the line that descended from Belle Morte, Beautiful Death, but anger, that was mine. The anger came to me as if it were a warm shower to touch and caress my skin. It felt so good to feed on it, to draw in all that rage. I had a moment of feeling that I had a choice whether to swallow it, or use it to be angry myself. That was new; usually it was just food. I “ate” the anger, letting it soak into me.
Alex stared up at me, still on the floor, on his knees, one arm braced. “What just happened?” he asked. His energy had completely changed; he felt normal, felt like himself.
“I ate your anger. Why are you so pissed?”
“I have no idea.”
Movement made me look back at Ethan. He shuddered with the pipe halfway out of his side. That one movement let me know how hurt he was. Yes, he’d heal if it wasn’t silver, but that didn’t stop having a pipe shoved through your side from hurting like hell. I couldn’t imagine trying to drag my body down it. I was thinking about it too hard, and my stomach clenched with nausea.
“What do you mean you have no idea, Alex?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. He looked up at me, and then called out, “George, come help us.” I turned and found another guard in the white T-shirt and khaki pants that passed as their uniform. His short, thick hair was the traditional deep, almost-black red, his eyes like orange and yellow pinwheels of fire. There was a slight gold tinge that just added to the exotic effect that some of the reds had.
“My prince,” he said, and literally dropped to one knee, his fist coming back to touch his chest. I raised an eyebrow at that, because I’d never seen anything that formal at any of the other clans. It was like medieval formal.
“Help Ethan.”
“As my prince wills,” George said, and stood.
I heard a gasp of pain behind me, and the sound of a body falling. I turned to find Ethan on the floor, on his knees, his hands catching him from falling. His skin was almost gray and beaded with sweat from the pain and shock. But even as I watched, the blood flow was lessening. His body was beginning to heal itself. A wave of relief that I hadn’t known I needed swept through me. It wasn’t that Ethan meant that much to me yet, but getting him killed for plain stupid jealousy would have just been so unfair.
George, the guard, was only partway to Ethan when the anger came back. One minute Alex was standing, wiping the blood off his face, his usual calm self, and the next he was snarling and hit the wounded man twice before Ethan could defend himself. They came up off the floor in a snarling, pounding mass.
I tried to eat the rage again, but it was as if I slid off it. I couldn’t reach the anger. Something was blocking me. The men began to beat on each other in a snarling, pounding mass.
I turned to the guard. “Stop them.”
“If my prince wishes to discipline him, it is not my place to interfere.”
“Seriously?” I asked.
George gave a little smile, shrugged, and said, “Seriously, I’m not crossing the Red Queen just for Ethan.”
“You are a useless piece of shit,” I said.
He frowned at me. “‘Off with your head’ isn’t just for
I had a second to think about the fact that this Red Queen beheaded her guards for disobedience, and then the fight took all our attention. If Ethan had been well, he’d have just kicked Alex’s ass; it showed in the fact that he was beginning to win even as hurt as he was. Alex was strong, fast, in good shape, but his day job was as a reporter. He had a chance to hit the gym and probably even took some kind of fighting class, but Ethan did nothing but train. He did nothing but make himself a better fighting machine, and as his body began to knit together, he began to hit back with more force, block more of Alex’s blows. It was the difference between an amateur and a professional in a fight; unless the amateur gets lucky early, he will lose.
Alex took another hit to the face and it spun him around. He tried to turn back, but Ethan kicked out and took his knee. I heard the meaty pop of it. Alex screamed and went down. Ethan kicked him in the face. Blood sprayed, and the screaming stopped. Alex fell to the floor unconscious. If he’d been human I’d have worried about a broken neck, but he wasn’t human; no one in the room was, not really. And yeah, I included myself on that list.
Ethan turned toward us, his breathing harsh. His chest rose and fell with it. The sick sweat had turned into just sweat. He wiped at the blood still on his side, and the wound was almost closed.
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,
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.
