Obsidian Butterfly (ab-9) (42 page)

And staring down into the woman's face, watching that perfect faith fill her lost eyes, I wasn't sure the bargain was a good one, but I was sure of one thing. I couldn't say no. I couldn't let the monsters win, not even if it meant becoming one of them. God forgive me if it was arrogance. God protect me if it wasn't. I got up out of bed and went in search of monsters.

I WAS BUCKLED into the front seat of Edward's Hummer, holding myself stiff and careful, glad the ride was smooth. Bernardo and Olaf were in the back seat, dressed in someone's idea of assassin chic. Bernardo was in a leather vest. His cast looked very white and awkward, right arm at a forty-five degree angle, a white strap going from arm to around his neck. His long hair was done in a vaguely oriental style, with one large, deceptively loose knot held back with what looked like two long gold chopsticks. It held back the sides of his hair, but left most of the length swinging free down his back. Black jeans of a looser cut with holes worn through across his knees, and the black boots I'd seen him wear since I arrived. But who was I to complain? I had three pairs of black Nikes, and I had brought all three with me,

There was a swollen bump to the side of his forehead and bruises like a pattern of modern art tattoos down one side of his face. His right eye was still puffy around one edge. But he managed not to look pale or ill like I did. In fact, if you could ignore the cast and bruises, he looked dandy. I hoped he felt as good as he looked, because I looked like shit and felt worse.

"Who did your hair?" I asked, because with only one good arm, I knew he hadn't.

"Olaf," he said, and that one word was very bland, very empty.

I widened my eye and looked over at Olaf.

He sat beside Bernardo on the side behind Edward, as far from me as he could get and still be in the car. He hadn't spoken a word to me since I walked out of the hospital room and the four of us walked to the car. It hadn't bothered me at the time because I'd been too busy trying to walk without making small pain noises under my breath.

Whimpering while you walked was always a bad sign. But now I was sitting down and as comfortable as I was likely to get for a while. I was also in a momentously bad mood because I was scared. I felt physically weak and not up to a fight. Psychically, my hard-won shields were crap again, full of holes, and if the "master" tried for me again, I was in very deep shit.

Leonora Evans had given me a woven silk cord with a little drawstring bag on it. The little bag was lumpy, packed full with small hard objects that felt like rocks, and dry crumbling things that were probably herbs. She'd told me not to open the bag because that would let all the goodness out. She was the witch, so I did what she told me.

The bag was a charm of protection, and it would work without my believing in its power. Which was good since except for my cross I didn't believe in very much. Leonora had been making the charm for three days, since she saved me in the emergency room. She had not intended it to be a cure all for the holes in my defenses, but it was all she had to give me on such short notice. She was almost as angry with me as Doctor Cunningham had been for leaving the hospital early.

She had taken one of her own necklaces and placed it over my head. It was a large piece of polished semiprecious stone. A strange dark gold color, Citrine for protection and to absorb negativity and magical attacks directed at me. To say that I wasn't a big believer in crystals and the new age was an understatement, but I took it. Mainly because she was so angry and so sincerely worried about me out in the world with my aura hanging open for the bad guys to munch on. I knew I had holes in my aura. I could feel them, but it was all just a little too hocus-pocus for me.

So I turned in my seat, feeling the stitches in my back tighten, adding a little push to the pain I was already feeling, and stared at Olaf. He was staring out the window as if there was something fascinating in the rows of small houses on that side of the car.

"Olaf," I said.

He never moved, just watched the passing scenery.

"Olaf!" It was almost a yell in the small confines of the car. His shoulders twitched, but that was all. It was like I was some kind of insect buzzing around him. You might wave a hand at it, but you wouldn't talk to it.

It pissed me off. "Now I understand why you don't like women. You should have just said you were homosexual, and my feelings wouldn't have been so hurt."

Edward said, softly, "Jesus, Anita."

Olaf turned very slowly almost in slow motion as if each muscle in his neck were pulling him around in small jerks. "What -- did -- you -- say?" Each word was rage-filled, hot with hatred.

"You did a great job on Bernardo's hair. You made him look very pretty." I didn't believe that particular sexual stereotype, but I was betting that Olaf did. I was also betting that he was homophobic. A lot of ultramasculine men are.

He undid his seatbelt with a noticeable click and eased forward. I pulled the Firestar out of the holster that was sitting in my lap. The pants that Edward had brought to the hospital were a little too tight for my innerpants holster. I watched Olaf's hand vanish underneath the black leather jacket. Maybe he hadn't understood the movement when I'd unholstered the gun. Maybe he expected me to raise the gun and sight along the back of the car. I pointed the gun between the small space between the seats. It wasn't a perfect angle, but I had my gun pointed first, and that counted in a gun fight.

He'd pulled his gun out from under the jacket, but it wasn't pointed yet. If I'd meant to kill him, I'd have won.

Edward slammed on the brakes. Olaf slammed into the back of the seat, gun at a bad angle, driving his wrist backwards. It wasn't being thrown into the seatbelt, and nearly the dashboard that hurt. It was the being flung backwards into the seat. My breath went out in a sharp gasp. Olaf's face ended up very close to the space between the seats, and he saw the gun barrel pointed, now, at his chest. I was hurting so bad that my skin twitched with the need to writhe, but I kept my hand tight around the gun, using my free hand to brace myself and make sure I didn't move. I had the drop on him, and I was keeping it.

The Hummer skidded to a stop against the curb. Edward had his seatbelt off and was whirling around in his seat. I caught the flash of a gun in his hand and had a heartbeat to decide whether to try and take the gun off Olaf and try for Edward, or keep the gun where it was. I kept the gun on Olaf, I didn't think Edward would shoot me, and Olaf might.

Edward shoved the barrel of his gun against the back of Olaf's bald head The tension level in the car skyrocketed. Edward went to his knees, gun never moving from Olaf's head. I could see Olaf's eyes rolled up. We looked at each other, and I saw that he was afraid. He believed that Edward would do it. So did I, though I didn't know why, and with Edward there was always a why, even if it was only money.

I had a sense of Bernardo sitting very stiff on his side of the seat, trying to pull back from the mess that was about to spill all over the car.

"Do you want me to kill him?" Edward asked. His voice was quiet and empty, as if he'd asked, did I want him to pass the salt. I could do an empty uninterested voice, but not like Edward. I could never be that dispassionate, not yet anyway.

I said, "No," automatically, then added, "not like this."

Something passed through Olaf's eyes. It wasn't fear. It was more like surprise. Surprise that I hadn't said, yeah, shoot him, or surprise about something else I couldn't fathom. Who knew?

Edward took the gun from Olaf's hand, then clicked the safety off on his own gun, and leaned back still on his knees in the driver's seat. "Then stop baiting him, Anita."

Olaf sat back in his seat, slowly, almost stiffly as if afraid to move too quickly. Nothing like having a gun to your head to teach you caution. He smoothed his hands down the leather jacket, which still looked like way too much to wear in the heat. "I will not owe my life to any woman." His voice was sort of subdued, but it was clear.

I eased the Firestar back out from between the seats, and said, "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, Olaf."

He frowned at me. Maybe he didn't get the quote.

Edward looked at both of us, shaking his head. "You're both scared, and that makes you both stupid."

"I'm not scared," Olaf said.

"Ditto," I said.

He frowned at me. "You just crawled out of a hospital bed. Of course, you're scared. Wondering if the next time you meet the monster will be your last."

I looked back at him, and it was not a friendly look.

"So you picked a fight with Olaf because you'd rather fight him than be scared."

"Just like a woman to be so irrational," Olaf said.

Edward turned to the big man. "And you, Olaf, you're afraid that Anita is tougher than you are."

"I am not!"

"You've been quiet ever since we saw the mess at the hospital. Ever since you heard what Anita did, how much damage she took and survived. You're wondering just how good is she? Is she as good as you are? Is she better?"

"She is a woman," Olaf said, and his voice was thick with some dark emotion as if he was choking on it. "She cannot be as good as I am. She cannot be better than I am. That is not possible."

"Don't make this a competition, Edward," I said.

"Because you will lose," Olaf said.

"I'm not going to arm wrestle you, Olaf. But I will stop picking on you. I'm sorry."

Olaf blinked at me as if he couldn't quite follow the conversation. I didn't think I'd overstepped his English, more like his logic circuits were overloading. "I do not need your pity."

I moved up from being "she" or "a woman" to a neuter pronoun. It was a start. "It's not pity. I acted badly. Edward's right. I'm scared, and fighting with you is a nice diversion."

He shook his head. "I don't understand."

"If it's any consolation, you confuse me, too."

Edward smiled, his Ted smile. "Now kiss and make up."

We both frowned at him and said simultaneously, "Don't push it," and "I do not think so."

"Good," Edward said. He looked at Olaf's gun in his hand for a second, then handed it back with a lot of heavy-duty eye contact. "I need you to be my backup, Olaf. Can you do that?"

He nodded once and took the gun slowly from Edward's hand. "I am your backup until this creature is dead, then we will talk."

Edward nodded. "I look forward to it."

I glanced at Bernardo, but his face told me nothing, nothing except that it had gone blank and empty and confirmed what I was thinking. Olaf had just warned Edward that when the case was over, he would try and kill him. Edward had agreed to it. Just like that.

"Just one big happy family," I said into the thick silence that had filled the car.

Edward turned around in his seat and buckled back in. He gave me sparkling Ted eyes. "And just like family we'll fight among ourselves, but we're much more likely to kill an outsider."

"Actually," I said, "the vast majority of murders are done by your nearest and dearest blood relatives."

"Or spouse, don't forget the spouse," Edward said and put the car in gear, pulling carefully out into the sparse traffic.

"Like I said, your nearest and dearest."

"But you said blood relative, and there's no blood between husband and wife."

"Sharing one body fluid or another, doesn't seem to matter. We kill those we're closest to."

"We are not close," Olaf said.

"No, we are not close," I said.

"But I hate you all the same," he said.

I spoke without turning around. "Right back at you."

"And I thought the two of you would never agree on anything," Bernardo said. His voice was cheerful, joking. No one laughed.

THE BLACK-PAINTED FRONT of the bar looked tired in the morning sunlight. You could see where the paint was cracked and beginning to peel. The front of the bar looked almost as neglected as the rest of the street. Maybe Nicky Baco hadn't tried to run the other businesses off. Maybe it had been an accident. Standing there in the soft heat of morning, I felt something I hadn't felt at night. It was as if the street had been used up in a mystical sense. I'd felt very strongly when I'd been here last time that Baco had drained the street of vitality, caused this to happen, but if that were true, then it hadn't been enough energy to sustain him. Or maybe all that negativity was finally coming home to roost. Most systems of magic or mysticism have rules of conduct, things you do and things you do not. You break the rules at your peril. The wiccans call it the threefold law: what you do to others comes back to you threefold. Buddhists call it karma. Christians call it answering for your sins. I call it what goes around comes around. It really does, you know.

I had the Firestar tucked into the front of my pants, minus the innerpants holster, because the gun could ride higher and not dig in as much. Edward had loaned me a paddle holster for the Browning, and I had ended up with it in front, so that I looked like one of those wild west gunslingers with two guns crossed over my hips. Though actually the black polo shirt came down low enough to hide both guns. Untucked, most shirts are too long on me. It looked sloppy, but it did hide the guns if you weren't looking too close. The polo shirt was a little too close to the body not to show telltale lumps, though Edward had been thoughtful enough to bring my black suit jacket, which helped camouflage the lumps. Last time I'd been here with guns I'd had the police backing me, but now we were taking guns into a bar, very illegal in New Mexico. Strangely, it wasn't a big worry, but I did hope the cops didn't choose today for a raid.

I still had the wrist sheaths plus knives on my wrists. Ramirez had collected all my knives from the inferno and given them to Edward, who had scrubbed, cleaned, oiled, and sharpened them to an inch of their lives. I'd had to leave the big blade in the car because I couldn't figure out how to carry it concealed, and carrying what amounted to a small sword barehanded seemed a little too aggressive.

Edward had even given me an incendiary grenade for my jacket pocket. It helped balance out the derringer in my right hand pocket so that the jacket didn't swing too funny as I walked. The derringer had been his idea, too, though I had brought it with me from St. Louis. I wasn't sure I really needed it today, but I'd learned never to argue with Edward when he gave me a weapon. If he thought I might need it, I almost certainly would. Scary thought on the grenade, isn't it?

At some unknown signal, Olaf moved up and tried the bar door. It was locked. He knocked twice hard enough to rattle the door. He also stood right in front of the door. After staring down a sawed-off shotgun the last time I came to the bar, I might not have stood facing front at that black door. Either Olaf hadn't heard about the shotgun, or he didn't care. Maybe he was trying to be muy macho for my benefit or maybe for his own benefit. If he'd been more secure in himself, then he wouldn't have been so easy to piss off.

Even standing off to one side, the sound of the locks being drawn back was loud. Good, solid locks just from the sound of it. The door pushed open, slowly, showing a thick slice of darkness like a cave pressing against the sunlight. The door continued to push slowly open as if on its own power. Only at the very last did a large beefy arm come into view, spoiling the illusion.

Harpo stood in the doorway peering out at us, eyes hidden behind the same small black sunglasses he'd been wearing the first time I saw him. He had changed clothes, though. He was wearing a jean vest open over a very hairy chest and stomach. He looked more like a bear than a werewolf. He looked like a great big sleepy bear that had rolled out of bed, pulled on some clothes and rumbled out to the door. Even his otherworldly energy seemed dimmer than last time.

But he blocked the door with his bulk, and growled out, "Anita, but not the others."

I moved around Olaf, and he actually moved back so I could face Harpo. Either Olaf was being nicer, or he figured better me than him in the door. "Nicky said I could bring some friends."

Harpo peered down at me. "Looks like you need better friends."

I didn't touch the bruise. It wouldn't help. "Let's just say I was relying on police backup and they were late." Which was true, and I still wanted to know where the hell Ramirez had been while I'd been playing lone ranger. I like policemen, but I knew the comment would please Harpo.

It did. He smiled a quick baring of teeth that flashed wolf fangs in the thickness of his beard. He had definitely been spending too much time in wolf form. There was a low murmuring voice, male. Harpo turned to look over one massive shoulder towards the voice. Then he turned back to me. The smile was gone.

"Boss says you were invited but not the others."

I gave a very small shake of my head because a big one would have hurt. "Look, Nicky invited me here. He said I could bring friends. I brought them. I'm here before ten in the fucking morning. I came down here to talk about our common problem, not to be dicked around at the door."

"This ain't dicking around," Harpo said, hand cupping his groin. "I can show you dicking around."

I held up a hand. "Fine, my mistake for using the wrong word. I didn't come down here to be stopped at the door."

He was still rubbing himself, getting into it or trying to piss me off. He'd succeeded on the last. I was so not standing here with forty-plus stitches in my back watching some werewolf ape jack off before I'd even had coffee.

"I am too tired for this shit," I said.

He started to get a little body language into it, smiling at me.

I raised my voice so it would carry into the open door of the bar. "I am not going anywhere today without my friends here. If you're waiting for me to give in on that point, then we're wasting each other's time."

There was no answer from inside the bar. Harpo had gotten a little hip action into his show. I'd had enough. "When the monster sucks your life out, Nicky, don't worry. It doesn't really hurt. Have a nice day."

I turned to my friends. "They're not going to let us see Nicky."

Edward nodded. "Then let's go." He made a small motion, and Bernardo and Olaf moved off down the sidewalk. Edward lagged a little behind with me. I think we were both hoping that Harpo would call my bluff. Except it was only partially a bluff. We could have forced our way in there with weapons, but Nicky wouldn't talk at the end of a gun. I needed a dialogue, not an interrogation.

I started walking away. Edward fell into step behind me, but kept an eye on our backs. I wasn't flexible enough to do much back trailing without turning my entire body around which was awkward. Besides I trusted Edward to watch our backs.

I admit there was a tension between my shoulder blades, waiting for Harpo to come running out and say come back, let's talk. But he didn't. So I kept walking. Olaf and Bernardo were beside the Hummer waiting for Edward to unlock the doors.

We were actually getting in the car when Harpo appeared on the sidewalk and started to walk towards us. He looked unarmed, but not happy.

I sat in the seat, and closed the door. "Start the engine," I said.

Edward did what I told him.

Harpo started jogging towards us waving those big arms. Some shapeshifters run like their animal counterparts, all grace and God-given motion. Harpo was not one of those. He ran awkwardly, as if he hadn't done it in a while, at least not in human form. It made me smile.

"You just wanted to see him run," Edward said. "Petty."

"Yeah, it's petty. Fun though," I said.

He put the car in gear, and Harpo put on a burst of awkward speed. He got to the car as Edward was starting to pull away. He actually slammed a big meaty hand on the hood.

Edward stopped. My window glide down, and I looked up at Harpo. There was sweat beading on his naked chest. His breath came harsh and too quick. "Fuck," he said.

"Did you want something?" I asked.

"Boss says -- that you can all -- come inside." He was leaning his hands against the Hummer while he got his breath back.

"Okay," I said.

Edward pulled the car back into the curb, while Harpo moved so there was room. We all got back out of the car. Harpo was still not breathing right. "Aerobic exercise is the key to good cardiovascular health," I said, sweetly, as we waited for him to start walking back to the bar.

"Fuck you."

I thought about getting back in the Hummer, but I'd played the game as far as I was willing to go. I wanted to talk to Baco, but only with backup. Harpo had said I could do both. I'd achieved my goal. Anything else was pure childishness. I was feeling petty, but not that petty.

When he recovered, he was once again the sunglass-wearing muscle man, face impassive. He strode back, hands in loose fists, doing his best impression of a moving mountain of flesh. His otherworldly energy prickled along my skin. Just a whisper of power, as if it were leaking out without him meaning for it to. Which probably meant he was pissed. Strong emotions made it harder to hold all that vibrating energy inside.

None of us spoke on the short walk back. Men are usually not good at useless small talk or don't see a need for it, and I was just too busy concentrating on walking normally without giving away just how much it hurt to chitchat.

Harpo held the door for us. I glanced at Edward. He gave me blank eyes back. Fine. I walked inside and the others followed. Three days ago I'd have been nervous stepping into that dark with the vibrating energy of werewolves rising like an invisible tide. But that was three days ago, and there just wasn't that much fear left in me. My body hurt, but the rest of me was oddly numb. Maybe I'd finally crossed that line that Edward seemed to live behind. Maybe I'd never really feel anything again. When even that thought didn't scare me, I knew I was in trouble.