all of it, but it wasn't. Requiem was, well, being his usual weird self. I wasn't certain that Belle would want her reasoning blabbed around. «Why does Belle do anything?»