Laurell Hamilton - Hit List

The room was suddenly very dark, only a thin line of artificial light sliding between the slightly crooked curtains that led to the balcony, which was just a sort of walkway with a railing. The door led directly out into the night. Vampires couldn’t come into the room without permission, but wereanimals could, and bespelled humans could, and . . . I was less than happy with the room, but it was cheap and I’d learned that if you were traveling on the government’s dime they pinched their dimes; pennies didn’t even figure into the equation.

Her voice came out of the less-than-perfect dark. “Is Gerald Mallory right—are women more likely to be seduced by vampires than men?”

“No.”

“Then why are you the only marshal who’s living with them?”

“Have you ever been in love?” I asked.

I couldn’t see her face, but I felt her go still, and then the sheets rustled. “Yes.”

“Did you plan on falling in love with him?”

The sheets moved again, and then she said, “You don’t plan love, it just happens.”

“Exactly,” I said.

Sheets sighed in the dark as she turned over. “I get it. I have seen pictures of your Master of the City; he’s pretty if you like white boys.” And she laughed.

It made me laugh, too. “I guess so. Good night, Karlton.”

“Call me Laila; all the guys call me Karlton. I’d like to hear my name sometimes.”

“Okay. Good night, Laila.”

“Good night, Anita.”

I heard her roll over a couple more times, the sheets stretching and moving with her, and then her breathing evened out and she slept. Edward and I would play by the book until they consolidated the warrants, and then we’d try to take over the hunt; until then, we waited for a warrant to be reassigned. The trouble was, the only way it got reassigned was if one of the other marshals was too injured, or too dead, to finish the hunt. I lay awake in the dark, and thought, Please, God, don’t let her get killed .

THE DREAM CAME as it had most nights for a month. The details changed but the theme didn’t. The theme was Haven, not as in a place of rest and peace, but as in the lover I’d killed. Some nights he died in my arms. Some nights we made love and then he bled to death on top of me. Some nights it was like a movie replay of how he’d actually died. Tonight’s version was new, but after the other nightmares new didn’t seem bad.

I was in a maze formed of black walls. They were slick and almost shiny, almost stone, almost mirrors, so that the ghost of myself wavered in the black surfaces. I had hopes that this was just a regular nightmare until I heard his voice. Haven called me somewhere in the maze: “Anita, I’m coming, Anita.” Great, he was hunting me tonight. Sometimes turnabout is so not fair play.

I was dressed in jeans with a belt and buckle, T-shirt, jogging shoes, but no weapons. This just got better and better.

“I can smell you, Anita. I can smell all that sweet skin.”

I started moving in the black maze, away from his voice. I thought about needing a weapon. I thought about my Browning BDM and it was in my hand. This was a dream. I could change some of it—normally I could break free of dreams, but something about the ones with Haven seemed to trap me. I think guilt made me stay to see the horrors.

I started moving faster, taking left turns only. All mazes had the same premise: One direction would lead out and one would lead to the center of the maze. I don’t know why I chose left; why not? I just prayed that it led out and not deeper into the blackness. But it was a nightmare, and you never really win in nightmares. No, they’re all about losing over and over again.

The center of the maze was a huge square space with a fountain in the middle of it. The fountain was all black squares and quietly pulsing water; as the center of a scary night-dark maze it wasn’t bad. It could have been worse; and then, of course, worse stepped out of an opening on the other side. Worse was six feet and a little more of slender, muscled handsome. Haven’s hair was still short, gelled into spikes on top of his head, all of it done in shades of blue as if some artful hairdresser had pretended that blue could be a real hair color and have highlights. The hair made his pale blue eyes look more blue than they actually were, I think; it was hard to tell since the hair was always so close to his eyes. The hair and the Sesame Street tattoos on his shoulders were what had made me nickname him “Cookie Monster.”

“What do you want, Haven?”

“What I always wanted: you,” he said.

“You can’t have me.”

“Here I can. Here there’s just me.”

“Fuck you.”

“Let’s.”

“You’re dead. You’re dead. I killed you.”

“I remember.”

“You’re dead, you don’t remember. You’re just my guilt visiting every night.”

“Am I?” he asked, and something about the way he said it made me ask, “What else could you be?”

Other figures stepped from the entrances around the square. Figures in white masks and black cloaks: Harlequin. I raised the gun and pointed it vaguely; there were too many of them, and I wasn’t that fast, not even in dreams.

Movement made me glance at Haven; he was wearing a black cloak and held a white mask in his hand. “We’re coming,” he said, “wake up.”

I woke staring at the dark ceiling, pulse thudding, throat almost closed around it, and then I heard it. The door, not the knob, but the brush of someone against it, like the first tentative touch. I drew my gun from underneath the pillow and tried to think how to warn Laila without them hearing me. They were either vampires or wereanimals; they’d hear any whisper. Then I realized they’d heard the change in my heartbeat; they knew I was awake.

I had time to say, “Laila, they’re here!” The door opened as she sat up in bed but didn’t reach for a weapon. Shit. There was no one in the doorway. It stretched pale and empty, filled with night and the artificial lights of the parking lot beyond. Then I heard it, a creak of board, and knew something was crawling on the floor, hidden from me by Laila’s bed.

She had her gun in her hand now, and whispered, “What is it? Why is the door open?”

I started to say, “It’s by you, on the floor,” but one minute she was on the bed with her gun and the next a black shape whirled over her and she was gone. I’d seen the speed of lycanthropes and vampires, but all I saw was the cloak like a black sheet and it dragged her over on the other side of the bed with it. It wasn’t just fast, it was as if the thing, whatever it was, was formed of the blackness of the cloth and nothing more. Fuck, that couldn’t be real. Had it mind-fucked me? If the answer was yes, I was about to lose in real life and not just in nightmare.

“Yell for help and we kill her,” a voice said on the other side of the bed. It was male and growly; I was betting shapeshifter of some kind.

“How do I know she’s still alive?”

“Do you think I could kill her that quickly?” the voice asked.

“Yes,” I said.

He laughed. “Say something, girl.”

There was a moment of silence, then a small pain sound, and Laila said, “I’m alive.”

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

“No.”

“Oh, I’m sad that you think I haven’t hurt you yet. The next thing I do to you, you won’t doubt that you’re hurt.”

“Leave her alone.”

“We will if you give us what we want.”

“What do you want?” I asked. I had the gun pointed in the direction of the voice, but there was nothing to shoot at. If I was patient maybe there would be; nothing is faster than a bullet.

“You,” and it was such a direct echo from my dream that it startled me.