The Harlequin

chapter thirty-three

EDWARD HIT THE door to the main trauma room with his shoulder. We were inside, but there was no one to pay attention to me. There was a white wall of doctors and nurses, and some of them in civilian clothes, but they were all around one gurney. Their voices held that frantic calm that you never want to hear when you're on your back looking up at doctors.

A spike of fear got through the shock—Peter. It had to be Peter. The adrenaline rush of it stabbed through my stomach like a fresh blow. Edward turned, and I could see more of the room. It wasn't Peter. He was lying on a different gurney, not that far away from the one that had everyone's interest. Who the fuck was it? We didn't have any more humans on our side.

The only person with Peter was Nathaniel. He was holding the boy's free hand. The other hand was hooked up to an IV. Nathaniel looked at me, and his face showed fear. Enough that Peter fought to turn and see what was coming through the door.

Nathaniel touched his chest, held him down. «It's Anita and your… Edward.» I think he'd been about to say your dad.

I heard Peter's voice as we got closer. «Your face, what's wrong with them?»

Nathaniel said, «I didn't think there was anything wrong with my face.» He tried to make a joke of it, but the noises from the other side of the room made humor sort of hard.

I couldn't see past all the white coats. «Who is it?» I asked.

Nathaniel answered, «It's Cisco.»

Cisco. He wasn't hurt that badly. I'd seen shapeshifters heal throat wounds that bad. Were there more bad guys in here with us? «How did he get hurt?» I asked.

Peter actually tried to sit up, and Nathaniel kept him down with that hand on his chest, as if he'd been having to pin Peter to the gurney for a while. «Anita,» Peter said.

Edward put me on the nearest empty gurney, and the movement didn't so much hurt as let me know that it was going to hurt. It was as if things shifted around that I shouldn't have been able to feel. I had a moment of nausea and knew that that was just me thinking too hard, or hoped it was. Edward moved me so Peter could see me without moving. It meant that I could see Peter. His jacket and shirt were gone, but bulky bandages were taped across his stomach; more of them were on his left shoulder and upper arm. His weapons and jacket and the remains of his bloody shirt were on the floor under his gurney. It'd be my turn next.

«What happened to Cisco?» I asked.

Peter said, «You're both hurt.»

«I'm fine,» Edward said, «it's not my blood.»

Peter looked at me, his eyes too wide, face sickly pale. «He got his throat torn out.»

«I remember, but he should be able to heal that,» I said.

«Not all of us are that good at healing, Anita,» Nathaniel said.

I looked at him now. The fact that I hadn't truly looked at him said clearly how much I was hurt. He was wearing one of his pairs of jogging shorts that left very little to the imagination. His hair was back in a tight braid. I met his eyes, and I still loved him, but for once my body didn't react to the sight of him.

Edward came to stand by Peter, and Nathaniel came to me, an exchange of emotional prisoners. Nathaniel took my hand and gave me as chaste a kiss as we'd ever exchanged. His lavender eyes held the worry that he'd been hiding from Peter, or trying to hide from him. He leaned over my body, and I heard him draw in a big breath of air. «Nothing's perforated,» he whispered.

Until he said it, I hadn't thought about it. My intestines could have been perforated, or hell, my stomach. If I'd had to get clawed up, it wasn't a bad place for it. It wasn't a fatal hit, not right away, not if things weren't spilling out of me. They were bulging out, not spilling. There was a difference.

«Is Peter…»

«Not perforated either, you were both lucky.»

I knew he was right, but… The voices had risen in pitch across the room. When the doctors start sounding that panicked, things are very bad. Cisco, shit.

It was Cherry who peeled away from the crowd around him and came to me. She had thrown a white coat over the usual black Goth outfit. Her heavy eyeliner had run down her face like black tears. She touched Peter's shoulder as she went past, and said, «Let the drugs work, Peter. You can't help him by fighting to stay awake.»

«She was trying for me,» he said. «She was reaching for me. He put himself in her way. He saved me.»

She patted his shoulder and checked the IV almost automatically, but she also adjusted the little knobby thing on it. The liquid began to drip a little faster. She patted him again and came to the other side of the gurney so that she could look at Nathaniel across me, or maybe so she could keep an eye on what was happening to Cisco. There were so many people around him that it looked like they were getting in each other's way.

She said, «Nothing I can do over there.» She said it almost to herself, as if she were trying to convince herself.

She put on a fresh pair of gloves before she looked at my stomach. There was blood on the sleeve of the white coat she was wearing. She seemed to see it at about the same time I did. She just stripped off the coat, tossed it in the little hamper they had for washables. Threw the clean gloves away, got another pair of clean gloves, and came back to me. Her eyes stared at the wound, not at me. Her face had gone to concentrating on her job. If she just concentrated on her job then she wouldn't fall apart. I knew the look, I had one like it.

I tried to do something else while she looked at the wounds. Somehow I didn't want to see my insides on the outside again. But it was like a train wreck; you couldn't quite look away. «What is that?» I asked.

«Intestine,» she said, in a voice that held no emotion.

I heard someone shout, «Clear!»

The crowd around Cisco cleared, and I saw Lillian using the crash cart on his chest. She was about to try to jump-start his heart. Fuck.

Micah was in the crowd. He turned and looked at me, his mouth and chin covered in blood. As if Nathaniel read my mind, he said, «He was trying to call flesh and help Cisco heal the wound.»

Micah could help a healing wound heal faster by licking it. He'd done it for me once. He wiped the blood off his face as he looked at me across the room. The look on his face was anguish. He'd tried.

Lillian hit Cisco's chest three times, four, but that high-pitched alarm sound just kept going. Flatline.

I didn't hear the door open, but Richard came through leaning so heavily on Jamil, one of his bodyguards, that he was being half-carried. Jamil put him by the gurney. Their bodies blocked me from seeing what was happening.

Cherry was swabbing my hand; she had a covered IV needle in her other hand. I looked away. Richard's power ran over my skin like heat. Nathaniel shivered where he held my hand. I glanced at him. His body was covered in goose bumps.

«You feel it?» I asked.

«We all do,» Cherry said, and the needle bit home in my hand. I squeezed Nathaniel's hand hard and kept staring at Richard's broad back.

Micah came to stand at the head of my gurney. He'd wiped most of the blood off, but his eyes held defeat. If I'd had a spare hand I would have offered it. He laid his face against the top of my head. It was the best we could do.

Jamil stumbled away from Richard, leaving him to half-collapse across the gurney. Jamil's body exploded; one second he was tall, dark, handsome, the next he was the black-furred werewolf that had saved my life once. Lillian fell to the floor, her body writhing, twisting. She was suddenly gray-furred. She lay on the floor with her newly ratty face turned up to the gurney. The other doctors and nurses kept their distance. Richard was trying to bring Cisco's beast, trying to help him heal by forcing him to shift. But the alarm was still screaming, still letting us know that Cisco's heart wasn't beating.

Richard clutched at the gurney with one hand and Cisco with the other. His power spread through the room as if someone had forgotten to turn off some invisible hot bath, and it was filling up the room. Micah stood up, put his hand against my head. I felt his power spring to life, felt him throw it around the four of us like a shield, keeping Richard's power out. Most of the time Micah could protect the other wereleopards, but my ties to Richard were too strong. It worked today. Today, Micah held me in the calm of his power along with Nathaniel and Cherry.

Richard screamed, a long, loud, anguished sound. He collapsed to his knees, one hand still clinging to Cisco's arm. The arm flopped limp, dead. Richard's back rippled as if some giant hand were pushing out from the inside. He threw his head back and screamed again, but before the echo had died, the scream turned into a howl. Fur poured over Richard's body. It was as if his human body were ice, melting to reveal fur and muscle. His human form just melted into a wolf the size of a pony. I'd never seen him in full wolf form, only the half-and-half. The wolf threw its head back and howled, long and mournful. It turned a head as big as my entire chest to look at me. The eyes were all wolf, amber and alien, but the look in them was not a wolf's look. It held too much understanding of the loss that lay on the gurney.

One of the other white coats started turning off the machines. The scream of the alarm went silent. Except for the ringing in my one ear the room was deathly quiet. Then everyone began to move. The doctors and nurses started pulling things out of Cisco's body. He lay on his back, eyes closed. I remembered seeing spine in the throat wound; now the bone was covered. He'd been healing, but not fast enough.

Jamil climbed to his furry feet and put a half claw, half hand on the wolf's back. He said in a voice gone to growl, «I'll take us to feed.»

One of the doctors helped Lillian to her feet. She seemed more shaken than Jamil was, but then I'm not sure she'd ever had someone rip her beast from her human form. Jamil had been on the wrong end of Richard's anger more than once. «Come with us, Lillian,» he said, and the wolfish muzzle had trouble with the double L sound.

She nodded and took the hand he offered. The dark-haired man who had turned off the alarm said, «We'll take care of the other patients, Lillian.»

Her own voice sounded high-pitched and nasal. «Thank you, Chris.» The three of them walked out together, leaving the others to begin to clean up.

«Why did he die?» I asked.

«He bled out faster than his body could heal,» Cherry said.

«I've seen you guys heal from worse,» I said.

«You hang around with too many big dogs, Anita,» Cherry said. «We don't all heal like Micah and Richard.» She had the IV on its little metal hat rack. She reached up for the knob that would start the drip.

«Wait, will that put me out?» I asked.

«Yes,» she said.

«Then I need to make some phone calls first.»

«You're not hurting too much yet, then?» She made it half question, half statement.

«No, not yet. It aches, but it doesn't exactly hurt.»

«It will,» she said, «and when it does you'll want the painkillers.»

I nodded, swallowed, nodded again. «I know, but we still have Soledad's masters out there. We need them dead.»

«You aren't slaying any vamps today,» she said.

«I know, but Ted Forrester still can.»

Edward looked at me at the mention of his alter ego. His hand was on Peter's hair, as if he were a much younger boy and Edward had just come in to tuck him in for the night.

«I need you to take over my warrants,» I said.

He nodded. His eyes weren't cold, they were rage-filled. I wasn't used to seeing this much heat from Edward; he was a cold creature, but what blazed in his eyes now was hot enough to burn a hole through me. «How is Peter?» he asked Cherry.

«Now that he's out, we'll sew him up. He should be fine.»

Edward looked at me. «I'll kill the vampires for you.»

«We will kill them for you.» Olaf's voice from the door. He must have arrived in time to hear the last few comments. I hadn't heard him come in; not good. Not good that I hadn't heard Olaf, but not good that it could have been someone else, something else. I trusted Edward to see me safe, but I was usually more help to myself than this. Admittedly, I was having a bad day.

The dull ache in my stomach was beginning to have twinges of something sharp. It was like a promise of what the pain would be in a little while. I looked down my body; I couldn't help it. Cherry blocked my view with her arm, turned my face to her. «Don't look. You'll sleep. The doctor will look at you. You'll wake up better.» She smiled at me; it was a gentle smile, but it left her eyes haunted. When had Cherry gotten that look in her eyes?

Someone found a cell phone. I dialed Zerbrowski directly. The Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, RPIT, was who I should have called, and I should have probably started by talking to Lieutenant Rudolph Storr, but I just wasn't feeling well enough to argue with Dolph about who, and what, was or wasn't a monster. Zerbrowski answered with his usual, «Zerbrowski.»

«It's Anita,» I said.

«Blake, what's shaking?» There was a thread of laughter to his voice, the beginnings of his usual teasing. I didn't have time today.

«I'm about to get sewed back up.»

«What happened?» The teasing note was gone.

I gave him the shortest version I could, and left out lots. But I gave him the important parts; two vamps, maybe with more servants, masquerading as two upstanding vampire citizens to get us to kill the two upstanding citizens. «They must have thought I was close, because they sent one of their animals to kill me.»

«How hurt are you?»

«I'm not hunting any vampires today.»

«What do you need from me?»

«I need you to get cops around the hotel. I need you to make sure these two don't get outside.»

«Shouldn't they be dead to the world, no pun intended?»

«They should, but after what I saw in the servant, I wouldn't bet anyone's life on it. Call in Mobile Reserve; if it goes wrong you'll want the firepower.»

Dr. Chris came to stand over me. He was a little under six feet but seemed taller because he was so thin, one of those men who just couldn't seem to put on muscle mass. I'd have called him willowy if he'd been a girl. He said, «Get off the phone, Anita. I need to look at your wounds.»

«I'm almost done,» I said.

«What?» Zerbrowski said.

«The doc's here. He's wanting me off the phone.»

«Tell me who's going to be processing your warrants and do what the doctor says. You've got to be healed by the time we do the barbecue at my house. I finally got the wife talked into letting you bring both your live-in boyfriends. Don't make me waste all that persuasion.»

I almost laughed but thought it might hurt, so I swallowed it. That sort of hurt, too. «I'll do my best.»

«Off the phone, Anita,» Dr. Chris said again.

«Ted Forrester will have the warrants,» I said.

«We didn't know he was in town.»

«Just got here.»

«Funny how it all goes pear-shaped when he blows into town.»

«I only call him in when it's already gone to hell, Zerbrowski; you're reversing cause and effect.»

«Says you.»

«He's a federal marshal, just like me.»

A hand scooped the phone out of my hand. Dr. Chris was a lycanthrope, but still… I should have at least seen it coming. «This is Anita's doctor; she needs to go now. I'm going to put the other marshal on. You two play nice. I'm going to make Ms. Blake go night-night.» He hesitated, then said, «She'll be fine. Yes, guaranteed. Now let me tend my patient.» He handed the phone to Edward.

Edward put on his Ted Forrester good-ol'-boy voice. «Sergeant Zerbrowski, Ted Forrester here.»

Dr. Chris shooed Edward farther away so I couldn't hear what he was saying. He turned the knob on the IV and said, «You're going to sleep now, Ms. Blake. Trust me, you'll enjoy the examination more that way.»

«But…»

«Let it go, Ms. Blake. You're hurt. You have to let someone else hunt the vampires today.»

I started to say something, probably to argue, but I never finished the thought. One minute I was staring up at Dr. Chris, the next—nothing. The world went poof.