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Chapter Thirty-nine

THE DOCTOR TOLD o That if I exercised and didn&039;t let the scar tissue harden up on me, I&039;d be fine He also assumed I was a shapeshifter, a new kind of shapeshifter that could do different animals He actually used the term panwere It was the first time I&039;d heard anyone but a shapeshifter say it The doctor had never actually seen one, untilI said persuaded hiave up If people won&039;t believe the truth, and you don&039;t want to lie, then you&039;re out of options Chimera had been the real deal, a true panwere, and one of the scariest beings I&039;d ever met I wondered what the doctor would have made of him?

I walked down the hall to Peter&039;s rooht up the rear I didn&039;t like hi For hiood boy The fact that I could feel the weight of his gaze onbetweenI could really bitch about Iat me? It was a little too childish for me to say it out loud, no matter how true it felt

It didn&039;t help that Olaf and I were dressed alike, sort of Edas in his white button-down shirt and jeans, and cowboy boots Ted Forrester dressed to be comfortable; Olaf dressed either to intimidate or because he liked the Goth assassin look I hadn&039;t picked h that the inner pants holster dug in a little, but they tucked nicely into the lace-up boots The black T-shirt was scoop-necked and the push-up bra that was under it made sure I had plenty of scoop to show My cross sat onin front of the and not Micah? First, the panties and bra matched, and the panties were perfect for the loaistline of the jeans; second, the shirt and bra showed a lot of cleavage; third, the boots Maybe my Nikes were covered in blood, they probably were, and the boots were comfy and low heeled, but Nathaniel enty and male and often looked at clothes from the perspective of his job Micah had a tendency to notperfectly; he would have just put on an ambi-sexual T-shirt from the T-shirt drae shared The outfit wouldn&039;t have looked so terribly like an outfit if Micah had done it I&039;d have to talk to Nathaniel about picking out things with thiswith the cops I had my backup shoulder holster instead of the custom-made leather one, which probably meant hospital efficiency had destroyed it That would be the second or third one that had gotten cut to pieces in an eency roo I turned and h to catch Olaf inhis hand back He had allared at him, and he stared at me Those dark, deep-set eyes stared at aze slid down the front of my body in that way that men can do That look that slides over you so that you know they&039;re thinking about you naked, or worse In Olaf&039;s case it was probably worse

"Stop looking atus both

"Everyat you like that" He ue direction of my chest "How can they not?"

I felt the heat run up ritted teeth "Nathaniel picked the clothes to bring to the hospital, not me"

"Did he buy the shirt and the bra?" Olaf asked

"No," I said "I did"

He shrugged "Then do not blame the boy"

"Yeah, but they&039;re date clothes, and I don&039;t think there&039;s going to be ti the vampire that escaped us?" he asked

I nodded "Yeah, if we can figure out where she and her huotten to, yeah"

He smiled

"What?" I said, because the s about

"If things work out as I hope, I may owe your boy a thank-you"

I shook my head "I don&039;t understand"

Edward touched my arm, and I jumped "You don&039;t want to understand" He led me down the hallway, his hand onat us with that strange half-smile on his face

"What?" I asked Edward

He leaned in close, speaking low and quick, "While you were unconscious, Olaf came into the room You were covered in blood and they&039;d cut offHe touched you, Anita The doctors and guards chased hiot him out of the roo to stop, and he kept us"Touched me where?" I asked

"The stomach"

"I don&039;t understand," and then I did "The wounds, he touched the wounds"

"Yes," Edward said, and stopped us outside a door

I sed hard; bothto climb up my throat I looked down the hallhere Olaf was still standing I knew my face showed fear; I couldn&039;t help it He drew his lower lip under and bit it I think it was an unconscious gesture A gesture you make when you are moved to the point where you don&039;t think about how you look, or who&039;s looking Then he moved down the hallway toward us like some black movie monster The kind that looks hu human left to talk to

Edward opened the door and drewon Olaf Fine with htened, steadyingup the hallway He , al

I must have looked pale, because Micah caainst hter "You&039;re shivering"

I wrapped ainst as s when it feels al to meld yourself into the other person Sometimes it&039;s sexual, but so and you need so to Micah like he was the last solid thing in the world I buried ainst the curve of his neck and drew in the scent of his skin He didn&039;t ask again rong; he just held ed ainst me I didn&039;t need to open my eyes and see Nathaniel to knoas him I didn&039;t even need the faint hint of vanilla I knew the feel of his body against ether

Another body came in from the side of us I did turn to see, and found it was Cherry She put an arm around both men I realized with a start that she wasn&039;t taller than Nathaniel now "What&039;s wrong?" she asked, dark eyes worried

What did I say? That I was afraid of Olaf? That the thought that he&039;d caressed my wounds creeped e of intestine the way a man touches a breast? That I wanted to know, and didn&039;t want to know?

The door opened behind us Edward nodded atdoor He spoke softly, then walked out the door to talk to Olaf in private, or maybe to sirateful Of course, that left me with Edward&039;s other backup

I looked past Micah&039;s shoulder and Cherry&039;s arht more of the shadow of that boy I&039;d firstlying there hooked up to tubes and monitors When I woke up, I hadn&039;t been hooked up to anything that monitored my vitals How much worse off was he than me?

I whispered, "I don&039;t think I can explain what&039;s wrong"

Cherry gave me narrow eyes

"I&039;ll try to explain later, promise"

She frowned atto do Maybe she did I&039;d probably made some s to move Most people wouldn&039;t notice, but a lot of the shapeshifters would

I hugged Micah again, a little less intensely, and he kissedkiss If Peter hadn&039;t been watching Icare of big and scary in the hallway That left , but scary in a very different way I leaned back to look overhis hand against the other side of ether I turned so he could get entle hiaze flicked across the roo about Peter watching made Nathaniel behave himself, but I didn&039;t knohy, or what I ht away into the crowd of other confusing thoughts There were so e to hold thes I didn&039;t understand wouldn&039;t overwhelot a better look at Nathaniel&039;s clothes and realized he&039;d dressed himself almost exactly as he&039;d dressed me, except his T-shirt was a boy&039;s, and he wasn&039;t wearing any weapons We looked like we should be going clubbing Hard to co the same outfit The clothes were

I took a deep breath and pushed out of the circle of co hands I moved out of that circle of warht This one was staring at me with brown eyes that looked like islands in the pale skin of his face Peter wasn&039;t naturally pale, not like I was, or Edas, but he was pale now Blood loss and pain will do that to you

I walked toward the bed In thata coward, or was Edward the one being the coward? I was betting that he&039;d rather face a thousand Olafs than one aled as I walked toward the bed He was still hurt, but his gaze see other than ot to the bedside he wasn&039;t as pale; he&039;d found enough blood somewhere to blush

Chapter Forty

"HEY, PETER," I said

He turned his head so he was looking up at the ceiling Apparently he didn&039;t trust himself not to stare at my chest and wasn&039;t sure how I&039;d react I wasn&039;t sure either "I thought you were hurt," he said

"I was"

He turned to look at"But you&039;re up I feel awful"

I nodded "I&039;aze had drifted down again Olaf was crazy andMen would stare, some on purpose to be rude, but not all Sonet and their gaze iron; it just attracted it I was sooo going to have to talk to Nathaniel about what clothes to pack next tiot so hurt I ended up unconscious in the hospital I sied jobs, there would be The thought startled ? Was I really, truly considering it? Maybe, ht into that cage with all the other thoughts The cage was getting awfully damn full

"Anita?" Petertoo hard"

"What about?" He was ive hiht

"Truthfully, wondering if I want to keep hunting vampires"

His eyes ide "What are you talking about? This is what you do"

"No, I raise zo is supposed to be a sideline Soue lycanthrope hunting are more likely to putup with new scars"

"Waking up is good, though," he said, and his voice sounded fragile He wasn&039;t staring atinto the distance, with that look on the face that says you&039;re seeing so it, just a little

"You didn&039;t think you were going to wake up," I said, and kept entle

He looked at ht this was it I thought" He stopped and he wouldn&039;tto die," I finished for him

He nodded, then winced as if the movement hurt

"I kneouldn&039;t die, or you Sto, but they&039;re rarely fatal with modern antibiotics and prompt medical attention"

He looked atall that as they put you under?"

I thought about it "Not exactly, but I&039;ve been hurt a lot, Peter I&039;ve lost count of the number of times I&039;ve lost consciousness and woken up in a hospital, or soht his eyes were on ain, but he said, "The scar on your collarbone, what did that?"

Another interesting sideline of wearing this much of my chest in full vieas that some of my scars were on display I&039;d been more worried about my ht it was a shapeshifter bite"

"Nope, vampire" I showed him my arms with all their scars "Most of these are from vampires" I touched one on my left arm: claw marks "This one was a shapeshifted witch, whichwas a spell and not a disease"

"I didn&039;t know there was a difference"

"Well, the spell isn&039;t contagious, and it&039;s not tied to the fullemotions don&039;t cause you to shift, or any of that You don&039;t shift until you put on the ite"

"Do you have any scars from shapeshifters?"

"Yes"

"Can I see?"

Truthfully, the most permanent scars were claw marks on my ass They were almost delicate marks Gabriel, the wereleopard who had done it, had considered it foreplay before he tried to rape me on film He&039;d been the first person I&039;d ever killed with the big knife in its spine sheath I was going to have to figure out a different way to wear the knife until I could get the shoulder rig re to show Peter

It took a little work to get the T-shirt out of the pants, but soot the shirt up and raised it overthe neounds

Peter made a surprised sound "That can&039;t be real" He whispered it He reached out as if he&039;d try to touch, then drew his hand back, as if he wasn&039;t sure what I&039;d say

I stepped closer to the bed He took it as the invitation it was, and ran his fingertips across the new pink scars "The scars ether, or they may stay I won&039;t know for a few days, or weeks," I said

He drew his fingers back, then put his whole hand across the biggest wound The one where it looked as if she had tried to take a chunk of flesh His hand was big enough to cover the ers splayed out beyond the scars "You can&039;t have healed this in less than, what twelve hours Are you one of them?"

"You mean a shapeshifter?" I asked

"Yes" He whispered it as if it were a secret He slid his hand along ed marks of claws

"No"

He ran his hand over e of the scars where they dribbled away just pastI look like shit You&039;re healed" He curved his hand around to the side of my waist that wasn&039;t scarred His hand cupped esture caughtenough to do that was Richard It see It made me move back from him and let my shirt drop over my stomach Which embarrassed him, which wasn&039;t my intent I just suddenly realized I probably shouldn&039;t let him touch me that much It hadn&039;t moved me or made me uncomfortable until that ain wasted blood that he didn&039;t have in blushing "Sorry," he mumbled, and wouldn&039;t look at me as he said it

"It&039;s okay, Peter No harlance of his brown eyes "If you&039;re not a shapeshifter, how could you have healed like that?"

Truthfully, it was probably because I was Jean-Claude&039;s hu to know that, I just didn&039;t want to share it with people who didn&039;t know "I&039; four different kinds of lycanthropy So far I don&039;t turn furry, but I&039;"

"The doctors told et more than one kind of lycanthropy That&039;s the point of the shot The two different kinds of lycanthropy cancel each other out" He stopped at the end of the speech and took a deeper-than-nor too much hurt

I patted his shoulder "Don&039;t talk if it hurts, Peter"

"Everything hurts" He seemed to try to settle into the bed, then stopped as if that had hurt, too He looked up at ry, defiant face was like an echo of alo The kid I&039;d rown up It et to see Peter when he wasn&039;t getting hurt? I guess I could just go visit Edward sometime, but that was just weird We did not just visit each other We weren&039;t that kind of friends

"I know it hurts, Peter I didn&039;t always heal this fast"

"Micah and Nathaniel have been talking toa lycanthrope"

I nodded, because I didn&039;t knohat else to say "They&039;d know"

"Do they all heal as fast as you do?"

"Some, no Some faster"

"Faster," he said "Really?"

I nodded

His eyes filled with so I couldn&039;t decipher "Cisco didn&039;t heal"

Ah "No, he didn&039;t"

"If he hadn&039;t thrown hier, I&039;d be dead now"

"You couldn&039;t have taken the dae that Cisco took, that&039;s true"

"You&039;re not going to argue about it Tell me it wasn&039;t my fault"

"It wasn&039;t your fault," I said

"But he did it to save er He did it to give us tiuards to come and help us He did his job"

"But"

"I was there, Peter Cisco did his job He didn&039;t sacrifice himself to save you" I wasn&039;t entirely sure that was true, but I kept talking "I don&039;t think he meant to sacrifice himself at all Shapeshifters don&039;t usually die that easily"

"Easily? He had his throat ripped out"

"I&039;ve seen both vampires and wereaniave ave the Boy Scout salute

That made him smile "You were never a Boy Scout"

"I wasn&039;t even a Girl Scout, but I&039;e hi like that would be cool"

I nodded "It is cool, but it&039;s not all cool There are so a wereanimal"

"Micah told me some of it He and Nathaniel have answered a lot of questions"

"They&039;re good at that"

He glanced past lanced where he looked Micah and Nathaniel had given us asthe rooether Cherry had actually left the rooo

"The doctors want et the shot," Peter said

I looked at him "They would"

"What would you do?" he asked

I shook h to have saved h to decide this on your own"

His face cru to cry, but as if the child was peeking out Did all teenagers do that? One ile like a drea your opinion"

I shook my head "I&039;d say call your mom, but Edward doesn&039;t want to He says Donna will vote for the shot"

"She would" He sounded resentful, face sullen He&039;d been pretty ed co with this new, rown-up son

"I&039;ll tell you what I told Edward; I won&039;t give an opinion on this one"

"Micah says that I et the shot"

"He&039;s right"

"He said fifty-five percent of the people who get the shot don&039;t get lycanthropy, but that forty-five percent get lycanthropy They get what&039;s in the shot, Anita If I get the shot and catch what&039;s in there, it otten anything"

"I didn&039;t know the stats broke down that nicely, but Micah would know"

"He says it&039;s his job to know"

I nodded "He takes his job at the coalition as seriously as Edward and I take ours"

"Nathaniel said he&039;s an exotic dancer, is that true?"

"It&039;s true," I said

He actually lowered his voice to say, "So he&039;s a stripper?"

"Yes," I said and fought not to s in his life, he eirded out that ht not know that Nathaniel was h the door But then, Cherry had joined the hug Oh, hell, noas not the time to try to explain my love life to him

"Micah told me some of the jobs that other lycanthropes have Nurses, doctors, but only if they don&039;t find out I ht not be able to join the armed forces, any branch"

"They consider lycanthropy a contagious disease, so probably not" In my head I remembered a talk Micah and I had had about a ru into deliberate recruiting of shapeshifters But it was a rumor He couldn&039;t trace anyone who had actually been approached It was always a friend of a friend&039;s cousin

"Did you get the shot?"

"They didn&039;t offer It&039;s too late foralready"

"But you&039;re not a shapeshifter?" He made it a question

"I don&039;t turn furry once a month, or at all, so no"

"But you&039;re carrying four different kinds at once The whole shot thing is based on the idea that that&039;s ied "I&039;m a medical miracle, what can I say?"

"If I could heal like that and not turn furry, that would be a"

"You still wouldn&039;t pass blood screenings for some jobs You&039;d still hit the radar as a lycanthrope"

He frowned "I guess so" Then he gave ain, that echo of before, and it was a frightened face "Why won&039;t you help me decide?"

I leaned closer "This is what it rown-up, Peter This is the bitch of it If you&039;re playing eighteen, then you have to decide If you want to fess up to your real age, then everyone will treat you like a kid They&039;ll make decisions for you"

"I&039; sullen on me

"I know that"

His frown slipped to puzzleround today You didn&039;t panic, or lose it I&039;ve seen grown men lose it around lycanthropes when the situation wasn&039;t as desperate Most people are afraid of them"

"I was afraid," he said softly "I&039;ve been afraid since I was a kid"

I had one of those moments of, shit and aha "The attack on your father," I said How could I have forgotten that this wasn&039;t the first lycanthropy attack he&039;d survived?

He gave a sht?"

"Yes" His voice was soft, his eyes staring into the distance again

I didn&039;t knohat to say I cursed Edward for not being here In that ht have traded a talk with Olaf for this talk with Peter I could always shoot Olaf, but no weapon would help me deal with Peter&039;s pain

"Anita," he said

I looked at him, met his eyes His eyes reminded me of Nathaniel&039;s eyes when I first met him Eyes that were older than they should have been Eyes that had seen things that older men would never see

"I&039;m here, Peter," I said, because I couldn&039;t think what else to say I ht my face not to sho much it hurt me to see his eyes like that Maybe they&039;d been that way years ago, but it took dating Nathaniel to teach me what eyes like that meant in a face that hadn&039;t seen twenty yet

"I thought if I trained with Edward that I wouldn&039;t be so scared, but I was I was scared just like last tiain"

I wanted to touch his shoulder, take his hand, but wasn&039;t sure it hat he needed me to do, so I kept ht to a car wreck"

His eyes changed, lost a little of that awful look "Were you there? Did you see?"

I shook my head "No She drove away and just never came back"

"I saw my dad die I used to dream about it"

"Me, too"

"But you weren&039;t there; what did you drea relative tookthe bloodstains" I realized I&039;d never told anyone that

"What?" he said "What&039;s wrong?"

I could have said soabout ? I settled for the truth, which crosses the lips like jagged glass, as if you should bleed when you say it "Just realizing I&039;ve never told anyone about that dream"

"Not even Micah and Nathaniel?"

Apparently, he did know they were my boyfriends "No, not even theo to therapy afterward I talked about it a lot"

"Good for Donna," I said

"Why didn&039;t your dad send you?"

I shrugged "I don&039;t think it occurred to hiht I could face my fears, and I wouldn&039;t be so afraid, but I was afraid" He looked away froain "I was so scared" He whispered the last

"So was I," I said

He gave me a startled look "You didn&039;t look it"

"Neither did you"

It took him a moment, but he finally s ely char "You really think so?"

"Peter, you savedto kill uys"

"Edward told uy wants to re or has a weapon, that o with them, you die slower and ht that&039;s what you meant when you repeated the rule in the hallway"

"You understood," he said

"I encouraged you, re to read so there "You did, didn&039;t you?"

"Edward and I know a lot of the same rules"

"He said you think like him"

"Sometimes," I said

"Not always," Peter said