Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [769]
The smile faded, leaving his eyes the color of winter skies and just as pitiless.
“Only you decide how far gone you are, Anita. Only you can decide how far you’ll go.”
I looked at the weapons and the black clothing like funeral clothes, even down to the things that touched my skin. “Maybe it would be a start if I bought something pink.”
“Pink?” Edward said.
“Yeah, you know, pink, like Easter Bunny grass.”
“Like cotton candy,” he said. “Or almost everything women give each other at baby showers.”
“When were you at a baby shower?” I asked.
“Donna’s taken me to two of them. It’s the new thing, couples baby showers.”
I looked at him, eyes wide. “You, at a couples baby shower, Edward.”
“You in something the color of children’s candy and baby doll clothes.” He shook his head. “Anita, you are one of the least pink women I’ve ever met.”
“When I was a little girl, I’d have given a small body part to have a pink canopy bed, and ballerina wallpaper would have been perfect.”
He gave me wide, surprised eyes. “You, in a pink canopy bed with ballerina wallpaper.” He shook his head. “Just trying to imagine you in a room like that gives me a headache.”
I looked at the things spread on the bed. “I was pink once, Edward.”
“Most of us start off soft,” he said, “but you can’t stay that way, not and survive.”
“There’s got to be someplace I won’t go, something I won’t do, some line I won’t cross, Edward.”
“Why?” That one word held more curiosity than he usually allowed himself.
“Because if I don’t have any lines, limits, then what kind of person does that make me?” I asked.
He shook his head, moving the cowboy hat low on his head. “You’re having a crisis of conscience.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Don’t go soft, Anita, not on my dime. I need you to do what you do best, and what you do best isn’t soft or gentle or kind. What you do best is what I do best.”
“And what is that? What is it that we do best?” I asked, and I knew the anger came through in my voice. I was getting angry with Edward.
“We do what it takes, whatever it takes, to get the job done.”
“There’s got to be more to life than the ultimate practicality, Edward.”
“If it makes you feel any better, we have different motives. I do what I do because I love it. It’s not just what I do. It’s who I am. You do the job to save lives, to keep the damage down.” He looked at me with eyes gone as empty and bottomless as any vampire’s. “But you love it, too, Anita. You love it, and that bothers you.”
“Violence is one of my top three responses now, Edward, maybe my number one.”
“And it’s kept you alive.”
“At what price?’
He shook his head, and now the blankness was replaced by anger. He was just suddenly moving forward. I caught his hand going under the shirt, and I was rolling off the bed, with the Browning in my hand. I had a round in the chamber and was falling back onto the floor with the gun pointed up, eyes searching for movement.
He was gone.
My heart was thudding so loudly that I could barely hear, and I was straining to hear. A movement, something. He had to be on the bed. It was the only place he could have gone. From my angle I couldn’t see anything on top of the bed, just the corner of the mattress and the trail of sheet.
Knowing Edward, the ammo in the Browning was probably his homemade brew, which meant that it would pierce the bottom of the bed and go up into whatever lay on top of the bed. I felt the last of the air in my body slide outward, and I sighted on the underneath of the bed. The first bullet would either hit him or make him move, then I’d have a better idea of where he was.
“Don’t shoot, Anita.”
His voice made me move the gun barrel just a touch more right. It would take him mid-body because he was crouched up there, not lying down. I knew that without seeing it.
“It was a test, Anita. If I wanted to come against you, I’d warn you first, you know that.”
I did know that, but . . . I heard the