“Chimera thought that once he hit his first full moon, the animals he had were all he got.”
“I don’t think that was true,” Micah said.
“Are you sure it wasn’t true?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, but it would explain what’s happening to you.”
“What do you mean, what’s happening to me?”
“Anita, you almost shifted tonight. Blood came out from under your nails. It was close.”
“We’re not sure I’m a panwere.”
“No, but if you are, then you won’t lose the leopards when you shift.”
I shook my head. “I’ll pick leopard, if I have to pick, thanks, just in case.”
“I agree,” he said, “but if you are a panwere, and you’re close to shifting…” He stopped talking, then looked down.
“You are thinking what I am thinking, mon chat, and you know she will not like it,” Jean-Claude said.
“What?” I asked.
Jean-Claude answered, “If you are to be a panwere, and there is a chance that you will gain new animals until your first change of shape, then we have the opportunity to gain great power.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If you are going to shift, then wouldn’t it make sense to add more types of lycanthropy?” Micah said.
“Make sense, no,” I said, “no, it wouldn’t make sense.”
“Why not, ma petite? You called the lions, and they came to your call. You call the leopards and they come. You call wolves, and I begin to wonder if it is my power that attracts them to you, or something more.”
“You’re saying I should deliberately infect myself with other types of lycanthropy?”
They exchanged glances. “Put that way, no,” Micah said.
“It is a thought, ma petite, merely a thought.”
“Are you always thinking about how I can help you be more powerful?”
He sighed. “We must be powerful, and stable. We must show the other masters that we do not pose a threat to the council in Europe or anyone else.”
“Powerful we can do, but stable—” I shrugged. “I don’t know about that one.”
“We aren’t a threat to the council,” Micah said, “but they may not believe that.”
“They may not,” Jean-Claude said.
There was a knock on the door. “Who is it?” Jean-Claude called.
“Remus.”
“Is there something you need, Remus?”
“Claudia ordered me to check in, physically, with you for the shift change.”
Jean-Claude glanced at us. He held an arm out. “Come to me, ma petite, let us make certain you are hidden from sight, then allow him to enter.”
“I don’t see why he needs to enter,” I said.
“We will ask him.” Jean-Claude took me into the curve of his shoulder. Micah moved in front of me. I wrapped my arms around Micah’s shoulders, drawing him in against my breasts. Yeah, the water covered me, but Remus was still one of the newer guards. I didn’t know him well enough to be comfortable in the tub with him in the room.
“You may enter,” Jean-Claude said.
The door opened; Remus stepped inside, but kept his hand on the doorknob, as if he were no happier about invading our bath than I was. His eyes were green-gray, nice eyes, if he’d ever look directly at you. He never did, or at least he never did at me, or Jean-Claude, or Micah, or Nathaniel. Why? Remus’s face had been broken at some point, and been put back together. There was no one thing you could point to and say, “That’s out of place,” but the overall effect was lopsided, and looked almost uncomfortable, like a ceramic mask that had been glued back together wrong.
I couldn’t make complete sense of Remus’s face, because he wouldn’t look at me. I wanted badly to tell him to just look at me, but I couldn’t without raising a subject that was probably painful, and none of my business. So I let it go.
The rest of him was dressed in the usual bodyguard black. If there were injuries under the clothes, it didn’t show when he moved. He moved like there were steel springs in the lean muscles of his body.
“Claudia ordered anyone who takes over to check with you in person, eye to eye. Her orders.”
“Did she say why?” I asked, because it was a change.
He looked up then, gave that lopsided smile. I had a moment to see disbelief on his face, before he looked away. “She filled me in on what’s been happening. She wants at least two guards in the room with you, at all times.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“That’s what I told her you’d say.” He gave another glance at me, and I had a second of those green-gray eyes, angry, then down and away again. “With Micah with you, it’s not a problem, but if it were only Jean-Claude—” he shrugged. “If you shift for the first time and it’s wolf, then he may be able to control you, but if you shift to an animal he doesn’t control, then what if you eat him?”
“He’s a Master of the City; I think he can handle it.”
“You don’t get it,” Remus said, and he came into the room a step, letting go of the doorknob. He finally looked at me, and held my gaze. Since I give absolute eye contact, it left us staring at each other. His eyes flinched, but he kept the gaze. It was a relief to be able to see his face straight on. “Jean-Claude is powerful, but in plain unarmed combat, shifters beat vampires. Unless they can mind-fuck us, we will win a fight.”
I glanced at Jean-Claude to see how he felt about that. He gave the same lovely, blank face. I turned back to Remus. “So, what, you guys get to watch?”
“Do you think this makes me happy?” he said, and his power flared through the room like a hot wind. He closed his eyes, and counted to ten, or something, because the heat vanished. He gave calmer eyes to all of us, but he knew it was mostly me he had to persuade, so he stared at me. The angry defiance, was back in his eyes. “You have no idea how dangerous you could be when you first shift. You won’t just be a lycanthrope—that’s bad enough, but you’ll be this uber-preternatural power. You’ll be a shifter with powers over the dead. If you lose control of one power, maybe you’ll lose control of all of them. Do you have any idea what could happen?”
I stared up at him, scared, and not liking it. I could be scared, or I could get angry. Guess which I picked. “The beast blocks the necromancy. Once I give in to one hunger that completely, the others go away.”
“Are you a hundred percent sure of that?” he asked.
I opened my mouth to say yes, then hesitated.
Micah answered for me, patting my arm as he did so, “No.”
No was truthful, but…“So what do we do?”
“You have to have at least one shapeshifter with you at all times, someone powerful enough to handle the emergency.”
“Handle how?” I asked.
“Keep you from hurting anyone too badly.”
“Who’s on the list of powerful enough?” I asked.
“Me, Claudia, Fredo, Lisandro, Socrates, Brontes, Bobby Lee, Mickey, Ixion. A lot of the wererats are ex-military and mercs. But some of them are better at killing than minimizing the damage.” He shrugged. “Claudia and Bobby Lee will be in charge of the list, but I know that you won’t be left with just Graham and Clay again. Maybe one of them, but they’ll need to be paired up with someone with more real-world experience.”
“Real-life experience?” I made it a question.
“Ex-military, merc, ex-cop, professional bodyguard. Raphael recruits from some very hardcore places.”
“Narcissus doesn’t?” I asked.
Remus shrugged again. “He does now. He lost nearly three hundred men when Chimera took them over. They slaughtered them. Narcissus had a lot of muscle and athletes, but he didn’t have many real fighters. One of the reasons that the werehyenas got taken over by such a small force was that they weren’t the real deal. Narcissus found out that martial arts training doesn’t stand up to true warriors. War ain’t an Olympic event; it’s no place for
amateurs.”
“And you are not an amateur,” Jean-Claude said in that pleasant, empty voice.
“No, sir,” Remus said, “I am not.”
25
I WENT TO the bathroom for a few minutes and came back out to find that Jean-Claude wasn’t the only vampire in the bedroom. Elinore stood near the bed. She was dressed in a white gown with a high lacy collar and a cream robe that managed to look graceful, and not like jammies at all. Her long blond hair fell in a pale wave around her body, like a second robe, so long. She was a vision in pale delicate colors, then she looked at me. Her eyes were a pale icy blue, the wrong color of blue for that delicate face. Her face was a near-perfect oval, dainty and unreal, as if someone had carved her from some white, pure rock, and breathed life into her. Unless she worked at it, hers was a cold beauty. If her eyes had been a brighter blue, I think it would have made her look warmer. The eyes gave the lie to the rest of her. The eyes were serious, careful, watchful. Hidden under all those clothes was a round, curvy body, soft. She didn’t believe in weight lifting, too unladylike. But she had a body that was as lovely and desirable as the face, if a little soft for my tastes. She had the blond Nordic beauty that I’d craved as a child. Craved so I’d fit in with my blond, blue-eyed father and his new family.
I’d tried to hate her, just on principle. I’d failed, why? Under that ladylike exterior she was tough, fair, and harder than a box of nails. She just hid it much better than I did. We got along. Besides, all the male vamps were prettier than me, why shouldn’t some of the female vamps be prettier, too?
“Elinore,” I said, “what…” I checked my wristwatch. “What are you doing awake before noon?”
“That is what I was asking Jean-Claude,” she said in that silky voice that matched all the lace and cream satin.
Jean-Claude looked at me from where he sat on the edge of the bed. He was in his black brocade robe with all the fur on it. They looked like opposite ends of a dream; one so pale, the other so dark.
“All our people have gained from what we did last night, ma petite.” He motioned toward Elinore. “This is proof of just how much they may have gained.”
I started walking around the end of the bed toward them. “Is this the earliest you’ve woken as a vampire?”
She nodded.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
She seemed to take the question seriously. She screwed that pretty little face up in a look of concentration. I was never sure if Elinore really had that many cute mannerisms or whether she’d spent so many centuries using them as camouflage that she couldn’t get rid of them now. Whatever, she was always doing things that made me think, little girl, doll-like, cute. Until she decided not to be cute; then she was positively frightening. I wondered how many enemies had been lured in by that softness only to find the steel dagger inside all that silk. If I’d been willing to play to my packaging, I might have pulled it off, but it just wasn’t in me to try.
“I feel fine,” she said at last.
“Have you fed?” I asked.
“Can you not tell?” she asked, giving me a very direct blue gaze.
“You always look a little ethereal to me, so no. I can’t tell with you.”
She gave a small smile. “Quite a compliment that the Executioner cannot tell whether I’ve fed.”
“Do you feel the thirst?” Jean-Claude asked.
She thought about that for a second, making the pretty little face. “No. I could feed, but I do not have to.”
I felt a stab of triumph from Jean-Claude. Triumph, and right on its heels, fear. Then he closed the leak in his shields tight.
“Why afraid? Why triumphant? Why both?” I asked.
“Jean-Claude fed the ardeur well and truly last night, and it is sustaining me. That is very impressive,” Elinore said.
“Yeah, I get that, but…” I tried to think how to form the question. “Why are you both so pleased?”
“If we wished to travel as a group in countries where we are illegal, only one of us would need to feed. It would mean Jean-Claude could take quite a large group of his own vampires into another territory without leaving much evidence behind. Certainly we could hide from the human authorities.”
“But we’re not going to invade anyone’s territory.”
“No,” Jean-Claude said, “but it is always good to have options, ma petite.”
“Where’s your sweetie? Your knight?”
“He did not wake with me,” and there was just a hint of sadness to that.
“So are you the only one who gained—” There was a knock on the door.
“Yes, Remus,” Jean-Claude called.
Remus opened the door and closed it behind him. “Requiem is out here.”
“Requiem,” Elinore said, “interesting.”
“Send him in, Remus,” Jean-Claude said.
He held Jean-Claude’s gaze for a moment, then looked down, and did his talking to the side of the face. “All right, but if anyone else shows up early like this, I will have to insist that you let two of the guards inside the room. So whatever secret shit you’re discussing, discuss fast.”
“You really think there’s going to be that many more vamps waking up this early?” I asked.
“Yeah, I think there will be.”
“We will discuss whether guards come back inside when someone else comes to my door,” Jean-Claude said. “Let Requiem pass, Remus.”
Remus’s face struggled; he didn’t like it. “I am caught between masters here. Claudia says don’t leave you guys alone. You say I can’t stay. We need a chain of command here.”
“Too many generals,” I said.
He gave me a quick, direct glance. “Yes.”
“I am sorry, Remus,” Jean-Claude said, “but Elinore’s arrival has changed things.”
“Fine, but Requiem is the last, or I’m calling Claudia and telling her I can’t guard you, because you won’t let me.”
“As you see fit, Remus.”
He gave another angry look around the room, then opened the door. A moment later Requiem glided through the door. He had his black, hooded cloak close around his body, so that the only thing that showed was the spill of his Vandyke beard framing the curve of his lips.
“How badly are you hurt, mon ami?” Jean-Claude asked.
Requiem shrugged back the hood without using his hands, the way you’d flip long hair behind your back. The hood slid down and the right side of his face was a mass of deep-purple bruises. One of his eyes was almost swollen shut, just a glimpse of that startling bright blue that had made Belle Morte try to buy Requiem from his original master. Belle had wanted to have a matching set of blue-eyed men. Asher’s were the palest blue; Jean-Claude’s the darkest; Requiem’s the brightest. His master had refused, and they had fled France.
His long, straight hair, so dark it mingled with the black cloak, made his pale skin all the paler, and helped the bruises stand out like purple ink on his face.
“Wow,” I said, “how much blood are you using to heal that?”
He looked at me then, and the look on his face said, clearly, I’d said something smart. “Much.”
“How fares the rest?” Jean-Claude asked.
Requiem spread the cloak wide with a gesture of both arms, so that it was like a curtain spilled dramatically around his body. His upper body shone like white flame against the darkness. My eyes adjusted to all that contrast and I realized that some of the whiteness was bandages. His right arm, chest, and stomach were all thick with gauze and white tape.
“Jesus, did Meng Die really do all that?”
“Yes.” He said that, and no more. Requiem rarely gave just a one-word answer to anything. He came toward us, the cloak flying out behind him, which said he was moving faster than that gliding walk appeared.
“Ma petite, if you could fetch scissors from the bathroom drawer, we can look at his wounds.”
I did it without being asked. I’d noticed the bruises last night, but hadn
’t seen all the bandages under his shirt. I had had no idea how hurt he was. I hesitated in the bathroom with the scissors in my hand. I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I looked sort of startled. Had he really dumped Meng Die because of me? Dumped another woman on the off chance that I might take him as a pomme de sang? I stared at myself in the mirror and just didn’t see a woman who could make a man dump someone on the possibility of sex. Elinore, maybe, but me…I just didn’t think so.
I went back to the other room, and found Requiem sitting on the bed beside Jean-Claude, who was turning his face to the light, checking his bruises.
Requiem was talking as I entered. “…she said, if she could not have my pretty face on her pillow, then no one would have it.”
Someone had brought one of the chairs by the fireplace so Elinore could sit and not be on the bed. “So she tried to ruin your face,” she said, softly.
“Yes,” he said, in that strangely clipped voice that wasn’t at all his usual.
I held the scissors out to Jean-Claude. He took them and laid them on the bedside table. “I think perhaps we can take off the tape, if you will help me, ma petite?”
I had to move Requiem’s cloak where he’d draped it on the end of the bed. The bed was tall enough that I had to make certain I was sitting far enough back from the edge so I wouldn’t slide off. Silk coverlet, silk robe, makes for slippery. I took Requiem’s hand in mine. The bandages wrapped around his hand, and up nearly to the elbow. “You didn’t get this from her hitting you,” I said.
“She had a blade,” he said, and again, his voice was clipped and to the point.
I looked up at him, and even the uninjured half of his face showed me nothing. He was lovely and empty like Jean-Claude was sometimes. Like looking at a painting of some handsome prince come back from battle. Even as I cradled his arm in my hands, he was as distant and remote as if he’d been hanging on a museum wall.
Jean-Claude was already peeling tape from around Requiem’s chest. I bent over his arm and worked on the tape there, holding his hand in mine while I started unwinding the gauze. His hand was crisscrossed with shallow and not-so-shallow slashes. I raised his hand as gently as I could, so I could keep unwrapping. The bandages fell away and I made a sound; I couldn’t help it. I put my hand at his hand and elbow, and lifted, gently. His forearm was a mass of slashing wounds. Two of them needed stitches.
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