Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [1114]
Chimera’s voice came out of the darkness. “Shut up, shut the fuck up!”
The man stopped screaming almost instantly, but his breath came in whimpers, as if he had to make some sound.
“Anita,” Chimera said. “Anita, where are you?”
Even he couldn’t see in the pitch blackness, and the smell of blood, sweat, and flesh masked my odor apparently. Great, he didn’t know where I was. I wished I could think of something good to do with that information. But I just lay in the dark on the foul floor, my hand in the pool of cooling blood, another drop of fresh, warm blood hitting my cheek, and did nothing. All I had to do was stall until the cavalry arrived. I’d tried talking to Chimera and that hadn’t worked so well. I’d try silence.
“Anita, Anita, answer me.”
I didn’t answer. If he wanted to find me he could damn well turn on the light. I thought I wanted some light. But then I thought maybe I didn’t really want to see what hung above me in this room. Maybe it would be one of those sights that blasts the mind, one you never really recover from. But I badly wanted to see something, almost anything. I lay in the dark, the way I used to huddle under the sheets as a child, afraid of the dark, afraid of what I could not see.
“Answer me, Anita!” He screamed it this time, voice harsh.
A male voice from above me. “Answer him if you can, you don’t want him angry with you.”
Another man gave a sound like a choking laugh. It sounded thick, as if there were blood in his mouth and throat.
The dark was suddenly full of voices saying, “Answer him, answer him.” It was like the wind had found a voice and was giving me instructions in the dark.
Another drop of blood fell on my cheek and began to slide slowly down my skin. I didn’t wipe it off. I didn’t move. I was afraid any movement would let Chimera know where I was, and I didn’t want that.
“Shut up!” Chimera yelled, and I heard him move farther into the room. The voices above me fell silent. But I could still feel them hanging there like weight above me, like a rock ceiling pressing down on me. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly. My claustrophobia was trying to scream in my head that I couldn’t breathe, but it was a lie. The dark did not have weight to it; that was the fear talking. If Chimera wanted to let me lie in the dark for the next hour until help arrived, I’d let him. I would not panic. It wouldn’t help anything for me to start crawling frantically across the floor with feet brushing my back. If I did that, I would start screaming, and I wouldn’t stop for a long, long time.
The blood oozed along my neck into my hair, and I kept my eyes closed and concentrated on breathing shallow, quiet.
“Answer me, Anita, or I will start cutting on the men hanging above you,” Chimera said. His voice was closer, but not too close. He was still outside the forest of hanging bodies.
I still didn’t answer.
“You don’t believe me? Let me prove it to you.”
A man screamed, high, piteous, hopeless.
“Don’t,” I said.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t hurt them.”
“They’re nothing to you, not your animal, not your friend. Why do you care?”
“Orlando King knows the answer to your question.”
“I’m asking you,” Chimera said.
“You already know the answer,” I said.
“No, no! Orlando knows the answer. I don’t. I don’t understand. Why do you care about strangers?” The other man screamed again.
“Stop it, Chimera.”
“Or what?” he asked. “What will you do if I don’t stop? What will you do if I stand here in the dark and cut pieces off this man? How will you stop me?”
The man was shrieking, “No, don’t, not that, nooo!” The scream fell off, which meant the man was either dead, or he’d fainted. I hoped he’d fainted, but either way I couldn’t do much about