Laurell Hamilton - Affliction

He started to point the gun in Seamus’s direction. Sirens sounded in the distance. The rest of the backup was finally here. Al lowered his gun and looked uncomfortable, bordering on embarrassed. Until he’d made that movement toward Seamus, I might have asked him to help me guard the shapeshifter, but now … I wasn’t sure Al wouldn’t be a little trigger happy. I couldn’t really blame him, because I knew he’d seen the damage that Ares had done, but that wasn’t Seamus’s fault, and yet … if I had to this time I would shoot him. I would not let another of my guards hurt anyone else. I couldn’t. The cynical part of me thought, Well, at least I’m not as attached to this one . I hated that I thought it, but Ares had been my friend; I barely knew Seamus.

Seamus suddenly grabbed my left arm, too tight, his eyes flared wide. ‘He doesn’t want to burn.’

Edward and the others came running toward us, and only then did I smell the burning flesh. Nicky and Lisandro caught one arm and the opposite leg of Seamus as they moved through, lifted him, got him balanced, and kept going for the door. I followed them, because when the people blowing shit up start running, you try to keep up, just a rule.

Edward unlocked the door from this side and they carried Seamus through. Hatfield went after them. Edward said, ‘Outside, now.’ He followed his own instructions and I ran to comply. Al didn’t ask questions, he just ran with me. The two of us were on the grass of the front yard when the first explosion rocked the world and staggered us. I kept moving away from the house, and when he got his footing Al followed. The second explosion was even bigger and made us all cower from the blast wave and the rush of heat.

‘What the hell did you do?’ Al asked.

‘They had extra propane tanks in the basement. One of the grenades must have hit them.’ He made it sound like an accident.

I looked at him, but his face was mild and unreadable. He held out a hand to wave at our backup with their lights and sirens. I wondered if they’d stop a safe distance back or drive up to the house. Another explosion made the ground shiver and the air smack into us like a giant hand. Al fell to the ground on all fours.

‘You okay?’ I asked.

He nodded.

A third explosion rained down burning bits and pieces.

‘How many tanks were down there?’ I asked.

‘Enough,’ he said.

Then Nicky yelled, ‘Anita!’

Seamus was beginning to writhe on the ground. I still had the Browning naked in my hand. Damn it, the vampire should have been blown up, dead, and when he died Seamus should have been free. Which meant the vampire wasn’t dead. Fuck!

‘The vampire isn’t dead,’ I said, and went to put my hand on Seamus. Either I’d help him control his beast until the vampire burned up, or I’d shoot him before he could change. Either way, my place was beside Seamus. Edward had his rifle up and was watching the house. If anything crawled out, he’d shoot it. Enough of the house had blown up that we could see if anything went out the back now, but the vampire could have run out that back basement door before the biggest explosion. Shit, if we’d waited for backup they could have had men back there to shoot him as he ran.

Seamus cried out. Nicky and Lisandro were holding him down, pinning him to the ground. I jogged the last few yards and fell to my knees beside them. I laid my hand on his arm again. His skin was hot to the touch, and his beast snarled up at me. It wanted to come out and play. My new beast growled up at me, or maybe at him.

‘If he shifts we have to kill him,’ I said.

Nicky said, ‘Understood.’

Lisandro said, ‘There’s got to be another way.’

Seamus spoke through gritted teeth. ‘She’s right.’

‘You smell like hyena,’ Lisandro said, ‘but you don’t carry that beast.’

‘I do now.’

‘Let him smell your skin,’ Nicky said.

I had to stop touching his arm to put my arm in front of his face. His eyes rolled back into his head, and his energy calmed. When he opened his eyes they were peaceful, he was in there again.

‘He’s not trying to control me anymore.’

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. It’s like he’s gone. I would have said dead, but I don’t think that’s it.’

‘Gone is good enough,’ I said.

Al said, ‘You’ve set a fire over in the trees there. It’s been a dry year; we need to put that out.’ He looked tired, as if something about the last few minutes had taken a lot out of him.

‘You okay?’ Hatfield asked.

‘I knew the couple who lived here. I don’t want to tell their kids in town that their folks got eaten alive.’

‘Tell them they were murdered,’ I said.

‘The families always ask how, always, as if that will make them feel better.’ Al shook his head. ‘Some truths don’t make you feel better. Some truths just hurt more.’

No one argued with him; we’d all been around violence and death too long to argue with something that true.

If Seamus hadn’t been injured we’d have had to stay at the scene longer, but they let us take him to get patched up. I wasn’t risking him in the ambulance; it was too close to the scenario with Ares in the chopper. No one argued with us. I think they thought the same thing. The EMTs put a dressing on his wound to keep him from bleeding all over the car and then let us go. We implied, though didn’t state, that we were taking him to the hospital; we didn’t. I called Claudia from the car and had some of the guards waiting to help take him upstairs. They’d help him shift form and if he went apeshit they’d kill him. If he was calm, they’d let him heal in animal form for a few hours.

We dropped Hatfield at the station for her to pick up her own car and drive home to clean up. The rest of us went to our rooms to shower with the industrial-strength cleaner that Edward and I had both started carrying in our go bags. It smelled like bad fake orange, but it was better than smelling like corpses. It was weird that zombies didn’t smell as bad as plain dead people, but they almost never did. Metaphysics was weird that way.

Edward went to his room across the hall from Nicky and me. Lisandro had a room farther down the hall. The guards on hall duty informed me that Nathaniel was asleep in the room. I asked, ‘And Micah?’ but was told no, just Nathaniel. I had a moment to wonder how Micah and his family were doing and why Nathaniel wasn’t plastered to his side, but then I wasn’t plastered to Micah’s side either and I was his ‘fiancée.’ I opened the door with his key card and tried to be as quiet as possible. The room was dark, the blackout curtains pulled except for that rim of sunlight. If they hadn’t told me Nathaniel was in the bed, at first glance it would have looked like just a pile of covers. When he slept alone he cuddled down like he was making a nest. It was always impressive how invisible he could be in a bed by himself.

Nicky and I threaded our way through all the coffins and past the bed. I might have kissed him if I hadn’t smelled like rotting corpse. I did not want the smell on the sheets. Nathaniel was a heavy sleeper, but to sleep through both the noise and the smell meant he was exhausted. I tried to remember if he and Micah had slept at all in the last twenty-four hours and couldn’t remember, which probably meant, no.

Someone had tidied the bathroom since the last shower that Nicky and I had taken. We had fresh towels, but no soap or shampoo that the hotel had would take care of this smell. I got the bottle of the same all-around body cleanser that they used in morgues, which was actually where I’d first used it on my hands. We’d use Febreze on the body armor vests and bag the clothes and talk to the hotel about laundry. They wouldn’t be happy with us if we let them put the clothes in with any other guest laundry. It was definitely a separate load for all five of our clothes. Of course, Seamus had bled all over his, so they might be a loss anyway.