Laurell Hamilton - Hit List

In the end Tilford opted not to share the room with us, something about his wife not allowing it. By that time I was so tired my eyes burned, and I just didn’t give a damn. Edward was supposed to take Tilford’s bed, and I was taking his, farther from the door, but the moment the door was locked behind us, he said, “Help me move the bed in front of the window.” We put the second mattress and bedspring up against the big and only window.

“It won’t keep them out,” I said.

“It will slow them down,” he said, “and give us time to shoot.”

I nodded. “Agreed.” I looked at the bare bed frame. “You know this leaves us with one bed.”

“It’s for a couple of hours.” He frowned. “Or are you saying that you’ll need to feed the ardeur when you wake up?”

I took the question seriously. “I’ve gotten better at controlling it. I’ll need solid food, protein. Staying fed physically helps control all the other hungers.”

“Good,” he said, and began to lay his guns on the bedside table.

“How am I ever going to reach a handgun on the floor?” I asked, as I climbed onto the far side of the bed by the wall.

He handed me a P90 carbine, though submachine gun was always what I wanted to say when I saw one. “Try this.”

“My MP5 is in the other room,” I said as I checked out the feel of the new gun. I’d shot one, in fact this one, but only at the shooting range with Edward. It was a sweet gun, but the MP5 was a nice gun, too. I put the bigger gun on the side of the bed, practiced rolling over, and I could reach it better than the handgun.

Then came that awkward moment when we were actually supposed to get into a twin bed together. I slept with and had sex with a dozen men on a regular basis, but suddenly it was awkward. Edward and I weren’t lovers, and never would be. We were friends and damn near family.

I sat up on my side of the bed by the wall. “Am I the only one who feels a little awkward here?”

“Yes,” he said, and sat down on his side of the bed. He grinned at me suddenly, that smile that was all that was left of a younger man before his life went hard and cold. “You know, you may be a succubus and a living vampire, but part of you will always be the small-town girl who isn’t sure she should be doing all this.”

I scowled at him. “Should I be insulted?”

“No, it’s part of your charm that no matter how many men you have in your life, you never quite get comfortable with it.”

I scowled harder. “Why is it charming?”

He shrugged. “Not sure, but it’s very you.”

I frowned at him. “And being all mysterious and vague is very you.”

The grin faded a little, to almost his normal smile. It was a colder smile.

I had a thought. “What would you have done if I’d said that I’d need to feed the ardeur when I woke up?”

He lay down, spilling the sheet over him. I already had the sheet over me. He turned and looked at me with the lamp still on. “Dealt with it.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we would have dealt with it.”

“Edward . . .”

“Let it go, Anita,” he said, and then he reached up and turned off the light. And just as he was one of the few people in the world that I would let back me up, he was one of the few that I would let drop this particular topic. He was right; we’d deal with it, the way we dealt with everything else.

I lay on my back in the dark. He was doing the same. “Edward,” I asked.

“Hmm,” he said.

“Are you a side sleeper, or a back sleeper?”

“Back.”

“I’m a side sleeper, so no spooning, I guess.”

“What?”

I laughed and turned over on my side. “Good night, Edward.”

“Good night, Anita.”

We slept.

I WOKE TO country music and my arm flung over someone’s stomach. That someone was wearing a T-shirt; no one I slept with wore clothes to bed. I felt that someone move as he rose up and said, “Yes, morning.”

The moment I heard his voice I knew it was Edward, and the night came flooding back. Without rising up, I said, “Who is it? Is it another murder?”

“It’s Donna,” he said.

That made me lift my head and blink at him. It also made me take my arm off his stomach and scootch a little back from him so we weren’t touching, as if his fiancée could see as well as hear us.

“It’s Anita,” he said.

Donna’s voice was suddenly loud enough for me to hear it. “What’s she doing waking up beside you?”

“There was only one bed.”

I buried my face in the pillow. That was so not the answer he should have given.

“Hold on,” he said, and he used his phone to take a picture of the mattress and box springs against the window. “I’m sending you a picture that shows what happened to the other bed.”

“This better be good,” she said, voice still loud with anger.

I glanced at Edward’s calm face as he listened to her angry breathing. A few minutes later she asked, “Why is the bed in front of the window?”

“So that if the vampires and wereanimals we’re hunting tried to break in, the bed would slow them down enough for us to start shooting.”

“What happened?” she asked, but her voice was already calmer.

“Anita and another marshal were attacked last night. The other woman is in the hospital. I didn’t trust anyone else to guard Anita but me.”

“Of course not, you’re the best at what you do.” Her voice got soft enough I couldn’t hear her side of the conversation.

Edward handed the phone toward me, saying, “Donna wants to talk to you.”

I shook my head vigorously, No .

He gave me the hard look, which let me know I wasn’t going to win this fight. I took the phone carefully and tried for cheerful, or at least not nervous, as I said, “Hey, Donna.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“How badly was the other marshal hurt?”

“She’ll live. She’ll heal, but we’re still waiting to find out if she’s got lycanthropy.”

“It was a shapeshifter?” And I could hear the fear in her voice.

I cursed myself for being careless. Donna’s first husband had been murdered in front of her by a werewolf. Peter, who was then only eight, had picked up his father’s dropped gun and killed the werewolf, saving both his mother and his little sister. Peter was seventeen now, and in a lot of ways he seemed more Edward’s son than Donna’s.

“Yeah, it was, but we’re okay. I mean, the other marshal isn’t, but she was new on the job, and . . .”

“How new?”

“It was her first real hunt.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

“Take care of Edward for me and the kids.”

“You know I will.”

“I know you’ll bring him home to us safe, and he’ll do the same for you.”

To that the only thing I could say was, “We will.” She wanted to talk to Edward then, so I handed the phone back to him. I also went into the bathroom to do morning stuff and give them some privacy. Since when did Donna and he talk every morning? But hey, it wasn’t my relationship.

When I came back out he’d hung up. He looked at me. I looked at him. “That went way better than I thought,” I said.

“Donna trusts you.”

“She trusts me to keep you alive. She doesn’t trust me with you.”

“She doesn’t trust any woman with me. She’s a little insecure in that area.”

I frowned at him. “You give her reason to be.”

“No, insecure people don’t need an excuse to distrust. It’s just what they do.”

“I couldn’t live like that,” I said.

He smiled at me. “You’re polyamorous, which means many loves?”