Crimson Death (74 page)

“We aren't supposed to kill you, but we can hurt you. If you make us hold you down like this, I will use it as an excuse to cause you pain.”

“Somehow, that doesn't surprise me,” I said.

“He will enjoy hurting you,” Hamish said.

“I believe that.”

“Do not put yourself at his mercy, Anita Blake.”

“I'm not at his mercy. You're here, Hamish.”

“Do not look to me for protection from Rodrigo. That would be a grave mistake.” He said it and he meant it, but he wasn't happy about it. Again, I smelled division in the ranks.

“Duly noted,” I said.

“I like hurting people,” Rodrigo said.

“You like killing people,” I said.

“That, too, but I really do enjoy a slower death; otherwise I'd have stabbed your lover through the heart, instead of the lungs.”

I couldn't keep my eyes neutral. It made him smile wider. “Oh, you didn't like that at all. Let's do this, Hamish. I know what sweet nothings I want to whisper in her ear.”

“Then grab her arms and stop talking us both to death.”

“Oh, when I do anything involving you, it won't be talk, old friend.” I had seldom heard the phrase
old friend
sound so hostile.

“He just threatened you,” I said.

“He does that,” Hamish said.

“Roddy, I don't think he's afraid of you. Are you, Hamish?”

“I fear no one,” he said.

“Not even Roddy, or especially not him?”

“Why are we letting her talk like this?” Hamish asked.

Rodrigo frowned; he looked like a petulant middle schooler, as if he should stamp his foot and complain to his mommy. “I don't know.”

“Hold her,” Hamish said, and this time he meant it, and so did I. I used my feet and legs and every bit of lower body I had to try to throw him off me. I didn't expect to really move him off me, but it kept him from using the needle on me, and that was my goal. Not to let them put whatever that was in me, and to stay in this room until help came.

“Hold her!” Hamish yelled.

Rodrigo got one of my wrists pinned, but I got a palm strike under his chin that rocked him. He tried to hit me back, and I somehow managed to block him with my one free arm, which pissed him off even more. “Stop squirming!”

“Squirming is one of my best things,” I said.

“This is going to happen. Stop fighting it!”

“Fuck you!”

“Only if it would cause you pain.”

“I doubt you're that well endowed.”

He snarled at me, sending his beast's energy playing along my skin. I breathed it in like a familiar cologne, but he shut down too fast. I couldn't tell what scent it was; it was a level of control of his energy that was really rare, but then, he was one of the Harlequin. One of the ones who had fled across the world and the ones with us hadn't found yet, or had given up on finding. We'd told them to stay home with us and leave the world alone. If I lived through this we'd be changing that policy.

He pinned one wrist under his knee, making sure to grind it to hurt, but I'd been hurt worse before, even recently, and I knew for a fact that once they got me out of this room unconscious, I'd eventually
be hurt a hell of a lot worse. He got a hand on my other arm, and my wrists were pinned under his knee and hand. I knew it was over, but I still moved the rest of me as much as I could. Hamish put his hand on my chest and leaned, and that pretty much ended my upper-body moving, and if he'd pressed long enough, my breathing. He shoved the needle in my arm, and I couldn't stop them. I screamed and Rodrigo slapped me hard enough that I saw stars for a second. When my vision cleared I was already starting to feel warm.

“What did you give me?” My words were clear, but my tongue was starting to feel thick; all of me began to feel like it was getting wrapped in cotton like some breakable object to be wrapped up for shipping. Whatever the stuff was, it was fast acting.

Rodrigo leaned over me, petting my hair, and I couldn't stop him. They still had my arms pinned, but it wouldn't matter for much longer. My body was starting to feel heavy, thick, and distant. “It doesn't matter what we gave you; it's working.” He leaned his dark eyes over mine, and it was too close to the intimate eye contact that Domino and I had just shared. It helped me fight clear for a moment. I dropped every metaphysical shield I had and silently broadcast to anyone and everyone, everything, that could hear me, feel me. I needed help and I needed it now!

“What are you doing?” Rodrigo asked, leaning so close that I smelled the soap he'd showered with, and underneath that was heat and fur and . . . leopard.

“Get back, Roddy. Don't touch her now!” I couldn't focus on the man sitting on top of me now, couldn't make my eyes work the way I wanted. I kept watching the blond.

“Why can you touch her and I can't?” he asked.

“Because I'm not one of her animals to call, and you are.”

I stared into the wereleopard's cave-dark eyes, and thought,
Mine
. He said, “No.”

The drugs hit a new level and my beast quieted. Everything quieted. I couldn't move, almost didn't want to move.

Rodrigo petted my hair again. “That's better.” He moved to one side and used my hair to lean my head back so I could see Ethan. I couldn't have moved enough to do it myself now. Ethan dangled from
the door, a knife through his shoulder pinning him in place while the rest of his body hung there. He was deeply unconscious or the pain would have revived him.

“I did that,” Rodrigo whispered near me, and then rolled my head to look at Domino, “and that, and if we get to kill you, I'll beg to help. I am not your leopard to call. I am something you cannot tame.”

It took almost all the effort I had to make my lips move and whisper, “Harlequin.”

It startled him, as if he didn't think I'd know what they both were, but what else could they be? Nothing else could have taken out two of my tigers, with all their training, and me this fast. He reached toward Domino and came back with his hand scarlet with fresh blood. He wiped the blood across my lips and I couldn't stop him.

“When she is done with you, I will make you choke on your own blood.” He shoved his fingers down my throat, but I didn't choke for him. “Swallow the blood of your tiger, Anita. Swallow him down for the very last time!”

I tried not to, but I couldn't do anything but swallow. All blood tastes the same, like sweet copper pennies. Darkness was starting to eat my vision. My tongue was almost too thick to use, but I fought to say it, while I stared up into Rodrigo's black eyes: “All the . . . Harlequin . . . belong . . . to me.” Then the darkness came and I wasn't sure if it ate me, or I became it, but Rodrigo's black eyes were the last thing I saw.

I
KNEW
I
was dreaming, but I knew it wasn't my dream. I was wearing a dress from a century that I'd never lived through. The skirt was heavy with one of those odd hoops, if that's what you call it, that made the dress go out to either side of your hips like you should be able to
set plates on the stiff satin cloth. The cloth was red and gold, and the tight cinched waist pushed my breasts up too much so that even I was distracted when I saw myself in the mirror that was leaning up against the stone wall. It was a very realistic dream. I could feel the long skirts brushing against the rough stone floor. I had enough of Jean-Claude's memories to know that there should have been sweet rushes or something on the floor, but it was rough-hewn rock, almost cavelike, except there were windows, long, thin, and reaching almost to the high vaulted ceiling. I could hear the ocean, feel the wind of it. I thought,
But where is the smell of the ocean?
And that was when I knew it was a dream. There's no scent in a dream; that part doesn't work when we sleep, which is why most people don't smell smoke from fire in time. Noises wake us, but not smells.

Whoever had picked the dress had left my hair loose, curling thick and utterly black around the whiteness of my skin. My eyes were dark. Some trick of the light in the room made them look black, but I had Rodrigo's eyes carved into my brain and I knew my eyes were brown, because his were truly black. A natural blond with black eyes, you didn't see that much.

“The Welsh come colored like that from time to time,” a woman's voice said.

There was a woman in the mirror now, and it wasn't me. She was taller than me, slender, model thin, but not starved, just built that way. She had long, straight blond hair that fell well past her waist to swirl in the white dress she wore. It was from a much earlier century than mine, loose with long belled sleeves that almost hid her hands. Gold ribbon laced her tight through the bodice so that it showed her small, high breasts to good effect. Her eyes were a clear pale blue, the shade that coloring books tell you is what water looks like, but it almost never does in real life. She was almost everything that I'd ever wanted to be when I was about twelve to sixteen, when I realized I would never be any of it.

“Wishes,” she said.

“When I was a child, before I knew my own worth, yes,” I said.

She walked closer to her side of the mirror; the room looked identical, as if we were both standing in the same place. She was shining in
the sunlight in a way that hair and skin didn't if you were human. She was almost unearthly in her beauty, like a shimmering white goddess.

“Yes, I was a goddess once.”

“They worshipped you as one,” I said.

“You don't believe I'm a goddess?”

I started walking toward the mirror as I said, “No.”

“Could anyone but a goddess build a dream for us to speak in?”

“I've met other people who could create dreams, and they weren't gods.”

The shining light of her flickered for a second like a bad connection on a video, and then it steadied to shine and be lovely again. I stood in front of the mirror now. It was a very old mirror, the glass full of imperfections, dark marks in the glass itself, a bubble here and there.

“It was a marvel of craftsmanship in its day,” she said.

“I bet it was,” I said, and looked at her like a tall, thin, blond reflection in the mirror. I could see that there were flowers and leaves embroidered on the gold ribbon of her dress now. Why had she put me in a dress that was closer to Belle Morte's taste than hers? Or did she want to wear bright colors, but they washed her out?

“I wear what I wish to wear,” she said.

“Pastels look terrible on me, but I bet they look wonderful on you,” I said.

The image of her flickered again, the shining white light gone for an eyeblink, replaced with darkness, rough stone, like a cave, or a tomb. Then the white figure was back, shining harder, as if trying to make up for that last glimpse. Take no notice of that man behind the curtain.

I could see that her high cheekbones were paired with a chin that was a little too pointed for my taste, a nose a little sharp;
witchy,
I'd have said once, but I knew too many witches now and none of them looked like that.

I got another glimpse of the dark cave, and her face bare of the light for a moment, and anger in those pale blue eyes. Too pale, not as rich a color as she was pretending to have here in her dream . . . our dream.

“It is not your dream. It is mine!”

“Have it your way,” I said. “Why did you bring me to your dream?”

“I thought this would be more pleasant.”

“It's not a bad dream, so what do you want in this pleasant dream?”

“You have something I want,” the image in the mirror said.

“What's that?” I asked.

“Power.”

“Yeah, you and everybody else.”

“What?” she asked, as if I'd confused her. If she could read my mind it shouldn't have confused her, which meant she could only read part of my thoughts.

“I am in your mind,” she said.

“But you still don't understand everything I'm thinking, or everything I'm feeling, do you?”

“I understand all!” But there was that flicker again, and I saw her standing in the dark place, her thin face closer to mine than it was in the dream.

“I don't remember the early deities claiming omniscience,” I said.

The flicker again, because I'd confused her again. She came back to the mirror in her white dress with its gold and embroidery, but she wasn't shining anymore. She was lovely, but not otherworldly so. Her eyes were blue, but I knew people with bluer ones.

“When I am done with you, I will find your blue-eyed lovers and carve their faces down to ruin!”

That scared me and I couldn't hide it with her inside my head, and she understood the fear. She smiled a thin smile. “I wanted to make this pleasant between us, Anita, but if you are determined to be unpleasant, I know how to do that, too.”

Dev lay on the floor beside me. His eyes were gone, just blood and thick bits as he screamed and reached out for me. I grabbed for his hand before I could think, and it felt real enough, but . . . it wasn't. It wasn't and I knew that it wasn't. I'd given her an awful idea to use against me, and she had, but it wasn't real. If she'd wanted to hurt me this wasn't the man to choose. Dev vanished and it was Nicky with both eyes bleeding and gone, but that wasn't right. He only had one eye, and she didn't know that. She wasn't perfect; even this far into my subconscious she couldn't see that clearly.

“I see more clearly than your man will after I take his last eye.”

I carefully, very carefully didn't think of anyone else, just put a blank wall between me and my thoughts. It was like shielding for metaphysics; just think walls. I put up a wall between us and it appeared in the middle of the room, dividing it in half with the mirror on the other side.

She screamed then, and the scream shattered the wall, so that I put up my arms to shield my face, and thought it was like the vampire exploding. I wasn't surprised to find a piece of stone embedded in my arm. I'd given her the image. I had to stop that.

I pictured the wall again, but this time it was smoother, metal, and mine. Her power hit it, but the metal only bent with her efforts; it did not break. Her power beat against my wall, my metaphysical shielding, and she couldn't get through.

“But you are still trapped in my dream, Anita Blake!”

Was I? I wasn't sure how to break the dream without dropping the wall, and I wanted the wall to stay. I'd learned to do lucid dreaming where I could change dreams as I had them, or even break free of bad ones, but holding the wall while she battered it and trying to figure out a way to break the dream was a few more balls to juggle than I could keep in the air.

I started with the dress, and I was suddenly wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt, black boots, and my favorite holster with my favorite gun. I felt more me as I looked up at the metal wall dimpling as she beat on it. It bent here and there, but she couldn't break through. I could hold the wall. I could stand in the dream and be okay. Interesting, and I did my best to stop the thought there, no other memories, nothing. I would give nothing to be used against me here. Nothing but the wall, cool metal, smooth without any handholds for her mind.

She screamed again, the metal of the wall bending as if a giant had hit it, but it held. She couldn't get to me anymore. She couldn't play with me in dreams, and she couldn't make the dream into a nightmare. I could wait her out. She must have realized that, because she decided to let me wake up, or maybe I just woke on my own.