The Harlequin

chapter thirty-four

I WOKE UP, which was nice. I was blinking up at a ceiling I'd seen before, but couldn't quite place. I was not in the room that I remembered last. This room was painted an off-white, and there were pipes in the ceiling. Pipes… that should have meant something, but I was still a little fuzzy around the edges.

« 'She wakes; and I entreated her come forth, and bear this work of heaven with patience.»

I knew who it was before he stepped beside the bed. «Requiem.» I smiled up at him, and reached out to him with my right hand; the other one was full of needles. Reaching for him made my stomach ache a little, but not that bad. It made me wonder how long I'd been out, or what drugs were coming through the IV tube. Requiem took my hand in his and bent over it to lay a kiss on the back. I was happy to see him. Hell, I was happy to see anyone. «I don't know the quote,» I said.

«The words of a worthless friar,» he said.

«Sorry, still a little fuzzy,» I said.

He held my hand underneath his cloak, against his chest. His blue, blue eyes glittered in the overhead fluorescents. «Perhaps this will help: 'A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun for sorrow will not show his head. Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished; For never was a story…»

I finished with him. « … of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.»

He laughed then, and it transformed his face from a thing of cold beauty to something livable, lovable, more touchable. «You should laugh more often, it becomes you,» I said.

The laughter leeched away, as if the two reddish tears that slid down the white perfection of his cheeks stole his joy away as they fell down his face. By the time the tears melted into the dark line of his beard, his face had its usual melancholy handsomeness.

I'd been happy to take his hand. Happy to touch someone I cared for, but there was something in the weight of that ocean-blue-and-green gaze that made me take my hand back. I had other lovers who would look at me that way, but the look in his eyes was one that Requiem had not earned, or that our relationship didn't deserve. He was Requiem, he wasn't a light comedic sort of person; no, he was definitely a lover of tragedies.

«Where's Jean-Claude?»

«Did you expect him to wait by your bedside?»

«Maybe.»

«He and Asher are busy elsewhere, together. I was left to tend you while they had more important things to do.»

I stared at him. Was it on purpose? Was he trying to make me doubt them? I'd nearly died, and was still hooked up to tubes; fuck it, I'd ask. «Are you implying that they're having sex together somewhere, and that that is more important to them than me?»

He looked down; I think he was trying to be coy. «They are off together, and they left me to tend you. I think the situation speaks for itself.»

«You really shouldn't try to play coy, Requiem. You're not good at it.»

He gave me the full weight of those blue, blue eyes, with that swimming shadow of green around the iris. Eyes you could sink into and swim away in, or be drowned in. I actually looked down, rather than meet his gaze. Normally he wasn't a problem, but I was hurt, weak, and I didn't like his mood.

«My evening star, you are thinking too hard. Let us rejoice that you live, that we all live.»

That gave me other questions to ask; maybe since they weren't about Jean-Claude, he'd answer them. «Then Peter is all right?»

His face went blank, even that pressing need in his eyes fading away. «He is in a room nearby.»

«Is he all right?»

«He will heal.»

«I don't like how you're saying that, Requiem.»

I heard the door open as a male voice said, «God, you are a gloomy bastard.» Graham strode into the room.

I watched him for signs that the Harlequin were messing with his mind, signs of that panicked false addiction. He was his usual smiling self. Okay, his usual self when he wasn't feeling grumpy about me not fucking him.

«Are you wearing a cross?» I asked.

He drew a chain out of his shirt, and on the end of it was a tiny Buddha. I stared at it. «You're a Buddhist?»

«Yep.»

«You do violence, you can't be a Buddhist,» I said.

«So I'm a bad Buddhist, but it was still the way I was raised, and I do believe in the chubby little guy.»

«Will it work if you're not following the tenets of the faith it represents?» I asked.

«I could ask you the same question, Anita.»

Did he have a point, or not? «Fine, I just wouldn't have pegged you for a Buddhist.»

«Neither would my parents, but when Claudia told us to get a holy item, I realized I didn't believe in the Jewish carpenter, never raised in that faith.» He shook the little Buddha at me. «This I believe in.»

I gave a small nod. «Okay, whatever works.»

He grinned at me. «First, Peter will be fine, but he heals human-slow.»

«How hurt is he?»

«About as hurt as you were, but not healing as fast.»

Graham came to stand beside Requiem. He was still in the red shirt and dark pants, but somehow it didn't bug me now. Graham would answer questions better than Requiem. He also seemed to be himself, while the vampire was being weird even for him.

I started to ask how fast I was healing, but I wanted to know about Peter before I asked questions about me. I felt amazingly well. «I'm going to ask this again, and I want a straight answer. How hurt is Peter?»

Graham sighed. «He got a lot of stitches—like the-doctor-lost-count stitches. He's going to be fine, honest, but he's going to have some manly scars.»

«Shit,» I said.

«Tell her the rest,» Requiem said.

I glared at Graham. «Yeah, tell me the rest.»

«I was getting to it.» He flashed an unfriendly look at the vampire. Requiem gave a small nod, almost a bow, and moved back from the bed.

«Then get to it, Graham,» I said.

«The doctors are offering him the chance for the new antilycanthropy therapy.»

«You mean the inoculation they offer?»

«No, something brand new.» He said «brand new» as if he had a bad taste in his mouth.

«How new?»

«St. Louis is one of only a handful of cities that are experimenting with it.»

«They can't experiment on an underage kid.»

«Underage?» He made it a question. «I thought Peter was eighteen.»

Shit, I thought. Apparently Peter Black was holding up as a secret identity. «Yeah, I mean, shit, fine.»

«If he's eighteen, then he can give permission for it.» Graham gave me a funny look as he said it, as if he wanted to ask why I didn't believe Peter was eighteen, or maybe he didn't either.

«Give permission for what exactly?» I asked.

«They're offering him a vaccine.»

«Like I said, Graham, they've been offering a vaccine against lycanthropy for years.

«Not the one that they used to offer in college. Not since that bad batch turned a lot of nice upper-class college students into monsters about ten years back.» He said it without referencing Richard—who had been one of those college students. I wondered if Graham didn't know. Not my place to share, so I let it go.

«The vaccine's a dead organism now, not live and kicking,» I said.

«Did you get it?» he asked.

I had to smile. «No.»

«Most people won't volunteer for it,» he said.

«Yeah, there's a bill wandering around Washington, D.C., right now to force inoculation against lycanthropy on teenagers. They claim it's safe now.»

«Yeah, they claim.» Graham's face said how much he believed in the «claim.»

I shook my head, moved a little too much in the bed, and found that my stomach gave a twinge. However healed I was, it wasn't perfect yet. I took in a deep breath, let it out, and forced myself not to move around so much. There, that was better. «But Peter has already been attacked. The inoculation is only effective before an attack.»

«They want to give him a live shot.»

«What?» I said, and it was almost a yell.

«Yeah,» Graham said.

«But that will give him whatever lycanthropy is in the shot.»

«Not if he's already got tiger lycanthropy,» Graham said.

«What?»

«Apparently, they had some people who were attacked by more than one beast in a single night. The two different strains canceled each other out. They came up clean and completely human.»

«But it's not dead certain that he'll get tiger lycanthropy,» I said.

«No, most of the feline strains are harder to catch than canine.»

«You can't even reliably test for cat-based lycanthropy for at least seventy-two hours. If they give him this shot and he's not going to be a tiger, then he will be whatever the shot is,» I said.

«And therein lies the problem,» Graham said.

«Therein,» Requiem said, his voice softly mocking.

Graham flashed him another unfriendly look. «I try to improve my vocabulary and you make fun of me; what kind of encouragement is that?»

Requiem gave a full bow, graceful, with one hand sweeping outward. That hand always seemed to cry out for a hat with a plume, as if the gesture was only half finished without the right clothing. He stood. «I beg pardon, Graham, for you are quite right. I do wish to encourage you in your improvements. It was churlish of me, and I apologize.»

«Why is it that when you apologize, you never seem to mean it?» Graham asked.

«Back to the main problem, boys,» I said. «What's happening with Peter?»

«Ted Forrester, federal marshal»—he said it the way you'd say «Superman, Man of Steel»—«is with him. He seems to be helping him choose.»

«But he may be fine, and the shot will guarantee the very thing they don't want to happen.»

Graham shrugged. «Like I said, it's a new thing.»

«It's an experimental thing,» I said.

He nodded. «That, too.»

«What kind of lycanthropy is in the shot?» I asked.

«They don't want to say, but it's probably one of the cat-based lycanthropies, and it won't be tiger.»

«Let's hope not,» I said. «They make vaccines in big batches. Are they positive what kind of kitty they've got in the shot?»

Graham looked at me as if that hadn't occurred to him. «You aren't saying that they'd give him tiger twice? I mean, that wouldn't work at all. That would guarantee that he'd be tiger.»

«Yeah. Has anyone asked them what flavor of kitty it is?» The look on Graham's face said no one had asked in his hearing. I looked at Requiem.

«I have been in attendance upon your bedside. I have not seen the boy.»

«Graham, go ask, and make sure Ted knows I wanted to know.»

Graham actually didn't argue. He just nodded and went for the door. Good. Because I knew where I was now. I was in the basement of what used to be a hospital, but the lower levels had been turned into a place where you kept suspected vampire corpses if you didn't think you'd get to them before nightfall, and where you held lycanthrope victims, or injured shapeshifters themselves until they were well enough to leave. Or you could force them into one of the government prisons—oh, «safe houses.» The ACLU was about to be heard by the Supreme Court on just how many constitutional rights the «safe houses» violated. Being admitted was voluntary—if you were eighteen or over, anyway. They told shapeshifters that they'd let them out once they learned to control their beast, but somehow people went in and never came out. Most hospitals had an isolation ward for shapeshifters and vampires who got injured, but this was the place they sent you if they were truly worried. How the hell did we end up here?

«Requiem,» I said.

He came to the side of the bed, his hooded cloak back to being tight around him. Only a pale glimpse of face was visible. «Yes, my evening star?»

«Why does that sound more and more sarcastic when you say it?»

He blinked so that those vivid blue eyes were shielded for a moment. «I will endeavor to say it as I mean it, my evening star.» This time it was soft, and romantic. I didn't like that either. But I didn't say so out loud. I'd complain later when I figured out how to get any use out of it.

«I asked you once where Jean-Claude is; now I'll ask again. Where is he and what's he doing?»

«Can you not sense him?»

I thought about it and shook my head. «No, I can't.» A spurt of fear ran through me like fine champagne. It must have shown on my face because Requiem touched my arm. «He is well, but he is shielding mightily to keep the Harlequin from reading him, or you, or the wolf king.»

«So there were more than just the two of them in town,» I said.

«Why would you assume only two?»

«It's all I saw,» I said.

«Saw how?»

Again, I didn't like the question and how he asked it. «Does it matter?»

«Perhaps not, but yes, Jean-Claude has detected more than two in your fair city.»

«I'm impressed that Jean-Claude can keep them out of us all,» I said.

Requiem's hand tightened on my arm. «As are we all.» He took his hand back, and it vanished under the black cloak again.

«Tell me what I've missed of the vampire end of things. Wait, how long have I been out?»

«It is only the night of the day you were injured. You have been out, as you put it, for only a few hours.»

«A few hours, not days?» I asked.

«No.»

I touched my stomach, and it didn't hurt the way it should have. I started to raise the hospital gown I was wearing. I hesitated, glancing at the man. He was my lover, but… there was always something about Requiem that made me less than perfectly comfortable around him. Micah, Nathaniel, Jean-Claude, Asher, even Jason, I would have simply looked at the wound. Richard, maybe I wouldn't have. But Requiem made me hesitate for different reasons.

«Look at your wound, Anita. I will not ravish you from the sight of your nakedness.» He sounded like I'd insulted him. Since he was an old vampire, that I could hear that much emotion in his voice meant one of two things: either he allowed me to hear the emotion, or he was so upset he couldn't control himself.

I compromised. I raised the gown and kept the sheet over my lower extremities.

«I am not an animal, Anita; I can bear your nakedness without being affected.» The anger and disdain were so thick in his voice that I knew it was lack of control.

«I never doubt your control, Requiem, but there's no way to be nude in front of you and have it be casual. I need to just look at my body and see what's wrong and right with the wound. I don't want to make a big deal out of it, or a romantic deal out of it.»

«Would it not be a big deal if Jean-Claude were here in my stead?»

«Jean-Claude would concentrate on business and worry about the romance later.»

«Is he that cold?»

«He's that practical,» I said. «I like that in a man.»

«I know you do not like me, my evening star.» Again the emotion was thick on the ground.

I did the only thing I could: I ignored him. Once I saw my stomach it wasn't that hard to ignore him. I had pinkish scars where she'd clawed me open. It was weeks' worth of healing. I ran my hands over the skin, and it felt smoother, almost as if the shininess of it could be a texture. «How many hours?» I asked.

«It is now nine o'clock in the evening.»

«Ten hours.» I said it soft, like I didn't believe it.

«About that, yes.»

«All this healing in ten hours?»

«It would seem so,» he said. There was still a thread of anger to his voice, but it was less.

«How?»

«Should I quote to you, 'There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Or should I simply say I do not know?»

«The 'I don't know' would be fine, but at least I know you're quoting from Hamlet. Now tell me, what's been happening while I slept?»

He glided to the bedside, a slight smile curving his lips. «Your friends slew a member of the Harlequin while she slept. Though the tall one, Olaf, or Otto, complained that she was dead when they arrived. He wanted her to be squirming when they cut her up.»

I shivered and put my gown back in place. I tried to ignore the whole creepy Olaf thing and concentrate on business. «There should have been two members dead.»

«You admit it,» he said. «You admit that you sent them to slay members of the Harlequin.»

«Admit it, hell, yes.»

«Jean-Claude is locked in arguments with the council, even now, on whether the Harlequin are within their rights to slay us all for what you have done.»

«If they don't give a black mask first, but they kill, not in self-defense, then it's a death sentence for them.»

«Who told you that?»

I debated on whether to admit it, but finally shrugged and said, «Belle Morte.»

«When has our beautiful death spoken to you?»

«She came to me in a vision.»

«When?»

«When the three of us were dying. She helped feed me enough energy to come back and keep us all alive.»

«Why would she help Jean-Claude?»

If it had been Jean-Claude, I'd have told the truth, all of it, but it wasn't. Requiem was, well, being his usual weird self. I wasn't certain that Belle would want her reasoning blabbed around. «Why does Belle do anything?»

«You are lying. She told you her reason.»

Great, he knew I was lying. «The shapeshifters say that I don't smell like I'm lying anymore; my respiration rate doesn't even change.»

«I am not smelling or listening to your body, Anita. I simply feel the lie. Why do you not tell me the truth?»

«I'll tell Jean-Claude, and if he says it's okay to tell everyone, then I will.»

«So you will keep secrets from me.»

«You know, Requiem, we have a lot of bad shit happening, and you seem more interested in your own hurt feelings than in the life-and-death stuff.»

He nodded. «I feel raw tonight, undone. I have felt that way since earlier in Jean-Claude's office.»

«We were being messed with then,» I said.

«But there is no holy object that I can wear, my evening star, no refuge that I can take from what the Harlequin have done to me.»

«Are they messing with you now?»

«No, but they showed me certain truths about myself, and I cannot seem to unknow what I have learned.»

«You don't sound like yourself, Requiem.»

«Do I not?» he said, and again there was too much emotion in his voice. I wanted Graham back here, or someone back here. Requiem thought they weren't messing with his head, but I was betting the Harlequin were playing Scrabble with his thoughts right now.

He undid his cloak and flung it backward onto the floor. I'd seen him do a similar gesture on stage at Guilty Pleasures near the end of his strip act. He was fully clothed in elegant gray dress slacks and a shirt that was a clear cornflower blue that turned his eyes as blue as blue could be. I'd looked into a lot of blue eyes, but none quite the color of his. It was a startling blue, a color that had made Belle Morte try to collect him and add him to her collection of blue-eyed lovers. He flung his long straight black hair behind his shoulders.

«I would not have left your side for any business, my star. If you would but love me as I love you, nothing would be more important to me than you.»

I called, «Graham!» It wasn't a yell but it was close to one. Was I afraid? A little. Maybe I could use necromancy to knock the Harlequin out of Requiem, but last time I tried I nearly got myself killed. I'd like to heal from one attack before I got hurt again—selfish, but there you go.

The door opened, but it wasn't Graham. It wasn't even Edward. It was Dolph, Lieutenant Rudolph Storr, head of the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, and paranoid hater of all things monster. Shit.