Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [35]
I put my gun back in its holster. “Yeah, I know.” I couldn’t kill her, because she wasn’t trying to kill Asher, but I would not stand here and watch him be tortured. I would not, could not, do it. I’d once thought that arm wrestling vampires was a bad idea. She was stronger than me, even with Jean-Claude’s marks, but I was also betting she wasn’t trained in hand-to-hand fighting. If I was wrong, I was about to get my ass kicked. If I was right, well, we’d see.
9
MUSETTE MADE NO move to protect herself. Angelito stayed with the other men across the room. It was as if neither of them saw me as a threat. You’d think with my reputation, vampires would stop underestimating me. But dead or alive, there are always fools.
I could feel myself smiling, and I didn’t need a mirror to know that it wasn’t a nice smile. It was the smile I got when I’d been pissed off too much and I’d finally decided to do something about it.
Musette made a big show of licking the knife clean, while Asher stood in front of her and bled. She licked it like a kid with a Popsicle on a hot day—got to lick carefully, but quickly, or it drips down your hand, and you lose some of it. Her eyes were all for me, the show was all for me. It was as if Asher didn’t matter at all to her. Maybe he didn’t.
She had actually turned back to plunge the blade home a third time, when I was within touching distance. I don’t know what she thought I planned to do, because she seemed totally surprised when I grabbed her hand. Maybe she expected me to fight like a girl, whatever the hell that means.
I pushed my shoulder into her, and she tottered backwards on her high heels. I hooked my heel behind hers, and foot swept her leg out from under her. She fell backwards, because I helped. I rode her body down to the ground, turning the knife in her hand with mine, and when she hit the floor, I plunged the knife home. I leaned my knee into the back of our hands and felt the blade come out the back of her body.
I whispered to her, “It’s not silver, you’ll heal.”
She screamed.
I didn’t so much hear Angelito move as feel him. “If you come over here, Angelito, I will force this blade up into her heart, and it won’t matter if it’s silver, or if it’s not. I’ll shred her heart before you can cross the room.”
The far drapes opened and vampires spilled into the room, some ours, some hers. I don’t know what would have happened, but I heard the far door open, behind the drapes. I heard a lot of movement, and I almost tore the blade up through her, not at all sure the metal was strong enough to take the strain. With a better blade I could have dug for her heart, with this one I wasn’t sure.
A split second before I tried it, I heard a sound that raised the hair on my arms. The sound of hyenas hunting. It’s a hell of a lot creepier than the howl of a wolf, but that joined with it. I knew the moment I heard the noises that it was our calvary coming, not Musette’s.
I didn’t look behind, because I didn’t dare take my eyes off the vampire I had pinned to the floor. But I felt the crowd surge behind me, felt the neck-ruffling power of shape-shifters filling the room like an electric cloud.
The touch of so many of them with such tension called my own beast like a snake in my gut to writhe and flow inside my body. I wasn’t a shape-shifter, but through Richard and my tie to the wereleopards, I had the closest thing a human being could have to their very own private beast.
It was Bobby Lee, who was actually a wererat, that came forward enough for me to see him. His southern drawl always sounded so out of place in a fight. “You planning to kill her?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
He knelt on one knee beside us. “You think that