Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [1004]
I held out my hand to Micah, not because of otherworldly energy, apparently depression dampens that, but because I wanted the touch of another hand. I wanted the comfort, and I didn’t want to have to think about it. I just wanted to be held.
He widened his eyes, but took my hand, squeezing it gently. I started walking towards the trees, leading him by the hand. The others followed us. Even the swan king and the wererats. Anita Blake, preternatural pied piper. The thought should have made me smile. But it didn’t.
28
TWO HOURS LATER I’d had a shower and Gregory had had a bath, though I’d showered by myself, and Gregory had had company. He still didn’t have complete use of his arms and legs. I didn’t think that Cherry, Zane, and Nathaniel needed to get naked and in the tub with him, but, hey, I wasn’t offering to help, so who was I to complain? Besides, it never became sexual; it was as if the touch of their flesh on his was necessary, part of the healing process. Maybe it was.
I was sitting at my new kitchen table. My old two-seater table just hadn’t been roomy enough for all the wereleopards to have bagels and cream cheese at the same time. The new table was pale pine, varnished to a golden glow. There still wasn’t enough room at the table for everyone to sit and drink coffee, but it was closer. I’d have needed a banquet table to have that much room, and the kitchen wasn’t long enough for it. There was more than one reason that feudal lords had had great big castles—you needed the room just to feed and care for all your people.
The only person sitting in the dimly lit kitchen was Dr. Lillian. Elizabeth had been transported to the secret hospital that the shapeshifters kept in St. Louis. All my other leopards were tending to Gregory. Micah and his cats wandered around the periphery of it all. Caleb had tried to include himself in the bath and had been refused. The rest of Micah’s pard seemed unsettled, nervous, not knowing what to do with themselves. I had my priority for the evening—taking care of Gregory. Everything else could wait. One disaster at a time, or you lose your way, and your mind.
Dr. Lillian was a small woman with gray hair cut straight just above her shoulders. Her hair was longer than the first time I met her, but everything else was the same. I’d never seen her wear makeup, and her face still looked pleasant and attractive in a fifty-plus sort of way—though I’d discovered she was actually well over sixty. She certainly didn’t look it.
“The drugs are still in his system,” Dr. Lillian said.
“Drugs, plural?” I asked.
She nodded. “Our metabolism is so fast that it takes quite a cocktail of chemicals to keep us sedated for any length of time.”
“Gregory wasn’t sedated. He seemed very much aware of everything that was happening,” I said.
“But his heart, his breathing, his involuntary reflexes were all subdued. If you can’t access the full effects of an adrenaline rush, you can’t change shape.”
“Why not?’
Lillian shrugged, taking a small sip of her coffee. “We don’t know, but there is something in the extremes of the fight or flight response that opens the way for our beast. If you can deprive a shapeshifter of that response, then you can keep them from shifting.”
“Indefinitely?” I asked.
“No, the full moon will bring it on, no matter what drugs you pump into someone.”
“How long until Gregory’s back to normal?”
Her eyes flicked downward, then up, and I didn’t like that she’d needed that second to school her eyes, as if something bad were coming.
“The drugs will probably wear off in about eight hours, maybe more, maybe less. It depends on so many things.”
“So he stays here until the drugs wear off, then he shapeshifts and he’s fine, right?” I put a lilt at the end, making it a question, because I knew the atmosphere was too serious for it to be that easy.
“I’m afraid not,” she said.
“What’s wrong, doc, why so solemn?”
She gave a small smile. “In eight