Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [674]
The thing was getting closer. I could hear tree trunks snapping with sharp explosions. It was coming. It was coming for me. I ran, and ran, and ran, and the dead trees stretched out forever and there was no escape.
A typical chase dream, I thought, and the moment I thought it, I realized it was a dream, and the dream changed, faded into another dream. Richard standing in nothing but a sheet, one tanned muscled arm reaching out to me. His brown hair falling in a froth of waves around his face. I reached for him, and as my fingertips brushed his, a smile curving his lips, the dream shattered, and I woke.
I woke, blinking into a patch of sunlight that spilled across the bed. But it hadn’t been the light that had woken me. There was a light tapping on my door. A man’s voice. “Edward says get up.”
It took me a moment to realize it was Bernardo’s voice. It didn’t take Freud to analyze the dream at the end with Richard in a sheet. I was going to have to be careful around Bernardo. Embarrassing, but true.
I sat up in bed, yelling through the door, “What time is it?”
“Ten.”
“Okay, I’m coming.”
I listened but didn’t hear him walk away. Either the door was more solid than it looked, or Bernardo was quiet. If it had just been Edward, I’d have thrown on a pair of jeans under the over-sized T-shirt, and had some coffee. But there was company in the house and it was all male. I managed to get into the bathroom and dress without meeting anyone in the hallway. I was wearing dark blue jeans, a navy blue polo shirt, white jogging socks, and my black Nikes. Normally, I’d left the guns off until I went out into the big bad world, but at Edward’s house the big bad world was staying in the next room, so I put the Firestar 9 mm in an inner pants holster, set for a right-handed cross draw. Brushed, cleaned, and armed, I wandered toward the smell of bacon.
The kitchen was small and narrow and white. But all the appliances were black, and the starkness of the contrast was almost too much first thing in the morning. There was another bouquet of wild flowers in the middle of a small white wooden table. Donna had struck again, but truthfully I agreed with her. The kitchen needed something to soften it.
The two men sitting at the table did nothing to humanize the room. Olaf had shaved so that the only hair left were the black lines of his eyebrows. He wore a black tank top, black dress slacks. Couldn’t see the shoes, but I was betting on a monochromatic look. He was also wearing a black shoulder rig with a big automatic of some kind. I didn’t recognize the brand. A black-hilted knife was in a holster under his left arm.
Shoulder holsters chaff when you wear them with tank tops, but hey, it wasn’t my problem.
Bernardo wore a white short-sleeved T-shirt and black jeans. He’d pulled the top layer of his hair back on either side with a large multi-colored barrette. There was still plenty of hair to fall down past his shoulders, stark and black against the pure whiteness of his shirt. He was wearing a ten mil Beretta just in back of his right hip. I couldn’t see a knife on him, but I was betting it was there.
Edward was at the stove, emptying a pan of scrambled eggs onto two plates. He was also wearing black jeans with matching cowboy boots, and a white shirt that was a twin of the one he’d worn yesterday.
“Gee, guys, do I have to go back to my room and change?”
They all looked at me, even Olaf. “What you’re wearing is fine,” Edward said. He carried the plates to the table and put one in front of each of the empty chairs. There was a plate of bacon in the center of the table beside the flowers.
“But I don’t match,” I said.
Edward and Bernardo smiled. Olaf didn’t. Big surprise. “You guys look like you’re in uniform,” I said.
“I guess we do,” Edward said. He sat down in one of the