Laurell Hamilton - Affliction

‘Pride is here, really? Our other golden tiger guard hasn’t ever come out on an away job,’ I said.

‘Apparently Claudia volunteered him and he didn’t say no,’ Nicky said.

‘Who else?’ I asked.

Edward came close and said, ‘Anita, let Lisandro do his job.’

‘I just remember how I felt when I thought we’d gotten him killed last time out. All I could think was I didn’t want to tell his kids and his wife.’

‘I have kids, and I’m Donna’s husband except for a legal piece of paper, but you aren’t leaving me home.’

I looked up into those blue eyes. He was saying something warm, but the eyes had bled to winter sky pale. I realized we were the last in the room, except for Hatfield. She wanted to ride with us, to learn the job the only way that seemed to work well, in the company of someone else who already knew how to do it. She was standing across the room, giving us privacy. Everyone else had taken their share of the addresses to check and left. Edward didn’t have to pretend to be Ted when it was just me.

‘Compromise,’ I said. ‘We bring Lisandro and Socrates. I’ll talk to him about toning down his spider-sense about your thugginess.’

‘You really think having Socrates along will keep Lisandro safe?’ Edward asked.

I shrugged.

‘You have to let him do his job, Anita.’

‘No, no, I don’t.’ I looked at him.

He frowned at me. ‘You can’t be like this just because people are married and have kids. Your guards are going to have a life outside of their job, and that’s going to include more kids eventually.’

‘I know that,’ I said, but I sounded defensive even to myself.

‘Then stop letting your issues with your own childhood mess with Lisandro’s ability to do his job,’ Edward said.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Anita,’ he said, and just looked at me.

I wanted to pout, or get unreasonably angry, all things I’d done for years as a coping mechanism. ‘Fine, but I still want a third guard to come with them.’

‘Will you trust Nicky to pick the third guard?’ Edward asked.

I sighed and then said, ‘Yeah, sure.’

‘Me, too,’ he said.

I looked at him. ‘Really?’ I said, and didn’t try to keep the surprise out of my face.

‘Lisandro and who?’ Nicky asked.

‘Edward and I agree that you can pick whoever else comes with the two of you.’

‘You used his real name,’ Nicky said.

‘Sorry, he just surprised me.’

‘What’d he do to surprise you that badly?’

‘I’ll explain later,’ I said. ‘Just be ready. We’ll pick you up on the way out of town.’

‘Will do. Love you,’ he said.

‘I love you, too,’ I said, and it was automatic, because I was still studying Edward’s face. When Nicky had hung up, I said to Edward, ‘You trust Nicky’s judgment that much?’

He gave one nod.

‘High damn praise,’ I said.

‘You know me, Anita; I like working with sociopaths who are willing to do anything to get the job done.’

‘What’s that say about me?’

He grinned, and it was all back to good-ol’-boy Ted. ‘You’ll never be as good a sociopath as I am, Anita, and neither of us will be as good at it as Nicky. It means he won’t let emotion color his choice. It isn’t that his feelings are hurt about Socrates not trusting him, it’s that the lack of trust makes Socrates hesitate to follow Nicky’s lead in a fight, and that makes for a bad team, and more than any sport, combat means you need a good working team.’

I stopped arguing, because Edward trusted Nicky. It was unprecedented that he had that much faith in one of my lovers. He liked Micah and Nathaniel. He didn’t dislike Jean-Claude, but that wasn’t the same thing as trusting any of them. I shoved it all away, put in a box to look at later, because we were running behind. I admitted to myself that the reason I’d argued about Lisandro had been about me losing my mother when I was eight. I knew how much damage that had done to me, and I didn’t want to do the same thing to Lisandro’s kids; there, that was the truth. I hated when my own issues interfered with me doing my job. They’d gotten in the way of my personal life for years, but my job was usually safe from my neuroses – well, most of the time.

We got Hatfield and went for Edward’s SUV. I told her we were picking up some deputies on the way out of town. She didn’t argue, just asked, ‘Are we picking up the two blond men?’

‘One of them,’ I said.

‘And new friends?’ she asked.

‘New to you,’ Edward said.

‘I look forward to meeting them,’ she said.

I glanced in the rearview to see if she was being sarcastic, but her face looked open and honest.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘Just trying to decide if you meant that.’

‘If there’s anyone, or anything, that can help me do my job better, I’m all for it. I got those people killed last night. I can’t bring them back, but I can get better and not do it again.’

‘You didn’t kill them, Hatfield,’ I said.

‘Neither of you would have stored the body parts in the morgue of a hospital. If either of you had been in charge last night, all five victims from last night would be alive now. Tell me how my ignorance didn’t cost them their lives.’

I didn’t know how to answer her.

‘We all make mistakes until we know better,’ Edward said.

‘Exactly, and I’m going to follow you both around like your fucking shadows and learn all I can before you leave.’

I wasn’t sure I wanted Hatfield following me that closely, but I couldn’t tell her no. Edward and I exchanged a look. He didn’t tell her no either. I guess we had a third wheel. I wondered how she’d like Lisandro and whoever else Nicky picked. For that matter, I wondered what they’d think of Hatfield.

We were at the third house on our list. If someone had come down the two-wheel track by accident and driven past, the house would have looked ordinary from the front. You had to get out and walk around to the back of the house to see the broken windows, the shattered door, its pieces scattered around a small deck that had a view off the side of the mountain that people would pay millions for in other towns farther north. They’d tear down the little house and put up something more elegant and a lot more expensive, but the view wouldn’t be one bit better off a bigger, fancier deck than it was from the little one.

The mountains marched off and off until the front range rose in white, snow-capped peaks, stark and so beautiful that it looked like a calendar shot instead of someone’s back porch view. I took in deep, even breaths of the crisp, clean air, but took too deep a breath because I caught the whiff of what lay inside. The elderly couple had been eaten by zombies. Had they been bled by vampires first? There was no way to tell from the scattered bones and what little flesh was left on them. It was amazing how bad just a little bit of meat smelled after a few days. If the bodies had been dragged outside, the scavengers would have cleared up the mess by now, but the wrecked furniture had partially blocked the door and even the windows. The windows I thought the couple had tried to board up with the tall dresser, but the door … why and how had the kitchen table gotten in the wrecked doorway? If the couple put it there, then why were they ripped apart and eaten? We’d had to move the table to get inside ourselves.

Nicky came to stand beside me. ‘You saw worse than this last night,’ he said.

‘I know.’

‘Why is this bothering you so much, then?’

It was a fair question. I thought about it. ‘Did you see their pictures?’