Chapter Fourteen

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Anita Blake belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and Laurell Hamilton.



Outside, the air boiled with heat.

Cherry and Nathaniel were there, in the alley, touching shoulders with Gregory and Vivian. The woman who was a wolf was standing nearby, though not with them, and was looking up and down the street. Damian stood, to one side of the door, the sword held against his leg.

Anne stepped onto the concrete, gravel and dirt sticking to the blood smeared on her bare feet. She still held the skin in her hands. Behind her came Warrick, then Zane, and then Rafael, who swung the door closed.

They were out of the Circus.

Cherry exhaled, a long, relieved exhalation as if she'd been holding her breath the whole time. “I thought,” she began to say, but then interrupted herself. “Did you...?”

Anne shook her head. “No. I only bumped into one other vampire and I guess she got back up after I left.”

The woman who was a wolf turned suddenly, frowning. “What vampire?”

“I don't know,” said Anne. “A woman. She looked like she worked out a lot.”

The woman's lips pulled back, for all the world in what looked like a snarl. “Liv.” There was hatred in her eyes. “She was going to rape me. She was going to go after Fernando.”

Oh. “Oh,” said Anne. Awkward. She paused. What did you say to that? “Well, next time I see her, I'll kill her for you.”

Anne felt them look at her, felt the woman's eyes on her face and Rafael's eyes on her back. Zane was exchanging glances with Cherry, worried glances, and Vivian's eyes were wide.

The woman's voice, when she spoke, was strange. “You offer me protection?”

That...was a weird way to phrase it. Gravely, each word weighted, as if there was some significance to them. Anne tried to think. “If you want me to. I mean, you're an adult, I know you can take care of yourself, I just—I...”

Now the woman was staring at her, this expression even weirder than before. Anne felt the hole widening under her feet.

“Look,” she said, “I'm sorry. I was talking without thinking. Never mind. I'm confident that you're capable of killing your own rapists...”

And it just kept getting worse. Anne closed her eyes, biting her tongue to keep from getting into more trouble.

The alley was very, very quiet.

“I'm really sorry,” she said finally, opening her eyes again. “It's just, my foot, it likes to live in my mouth. I'm going to stop talking now, OK?”

The look on the woman's face was...more confused than anything else. Anne felt that it was an accurate description of the look on her own face, and turned to Zane before she said something else horrifying.

“I want Gregory and Vivian to see a doctor,” she told him. “Can we do that?”

Zane hesitated, looking at Cherry, who was looking at Anne.

“Yes,” said Rafael. He came forward from the door, his bare feet quiet against the pavement. “There is a place.”

He looked at Anne, but he held out his hand to Zane.

Zane shifted his weight on his feet, looking at Anne and glancing at Rafael from the corners of his eyes. His head was lowered, his shoulders stiff. Balking. Unwilling.

“Zane,” said Anne quietly. He raised his head, met her eyes.

She smiled.

Zane pulled out his cell phone, put it into Rafael's hand, all without looking at the Rat King. He was staring at Anne, staring as if at something he was afraid would disappear if he looked away. It was an expression that hurt Anne to see, one that made something in her chest and something in her head ache at the same time. A look that felt familiar, a look that echoed in her head like a voice in an empty room.

She didn't want to see that look. On anybody.

She turned away.

“You should come with us,” she told the woman who was a wolf. “Just in case. Please?”

The woman frowned. Rafael was talking on the phone, was telling someone to send “three cars, to the Circus.” The woman's eyes came back to Anne from Rafael, and something changed in her expression.

The woman straightened, stretching her shoulders and arms, as if she were a dog or a wolf that had just gotten to her feet, and walked closer. The woman was nearly four inches taller than she was, Anne realized, and looked very fragile with her short, dark hair, her pale skin.

“My name's Sylvie,” she said, her voice loud, firm. “I'm the Geri of Thronos Rokke.”

And—something. Rafael stopped talking, looked up. Zane stepped forward, eyes narrowing, and Warrick tightened his grip on his hilt.

Damian was turning.

Anne smiled, trying to look as if she knew what Geri or Thronos Rokke meant. “Hi, Sylvie,” she said. “I'm Anne.”

Sylvie smiled back.

—and lunged.

Time slowed. Anne watched, detached, as Sylvie came toward her, arms out, hands spread. Her fingers—they were—they were growing, they were elongating, the nails sharpening into claws, her eyes gleamed a pale color they weren't supposed to be and her face was—

—her face—

—her claws—

—claws that were reaching for her arms—

—and Warrick was moving, Damian was raising his blade, they were moving toward her but so slowly, as if they were moving through water, a current against them, and Zane was baring his fangs, he was turning, reaching for Sylvie, and behind him, still near the door, Rafael was lowering the cell phone—

Anne opened her hands, letting the wrapped skin fall wetly to the ground, stepped forward, fast, into the circle of Sylvie's arms, reached up, and clamped her blood-smeared fingers onto Sylvie's neck—

—and time resumed, and everyone stopped, Sylvie's mouth open, her claws going wide, but Anne kept walking, closing in on the wall behind Sylvie and slamming her into it, keeping her grip on Sylvie's neck. Sylvie's head hit the wall with a thud, and her eyes rolled to show the white, but then she was choking again as Anne pushed up with her arm, bringing Sylvie off the ground completely and pinning her to the wall by only her neck.

Her claws slashed, desperate, but Anne only slapped them away with her free hand. When they came again, groping for Anne's stomach or throat, she broke those clawed hands at the wrists.

Sylvie struggled against the wall, hanging only from Anne's hand, her claws useless, and the alley was thick with heat and silence but for her strangled gasps. She gurgled, trying to catch at Anne's hand, her lips pulled back to show sharp, long teeth, the teeth of a meat-eater. Anne tightened her fingers, watched Sylvie's face whiten, watched the first shade of blue begin to touch the woman's lips.

And something inside Anne began to move.

“That was kind of rude, Sylvie,” said a voice, and Anne was vaguely shocked to realize that that voice, that calm, casual, completely normal voice, was her own.

Sylvie's eyes were wide, the pupils so small they were nearly swallowed by the pale color, and, as they met Anne's, beginning to be frightened.

“Anne,” someone was saying—no, pleading. Desperately. “Anne, please. Anne, she didn't mean anything. Anne, please.”

Anne...stopped.

Her grip on the throat weakened. Sylvie sucked in a short, inadequate gasp of air, choked, her lips blue-tinged. Her broken wrists dangled at her sides.

“Anne,” pleaded the same person, and it was Zane, Zane was next to her, Zane was touching her shoulders, he was pulling at her, though not very effectively. “Anne, she didn't mean anything. Don't kill her. Don't kill her!” There was dread in his voice.

Anne opened her hand.

Sylvie collapsed to the ground, gasping and coughing. Her throat was red and slick where Rafael's blood smeared it. She cringed away from them, pressing back into the wall.

Anne—couldn't understand.

She turned away. Zane turned with her, his arm loosely around her shoulders.

Warrick had stopped, only three or four steps away. Damian was behind them. Both of them had lowered their swords, and they were staring at her, unblinking, still, motionless as only corpses could be motionless, not even breathing. Behind them, Cherry, Nathaniel, Gregory, and Vivian had all backed into the opposite wall, huddled together, watching. Their faces, their hair, were damp with sweat.

Rafael stood beside the door, the cell phone in his hand, and he looked at her as if he'd never seen her before.

“Anne,” said Zane, his voice shaken. “Anne, she didn't mean anything. She didn't.”

She felt...numb. It was as if she could feel herself pulling back from the surface of her skin, retreating from the air.

Rafael's blood was hot and slippery on her skin.

What had just happened?

“But she attacked me,” Anne heard herself say, and the sound of her voice was bringing her back, made the distance between her and her skin shorten. “She was going for my throat.”

“She—” Zane stopped, hesitating, but it was too late. “She was trying to show her dominance to you,” he said, weakly. “She wouldn't have killed you. She just—she was just trying to see who was alpha.”

Rafael—his eyes were wide. He was staring, and so was Warrick, Damian, Gregory and Vivian. She could hear Sylvie's breathing begin to slow, heard her back scraping the wall as she struggled into a sitting position.

“Why?” asked Anne.

“Because,” said Zane, and he looked miserable, trying not look at anyone. “Because, you...you were offering her protection. That—that implied you were dominant to her, except she's Geri of Thronos Rokke, so—”

She was so sick of not understanding anything they said. “What's a Geri?” said Anne. “And what exactly does being alpha mean?”

Gregory—Gregory was making small, stifled noises. Zane looked wretched, nearly panicked.

The Rat King had thrown down the cell phone. He walked forward, his bare feet leaving bloody smudges on the concrete.

“Leopard,” said Rafael, and it wasn't exactly a growl, not exactly a hiss, but a thing of menacing teeth. “Explain this!”

Anne looked at him. The whites had gone out of Rafael's eyes. They were entirely filled with the expanding black of his pupil, the same sheer black of his hair.

A pitiless, inhuman black.

Warrick turned his head. It was only a small movement, but it caught at her eye, and she watched him look at her, watched him as he thought, as he considered, and as his lips pressed together.

Damian was closing his eyes.

Zane flinched, moved back. His hand on her arm was pleading.

“She,” he said, “she...”

What was going on? What was happening? Anne looked from Rafael to Warrick to Zane, and then behind her at Sylvie. Sylvie was still sitting against the wall, but the blue was gone from her lips. She was staring at Anne, mouth hanging open.

“Explain this,” said Rafael again, and the threat lowered his voice into something almost bestial.

Zane opened his mouth—

“She's new,” someone said.

They turned, nearly as one, to Cherry, the one who had blurted it out. Cherry's face flushed, and she leaned back, closer to Nathaniel.

“She's new,” she said, and her voice trembled under Rafael's look. “She's a baby. She...she hasn't been infected for longer than a week. Maybe only days. She...she doesn't know anything.” Her chin lifted. “I don't think she's even turned yet.”

Zane's mouth closed. His arm tightened around Anne's shoulders.

Warrick's eyes touched her as if he'd put his hand on her cheek.

Rafael stood, still, unmoving, and then, slowly, painstakingly, he turned to look at Anne.

He looked at her, his eyes black, inhuman, inexplicable.

He looked at her, and she felt Zane's fear crawl like sweat over her skin.