Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [760]
“Jesus, did Meng Die really do all that?”
“Yes.” He said that, and no more. Requiem rarely gave just a one-word answer to anything. He came toward us, the cloak flying out behind him, which said he was moving faster than that gliding walk appeared.
“Ma petite, if you could fetch scissors from the bathroom drawer, we can look at his wounds.”
I did it without being asked. I’d noticed the bruises last night, but hadn’t seen all the bandages under his shirt. I had had no idea how hurt he was. I hesitated in the bathroom with the scissors in my hand. I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I looked sort of startled. Had he really dumped Meng Die because of me? Dumped another woman on the off chance that I might take him as a pomme de sang? I stared at myself in the mirror and just didn’t see a woman who could make a man dump someone on the possibility of sex. Elinore, maybe, but me…I just didn’t think so.
I went back to the other room, and found Requiem sitting on the bed beside Jean-Claude, who was turning his face to the light, checking his bruises.
Requiem was talking as I entered. “…she said, if she could not have my pretty face on her pillow, then no one would have it.”
Someone had brought one of the chairs by the fireplace so Elinore could sit and not be on the bed. “So she tried to ruin your face,” she said, softly.
“Yes,” he said, in that strangely clipped voice that wasn’t at all his usual.
I held the scissors out to Jean-Claude. He took them and laid them on the bedside table. “I think perhaps we can take off the tape, if you will help me, ma petite?”
I had to move Requiem’s cloak where he’d draped it on the end of the bed. The bed was tall enough that I had to make certain I was sitting far enough back from the edge so I wouldn’t slide off. Silk coverlet, silk robe, makes for slippery. I took Requiem’s hand in mine. The bandages wrapped around his hand, and up nearly to the elbow. “You didn’t get this from her hitting you,” I said.
“She had a blade,” he said, and again, his voice was clipped and to the point.
I looked up at him, and even the uninjured half of his face showed me nothing. He was lovely and empty like Jean-Claude was sometimes. Like looking at a painting of some handsome prince come back from battle. Even as I cradled his arm in my hands, he was as distant and remote as if he’d been hanging on a museum wall.
Jean-Claude was already peeling tape from around Requiem’s chest. I bent over his arm and worked on the tape there, holding his hand in mine while I started unwinding the gauze. His hand was crisscrossed with shallow and not-so-shallow slashes. I raised his hand as gently as I could, so I could keep unwrapping. The bandages fell away and I made a sound; I couldn’t help it. I put my hand at his hand and elbow, and lifted, gently. His forearm was a mass of slashing wounds. Two of them needed stitches.
I looked at his face, and he met my eyes, and for an instant there was a flash of anger in those eyes; then it went back to being empty.
“These are defensive wounds. You held your arm up in front of your face, because that’s what she was going for.”
“Not entirely, ma petite.” Jean-Claude’s voice drew me back to him, and Requiem’s now bare chest. I let out a hiss of breath, because he was right. His pale, muscular chest didn’t have as many wounds as his arm, but the ones he did have were deeper.
I traced the one under the sternum. It was deep, and I could see the mark of the blade in his flesh. I looked up at him, and it must have shown on my face.
“So shocked, Anita, why?”
“She was trying for your heart. She was really trying to kill you.”
“I told you that last night, ma petite.”
“I know you said she was trying to kill him, but…” I traced my fingers just above another wound that went between his ribs. The stab wounds were well placed. She’d tried to hack his face, and the marks on the arm showed that she