He held up his hand. "No, ma petite. You have been very rash. Remember, if you die, Richard and I may die, as well. The binding that makes us a triumvirate gives power, but it does not come without a price. It is not merely your own life that you are risking."
That stopped me. "I hadn't thought of it that way," I said.
"You will need an entourage now that befits a human servant of mine, and an entourage that is strong enough to fight Colin's people, if need be."
"Who do you have in mind?" I asked, suddenly suspicious.
"Leave that to me."
"I don't think so," I said.
He stood, and his anger lashed through the room like a scalding wind. "You have endangered yourself and me and Richard. You have endangered everything we have or hope to have with your temper."
"It would have come down to an ultimatum in the end, Jean-Claude. I know vampires. You would have argued and bargained for a day or two, but in the end, it would have come down to this."
"Are you so sure?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said. "I heard the fear in Colin's voice. He's scared shitless of you. He'd have never agreed to us coming down."
"It is not just me he fears, ma petite. You are the Executioner. Young vampires are told if they are foolish, you will come and slay them in their coffins."
"You're making that up," I said.
He shook his head. "No, ma petite, you are the bogeyman of vampirekind."
"If I see Colin, I'll try not to scare him more than I already have."
"You will see him, ma petite, one way or the other. He will either arrange a meeting when he sees you mean him no harm, or he will be there when they attack."
"We have to get Richard out before the full moon. We've only got five days. We didn't have time to do this slowly."
"Who are you trying to convince, ma petite, me or yourself?"
I had lost my temper. It had been stupid. Inexcusable. I had a temper, but I was usually better at controlling it than that. "I'm sorry," I said.
Jean-Claude gave a very inelegant snort. "Now she's sorry." He dialed the phone. "I will have Asher and the others pack."
"Asher?" I said. "He's not going with me."
"Yes, he is."
I opened my mouth to protest. He pointed one long, pale finger at me. "I know Colin and his people. You need an entourage that is impressive without being too frightening, and yet if the worst happens, they must be able to defend you and themselves. I will pick who goes and who stays."
"That's not fair."
"There is no time for fairness, ma petite. Your precious Richard sits behind bars and the full moon is approaching." He let his hand fall to his lap. "If you wish to take some of your wereleopards with you, that would be welcome. Asher and Damian will need food while they are away. They cannot hunt within Colin's territory. That would be taken as an act of hostility."
"You want me to volunteer some of the wereleopards as walking provisions?"
"I am going to supply some werewolves as well," he said.
"I'm lupa for the pack as well as Nimir-ra for the leopards. You need to run the wolves by me, too." Richard had made me lupa of the werewolves when we were dating. Lupa is often just another word for the head wolf's girlfriend, though usually it's another werewolf, not a human. The wereleopards came to me by default. I killed their last leader and found out that everyone else was pretty much beating the hell out of them. Weak shape-shifters without a dominant to protect them end up as anyone's meat. It was my fault, sort of, that they were being hurt, so I extended my protection over them. My protection, since I wasn't a wereleopard, consisted of my threat. My threat was that I'd kill anyone who messed with them. The monsters in town must have believed it, because they left the leopards alone. Use enough silver bullets on enough monsters, and you get a reputation.
Jean-Claude put the receiver up to his ear. "It is getting so that a person cannot insult a monster in Saint Louis without answering to you, ma petite." If I hadn't known better, I'd say Jean-Claude was angry with me.
I guess, this once, I couldn't blame him.
3
The private jet was like a long white egg with fins. Okay, it was longer than an egg and more pointy at the ends, but it seemed just as fragile. Have I mentioned I have this little phobia about flying? I sat in my comfy, fully swivel, fully reclinable chair very upright, seat-belted in, fingernails digging into the cushioned arms. I had purposefully turned the seat away from one of the many round windows so I couldn't see out the side nearest me. Unfortunately, the plane was so narrow that I caught glimpses on the opposite side windows of fluffy clouds and clear blue sky. Hard to forget you're thousands of feet above the ground with only a thin sheet of metal between you and eternity when clouds keep floating past the window.
Jason plopped down in the seat next to me, and I let out a little yip. He laughed. "I can't believe you're this scared of flying." He pushed his chair with his feet, making it spin around, slowly, like a kid with Daddy's office chair. His thin blond hair was cut just above his shoulders, no bangs. His eyes were the same pale blue as the sky we were flying through. He was exactly my height, five three, which made him short, especially for a man. He never seemed to mind. He wore an oversized T-shirt and a pair of jeans so faded they were almost white. He wore two hundred dollar jogging shoes, though I knew for a fact he never jogged.
He'd turned twenty-one this summer. He'd informed me that he was a Gemini, and he was now legal for everything. Everything could cover a lot of ground for Jason. He was a werewolf, but he currently lived with Jean-Claude and played morning appetizer or evening snack for the vampire. Shapeshifter blood has a bigger kick to it, more power. You can drink less of it than human blood and feel a hell of a lot better, or so I've observed.
He flung himself up from the chair and fell to his knees in front of me. "Come on, Anita. What's to worry?"
"Leave me alone, Jason. It's a phobia. It has no logic. You can't talk me out of it, so just go away."
He sprang to his feet so fast it was almost magical. "We're perfectly safe." He started jumping up and down on the floor on the plane. "See, solid."
I yelled, "Zane!"
Zane appeared beside me. He was about six feet tall, stretched long and thin as if there wasn't enough flesh to cover his bones. His hair had been dyed a shocking yellow, like neon buttercups, shaved on the sides and gelled into small, stiff spikes on top. He wore black vinyl pants, like a slick second skin, and a matching vest, no shirt. Shiny black boots completed the outfit.
"You rang?" he asked in a voice that was almost painfully deep. If a shapeshifter spends too much time in animal form, some of the physical changes can be permanent. Zane's gravelly voice and the dainty upper and lower fangs in his human mouth said he'd spent a little too much time as a leopard. The voice could have passed for human, but the fangs -- the fangs gave it away.
"Get Jason away from me, please," I said through gritted teeth.
Zane looked down at the smaller man.
Jason stood his ground.
Zane moved those last two steps to close the distance between them. They stood there, pressed chest to chest, eyes locked. You could suddenly feel that skin-crawling energy that let you know that human was not what they were.
Shit. I hadn't meant to start a fight.
Zane lowered his face toward the shorter man, a low growl trickling out of his closed lips.
"No fighting, boys," I said.
Zane planted a big, wet kiss on Jason's mouth.
Jason jerked back, laughing. "You bisexual son of a bitch."
"Now, if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black," Zane said.
Jason just grinned and wandered off, though there wasn't a lot of room to wander anywhere. I also have a touch of claustrophobia. I got it from a diving accident, but I've noticed it's worse since I woke up one morning trapped in a coffin with a vampire I didn't like. I got away, but I like enclosed spaces less and less.
Zane slid into the seat be
side me. The shiny black vest gaped over his thin, pale chest, giving a glimpse of a silver nipple ring.
Zane patted my knee, and I let him. He was always touching people, nothing personal. A lot of shapeshifters were touchy-feely, as if they were animals instead of people and had fewer physical boundaries, but Zane had turned to casual touch into an art form. I finally realized that he touched others as a sort of security blanket. He tried to play the dominant predator, but he wasn't. Underneath the show of teasing confidence, he knew it. He got really tense if he was in a social situation where he had to stand alone, literally without the touch of other flesh. So I let him touch me when I'd have bitched at anyone else.
"We'll be on the ground soon," he said. The hand left my knee. He understood the rules. I let him touch me when he had no business doing it, but no long, lingering caresses. I was his touchstone when he was nervous, not his girlfriend.
"I know," I said.
He smiled. "But you don't believe me."
"Let's just say I'll relax when we actually land."
Cherry joined us. She was tall and slender, with straight, naturally blond hair cut very, very short and close to a strong, triangular face. The eye shadow was gray, the eyeliner so black it looked like crayon. The lipstick was black. The makeup wasn't the colors I'd have chosen for her, but it did match her clothes. Black fishnet stockings, vinyl miniskirt, black go-go boots, and a black lace bra underneath a fishnet shirt. She'd added the bra for my benefit. Left to her own devices, when she wasn't working as a nurse, she went pretty much topless. She'd been a nurse until they found out she was a wereleopard; then she'd been the victim of budget cuts. Maybe it was budget cuts, but then again, maybe it wasn't. It was illegal to discriminate against someone because they had a disease, but no one wants a wereanything treating the sick. People seem to think lycanthropes can't control themselves around freshly spilled blood. Some of the newer shapeshifters would be in trouble, but Cherry wasn't new. She'd been a good nurse, and now she'd never be a nurse again. She was bitter about it and had turned herself into the slut bride from Planet X, as if even in human form, she wanted people to know what she was now: different, other. Trouble was, she looked like a thousand other teens and early twenties who also wanted to be different and stand out.
"What happens once we land?" Cherry asked in a purring, contralto voice. I'd thought her voice had been the product of too much fur time, like Zane's teeth, but nope, Cherry just had this wonderful, deep, sexy voice. She'd have done good phone sex. She sat on the ground at our feet, knees out, ankles crossed, making the short skirt ride up enough to show the hose were thigh high but still managing to cover the rest. Though in a skirt that short, I was hoping she was wearing undies. I'd have never have been able to wear something that short and not flash.
"I contact Richard's brother and go to the jail," I said.
"What do you want us to do?" Zane asked.
"Jean-Claude said that he made arrangements for rooms, so you guys go to the rooms."
They exchanged a glance. It was more than an ordinary glance.
"What?" I asked.
"One of us will need to go with you," Zane said.
"No, I'm going to go in there flashing my executioner's license. I'm better off on my own."
"What if the master of this city has his people waiting for you in town?" Zane asked. "He'll know you're going to the jail today."
Cherry nodded. "It could be an ambush."
They had a point, but ... "Look, nothing personal, guys, but you look like the top half of an S and M wedding cake. Cops don't like people who look sort of ... " I wasn't sure how to say it without being insulting. Cops were meat-and-potatoes people. They weren't impressed by the exotic. They'd seen it all and cleaned up the mess. Most of the exotic that they saw were bad guys. After a while, policemen seem to think anything exotic is a bad guy; just saves time.
If I walked into the police station with Tweedle-punk and Tweedle-slut, it was going to raise the cop's antennae. They'd know I wasn't exactly what I was claiming to be, and that would complicate things. We needed to make things easier, not harder.
I was dressed in vampire executioner casual. New black jeans, not faded, crimson short-sleeved dress shirt, black suit jacket, black Nikes, black belt so the loops of my shoulder holster had something to hang on. The Browning Hi-Power sat under my left arm, a familiar tightness. I was carrying three blades. A silver knife in a wrist sheath on each arm and a blade in a sheath down my spine. The handle stuck up high enough that my hair had to hide it, but my hair was thick and dark enough to do the job. The last blade was like a small sword. I'd used it only once for real to pin a wereleopard through the heart. The tip had pushed out his back. A silver cross under the blouse for true emergencies, and I was packed for werebear, or almost anything else. I had a spare clip of normal bullets in my fanny pack just in case I met up with a rogue fairie. Silver didn't work against them.
"I'll go with you." Nathaniel slid in behind Cherry, pressing himself against the wall of the plane and my legs. One broad shoulder rested against my jeans in a nice, solid weight. There was actually no way for him to sit there and not touch me. He was always trying to touch me, and he was good enough at it that I couldn't always bitch about it, like now.
"I don't think so, Nathaniel," I said.
He hugged his knees to his chest and asked, "Why not?" He was dressed normally enough in jeans and a tucked-in T-shirt, but the rest of him ... His hair was a deep, nearly mahogany auburn. He'd tied it back in a loose ponytail, but the hair fell like silken water to his knees.
Nathaniel gazed up at me with eyes the pale purple of Easter egg grass. Even if he cut the hair, the eyes would have given him trouble. He was short for a man, and was also the youngest of us, nineteen. I suspected strongly that he was in the middle of a growth spurt. Someday, that short body was going to match his shoulders, which were broad and very masculine. He was a stripper at Guilty Pleasures, a wereleopard, and once he'd been a male prostitute. I'd put a stop to that. If you're going to be leopard queen, you might as well rule. The rule was that none of the leopards were whores. Gabriel, their old alpha, had pimped them out. Shapeshifters can take a lot of damage and survive. Gabriel had figured out a way to make that pay. He pimped his kitties out to the S and M set. People who liked to give pain had paid a lot of money for Nathaniel, once upon a time. The first time I'd ever seen him was in the hospital after a client had gotten carried away and nearly killed him. Admittedly, this was after Gabriel had been killed. The wereleopards had tried to keep up the client list without anyone to protect them from the clients.
Zane had tried to take Gabriel's place as pimp and bad-ass kitty, but he hadn't been strong enough to fill the bill. He'd let Nathaniel nearly die and hadn't been able to protect him.
Nathaniel could bench-press a grand piano, but he was a victim. He liked pain and wanted someone to be in charge of him. He wanted a master and was trying very hard for me to take the job. We might have worked something out, but being his master -- or mistress -- seemed to include sex, and that I was not up for.
"I'll go," Jason said. He sat down beside Cherry and laid his head on her shoulder, snuggling. Cherry moved away from him, cuddling closer to Nathaniel. It wasn't sex, exactly, it was that the wereanimals tended to get up close and personal with their own kind. It was considered something of a social gaffe to cuddle up to a different sort of animal. But Jason didn't care. Cherry was female, and he flirted with anything that was female. Nothing personal, just habit.
Jason wiggled his butt until Cherry was pressed between him and Nathaniel. "I've got a suit in my luggage. A nice, normal, blue suit. I'll even wear a tie."
Cherry growled at him. It sounded all wrong, coming from that pretty face. I am not one of those women who wants to redo other women. I don't care much for makeup or clothes. But Cherry made me want to give her hints. If she was pretty in the Bride of Frankenstein makeup, she'd have been a knockout in something that matched her skin tone.
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I smiled. "Thanks, Jason. Now, give Cherry some breathing room."
He pressed himself even closer. "Zane gave me a kiss to make me move."
"Move, or I'll bite your nose off." She gave an expression that was half-snarl, half-smile, a threatening flash of teeth.
"I think she means it," I said.
Jason laughed and stood in one of those lightning-fast movements that they were all capable of. He went to stand behind my seat, leaning his forearms on it.
"I'll hide behind you until it's safe," he said.
"Get off the back of my seat," I said.
He moved his arms but stayed standing behind me. "Jean-Claude thought you might have to take some of us into police situations. We can't all look like college students and porn stars."
The porn star comment was sadly accurate for all three of the wereleopards. Another good idea of Gabriel's had been to star his people in porno films. Gabriel did his own share of starring roles. He was never one to ask of his kitties what he wasn't willing -- nay, eager -- to do himself. He'd been a sick son of a bitch, and he'd made sure that his wereleopards were as sick as he was.
Nathaniel had given me a gift box of three of his movies. He suggested we watch them together. I said thanks, but no thanks. I kept the tapes mainly because I wasn't sure what to do with them. I mean, he'd given me a gift. I was raised not to be rude. They were way in the back of my video cabinet, hidden behind a stack of Disney tapes. And no, I had not watched them once I was alone.
The air slapped against the plane, making it shudder. Turbulence, just turbulence. "You're actually pale," Cherry said.
"Yeah," I said.
Jason kissed the top of my head. "You know you're actually cute when you're scared."
I turned very slowly in the seat and stared at him. I would have liked to say I stared at him until his smile faded away, but we didn't have that kind of time. Jason would grin on his way into hell. "Don't touch me."
The grin widened. His eyes sparkled with it. "Who me?"
I sighed and settled back into the seat. It was going to be a very long couple of days.
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