“I’m sorry,” I said, and my voice was an abused whisper.
He rolled golden eyes up to look at me. “That fucking hurt.”
Micah came to the edge of the bed. He took one of my hands in his, and looked at my fingers. “You were bleeding from under your nails. If he hadn’t taken your beast when he did,” he shrugged, “it might have been too late.”
That scared me. It tightened my stomach, and even that hurt, as if I’d abused muscles that I didn’t know I had.
“Thank you, Cookie, more than you’ll know.”
The lionman said, “Did you just call me Cookie?”
“Sorry, it’s the hair, Cookie Monster blue, and the tat.”
“Haven. My name’s Haven.” I think he smiled, but it was hard to tell on the lionish face, from the angle I had. “Though Cookie Monster works just fine.”
“I said Cookie, not Monster.”
“You haven’t seen me at my best, yet” he said, and smiled for sure.
I did not understand the comment. Micah did. “He’s implying he’s big.”
“Oh,” I said, then had to smile up at Micah. “He shouldn’t brag until he’s seen the competition.”
The lionman rolled his face to look at Micah. He wasn’t looking at his face. Micah said, “You aren’t seeing me at my best either.”
Even through the lion’s face I could see the arrogance as he looked up at me, not at Micah. “Trust me, I’ll measure up. Auggie was shopping for size, not just talent.”
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to say Oh, really, Oh, goody, or Oh, boy. Under normal circumstances his assumption that he was going to get to fuck me would have pissed me off. But one, I didn’t have energy left to get pissy; two, he’d saved me. Saved us. Micah, Nathaniel, and me. I could ask for our local pride to give me some lions to follow me around, but this morning, right this moment, Haven had been the only rescue I had. I owed him. Also I’d ripped his body apart, and caused him massive amounts of pain. Oops didn’t really cover that one.
“When you can walk,” Nathaniel said, “I’ll take you to the feeding area.” Nathaniel’s fur glistened under the lights, wetter from being so close to Haven’s violent shift than from his own. He slipped off the end of the bed and padded around to join Micah, who was still holding my hand.
Micah pressed my hand to his face, and it left a wet glistening stain on his cheek. I was so going to need another bath.
“I can walk.” Haven slipped off the side of the bed, and went straight to his knees. “Shit.”
Nathaniel reached down to help him stand.
Haven asked, “Did you take her beast, too?”
“Yes.”
“It didn’t hit you this hard, did it?”
“No.” Nathaniel didn’t bother to explain that it hadn’t been as violent, and no one else did either. I wasn’t sure we were keeping Haven, but if we were then Nathaniel would need to establish some sort of dominance with the other man. That Nathaniel could take that much pain and keep on ticking would help.
Haven leaned against the bed, Nathaniel still holding his arm. Those golden lion eyes looked at me. “Don’t take this personally or anything, but the fringe benefits better be fucking amazing.”
“They are,” Nathaniel said.
“Depends on what fringe benefits you’re talking about,” I said.
“Sex,” he said, straightening up slowly, obviously still in pain. “You’re Belle Morte’s line, there is no other fringe benefit for you guys.”
I couldn’t argue with the last part, but I could with the first. “Don’t assume you’re getting sex, Haven.”
He gave me a look. “All this and you don’t think I’ve proved myself enough for sex? Damn, girl, what does a man have to do to meet your standards?”
“When you figure it out, let me know.” This from Richard. He stopped near the bed, and looked at me. “You could have been my lupa for real, but you didn’t want to be. You chose him, them, over me.”
“If I’d been lupa for real, you wouldn’t have wanted me. I saw it in your head.”
He shook his head. “You could have been my lupa at the lupanar, with the pack.”
“But I would have lost the baby.”
He wouldn’t meet my gaze.
“You can’t stand the thought that this isn’t your baby.”
“No, I can’t.”
“I’m already your lupa,” I said, “I’m already Bolverk. Nothing would have changed for you and me if I’d become wolf for real. My being wolf would have meant you looked harder for that human Ms. Right.”
He stared down at me. “You won’t even let me have the illusion of it, will you?”
I tried to sit up, and Micah had to help me. So stiff, so sore. “What illusion, Richard?”
“That we could be together as a couple, at least with the wolves.”
“And what happens to my life when the moon isn’t full?”
“Would it be so bad to be with me for real, without the others?”
I looked up into his face, and maybe I was tired, physically, mentally, emotionally. After everything I’d been through tonight, and this morning, all he could think of was himself, his problems, his pain. “Is everything about your pain, Richard, is that all you think about?”
“Answer me, Anita, answer me. Would it be so bad to have been with me for real? Just the two of us, would that be so bad?”
I tried one more time not to answer. “You don’t want me to answer that question, Richard.” I leaned in against Micah, let him hold me.
“Mon ami,” Jean-Claude said, “let it go.”
He shook his head again. “No, not this time. I had this idea that if he”—and he pointed at Jean-Claude—“hadn’t interfered we’d be a couple, we’d have been happy. But I see you with him”—he pointed at Micah—“and him”—he pointed at Nathaniel—“and I have to know. Tell me the truth, Anita. Tell me the truth. I won’t break the triumvirate. I won’t run away. But tell me the truth, so I know where I stand. I need to know how hard I need to look for Ms. Right. Tell me the truth, and maybe I can move on. I know I can’t stand watching you take another lover. That, I know I can’t stand.” He sat down on the messy edge of the bed. He gave me a solemn face. “If you’d become wolf for real, and had to live with me, give up Micah and Nathaniel, would that have been so bad?”
My throat hurt, but it wasn’t from what the beasts had done. My throat was thick and tight; my eyes burned. Why did Richard always make me want to cry? “Don’t make me do this,” I whispered.
“Just say it, Anita, just say it.”
I had to swallow twice, and the tears spilled over as I said, “Yes, it would have been bad.”
“Why? Why would the two of us living together, raising our child be so bad? If it is mine I want a place in his life.”
That was it, he’d brought the baby up, and suddenly in all the tears was the anger, never far behind for me. “You don’t see me, Richard. You see this ideal of me, but it’s not me. I don’t think it was ever me.”
“What does that mean, I don’t see you? I see you, you’re right there.”
“What do you see, Richard, tell me?”
“I see you.”
“I’m naked on a bed being held by a naked man, with two other naked men in the room who are also my lovers. You’ve just said you can’t stand to watch me take another lover, when you know I’m supposed to be looking for a new pomme de sang to feed the ardeur.”
“I thought you weren’t really going to look, just pretend.”
That should not have been said in front of our company. “I’m not sure I have a choice right now, Richard.”
“The next time the wolf comes, just don’t fight it, and you can be my lupa. We can be together, because you won’t be able to be with anyone else.”
That was it; I told him the truth. “I don’t want to be just with you, Richard. I don’t want to lose Micah and Nathaniel, or Jean-Claude.”
“So, if I said, choose, I�
��d lose.”
I thought, you’ve already lost me. Out loud, I said, “I can’t be with just one person, Richard, you know that.”
“Even if the ardeur cools, you’re never going to choose just one of us, are you?”
We stared at each other, and the weight of his gaze was so heavy, so heavy. In his own way, he was just as stubborn as I was, and this was one of those moments when it was about to destroy us. “No, Richard, I don’t think I am.”
He took in a lot of air, and let it out slow. He nodded, as if to himself, stood, and said, without looking at me, “That’s what I needed to hear. Not this weekend, we’ll be busy, but next weekend I’ll still want you to go to church with me, if you want to.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I said, “Okay.”
“Family dinner afterward, like always,” he said as he headed for the door. He hesitated at the door, turned with his hand touching it. “I will find someone who wants the life I want.”
“I hope you do,” I whispered.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too,” I said, and meant it.
“I hate you, Anita,” he said, with almost no change in his voice.
“I hate you, too, Richard,” I said, and I meant it.
24
ANOTHER MESS, ANOTHER bath. Thanks to the violence of Haven’s change I wasn’t the only one with gobs of him in my hair, and other places. If a forensics team had come on the scene; God knows what they would have made of it. Jean-Claude and Micah got in the tub with me. Nathaniel had taken Haven to the feeding area, where they kept livestock, or I assumed it was livestock. Truthfully, I’d never seen the “feeding,” but Nathaniel and Jason had both told me that it was legal food, and that meant animals. Though I loved several shapeshifters, I did not want to see them eat. Some visuals I did not need.
Octavius and Pierce had tried to go back to their rooms, but Claudia had stopped them. She’d asked where the guards on their door were. Pierce said, “They tried to stop Haven and me from leaving the room.”
“That was their job,” Claudia said.
“Then they aren’t that good at their job,” he said.
“Did you kill them?”
He looked down at the floor, then back up. “They were breathing when we left them.”
That had prompted her to send Lisandro and Clay to check. She’d kept Graham with her, and made Octavius and Pierce wait for the news. Both of the wererats were alive, but hurt. Badly hurt.
Thanks to the problems we’d had with the masters of both Cape Cod and Chicago, we had extra guards. They had actually put guards on the coffin room, which was fortunate; Meng Die had cracked her coffin when she got the power rush that all of Jean-Claude’s people got from our sex with Augustine. Meng Die, more powerful, not a good thought.
Now the extra guards came in handy. Claudia put four guards on Octavius and Pierce. She sent Lisandro to supervise them, with orders to check in with Fredo, who turned out to be in charge of the coffin room detail. Claudia stayed with us, and kept Clay with her. The two of them were outside in the bedroom now, while we cleaned up. Claudia and Clay were messy, too, but would wait to clean up.
Jean-Claude drew me through the warm water, until my body rested against his. I laid my head back against his shoulder and said, “Didn’t we just do this?”
“Not precisely, ma petite,” he whispered against my wet hair.
Micah moved through the water until he knelt beside us. His hair was plastered to his head, looking straight and black. His chartreuse eyes were startling in his tanned face without the hair to distract from them. He moved in close enough that a strand of his hair touched mine, and the illusion of blackness faded, because even wet his hair was not as dark as mine, or Jean-Claude’s. Impossibly rich, dark brown, but not black.
I whispered against Micah’s cheek, “No, not precisely.”
Micah kissed me, then leaned back enough to see us clearly. “Now that we’re clean, why couldn’t we wake you and Jean-Claude?”
“I thought Jean-Claude was awake the whole time,” I said.
“Not at first; at first he was as out of it as you were.”
“How did you know he wasn’t just dead to the world like normal?”
“He was breathing.”
I felt Jean-Claude stir against me, as if that fact had startled him. “Breathing. How…interesting.” His voice was very careful.
“Shouldn’t you have been breathing?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
I turned around in his arms until I could study his face. That face showed me nothing. It was as beautiful and unreadable as a painting, as if instead of a face with movement and breath, it were just a moment caught in time, a single lovely expression. He was at his most careful, hiding, when he was like that.
“Why is your breathing more surprising than your not dying at dawn?” I asked.
“I also dreamed,” he said.
I frowned at him. “You were asleep. You dream when you’re asleep.”
“I have not dreamed in almost six hundred years.”
“What did you dream?” Micah asked.
“A very practicial question, mon chat.”
I looked from one to the other of them. “Am I missing something?”
Jean-Claude looked at me. “What did you dream, ma petite? Who did you dream of?” His voice never changed from that friendly lilt.
“You ask like you already know,” I said.
“You must say it, ma petite.”
“The Mother of All Darkness,” I said, softly, and just saying it seemed to make the room not quite bright enough.
“Marmee Noir,” he said, nodding.
“Yes,” I said. I tried to read past that pleasant exterior, and failed. “You dreamed of her, too?”
“Oui.”
“You both dreamed of the head of the vampire council?”
“She is much more than that,” Jean-Claude said. “She is the creator of our civilization. Our laws are her laws. Some say she was the first vampire, and that she truly is the mother of us all.”
I cuddled in closer to him, and he tucked me under his arm, so I could wrap my arms around his waist. Somehow, close wasn’t close enough when talking about the Mother of All Darkness.
“What did you dream, exactly?” Micah asked.
“She tried to play human for me, but, God, she was bad at it.”
“I saw her bend over you, ma petite. I saw her begin to take you away from me. But I could not reach you, the darkness held me as her figure bent over you.” He shuddered, and held me tight against his body. “I could not reach you, and her voice taunted me for my carelessness.” He kissed the top of my head. “But she also told me that if I had given you the fourth mark, that she would have killed you, for if she could not control you, then she would destroy you.”
Micah came to us, tucked himself against me, pressing Jean-Claude’s arm between us, his own arm going across Jean-Claude’s shoulders. Micah was on his knees beside me, because their heads came together over mine, and Micah wasn’t tall enough for that without some help. “But you woke before Anita,” Micah said. “Why?”
“I thought if I could break my dream, it would free ma petite. It did not, but I was able to break Marmee’s hold on my mind. That, in itself, is a surprising thing.”
“Surprising doesn’t begin to cover it,” I said. “How did you break free?”
“How did you?” he asked.
“I called the only animal I have that isn’t a cat. She only does cats. I saw her in that room, where her real body is. I saw her body jerk. My wolf bit her, for real, I think.”
The two men held me tighter, pressing me between them, as if something about what I’d said scared them. I guess it was scary, but…“Am I missing something here, guys? You’re suddenly both even more afraid.”
“The ability to send a spirit animal through dream and harm another is rare among us.”
“Among vampires, you mean,” I sa
id.
“Oui.”
“Us, too,” Micah said, “but…” Then he stopped abruptly.
“But what?” I asked. When he didn’t answer, I pulled away from them both, so I could see his face. Jean-Claude, if he wanted to, could hide anything behind his face, but Micah wasn’t that good. If I looked hard enough, I might get a hint.
He lowered his eyes, as if he knew what I was doing.
I touched his face, turned him to look at me. “What, Micah, what is it?”
“Chimera could invade your dreams.”
“Could he hurt someone that way?”
“No”—then he seemed to think about it—“not when he took over my original pard, he couldn’t. He had grown in power in the years I was with him, so maybe? Ask some of the dominants he took, who survived. Ask them if he could hurt them in their dreams.”
“It is very rare for a lycanthrope to be able to invade dreams like a vampire,” Jean-Claude said.
“Chimera was a rare kind of guy,” I said, and just thinking about him scared me. He was dead, I’d killed him, but he had been one of the scarier things I’d ever fought.
Micah looked at me, and his face held such pain, as if whatever he was thinking was something so awful.
“What?” I asked.
“We learned last month that you carry lion lycanthropy. That had to come from your fight with Chimera.”
I nodded. “He was in lionman form when he cut me up, yeah.”
Micah licked his lips, as if there were any possibility in the hot, misty tub that his lips were dry. “What if you gained more from him than just lion lycanthropy?”
I frowned at him. “I’m not following.”
“He means, ma petite, what if you gained not simply lycanthropy, but the kind of lycanthropy that Chimera held? He was not a werelion, he was a panwere. He held over a half-dozen types of lycanthropy, did he not?”
Micah nodded. “Leopard, lion, wolf, hyena, anaconda, bear, and then he took the cobra’s leader. I think if he’d lived until next full moon, he would have been cobra, too.”
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