Anita Blake 22 - Affliction (33 page)

‘Ares, can you hear me?’

‘Yes,’ but his voice had that edge of growl to it.

‘Ten minutes, hold on for ten minutes and then they’ll land.’

‘I don’t think … not sure.’

‘Hold on, we’ll get you out of here, but you gotta hold on.’

He writhed again, and I had to pry my hand out of his, or he was going to break me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and then he screamed again, but the scream ended in a gibbering howl.

Lawrence backed up and had only his little seat to go to. The pilot looked behind at us but spoke through the headset, because of the noise. ‘What the hell was that?’

‘We need to land,’ I said.

‘We got nothing for another seven minutes.’

Ares yelled, ‘Anita!’

I moved back where he could see me more easily, but didn’t offer my hand to hold. ‘I’m here.’

‘Shoot me.’

‘What?’

‘Shoot me, before I shift.’ He writhed on the stretcher, and screamed in pain again, and then said, ‘There’s nowhere for you to run in here.’

‘Seven minutes, just seven minutes, hold on.’

He screamed, and the gibbering call filled his throat. ‘I will attack you. I will not be me … I can feel it. Oh, God! God! Shoot me!’ He turned wild eyes to Lawrence, pointed at him. ‘Shoot me!’

Lawrence shook his head. ‘I’m here to save your ass, not kill it.’

‘Anita!’

‘I’m here, Ares.’

‘Don’t let him … use me … like this …’ And he just started screaming over and over again as fast as he could draw breath. His body began to jerk and convulse. I could see the muscles and ligaments under his skin popping and moving in ways that they were never meant to move. He was fighting the change, which meant it was slower and a lot more painful. He was trying to give us time.

Lawrence asked, ‘Does it always hurt this much?’

I shook my head. ‘He’s fighting it.’

‘To give us time,’ he said.

I nodded. ‘Can you move the other men farther away from him?’

‘To where?’ he asked.

He was right. There was nowhere to go. Travers was trapped above Ares, and the third wounded man whose name I hadn’t even caught was strapped in the middle of it all. Shit, shit, shit!

The screaming gave way to that skin-crawling gibbering, laughing sound. Fur flowed, bones shifted, and it was as if some giant hand crushed the human form and remade it by pulling it apart. I’d never seen anyone change like this, as if they were being dissected and put back together. It wasn’t just clear liquid that ran out of Ares. Blood poured from his body and spattered across the inside of the chopper as he fought to hold on. They only bled like that when they fought the change. Blood was hitting the man on the floor of the chopper, and I had a moment to worry about the lycanthrope blood getting in his wounds and then we had other things to worry about.

Ares popped the straps that held his body down and tried to sit up, but there wasn’t room with Travers above him. He rolled so his back was to us and the blankets they’d put on him and the shadows hid most of him. We could still see the muscles and bones of his body moving under the blanket like a nest of snakes. I heard the copilot on the radio yelling, ‘Mayday Mayday Mayday!’

Lawrence strapped himself into the seat. I stayed standing, got a death grip on the edge of one of the stretchers, and used the other hand to unholster my Browning BDM. Yeah, the AR or the shotgun would be a surer kill, but they would also go through Ares and through the helicopter. The Browning would just shoot a hole in Ares. I didn’t want to do that, but I’d had the air marshal training so I could carry on planes, and they’d covered helicopters. They didn’t like being shot, even more than airplanes. No matter what the movies showed on screen, damage the rotor blades and it’s coming down. You damage the motor and it’s coming down. Planes could fly on only one engine, or glide with no engines for a while; once the blades stopped rotating, helicopters just crashed. If I was going to have to shoot Ares anyway, I’d just as soon not kill us all while I did it.

The Black Hawk shuddered and started down. The pilot yelled, ‘I found a clearing, but it’s gonna be tight. Strap in!’

I debated on sitting down and strapping in, but I wasn’t sure I could shoot Ares before he took out the pilot and copilot. The space was that tight. I had assured them that he wouldn’t lose it in the air, and I had been wrong, so I stood between them and what was lying on the stretcher in the dark. A low, evil growl trickled through the cabin.

I tightened my grip, braced my legs as best I could, and aimed into the shadowed pile that was Ares. The only comfort I had was that in hyena form Ares was too big to move well in the close space. What made it a nightmare for us made it harder for him, too, or that was what I told myself as I felt something hit the bottom of the copter.

Lawrence yelled, ‘Treetops!’

Now that I knew what was happening, I heard and felt the trees hitting the bottom of the copter. I felt the pilot fighting to make a very tight landing. We could skim a few trees as long as the blades weren’t compromised. We shuddered, and I could hold on with one hand, but I couldn’t keep my feet. I fought to not fall onto the third wounded man and tried to be ready to aim at Ares if I had to. He rolled over and tried to spill out, but he was trapped for a second between Travers’s weight on top of him and the frame of the stretcher below him. I had a second to see the werehyena like a pale furred nightmare pressed in the space. I was still half-fallen, only one hand keeping me from the floor, and every angle I had risked Travers just above him.

Lawrence yelled, but I didn’t have time to look at him. I had to find a better angle. But the hyena pushed forward with all the power he had, cracking the stretcher underneath him and raising up Travers’s stretcher, and the hyena scrambled free and went for Lawrence across from him. He’d gotten his gun out, because it fired before mine did. I got him in the chest, but I knew it wasn’t a kill.

I heard Lawrence scream. I was left half-straddling the wounded man on the floor, pushing my gun into the furred body, and fired twice more, but I was just hitting midbody; I didn’t have a kill! But apparently I’d irritated him, because he turned and came for me, his weight in the small space pinning me to the wounded man below. I saw the huge bloody jaws, the mad eyes, and I fired into that mouth, as two more guns sounded. I felt like someone had hit me in the side with a baseball bat hard enough to knock the breath out of me, but I knew if I didn’t kill the thing on me I’d never get another breath.

An arm showed, and the hyena bit the hand, gun and all. Blood poured over my face, and there was screaming. There was a bump hard enough that it jarred, and we were on the ground. Someone fell into us, and the hyena pushed off me and tore into the man. I thought it was Lawrence, but someone opened the big door on his side, and wasn’t that Lawrence, too—

I was trapped underneath the hyena’s hindquarters; he was literally sitting on me. I emptied the Browning into what I could reach of him. Even if it wasn’t a kill it should have hurt, crippled, but the next thing I knew he was pushing off me and gone.

I pulled myself to sitting and saw Lawrence collapsed in the doorway, his shoulder torn away so badly that it had pulled the jugular vein out with it. He was dead, or dying. I saw lights and a house. We’d landed in a fucking neighborhood and Ares was out there with families, kids – Fuck!

I looked back at the pilot and copilot, but the pilot was putting a tourniquet on the copilot. His hand had been the one torn away, his blood all over my face, mostly.

I made myself move, made myself get to the big door. I dropped the Browning and swung the AR around on its strap and looked for Ares. I didn’t expect to see him, thought he’d be long gone, but he was too gone in bloodlust to pass up prey. There was a car in the driveway of the house with children white-faced at the windows, and a woman half-crouched, hair and clothing blown back from the helicopter’s blades that were only now slowing, spinning slowly down. I wasn’t sure she’d seen the big hyena, but the kids had. It was one of those crystalline moments when everything slows down. You have the illusion that you have all the time in the world. Individual details stand out like they are carved jewel-bright, hard-edged. I saw the children in the car start to scream. I saw the woman shielding her eyes from the dust and debris of the blades, as they slowed and stopped above me. I saw the hyena, his fur shining with blood, start to run toward the woman. I raised the AR to my shoulder, snugged it tight, hit the optics switch, and lit up the hyena’s hindquarters. I fired and the 6.8 ammo turned the beast, took his back legs out from under him. He whirled and turned. He looked at me, and it wasn’t an animal’s look. He turned and started to run away from the woman, away from the children, toward the woods that edged the yard. If he got into the trees we’d lose him.

I used the side of the now-still chopper to steady me; I didn’t still my breath, I stopped breathing. I heard Ares’ voice in my head from the shooting range. He was a sniper. I did most of my shooting within twenty-five to fifty yards. The hyena was more than a hundred yards away and still moving, shot to hell and still moving well. A hundred, a hundred and fifty yards, it didn’t matter, the head was there, I had it in my optics, just like he’d shown me. ‘Lead the target, where’s the wind.’ I always had trouble with wind. I pulled the trigger.

The hyena somersaulted and fell into a pool of darkness on the edge of the woods. I had to know, had to be sure. I stumbled out of the Black Hawk. My side wasn’t right, numb, and it seemed like it took a long time to cross the yard with the AR held at the ready at my shoulder. There was a spotlight sweeping over me, following me. I heard another helicopter, but I kept my eyes on the place where he’d fallen.

The pilot was beside me now, his own rifle at his shoulder. He said something, but I couldn’t understand it. The spotlight stayed with us so that the harsh white light showed Ares lying in the grass. He was human again, but it looked like he’d been decapitated. Fingerprints, fingerprints would be the way they’d ID him, because it was too late for dental.

I stood over what was left of him and let the AR swing back on its strap. I dropped to my knees beside him. The pilot asked, ‘Are you hurt?’

I shook my head and then I realized my side hurt. I put my hand down and came away with fresh blood. ‘Fuck,’ I said.

‘You’re hit,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I am.’ I slid slowly to the grass and was on my back staring up at the second helicopter and its spotlight. It was a news chopper. We were going to be live on the local news. Fuck, again.

The pilot was back with the med kit. He was holding pressure on the wound low in my side. I was betting it was the copilot’s bullet when he’d been shooting down at the hyena. Damn friendly fire.

I looked at the body just a few feet away. I looked at the man just a few feet away. I looked at Ares just a few feet away. I looked at what was left of Ares. I looked at what my bullet had done to him. He’d have been so impressed that I made the shot. He’d have been so proud that he’d finally taught me to read wind direction. I might have even let him believe I’d calculated the wind that fast, but I hadn’t. The truth was I still couldn’t read wind direction and make the change in a long shot, but I wouldn’t have told him that. It was a guy thing, and for some reason that made me start to cry. I heard the distant
whoop-whoop
of ambulance sirens. The pilot pressed too hard, and I half rose up, saying, ‘Ow, damn it,’ but it was too much movement. The night swam in streamers of color and shadow, and when the darkness reached up to swallow the world I didn’t fight it.

The quiet murmur of voices woke me. I tried to move my arm and something pulled. I opened my eyes and found an IV in my left arm. It was taped down to a board, which meant it wasn’t the first time I’d tried to move the arm while I was unconscious. The monitor’s light seemed brighter than it should have in the darkened room, but it beeped slow and steady by the bed with its metal rails.

‘Oh, good, you’re awake.’ The nurse smiled down at me. Her voice was lower than usual for a nurse, and as if she’d read my thoughts she said, ‘Your fiancé finally fell asleep on the couch. Poor boy.’

I looked where she was looking on the far side of the room and found there was a small table with two chairs, and a couch. Micah was asleep on it with a small pillow and a blanket that covered most of him. His face looked pale and his curls like a dark halo where they were escaping from his braid. He looked younger, more fragile lying there.

I whispered, ‘How’s his dad? Sheriff Callahan?’ My voice sounded rough, and my throat was dry. Since I was getting fluids through the IV, it meant I’d been out a while.

‘As good as can be expected,’ she said, but busied herself with taking my pulse and shoved a thermometer under my tongue before she moved enough that I could see there was someone sitting in a chair by my bed. It was just as well I couldn’t talk, because I would have yelled, ‘Edward!’

His blond hair was still cut neat and short, as it had been the whole time I’d known him. His eyes were a pale blue, cold as winter skies, his expression almost empty right now, because it was just me looking at him, but he was sitting like his alter ego. He had one ankle on the opposite knee, showing off the rich blue of his jeans and the paler wear marks along the seams, and the cowboy boots with their scrollwork, brown on brown. A white cowboy hat sat on his knee; its brim was creased and folded just right by constant wear. It had aged to a nice ivory, in contrast to the white of his button-down shirt. The sleeves were rolled up over strong forearms; his marshal badge was on a lanyard around his neck, which meant he wasn’t Edward right now; he was Ted Forrester, fellow U.S. Marshal attached to the Preternatural Branch. Ted was Clark Kent to Edward’s Superman, or maybe supervillain. He was pretty much a full-time marshal now, but when I’d met him his Ted Forrester had been a legal vampire executioner just like me, but as Edward he’d been a very pricey assassin. He specialized in shapeshifters and vampires, because humans had become too easy a prey, and he was bored. I was still a little fuzzy on how much the government knew about Edward, as opposed to Ted, but it was on a case with Edward where I first heard the name Van Cleef and met some of the other people who’d trained, or were trained by, him. Edward would never talk about it much.