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I could feel my face grow calm, and I felt myself sinking into that place where there is nothing but white noise and the solid, almost comforting surety that I felt nothing. I said, softly, "I can."
He turned away from me, as if I hadn't spoken, and called up for them to lower the harness. We slid the harness around Gregory, talking only about the task at hand--no metaphysics, no politics. There was a second harness on the rope, and Richard made me put it on. I'd get to cradle Gregory, protecting him with my body so he didn't get scraped up too badly.
"I've never done this before," I said.
"I'm too broad through the shoulders to add Gregory's bulk to mine. It has to be you. Besides, you'll keep him safe, I know you will." There was something in his eyes that made me want to say something, but he jerked on the rope and we started rising into the air.
Richard watched us, face upturned, his flashlight casting odd shadows around the small room as he knelt on the bones. Then we were up inside the tunnel, and I couldn't see him anymore. I had my arms full, literally and figuratively, trying to keep Gregory from crashing into the walls. His arms and legs were still almost useless. I wasn't sure if it was because of the long confinement or the drugs he'd been given, or both. Probably both.
Gregory kept saying "thank you, thank you, thank you" under his breath.
By the time we reached the top, there were tears drying on my cheeks. Regardless of what Richard decided, someone was going to pay.
Jacob was there, already bound in silver chains, carried like a piece of struggling luggage between three werewolves. They let him keep his cutoff shorts. No nudity for the good guys. I guess there has to be some differences, or how do you tell which side you're on?
Cherry was already checking Gregory over. She had to keep chasing the other leopards back. They kept trying to touch him.
I stared across the clearing at Jacob. The look in his eyes was enough. Richard could be squeamish if he wanted to be, but if I let what had been done to Gregory stand unchallenged, then Jacob and his followers would see it as weakness. They'd turn and destroy us once Jacob secured his power base. Because there was one way for Jacob to avoid a civil war, and that was by doing what I was encouraging Richard to do. If he did something so terrible that the others were afraid to fight, then he could be Ulfric without a bloodbath. I'd seen what he'd done to Gregory. Call it a hunch, but I was willing to bet Jacob would do what needed doing. He didn't strike me as the squeamish sort.
Richard climbed out of the hole. "Put him in."
"Do you want the drugs used?" Sylvie asked.
Richard nodded.
"What about the blindfold and the rest?"
Richard shook his head. "Not necessary."
Jacob started struggling again. "You can't do this!"
Richard knelt in front of him, holding him by his thick hair. The grip looked painful. "Who showed you where these were?" He held his hand out with the silver-tipped earplugs in his palm.
"Oh, my God," Sylvie whispered.
Others asked, "What is it?"
"Who, Jacob? Who told you our dirty little secrets?"
Jacob just stared at him.
"I could have them used on you," Richard said.
Jacob paled a little, but he didn't answer. His jaw was so tense that I could see the muscles pulsing, but he didn't give up who'd helped him. He didn't even ask if answering the question would save him from the oubliette. I had to admire that, at least, but I didn't have to like it.
"You wouldn't do that." It was Paris, looking a lot less confident than she had by the throne. She looked downright unsure of herself in her skintight dress.
Richard looked at her for a long time, or maybe it just seemed long, and something in his eyes made her look away.
"You're right, I can't use them on Jacob, or anyone." He looked around the clearing at the scattered wolves and at the ones waiting in the trees beyond-"But hear me, if there are anymore of these things around, I want them destroyed. When Jacob comes out of the oubliette, it is to be sealed up forever. You have learned nothing from me, if any of you could do this, you have learned nothing." He signaled Sylvie, and she came forward with a syringe.
The three werewolves had to hold Jacob against the ground for her to give him the shot. They held him until his limbs went limp and his eyes fluttered shut.
"He'll wake up in the oubliette," Richard said. His voice held not just tiredness, but defeat. He turned to me as they carried Jacob towards the hole. "Take your leopards, and your allies, and go home, Anita."
"I'm lupa, remember, you can't kick me out of pack business."
He smiled, but it left his eyes empty and tired. "You're still lupa, but for tonight you're also Nimir-Ra, and your leopards need you. Take care of Gregory, and for what it's worth, I'm sorry about all of this."
"Sorry is worth something, Richard, but it doesn't change things."
"It never does," he said.
I couldn't read his mood. He wasn't sad exactly, or worried, or, anything I had a name for, except defeated. It was like he'd already lost the battle.
"What are you going to do?" I asked.
"I'm going to find out who helped Jacob do this."
"How?" I asked.
He smiled and shook his head. "Go home, Anita."
I stood and looked at him for a heartbeat or two, then turned back to my leopards. Gregory was on a stretcher, and Zane and Noah were carrying it. Cherry was talking to the werewolf doctor that had packed Jacob's nose. She was doing a lot of nodding. Instructions, maybe.
Micah was standing at the edge of the group watching me. I met his eyes, but neither of us smiled. I looked back but Richard was already moving off through the trees with Jamil and Shang-Da at his back. Micah's face was very neutral as I walked towards him. I wasn't hopeful anymore. I could have played it cool, but I didn't want to. I was tired, so terribly tired. My clothes smelled like an outhouse, and probably so did my skin. I wanted a shower, clean clothes, and to make the lost look in Gregory's eyes go away. The shower and clothes were the easy part. I didn't even know how to begin to make Gregory's pain go away.
I held out my hand to Micah, not because of otherworldly energy, apparently depression dampens that, but because I wanted the touch of another hand. I wanted the comfort, and I didn't want to have to think about it. I just wanted to be held.
He widened his eyes, but took my hand, squeezing it gently. I started walking towards the trees, leading him by the hand. The others followed us. Even the swan king and the wererats. Anita Blake, preternatural pied piper. The thought should have made me smile. But it didn't.
Chapter 28
TWO HOURS LATER I'd had a shower and Gregory had had a bath, though I'd showered by myself, and Gregory had had company. He still didn't have complete use of his arms and legs. I didn't think that Cherry, Zane, and Nathaniel needed to get na**d and in the tub with him, but, hey, I wasn't offering to help, so who was I to complain? Besides, it never became sexual; it was as if the touch of their flesh on his was necessary, part of the healing process. Maybe it was.
I was sitting at my new kitchen table. My old two-seater table just hadn't been roomy enough for all the wereleopards to have bagels and cream cheese at the same time. The new table was pale pine, varnished to a golden glow. There still wasn't enough room at the table for everyone to sit and drink coffee, but it was closer. I'd have needed a banquet table to have that much room, and the kitchen wasn't long enough for it. There was more than one reason that feudal lords had had great big castles--you needed the room just to feed and care for all your people.
The only person sitting in the dimly lit kitchen was Dr. Lillian. Elizabeth had been transported to the secret hospital that the shapeshifters kept in St. Louis. All my other leopards were tending to Gregory. Micah and his cats wandered around the periphery of it all. Caleb had tried to include himself in the bath and had been refused. The rest of Micah's pard seemed unsettled, nervous, not knowing what to do with themselves. I had my priority for the evening--taking care of Gregory. Everything else could wait. One disaster at a time, or you lose your way, and your mind.
Dr. Lillian was a small woman with gray hair cut straight just above her shoulders. Her hair was longer than the first time I met her, but everything else was the same. I'd never seen her wear makeup, and her face still looked pleasant and attractive in a fifty-plus sort of way--though I'd discovered she was actually well over sixty. She certainly didn't look it.
