Haven wasn't touching me anymore. I heard fighting. «Get away, Anita, get away from him,» Haven said.
«Get away from who?» I asked. I stabbed the claw that wasn't Remus. I cut it up, but it cut me up, too. I screamed more in frustration than anything. Remus whispered, «I'm sorry.» His arms slid away from me and his knees buckled, but he didn't fall. I grabbed him, trying to support him, and that was when I realized where the clawed hand was coming from. I had to be wrong. I screamed, «Remus!»
There was movement, sound, fighting. I heard a sound I didn't recognize, grunts of effort. What the hell was happening? Remus suddenly fell forward. I tried to catch him, but it was too sudden and he outweighed me by a hundred pounds. I fell to the ground with him on top of me. He wasn't moving. The darkness vanished. I could see again.
There was a severed arm sticking out of Remus's back. I screamed. I couldn't help it. More guards were there, picking him up, getting him off me. They couldn't roll him onto his back, because the arm had pierced his chest. The hand looked human now, but my chest and Remus's said it hadn't been human when it went through. His eyes were closed, and he was so still, terribly still.
«Get that thing out of him,» Claudia said.
Fredo was suddenly at her side with a knife the size of a small sword. He raised it up, and I looked away before he brought it down. I saw Wicked and Truth, with bare swords pointed at the throat and chest of a fallen Harlequin that I had never seen before. He was dressed all in black, even his mask. He was missing an arm. Edward and Olaf and more of the guards had Columbine and Giovanni at gunpoint. Jean-Claude, Asher, Requiem, and most of our vampires were gathered around them. I think with the real master Harlequin down, they'd been able to take the other two. Good that something had worked out. Haven was kneeling between the two groups, bleeding, but he'd live. I turned back to Remus. I wasn't so sure about him.
They had the arm out now, in two pieces, but there was a hole in his chest that I could see through like some sort of cartoon cannon shot. «Fuck,» I said softly, «his heart.»
Claudia looked at me, tears drifting silently down her face. «Bastard had silver bracers on his forearms. Silver, fucking razor wire as fucking jewelry.»
«This one is healing,» Wicked called. «How do we stop him from doing that?»
«Is Remus…«I couldn't say it.
«Dead,» Claudia said, in a voice that was hard and cold and didn't match the tears.
«Yeah,» I said.
She just nodded.
«He died saving me,» I said.
«He died doing his job,» she said.
I watched her tears and wondered if he had been more than just a friend to her. I hoped not. In that moment, I hoped not. I got to my feet and fell back down. Richard was beside me, holding me. «You're hurt.»
«Remus is dead,» I said, and pushed him away.
«Anita, please.»
I shook my head. «Either help me walk over to Wicked and Truth, or go somewhere else.»
«Can I at least see how badly you're hurt first?»
«No!»
«Do you want Remus to have died for nothing, is that what you want?»
Micah was on my other side. «Let us see, Anita, then we'll take you to Wicked and Truth.»
Nathaniel was there, too. «Please, Anita.»
I nodded and let them wipe away some of the blood with a cloth that someone gave them. The scratches weren't that deep, deep enough that if I'd been a little more human I might have needed stitches, and seeing that they were across the mound of one breast I should have been more worried about that whole cosmetic thing, but strangely, I wasn't.
«Take me to them,» I said.
Richard took one arm and Nathaniel the other. They lifted me to my feet and helped me walk where I wanted to go. Micah followed us, carrying bandages. Maybe I'd even let him use them on me eventually. Remus was dead, and I wanted to know why. Or maybe, how? The thing that had come out of the darkness had been a vampire that smelled like a wolf and had claws like a powerful shapeshifter. Impossible. But Remus was dead, so it had to be possible.
«Who are you?» I asked.
«I am Harlequin.»
«One of, or the?» I asked. My voice sounded strangely distant inside my own head, as if the distance was greater than it should have been.
«I am Pantalone, once Pantaleon. I was one of the first children of the dark.»
«You didn't send us a black mask, Pantalone, but you tried to kill us. That's against council law. Hell, that's against the Mother of All Darkness's law.»
«You know nothing of our mother, human. You are not vampire, or succubus. You are a necromancer, and our laws say you can be killed on sight.»
I smelled jasmine. Nathaniel said, «Flowers.»
Richard said, «What is that?»
I felt the rain on the edge of a wind that hadn't existed for a million years. I tasted jasmine on my tongue, sweet and cloying. I wasn't afraid this time. I welcomed it. Because I knew I wasn't the one she was pissed at. Though pissed was too strong for the feeling I got as she breathed closer. Pissed was too human an emotion, and as she'd said herself, she'd lost the knack of being human.
«Marmee Noir,» Nathaniel answered Richard. I'd forgotten he'd asked a question.
«Anita,» Richard said, «fight it, fight her.»
«If you aren't going to help me do this, then get away from me.»
«Do what, let the Mother of All Vampires possess you?»
I screamed at him, «Get away from me, Richard, now!» A cut opened on his arm like a red mouth. It wasn't Marmee Noir; I'd done that a couple of times before under stress. I couldn't do it dependably, but… «That's not her, that's me. Help me, or get away.» I fought to keep my voice even, because my emotions were dangerous, apparently.
«Don't let her inside you.»
«Micah, take my arm.»
«Don't let her do this,» Richard said to him.
«We are still in danger here, Richard,» Micah said. «Don't you get that? We have to finish what we started.»
«You mean kill them?»
«Yes,» I said, «yes, kill them. Kill them all!» Another cut opened on Richard's arm. He let me go, as if I were something hot that had burned him. Micah slid furred arms around me. He and Nathaniel led me forward, so I could do what needed to be done. No, truth, what I was going to do. Not need, want. I wanted him dead. He'd killed Remus, and Remus had died because the vampire on the ground had meant to kill me. Remus had given his life to save mine. I'd pay my debt, now, tonight, in the blood and pain of his killer. It sounded like such a good idea.
The smell of jasmine was everywhere. I could taste rain on my tongue. The wind was cool and fresh against my face, and the wind was coming from me.
chapter forty-seven
«TAKE OFF HIS mask,» I said, but the voice held an echo of a different voice.
«If you see my face I will be forced to kill you all,» he said.
I laughed, and the laughter made the wind play around the room, patting with cool, damp hands at people's hair, their skin. «You are going to die tonight, Pantalone. Your mask can come off now, or after your corpse lies stretched at my feet. I prefer now, but I guess it really doesn't matter.» The wind eased back. I was drowning in the scent of rain and jasmine.
He struck at me with his own power. It was like some spirit wolf, a great dark beast that rose from him and came at me, huge jaws agape. Micah and Nathaniel pulled me backward, but though it looked like a shadow, it hit me and pulled us all to the floor. People were running from everywhere, but Marmee was already there. The shadow wolf spilled into me; she absorbed it like something melting into the snow. With the touch of his power came a memory.
A snowstorm, so cold, the wind howling, so that he thought he heard voices on the wind. He'd found a cave, buried in the snow. Shelter, he thought. Then he'd heard the growl, low and too close. Something else had taken shelter from the storm. Then a woman had stepped into the light of his fire. A woman with a spill of dark hair and eyes that glittered in the firelight. He had smelled death on her and tried to fight. I felt his body run hot and spill bone and muscle and flesh from human to wolf. But a wolf like none that still walked today. She had turned into a huge striped cat, the color of a lion, but striped like a tiger, bigger than both. She'd nearly killed him, but when pain and injury had turned him back to human, she'd fed on him. She fed on him for three days until the storm stopped, and when the fourth night rose, they went out together, to hunt.