Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [892]
Someone rolled me over. Remus’s jigsaw face loomed out of the growing dimness. “Anita, Anita, can you hear me?”
I meant to say yes, but the world went black, and I was floating, and I couldn’t say anything to anyone.
55
I WOKE UP in the hospital. Not the human hospital, but the lycanthrope hospital. The building that the local shapeshifters keep for just such emergencies. If they’d taken me to the humans, then Asher might have ended up with an order of execution against him. The downside to going to the furry hospital was that the blood they used for transfusing wasn’t human blood. If you get the right blood type, humans can take in lycanthrope blood, and lycanthropes can take in human blood, but lycanthropes have trouble taking in blood that isn’t their strain of lycanthropy. Since I carry three, I was something of a problem. But since I was also O-negative, there wasn’t a lot of choice. It’s not the most common blood type around, especially in a small hospital like this one.
Doc Lillian won’t actually tell me what strain of lycanthropy she decided to add to my mix, or if she chose one that I already had. She thinks that if I know what it is, it could influence which beast wins. Since my mental process shouldn’t have anything to do with it, I have no idea what she’s babbling about, but she won’t give in, so come next full moon we’ll see if my mixed bag of furry picks a winner.
I slept off and on, and when I woke up again, Asher was sitting by my bed. I startled when I saw him, made a little gasp.
He looked away from me, letting all that long hair fall forward to hide his face completely. He wasn’t flirting, showing that perfect profile. He was just hiding. “You are afraid of me now.” His voice held regret like a light, persistent rain, one you know will go on all day.
I started to deny it, then stopped myself. Was I afraid of him? Yes. Yes, I was. But not for the reason he thought. I touched the bandage at my neck, and from the feel of it alone, I knew the bite wouldn’t be some polite pricking. He’d gotten carried away at my neck, as he had elsewhere. It wasn’t like collarbone-scar bad, or even the bend of my arm bad, but it wasn’t what the old vamps usually did. It felt like a rookie mistake under the bandages.
He stood, and the movement looked tired, weary. “I understand, Anita. I don’t blame you.”
Movement by the door drew my attention. There were guards at the door, and there hadn’t been when everyone else visited me. Remus was one of the guards. I remembered his face just as I passed out.
Asher started for the door.
“Don’t go,” I said, my voice hoarse.
He didn’t turn and look at me; he just stopped moving. He stood, motionless, waiting.
“Stay,” I said.
He risked a glance back at me, his eyes peering through the curtain of hair. The hair wasn’t artfully messy, it was just tangled and spilled over his face, as if he hadn’t bothered to touch it.
I stared at him, that tall figure. He usually had perfect posture, but tonight his broad shoulders were rounded, slumped in defeat. It was as if he were hunched from the cold. I knew that wasn’t it; the dead don’t feel the cold, much.
“I know you cannot forgive me, but I had to see you. I had to see you…” His words trailed off. He reached out with those graceful hands that tonight had lost all their grace to his grief.
I wanted to reach out to him, to offer my hand, but I was afraid of what would happen if he touched me. I wasn’t afraid he would turn into some ravenous monster. I was afraid that I would. I’d almost died, and all I could think was, Isn’t he beautiful, isn’t he sad. I wanted to comfort him, hold him. He said I couldn’t forgive him; he was wrong. I had forgiven him, but it wasn’t a conscious thing. It was as if the sight of him just made it impossible to be angry with him. That wasn’t right. That was vampire mind tricks.
“Why the guards?” I asked, finally, because I didn’t know what