Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [531]
She came at me slower, in a limping run. I was out of ideas. One thing I knew: If she touched me with those claws or that mouth, I might be a lupa for real next month. Time was in that crystalline run, slow and fast, slow and glitteringly fast. I thought of several things to do and wouldn’t be fast enough to do any of them. But I’d go down trying.
Richard was yelling, “No claws, Roxanne, no claws.”
I don’t think Roxanne heard him. She swiped at me with those monstrous claws, and I ducked under the swinging arm. I ducked blows that were too fast to see, avoided her like I knew where she’d be. It was Richard, the marks, but it was too confusing, too new for me to be able to fight with it. I could use it to avoid her, but only for so long.
I ended up on my back, on the floor, pointing the Firestar up at her. She was coming with claws and teeth, and I was out of options.
The door burst open, and Verne yelled, “Roxanne, no!” I felt his power crash through the room like the lid on a boiling pot, something thrown over the heat, to hold it, contain it, but it didn’t stop it.
Ben and Roland were suddenly hanging onto Roxanne, dragging her back from me. If Verne had given an order to them, I hadn’t heard it. Roxanne was cutting them up, slicing their arms open, and they were taking it.
Verne was still yelling, “I lied, Roxanne. I lied. She didn’t proposition me.”
Roxanne went very still in their arms. She spoke around that only partly human mouth, “What did you say?”
Lucy came in behind Verne, through the still-open door. She shut the door and leaned against it, smiling, enjoying the show.
“I said, I lied,” Verne said. “I’m an old man, and you are beautiful and powerful and thirty years younger than I am. I told you when she marked my neck that she propositioned me. She didn’t.”
Roxanne relaxed in the grip of her bleeding bodyguards. You could feel the tension seep away, and with it her flesh. Her face, her hands, flowed until she stood human again. Her nose was bloody where I’d kicked her.
“You can let me go,” she said. “I won’t hurt her.”
They didn’t let her go. They looked at Verne.
“How about me, darling?” he said. “You going to hurt me?”
“When we get home, I’ll kick the shit out of you, but not here, not now.”
Verne smiled. Roxanne smiled. And both smiles were the same. It was more than lust, though that was mixed in with it. It was a look that couples have, like a secret language, a look that excludes everyone else and cannot be explained.
I looked at Richard. “They be crazier than we are.”
He smiled at me, and the smile warmed me down to my Nikes. I smiled back, and realized with a jolt that tingled through my entire body that we had our own secret look. God, I’d missed him.
Lucy stalked into the room on a pair of platform shoes, purple short-shorts, and what looked like a lavender bra but probably wasn’t. She sashayed up to Richard, slipping both of her arms through one of his.
“He’s rejected me for you, sweetie,” she said in a voice that was too pleasant for the anger in her eyes.
I looked at Richard. “I don’t think he dumped you because of me.”
She pushed away from Richard to stand in front of me. I had the gun in my hand. I figured I was safe. The marks with Richard faded, pulled back, replaced with the knowledge that we were a couple again. I valued that a hell of a lot more than the marks.
“I can do things for him in bed that your human body could never do. I can take every ounce of strength, every thrust, and it just feels good. It doesn’t have to be gentle with me, careful with me.”
Which hit a little close to home, which is my only excuse for what I said next. “Gee, Lucy, I don’t know. He spends one night with me and drops you like yesterday’s news. Either you’re not that good a lay, or I’m better.”
Her face narrowed down, eyes wide; for a second, I thought she might