Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [1109]
I met her eyes, but it took effort. “I’d do a lot, but I wouldn’t betray anyone.”
The tears started slowly down her face, as if she were fighting not to cry. “He tortured Micah because Micah refused to help lure you into the ambush. Chimera is going to kill him, because he says that Micah is no longer his cat, but yours, that the wiles of a woman have won his loyalty.” She sobbed, and the movement must have hurt, because she bent forward, body spasming. I caught her by the arms to keep her from falling.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, “it hurts.”
My throat was tight. I held her elbows until she could stand again.
“I’m Chimera’s message to you, Anita. He says he’ll do this to your leopard if you don’t come back with us.”
“You’re not going back there,” I said.
“He still has Cherry and Micah. If I don’t go back he’ll do this to her. I don’t think she’d survive it.” I understood what Gina meant. Not Cherry’s body, but her mind.
She began to collapse towards the floor, slowly, me supporting her as gently as I could. “Micah knew what would happen to him when he refused to help trap you, but he still did it.” She was on her knees now, her hands gripping my arms tight, tight enough to hurt. “I would have lied and agreed to do anything to keep this from happening to me.” She sobbed again, and I held her arms to keep her from falling backwards onto her back on the floor. I held her while she shook in pain, and when she quieted, she said, in a voice more tears than noise, “I would have betrayed anyone to stop him from hurting me. But he didn’t want anything from me. Nothing I could say, or do, would stop it. Chimera promised Micah that only he would suffer for refusing, then once he was chained up and couldn’t get away they brought me in and made him watch.” She looked at me, eyes wide, full of awful things. “Chimera would have made Cherry or me take animal form. He said he’d never had a female beast before.”
“That’s what he calls those of us trapped between forms,” Zeke said.
Gina’s fingers dug into my arm, just a little. “Micah took our place. He’s alpha enough to have kept human form. He risked his human form for us. Merle was our Nimir-Raj but he wouldn’t risk his humanity for us. Micah took his place, our place. He’s our Nimir-Raj because he loves us, all of us. Micah offered to betray you to stop them from hurting me, but Chimera said he could smell that Micah was lying and that he would just get away and warn you. So he sent me with Zeke, because he trusts Zeke.”
I looked at Zeke over her slowly collapsing form, trying to cradle her as she slid down, and not hurt her, but everything seemed to hurt. She was making small mewling sounds by the time I helped her lower herself to the floor. There was something in Zeke’s human eyes that didn’t need facial expressions to interpret.
“Chimera must be stopped,” Zeke said, softly. “He must be stopped.”
“Yes,” I said, still holding one of Gina’s hands, “yes, he must be stopped.”
“Stopped, hell,” Bobby Lee said, “we need to kill his ass.”
I nodded. “That, too.”
64
WE MADE IT back to the club with a little time to spare. The wererats had arrived in force at my house, and I’d left Rafael in charge of the rescue, because that’s what it would be. I was letting Zeke take me into the bad guy’s lair unarmed. Zeke would be carrying my weapons, and theoretically he’d give them back to me if I needed them, theoretically. But theory and practice aren’t always the same thing. Zeke had tried to kill me once; now I was supposed to trust him with my life. It seemed a bad idea, but I was still going to do it. With enough time maybe we could have come up with a better plan, but we didn’t have the time. Not if