Hit List ab-20 Read online

  The guard beside me drew his gun and pointed it at him. “You know the punishment for hurting any of the queen’s family.”

  “In a battle over a female, that rule doesn’t count,” Ethan said, his voice barely showing his breathing. He was already recovering, controlling his body.

  I saw George’s hand tense, and I reacted, not really expecting to get there in time, but I did. I swept his hand and the gun to the ceiling. The shot was thunder in the small room. The echoes were deafening.

  He relaxed his arm against my hand, not trying to lower the gun. It made me look away from the center of his body to his face. I saw his lips work and heard his voice distant with the ringing in my ears: “You’re faster than I thought.” Then he tensed, and I had less than the blink of an eye to know that his other hand was coming for me. There wasn’t even time for me to see it, let alone judge where it would land; there was just him tensing and the feel of his body moving.

  His arm slammed across the side of my body. It was just a straight arm into my waist, but it raised me a few inches off my feet and sent me falling. Years on the mat in judo helped me fall as well as I could, taking most of the momentum with a slap of my hands and arms on the rough floor. Even then, I had a moment of blinking and being half-stunned on the floor. Another shot rang out, sharp, and hurting, like a blow to my ears. My brain was screaming, Get up, get up, or you’ll die! I got up.

  15

  I GOT TO my feet in time for a third shot to whirr over my head and make me crouch back down. Ethan got the gun away from George as I watched, but George punched him at the same time, and the gun went spinning across the floor. A knife flashed in George’s other hand as I moved toward the fallen gun. I had it up and aimed it at the fight, but they were too fast. Ethan was fast, but George was faster, not fast enough to cut him, but fast enough that it was all Ethan could do to keep George from cutting him. They moved in a blur, circling and punching, and using their knees against each other’s lower bodies, because they were too close in to use the whole leg to kick. I couldn’t get a clean shot. Every time I thought I had it, Ethan was in my way.

  I realized that George was purposefully moving Ethan around so he spoiled my shot, which meant that George was even better. I realized he had openings to punch Ethan, and I knew he had the strength to knock him back, but if he did that then he wouldn’t have Ethan as a shield against the gun. He could have won the fight, but he needed Ethan in front of him, and close to him. Fuck, but he was good.

  Did Ethan think he was holding his own, or did he understand what the other man was doing? I heard footsteps running in the hallway. I hoped it was help coming.

  “I’m not here to hurt you, Anita Blake,” George said in a voice that showed no strain.

  I ignored him and waited for a shot to open up.

  Ethan stopped trying to fight and let George cut his arm. It gave him an opening to push back and let himself fall to the floor and give me a clear shot. I aimed at George’s center and squeezed the trigger, but he was already moving, impossibly fast, a blur that I tried to follow with my hands and the gun as I fired. The gun was a Glock 21, which was a .45ACP, and it took my hands up toward the ceiling so that by the time I had the gun back down and ready to aim again he was through the door and out of sight.

  I said, “Motherfucker!” and got to my feet, gun held up, elbows bent, so if I had another shot I would be able to take it. But the hallway was a mass of people in white T-shirts and khaki pants. Most of them had the same short, dark red hair, so that there was no target to aim at, or there were too many.

  Some of the figures were on the ground, white shirts blossoming crimson with blood. I prayed that one of them was George, but somehow I knew he wouldn’t be.

  I felt movement behind me and started to bring the gun around, but Ethan said, “It’s me.” I stopped in midmotion, telling the beating of my pulse in my throat that of course it was Ethan; no one else in the room was conscious. That made me think about Alex, and wonder why his being hurt hadn’t hurt me. I’d taken damage when some of my other animals to call had been hurt, so why hadn’t it hurt me?

  I glanced behind to see that Alex was still motionless on the floor. I’d check on him after I knew what had happened to the bad guy.

  Ethan moved in front of me, and I realized he’d taken the time to get his weapons. His T-shirt was untucked so that it didn’t all fit back as neatly as it had started, but shoulder holsters chafe without a shirt. I had time to see that his wound was bleeding freely and starting to get all over his white shirt, as he put me at his back and did what a good guard will do: be a meat shield. When all else fails, that’s the last duty of any bodyguard, to literally put his body between you and harm.

  I started to say I didn’t need it, but honestly, I couldn’t have held my own against the other man as long as Ethan had. I could admit that he was not only stronger than I was, but better at slugging it out. I didn’t like it, but I admitted it in my head, and I let him wade out into the fight in the hallway first. Did it hurt my pride? Yes. Was my pride worth dying for? No.

  But when I started moving out behind him from the doorway, Ethan put a hand back and stopped me. “Wait,” he said. There was a time when I wouldn’t have listened, but the speed . . . the speed at the end had been too fast even for a shapeshifter. He’d been as fast as the masked shapeshifter who had injured Karlton. He wasn’t tall enough, but he was fast enough. He had to be one of the Harlequin. I still wasn’t certain if I’d hit him, or if he truly had been faster than a speeding bullet. It had all happened too damned fast.

  I picked out words from the babble of voices in the hallway: “He was too fast . . . dead . . . help me stop the bleeding . . . it’s too late, he’s dead . . . get the doctor.”

  Ethan motioned that I could move forward. I pointed the gun down at the floor, but kept it in a two-handed grip. There were two men down in a pool of blood. A guard with yellow hair was holding his hands on one man’s throat, trying to stop the bleeding, but blood gushed out from between his fingers. I’d known shapeshifters powerful enough to heal a wound like that, and I’d seen one die from an almost identical wound. He’d been killed by one of the Harlequin’s animals to call, too. Were they trained to go for the throat?

  The other fallen guard had less blood on him, but his eyes were already set in death. It looked like a stab straight to the heart. There was no recovery from a silver blade through the heart for a lycanthrope. He’d been dead the moment the blade slid home. Two other men were down with knife wounds, and a third was mobile but bleeding like Ethan.

  George had fought his way through them in a matter of moments: two dead, three wounded, five if you counted Alex and Ethan. He did all that to a group of trained bodyguards who were also shapeshifters. Apparently the Harlequin were going to live up to their reputation. They were scary good.

  There was nothing I could do for anyone out here, so I said, “Ethan, I’m going to check on Alex.”

  “Good idea,” and he followed behind me. One of the other guards asked, “What’s wrong with the prince? Is he hurt?”

  “He’s hurt,” Ethan said.

  “Did George do it?” the man asked.

  I answered before Ethan could. “Let’s just see how hurt Alex is.” I didn’t want to get bogged down in details, and I also didn’t want to see Ethan hurt before I could explain that it was the Harlequin that had made Alex attack and forced Ethan to defend himself. It was too complicated to explain with two of their men dead and more wounded. Complicated could wait until after everyone calmed down.

  Alex was sitting up as we walked toward him. Ethan got to him first and dropped to one knee as George had done, hand going to his chest. “My Prince, forgive me.”

  Alex looked at him and then at me. “It’s okay; I would have killed you if you hadn’t fought back. The rage was . . . like nothing I’ve ever felt.” He held out his hand to the other man. “Help me up, and we’ll call it even.”

  This was the reasonabl
e Alex I remembered. Ethan helped him stand up. There was bruising on Alex’s face where the other man had kicked him, but it was as if the injury were days old instead of only minutes. If Alex had been a more powerful shapeshifter, there wouldn’t have been any mark by now.

  The other guard with us asked, “What is Ethan apologizing for?”

  I asked, “Do you know where the rage was coming from?”

  “It was like a dark voice in my head,” Alex said.

  The guard blinked orange eyes at us, running fingers through his short orange-red hair. “I feel like I’m missing something.”

  I looked at Alex. “I know there are real vampires that feed on emotion. I’ve met one that fed on fear and could also cause it to rise in people just by thinking at them.”

  “Handy to be able to make your own food,” Alex said.

  I nodded.

  “You think this was a vampire?” Ethan asked.

  “I know that the weretiger who ran out of here was one of the people that we’re hunting. That speed, that level of weapons work, it was them.”

  “You mean George was a spy,” the new guard said.

  “First, what’s your name, and second, how long has George been here?”

  He smiled. “I’m Ben, and a couple of months.”

  I thought about that. “They put him in here almost as soon as she woke up.”

  “What?” Ben asked.

  I shook my head. “Just thinking out loud.” They’d put a spy in here as soon as the Mother of All Darkness woke.

  “They put him here near me,” Alex said. “They knew eventually you’d come visiting.”

  “His paperwork checked out,” Ben said.

  “Some of these guys have been master spies for a thousand years or more,” I said. “They’re good at what they do.”

  “He cut through us as if we were human,” Ben said.

  “Did I hit him with the last shot?” I asked.

  Ben frowned; I think he was trying to replay the fight in his head. “He had blood on his T-shirt, here.” He touched the left side of the chest, shoulder area. “Was it Ethan’s blood?”

  “I never touched him,” Ethan said.

  “Then, yes, you shot him.”

  I grinned and felt that it was a fierce baring of teeth. “Please tell me all your guns are loaded with silver shot,” I said.

  “Of course,” Ben said. “Silver will kill a human or a shapeshifter; lead only stops humans.”

  “Then he’s hurt,” Alex said. “Silver makes even the strongest of us have to heal human-slow.”

  “You were faster than he planned for,” Ethan said. “He said so. Most of the guards would have missed that last shot. You did it with an unfamiliar gun, against someone faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.” Ethan gave me an admiring look that wasn’t about sex, but about that guy moment when they realize you are not just another pretty face, but maybe, just maybe you can be cute, petite, and one of the guys all at the same time.

  “I’ll call Ted and let him know that the bad guys are trying to find me.”

  “Why did he say that he hadn’t come to hurt you?” Ethan said.

  “I think he hoped I wouldn’t shoot him.”

  Ethan gave me a look. “He could have been lying.”

  “Yeah, but the other one last night that cut up the marshal said the same thing. They want me alive.”

  “Why?” Ethan asked.

  I shook my head. I didn’t know Ethan well enough to answer that question, but I knew now that the Mother of All Darkness wanted me alive. There was only one reason she wanted me that way: so she could take over my body and make it hers. George had said he wasn’t here to hurt me. He was lying. He wanted to kidnap me and feed me to the Dark Mother of them all. So she could use my body to live again. Not hurting me? Yeah, right. George was a lying bag of shit.

  16

  THE WERETIGERS’ DOCTORS and medics descended on the hallway not long after that. They took the more critically injured and left the dead to be carried away. Both the wounded and the dead were carried farther into the underground where they had their hospital area. We had one in the underground back home in St. Louis, too. They patched up the knife wound on Ethan’s arm. It was shallow and long; if the knife hadn’t been silver-edged he’d have healed it already. Edward reported the disaster of the tracking dogs after he heard my report about the Harlequin spy. The dog had been as useless as we’d said, but he was more concerned about what had happened to me than about the case.

  Alex went with most of the guards to report to his mother, the queen. They left two on the door of the room where we’d managed to wreck half the machinery that handled ventilation to their underground lair. A repair person was coming to look at it later. Business was being handled once the wounded and the dead were tended to, because no matter how much blood is spilled, you still need your air circulation to work. The mundane aspects of life keep needing attention no matter what else is happening. If you live through the disaster you still need to get groceries, do laundry. That’s one of the hardest things to understand when you first get involved in violence. That once it’s over the world goes on, and you have to go along with it.

  Edward was adamant about talking to Ethan and me in private. Once the door was closed, he let Ethan see just how unhappy he was with him. He was up in Ethan’s face. “I thought you were supposed to be good at your job.”

  “I am,” Ethan said, and that first trickling heat began to fill the room. He’d been patient, but no one’s patience is limitless, not even Ethan’s, apparently.

  “Edward, this wasn’t his fault. This wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

  Edward turned on me, hands in fists, eyes paled to that cold color of blue like a winter sky. I’d never seen him upset like this; he was usually one of the most controlled people I knew.

  “I trusted your safety to him, Anita. I left you in his hands, literally.” He was up in my face now, and the height difference made him loom a little over me. He was one of those men who weren’t that tall, but could really loom when they wanted to, and he wanted to. “The only reason you’re not dead is that he had orders to take you alive, Anita.”

  I realized something and did the girl thing and said it out loud. “You really do care that much about me.”

  That stopped him in midword. Made him close his mouth and just look down at me, shaking his head. “What?”

  “Sorry, had a girl moment.”

  He frowned at me.

  “It’s just that I’ve been in danger before. I’ve had people try to kill me before and you were somewhere else when they tried. You’ve never gotten this upset.”

  He turned around, hands on hips. I think he was trying to regain control of himself. It wasn’t like Edward to lose it. I had a thought: Was it the vampire? Was he that good, even in daylight, to spread anger like this?

  “Edward, are you wearing your holy item?”

  That made him turn around and face me. “What?”

  “Are you wearing a holy item?”

  He gave me a very Edward look, like I should know better. “You know I don’t wear one.”

  “You’ve seen my cross glow. You know blessed holy water works. I’ve never understood why you don’t wear something.”

  “Holy water works because a priest blesses it; a cross works only if the wearer has faith in God. I don’t.”

  I let the theological discussion wait for another day. “The vampire caused Alex to be filled with rage and try to kill Ethan. Now you’re as angry about something like this as I’ve ever seen you, and you’re angry at Ethan again.”

  I had a thought: What if I wasn’t the only one who had figured out that Ethan carried some of the gold bloodline? What if while George was here waiting for me to show up for the last two months, he smelled the gold on Ethan? What if today hadn’t just been about capturing me, but about killing Ethan? Was that too twisty-turny, or was it just devious enough for the Harlequin?

  Edward was studying my face
. “You’ve thought of something.”

  I looked into his very calm, very Edward face. But it was Ethan who said, “This isn’t like the anger that was in the Prince. That didn’t go away.”

  I nodded. I didn’t say out loud that it had to be a change of heart toward me on Edward’s part. Once I’d believed that if he had to he’d kill me—he might miss me, but he’d do it. Now, I realized maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he was finally emotionally attached to me in a very un-Edward-like way.

  If Edward had known that Ethan was part gold tiger, I’d have just said my thinking out loud, but he didn’t know. I was thinking that the fewer people who knew, the better, but if the Harlequin knew, then Ethan wasn’t safe. Of course, maybe it had just been coincidence that he was the guard who was with me when Alex attacked me. I frowned and rubbed my forehead. I was giving myself a headache.

  “I think I’m overthinking this.”

  “Overthinking what?” Ethan asked.

  I looked from him to Edward. We were alone. Alex had gone with the guards to tell the queen what had happened. They’d left some guards outside the door of the room we were in, but only Ethan was in the room with us, mainly because Edward had insisted he needed to talk to Ethan.

  “Okay, I’m thinking that maybe Alex attacking you wasn’t just to make you kill each other so I’d be alone and easier to snatch. I think maybe George saw a way to kill two birds with one stone.”

  Ethan frowned at me. “I don’t understand.”

  I told them both what I’d smelled from Ethan’s skin. He gave me an incredulous look. “If I were part gold I’d have the power to command the other colors, and I so do not have that.”

  Edward was looking at me. “Anita is the Mistress of Tigers; if she says you smell like the golden tigers, then you do.” He looked at the other man.

  “I have three tiger forms, three.” He actually held up three fingers. “Red, blue, and white, that’s it. No gold.” He folded the fingers down into a fist. “I can’t be.”

  “All I can tell you is that you carry the strain. I’ve never smelled a weretiger that smelled of four different colors, so I can’t tell you why you don’t have three shapes to go with it, but I can tell you it’s there.”