Circus of the Damned

48

I woke up staring into an off-white ceiling. I blinked at the ceiling for a minute. Sunlight lay in warm squares across the blanket. There were metal rails on the bed. An IV dripped to my arm.

A hospital—then I wasn't dead. Surprise, surprise.

There were flowers and a bunch of shiny balloons on a small bedside table. I lay there a moment, enjoying the fact that I wasn't dead.

The door opened, and all I could see was a huge bunch of flowers. Then the flowers lowered, and it was Richard.

I think I stopped breathing. I could feel all the blood rushing through my skin. There was a soft roaring in my head. No. I wasn't going to faint. I never fainted. I finally managed to say, "You're dead."

His smile faded. "I'm not dead."

"I saw Oliver tear out your throat." I could see it in front of me like an overlay in my mind. I saw him gasping, dying. I found I could sit up. I braced myself, and the IV needle moved under my skin, the tape pulling. It was real. Nothing else seemed real.

He raised a hand towards his throat, then stopped himself. He swallowed hard enough for me to hear it. "You saw Oliver tear out my throat, but it didn't kill me."

I stared at him. There was no bandage on his cheek. The circle cut had healed. "No human being could survive that," I said softly.

"I know." He looked incredibly sad as he said it.

Panic filled my throat until I could barely breathe. "What are you?"

"I'm a lycanthrope."

I shook my head. "I know what a lycanthrope feels like, moves like. You aren't one."

"Yes, I am."

I kept shaking my head. "No."

He came to stand beside the bed. He held the flowers awkwardly, as if he didn't know what to do with them. "I'm next in line to be pack leader. I can pass for human, Anita. I'm good at it."

"You lied to me."

He shook his head. "I didn't want to."

"Then why did you?"

"Jean-Claude ordered me not to tell you."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "I think because he knew you'd hate it. You don't forgive deceit. He knows that."

Would Jean-Claude deliberately try to ruin a potential relationship between Richard and me? Yep.

"You asked what hold Jean-Claude had on me. That was it. My pack leader loaned me to Jean-Claude on the condition that no one find out what I was."

"Why are you a special case?"

"They won't let lycanthropes teach kids, or anybody else for that matter."

"You're a werewolf."

"Isn't that better than being dead?"

I stared up at him. His eyes were still the same perfect brown. His hair fell forward around his face. I wanted to ask him to sit down, to let me run my fingers through his hair, to keep it from that wonderful face.

"Yeah, it's better than being dead."

He let out a breath, as if he'd been holding it. He smiled and held the flowers out to me.

I took them because I didn't know what else to do. They were red carnations with enough baby's breath to form a white mist over the red. The carnations smelled like sweet cloves. Richard was a werewolf. Next in line for pack leader. He could pass for human. I stared up at him. I held out my hand to him. He took it, and his hand was warm and solid, and alive.

"Now that we've established why you're not dead, why aren't I dead?"

"Edward did CPR on you until the ambulances came. The doctors don't know what caused your heart to stop, but there's no permanent damage."

"What did you tell the police about all the bodies?"

"What bodies?"

"Come off it, Richard."

"By the time the ambulance got there, there were no extra bodies."

"The audience saw it all."

"But what was real and what was illusion? The police got a hundred different versions from the audience. They're suspicious, but they can't prove anything. The Circus has been shut down until the authorities can be sure it's safe."

"Safe?" I laughed.

He shrugged. "As safe as it ever was."

I slipped my hand out of Richard's grasp, using both hands to smell the flowers again. "Is Jean-Claude. . alive?"

"Yes."

A great sense of relief washed over me. I didn't want him dead. I didn't want Jean-Claude dead. Shit. "He's still Master of the City, then. And I'm still bound to him."

"No," Richard said, "Jean-Claude told me to tell you. You're free. Alejandro's marks sort of canceled his out. You can't serve two masters, he said."

Free? I was free? I stared at Richard. "It can't be that easy."

Richard laughed. "You call this easy?"

I looked up. I had to smile. "All right, it wasn't easy, but I didn't think anything short of death would get Jean-Claude off my back."

"Are you happy the marks are gone?"

I started to say, "Of course," then stopped myself. There was something very serious in Richard's face. He knew what it was to be offered power. To be one with the monsters. It could be horrible, and wonderful.

Finally I said "Yes."

"Really?"

I nodded.

"You don't seem too enthused," he said.

"I know I should be jumping for joy, or something, but I just feel empty."

"You've been through a lot the last few days. You're entitled to be a little numb."

Why wasn't I happier to be rid of Jean-Claude? Why wasn't I relieved to be no one's human servant? Because I'd miss him? Stupid. Ridiculous. True.

When something gets too hard to think about, think about something else. "So now everyone knows you're a werewolf."

"No."

"You were hospitalized, and you've already healed. I think they'll guess."

"Jean-Claude had me hidden away until I healed. This is my first day up and around."

"How long have I been out?"

"A week."

"You're joking."

"You were in a coma for three days. The doctors still don't know what made you start breathing on your own."

I had come that close to the great beyond. I couldn't remember any tunnel of light, or soothing voices. I felt cheated. "I don't remember."

"You were unconscious; you're not supposed to remember."

"Sit down, before I get a crick looking up at you."

He pulled up a chair and sat down by the bed, smiling at me. It was a nice smile.

"So you're a werewolf."

He nodded.

"How did it happen?"

He stared down at the floor, then up. His face looked so solemn, I was sorry I'd asked. I was expecting some great tale of a savage attack survived. "I got a bad batch of lycanthropy serum."

"You what?"

"You heard me." He seemed embarrassed.

"You got a bad shot?"

"Yes."

My smile got wider and wider.

"It's not funny," he said.

I shook my head. "Not at all." I knew my eyes were shiny, and it was all I could do not to laugh out loud. "You've got to admit it's nicely ironic."

He sighed. "You're going to hurt yourself. Go ahead and laugh."

I did. I laughed until it hurt, and Richard joined in. Laughter is contagious, too.