Disclaimer: Laurell K. Hamilton owns all these characters.
I’m just using them for my own amusement.
Summary: Someone is killing all the shapeshifters and vampires in town and it
is up to Anita to stop them.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: None
Feedback: I’d love some. Please don’t be too harsh, constructive criticism is
welcome. Send comments to [email protected]
***Author’s note: This takes place after Narcissus In Chains. Major character
death waning.***
Death Never Sleeps
Snow Leopard
Anita stepped out of her jeep and headed toward the house. It had been a long
night. Ever since Bert found out that she could raise 5 zombies a night without
getting tired, he had increased her appointments. Damn greedy bastard. He never
would have found out if Larry hadn’t gone with her one night. Larry was all
right but he seemed so much younger. He was naïve and innocent. ‘Well, not for
much longer if he keeps hanging around me.’ Anita thought bitterly.
The answering machine light was blinking when Anita walked in. Out of habit she
went over to it and turned it on while she got ready for a shower. There were
three calls. The first from Ronnie wondering if they were still working out
tomorrow morning. The second was from Micah, he and some of his leopards had to
stay overnight. They were packing the last of their things to move to St.
Louis.
The last call stopped Anita cold. It was from Richard. They hadn’t talked much
since the break up. His voice came thin and panicked over the line. “Anita
where are you? I need help. Pick up if you are there. God Anita this is
important. Someone is killing all the shapeshifters in town. Not just
werewolves, any kind that they can find. We need you to---” the beep of they
answering machine cut off the rest of his message.
Anita just stood there stunned for a minute. Then she jolted back into herself
and hurried to the phone. The call was from just an hour ago. First she tried
calling everywhere to look for Richard. She couldn’t find him. So he was either
hiding or….. ‘Stop thinking like that.’ Anita mentally chastened herself.
Next she tried the Circus of the Damned. No one answer. She tried calling all
of Jean-Claude’s clubs. No one was answering anywhere. That got her more
worried. She couldn’t reach anyone supernatural. She was about to go and start
looking everywhere when there was a knock on her door. She grabbed her gun and
opened the door pointing her gun barrel at the person just outside. It took a
moment for her mind to register that it was Nathaniel. He was covered in blood
and could barely walk.
She helped him stagger into the living room and collapse on the couch. He tried
to talk but no sound came out. “Don’t worry everything will be fine,” Anita
told him. She had to believe that. The alternative was unbearable.
She looked at his wounds and was barely able to stop herself from throwing up.
His left leg was had been sawed of from the point just below his groin and
beyond. His right arm was barely still on with nothing more that a thin piece
of skin holding it from the elbow below.
All of his ribs were broken and two on each side were poking at least an inch
out of his stomach. The upper part of his chest was a red ruin. Anita couldn’t
tell what happened to it. His skin was hanging in tatters.
She lifted him up and had to look away before she could see it. She didn’t want
to know, but she had to look. The entire back off his head was blown off. Only
a partial part of his skull kept his brains from leaking out.
Anita started to cry. She lay her head on his untouched back and sobbed. She
could already feel his body cooling and knew he was going to die soon. She
wondered briefly why he didn’t shift but realized that he didn’t have enough
energy to try. He had used all his energy just to stay alive and get to her.
She felt a movement and looked up. Nathaniel was looking at her. He had pain in
his eyes and fear, but he also had love and sorrow and acceptance. He had
accepted that he was going to die and he was concerned about how much it would
hurt her. He was dying and worried about her. That was true loyalty. He opened
his mouth and whispered breathily, “Anita…Nimir-Ra.”
Then his eyes closed and Anita felt as his soul left him. She tried to stop it,
to bring it back but there was nothing she could do. Nathaniel was gone. She
hung her head in defeat and briefly considered sitting there until someone came
to find her. Then she looked up at Nathaniel’s body and her face contorted in
fury. She had thought the worst thing she could do was to kill cold. She was
wrong. Her killing with feeling was a hell of a lot worse.
Anita gathered all of her weapons. She would hunt down whoever or whatever was
doing this and stop them. She started out the door but stopped in her tracks a
few steps toward her driveway. This was just too much to deal with.
Body parts were strewn across her front lawn. There was an arm here and a hand
there and a leg just a few feet away. She didn’t recognize any of the bodies
until she came to the heads. At the end of her driveway, just in front of her
car, was a wall of heads. They were stuck on pointed sticks about four and a
half feet tall. They formed a curving line like a barricade holding her in.
She tried not to but the more she looked the more she recognized. Some of the
heads had hearts with stakes through them on the ground below them. That could
only mean one thing. Vampire. She looked around the circle picking out faces of
the people she cared about. There was Jason, Sylvie, Jamil, Shang-Da, Irving,
Stephan, Gregory, Willie, Hannah, Vivian, Cherry, Zane, Asher, Damian, Lillian,
Louie, Rafael, Dave. And on the end of the line on either side were the heads
of Jean-Claude and Richard.
She would have broken down right then and there if she were still thinking
clearly. But she only had two logical thoughts. The first was ‘find, hunt,
torture, kill’, and the second was ‘I’m glad Micah’s leopards aren’t here.’
That thought however was short lived. When she got to the door of her jeep, she
saw what was behind it. In a semi-circle around the back of the jeep, on the
same pointed sticks, were the heads of Micah and his entire pard. Apparently
they had gotten back early.
Anita just stared in disbelief. There was no way this was happening. It all had
to be a bad dream. She had only been inside for 40 minutes. There was no time
for this to happen. She got into the jeep, her face filled with new resolve.
They couldn’t get away with it. She maneuvered the jeep around the heads and
onto the road. As she drove away, a single tear slipped passed her defenses,
rolling down her cheek to dry on her chin.
*************************************************************
Anita had been driving for an hour but couldn’t find anything. She had no idea
what to look for. She finally tried going to the Circus of the Damned. When she
got inside she heard a scuffling sound. Rushing father downstairs she saw a
vampire tied up to a burning chair. She ran over and pulled him away from it.
She removed the gag.
“Who did this? How did you get here? Where is everyone else?” she questioned
him.
“I don’t know anything,” he cried out. “All I know is that I’m supposed to give
you a message. He said to meet him at the fountain in the middle of Blood
Square.” Anita jumped up and headed toward the door, eager for her revenge.
When she arrived at Blood Square, she saw a figure standing in the shadows of
the fountain. She had parked her car a little ways away and had walked this far
hoping to surprise her prey. It didn’t work though. When she was still 50 feet
away, he turned around and gazed at her. Anita couldn’t make out his features
as he was still standing in the shadows.
Giving up the pretense of being stealthy, she walked toward him and stopped
about 10 feet away. “What do you want?” she asked him coldly. Her voice was
like a whip slashing through the air.
“I would think that was obvious,” he replied in a mocking tone. “I want your
pain. I am being paid a great deal to cause you so much pain and then to
eliminate you.” He quickly whipped his hand around and pressed the trigger on a
gun that had been concealed behind his back. The bullet hit its mark burying
itself soundly in her stomach.
Anita cried out and fell to her knees. The burning in her stomach was
increasing and her blood was flowing into a pool around her. She heard quiet
laughter and looked up. The man stepped out of the shadows revealing his face.
She gasped in shock. This was the last person she expected.
“Why?” she asked him as blood started foaming at her mouth. “I told you. I am
being paid a large sum of money,” he answered her. He walked over and took the
barrel of the gun pressing it against her temple.
“How do you sleep at night with the knowledge of the things you have done?” she
asked almost to softly to hear.
He pulled the trigger and watched her body slump to the side. A few tears
slipped passed his eyes and for the first time in as long as he could remember,
he felt emotion. Regret, Sorrow, Pain. “Death never sleeps,” Edward replied to
the silent air before walking away from her lifeless corpse.