Cerulean Sins

"Are you saying you would willingly feed me, now?" He didn't look at me as he asked it. He was staring at the floor.

"Actually, I'm sort of not in the mood anymore," I said, and my voice was fighting to get back to normal. Jean-Claude wasn't kicking me out of his life, but I didn't like that he wouldn't look at me.

"I will feed, but it will be only for food, and you are not food. So, please, go."

"Jean-Claude..."

"Just go, Anita, go. I need you not to be here right now. I need to not have to look at you, right now." The first stirrings of anger had trickled into his voice, like a fuse freshly lit and ru

"Would saying I'm sorry help?" My voice was small when I asked.

"That you understand that you have something to apologize for is a begi

I opened my mouth, drew a breath to reply, but he held up a hand and said, simply, "No."

I gathered my gun and shoulder holster from the bathroom. The wet clothes I left on the floor of the bathroom. I didn't look back, and I didn't try to kiss him good-bye. I think if I'd tried to touch him, he'd have hurt me. I don't mean struck me, but there are a thousand ways to hurt someone you love that have nothing to do with physical violence. There were words trapped in his eyes, a world of pain shining there. I didn't want to hear those words. I didn't want to feel that pain. I didn't want to see it, or touch it, or have it rubbed in the wounds in my own heart right that moment. I believed I was right, and a girl's got to have some standards. I don't let the vamps fuck with my mind, they just get my body. It had seemed a good rule an hour ago.

I shut the door behind me, leaned into it, and fought to take a breath that didn't shake. My world had been more solid an hour ago.

33

I was still leaning against the door, shaking, when Nathaniel came up to me. I didn't see him at first, even though he was standing right in front of me. I was staring at the floor, and I saw his jogging shoes, his legs, his shorts, before I looked slowly up and found his face. It felt like it took a long time to look up his body, and find that familiar face with those lilac eyes.

"Anita..." his voice was soft.

I held out a hand, because if anyone was nice to me, I was going to fall apart. I couldn't afford that right now. If Asher was up, then probably so was Musette. Normally, the thought would have been enough to let me check on a nearby vampire. Today, it was empty. I was empty. I was what Maria

"What is it, Nathaniel?" My voice was a bare whisper. I cleared my throat, sharply, to repeat it, but he'd heard.

"The two men that were following us in the blue Jeep are outside watching the back parking lot. They've got a different car, but it's still them."

I nodded, and the black hole at my feet began to close. I still hurt, and I was still head blind, but for this it didn't matter. Guns don't care if you're psychically gifted. Guns don't care about anything. They don't bitch at you about the rules in your personal life, either. Of course, neither does a dog, but I don't have to use a pooper-scooper after I'm through shooting my gun. Sometimes a body bag is needed, but that's not usually my job.

I was feeling better. Steadier. This I could do. "Find Bobby Lee, I want the best people he's got for car work."

"Car work?" Nathaniel made it a question.

"We're going to box them in and find out why they're following us."

"What if they don't want to tell us?" he asked.

I looked at him as I slipped into the shoulder holster and unthreaded my belt, so I could rethread the holster. I didn't say anything as I readied the gun, got it exactly where I wanted it. I had to carry the butt of the gun a little lower than I might have wanted for speed, but hitting your breast with the edge of the gun slows your fast draw even more. So a little lower angle, to avoid the chest. Legends say that the Amazons chopped off a breast to make them better at archery. I don't believe that. I think it's just another example of men thinking a woman can't be a great warrior without cutting away her womanhood, symbolically, or otherwise. We can be great warriors; we just got to pack the equipment a little differently.

Nathaniel was looking very solemn. "I didn't bring a gun."

"That's great, because you're not coming."

"Anita..."

"No, Nathaniel. I taught you about guns so you wouldn't hurt yourself, and so in an emergency you could defend yourself. This isn't an emergency. I want you to stay inside out of the line of fire."

Something flitted over his face, something that might have been stubbor

I hugged him, and I think it caught us both by surprise. I whispered in his ear, against the sweet vanilla scent of his cheek, "Please, just do what I say."

He was quiet for a heartbeat, then his arms wrapped around me, and he whispered, "Yes."

I drew back from him, slowly, searching his face, wanting to ask him if he found my "rules" a burden, if I'd taken half the pleasure out of his life, too? I didn't ask, because I didn't really want to know. It wasn't that my courage failed me, it was more that my cowardice overwhelmed me. I'd had about all the truth I could stand for one day.

I kissed him on the cheek and left to find Bobby Lee. Him, I trusted to be in the line of fire. But it was more than that; I wasn't sleeping with Bobby Lee. I didn't love him. Sometimes love makes you selfish. Sometimes it makes you stupid. Sometimes it reminds you why you love your gun.

34

I was looking through a pair of binoculars at a car parked at the far corner of the Circus of the Damned employee parking lot. Nathaniel was right, it was the same two men, but now they were in a large gold Impala dating to the 1960s, or some such. It was big, old, but in good shape. It was also very different from the shiny new blue Jeep that they'd been in before. They'd switched so the blond was driving. With the binocs I could see that he looked youngish, under forty, over twenty-five. He was clean shaven, wearing a black mock turtleneck and silver frame glasses. His eyes were pale, gray, or grayish blue.

The dark-haired man had put a billed cap on and changed to a larger pair of sunglasses. His face was thin, clean shaven, with a good-sized mole at one corner of his mouth. What they used to call a beauty mark.

I watched them sitting there and wondered why they weren't at least reading a newspaper, or drinking coffee, something, anything.

They'd done everything they were supposed to do, according to Kasey Krime Stoppers 101. They'd changed vehicles. They'd made small changes to their appearances. All this might have worked, if they weren't sitting outside Circus of the Damned, doing nothing. No matter how clever you disguise yourself, very few people sit in a car in the middle of the morning and do nothing. Also the employee parking lot was almost empty before noon. Once darkness fell, they could probably have parked and not been noticed so quickly, but this time of morning there was no hiding.