"I'm not here to hurt you, Anita Blake," George said in a voice that showed no strain.
I ignored him and waited for a shot to open up.
Ethan stopped trying to fight and let George cut his arm. It gave him an opening to push back and let himself fall to the floor and give me a clear shot. I aimed at George's center and squeezed the trigger, but he was already moving, impossibly fast, a blur that I tried to follow with my hands and the gun as I fired. The gun was a Glock 21, which was a .45ACP, and it took my hands up toward the ceiling so that by the time I had the gun back down and ready to aim again he was through the door and out of sight.
I said, "Motherfucker!" and got to my feet, gun held up, elbows bent, so if I had another shot I would be able to take it. But the hallway was a mass of people in white T-shirts and khaki pants. Most of them had the same short, dark red hair, so that there was no target to aim at, or there were too many.
Some of the figures were on the ground, white shirts blossoming crimson with blood. I prayed that one of them was George, but somehow I knew he wouldn't be.
I felt movement behind me and started to bring the gun around, but Ethan said, "It's me." I stopped in midmotion, telling the beating of my pulse in my throat that of course it was Ethan; no one else in the room was conscious. That made me think about Alex, and wonder why his being hurt hadn't hurt me. I'd taken damage when some of my other animals to call had been hurt, so why hadn't it hurt me?
I glanced behind to see that Alex was still motionless on the floor. I'd check on him after I knew what had happened to the bad guy.
Ethan moved in front of me, and I realized he'd taken the time to get his weapons. His T-shirt was untucked so that it didn't all fit back as neatly as it had started, but shoulder holsters chafe without a shirt. I had time to see that his wound was bleeding freely and starting to get all over his white shirt, as he put me at his back and did what a good guard will do: be a meat shield. When all else fails, that's the last duty of any bodyguard, to literally put his body between you and harm.
I started to say I didn't need it, but honestly, I couldn't have held my own against the other man as long as Ethan had. I could admit that he was not only stronger than I was, but better at slugging it out. I didn't like it, but I admitted it in my head, and I let him wade out into the fight in the hallway first. Did it hurt my pride? Yes. Was my pride worth dying for? No.
But when I started moving out behind him from the doorway, Ethan put a hand back and stopped me. "Wait," he said. There was a time when I wouldn't have listened, but the speed . . . the speed at the end had been too fast even for a shapeshifter. He'd been as fast as the masked shapeshifter who had injured Karlton. He wasn't tall enough, but he was fast enough. He had to be one of the Harlequin. I still wasn't certain if I'd hit him, or if he truly had been faster than a speeding bullet. It had all happened too damned fast.
I picked out words from the babble of voices in the hallway: "He was too fast . . . dead . . . help me stop the bleeding . . . it's too late, he's dead . . . get the doctor."
Ethan motioned that I could move forward. I pointed the gun down at the floor, but kept it in a two-handed grip. There were two men down in a pool of blood. A guard with yellow hair was holding his hands on one man's throat, trying to stop the bleeding, but blood gushed out from between his fingers. I'd known shapeshifters powerful enough to heal a wound like that, and I'd seen one die from an almost identical wound. He'd been killed by one of the Harlequin's animals to call, too. Were they trained to go for the throat?
The other fallen guard had less blood on him, but his eyes were already set in death. It looked like a stab straight to the heart. There was no recovery from a silver blade through the heart for a lycanthrope. He'd been dead the moment the blade slid home. Two other men were down with knife wounds, and a third was mobile but bleeding like Ethan.
George had fought his way through them in a matter of moments: two dead, three wounded, five if you counted Alex and Ethan. He did all that to a group of trained bodyguards who were also shapeshifters. Apparently the Harlequin were going to live up to their reputation. They were scary good.
There was nothing I could do for anyone out here, so I said, "Ethan, I'm going to check on Alex."
"Good idea," and he followed behind me. One of the other guards asked, "What's wrong with the prince? Is he hurt?"
"He's hurt," Ethan said.
"Did George do it?" the man asked.
I answered before Ethan could. "Let's just see how hurt Alex is." I didn't want to get bogged down in details, and I also didn't want to see Ethan hurt before I could explain that it was the Harlequin that had made Alex attack and forced Ethan to defend himself. It was too complicated to explain with two of their men dead and more wounded. Complicated could wait until after everyone calmed down.
Alex was sitting up as we walked toward him. Ethan got to him first and dropped to one knee as George had done, hand going to his chest. "My Prince, forgive me."
Alex looked at him and then at me. "It's okay; I would have killed you if you hadn't fought back. The rage was . . . like nothing I've ever felt." He held out his hand to the other man. "Help me up, and we'll call it even."
This was the reasonable Alex I remembered. Ethan helped him stand up. There was bruising on Alex's face where the other man had kicked him, but it was as if the injury were days old instead of only minutes. If Alex had been a more powerful shapeshifter, there wouldn't have been any mark by now.
The other guard with us asked, "What is Ethan apologizing for?"