Obsidian Butterfly - Laurell K. Hamilton [137]
He touched my shoulder lightly. When I didn’t say anything, he moved into me, wrapping his arms across my back, holding me against him. I stayed stiff in his arms for a second or two, but didn’t pull away. I relaxed against him in inches, until my head rested in the curve of his neck, my arms tentatively around his waist.
He whispered, “It will be all right, Anita.”
I shook my head against his shoulder. “I don’t think so.”
He tried to see my face but I was standing too close, at too awkward an angle. I pulled back so he could see my face, and suddenly I felt awkward standing there with my arms around a stranger. I pulled away, and he let me go, only keeping the fingers of one hand grasped in his. He gave my hand a little shake. “Talk to me, Anita, please.”
“I’ve been doing cases like this for about five years. When I’m not looking at the messily dead, I’m hunting vampires, rogue shapeshifters, you name it.”
His was holding my hand solidly now, wrapped in the warmth of his skin. I didn’t pull away. I needed something human to hold onto. I tried to put into words what I’d been thinking for awhile now. “A lot of cops never use their guns, not in thirty years. I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve killed.” His hand tightened on mine, but he didn’t interrupt. “When I started out, I thought vampires were monsters. I really believed it. But lately I’m not so sure. And regardless of what they are, they look very human. I could get a call tomorrow that would send me down to the morgue to put a stake through the heart of a body that looks every bit as human as you and me. Once I’ve got a court order of execution, I am legally sanctioned to shoot and kill the vampire or vampires in question, and anyone that stands in my way. That includes human servants or people with just a bite on them. One bite, two bites, they can be healed, cured. But I’ve killed them to save myself, to save others.”
“You did what you had to do.”
I nodded. “Maybe, maybe, but that doesn’t really matter anymore. It doesn’t matter whether I’m right to do it, or not. Just because it’s a righteous kill doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect you. I use to think that if I was right, it would be enough, but it’s not.”
He drew me a little closer with his hand. “What are you saying?”
I smiled. “I need a vacation.”
He laughed then, and it was a good laugh, open and joyous, nothing special about it but his own astonishment. I’d heard better laughs but none when I needed it more. “A vacation, just a vacation?”
I shrugged. “I don’t see myself taking up flower arranging, Detective Ramirez.”
“Hernando,” he said.
I nodded. “Hernando. This is part of who I am.” I realized we were still holding hands, and I drew away from him. He let me, no protest. “Maybe if I take a break, I’ll be able to do it again.”
“What if a vacation isn’t enough?” he asked.
“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.” It wasn’t just the brutal day in and day out of the job. My reaction to Bernardo’s body and letting a perfect stranger comfort me were so unlike me. I was missing the guys, but it was more than that. When I left Richard, I left the pack, all my werewolf friends. When I left Jean-Claude, I lost all the vamps, and strangely one or two of them were friends. You can be friends with a vampire as long as you remember that they are monsters and not human beings. How you can do both at the same time, I can’t really explain, but I manage.
I hadn’t just cut myself off from the men in my life for six months. I’d