Affliction ab-22

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Dev turned in his seat, belt free, and said, ‘I understand his friends and coworkers, but some of these marked cars are from towns away. There’s even one from Wyoming.’

  ‘Dad’s been the county sheriff for a long time,’ Micah said. ‘He knows a lot of people.’

  But it was Nathaniel who said the truth. ‘There’ll be officers here who don’t know Sheriff Callahan, but once the word goes out that there’s an officer down for any reason, they come to make sure the family has everything they need and that the officer is never alone. They do vigil.’

  Juliet turned in her seat so she could see Nathaniel. ‘How do you know that? Your dad a cop, too?’

  ‘No, but I’ve been with Anita for years. I’ve been at the hospital when she was hurt and visited when other officers were injured.’

  ‘And they accept you as family?’ Juliet asked.

  ‘Most of the local police do.’

  ‘They’re sort of used to my domestic arrangements,’ I said.

  Juliet shook her head hard enough to make her curls bounce. ‘Well, I don’t know about the other cops, but our family is probably going to be embarrassing the hell out of us about your domestic arrangements. I’ll just apologize now and get it over with.’

  ‘Appreciated,’ I said. Micah squeezed my hand. I gave him a smile. ‘If I kiss you, you’ll be having to wipe lipstick off.’

  ‘I’ll risk it, if we’re careful,’ he said, and smiled.

  We kissed gently, and it left a stripe of scarlet in the middle of his lips. Nathaniel said, ‘Share the go-faster stripe, because I may not be able to kiss you for a while.’

  Micah turned to him in the narrowness of the backseat. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay. We can’t kiss in public in a lot of places. I know you love me even when we can’t kiss.’

  Micah leaned into the other man, and Nathaniel was just taller enough in the upper body to have to bend down a little. It was as gentle a kiss as we’d done, but then Micah slid his arms around Nathaniel’s waist, up underneath his jacket so he could run his hands up the muscled warmth of his back with only the thin dress shirt between him and the other man’s skin. I loved that pocket of heat just underneath the jacket myself, so I knew what Micah was doing.

  Nathaniel responded, sliding his own arms around Micah, and the kiss grew. I knew I had a big, happy smile on my face. I loved watching them together.

  Juliet said, ‘You really don’t mind, do you?’

  It took me a moment to realize she was talking to me. I glanced at her, not really wanting to stop looking at my two men. ‘Not mind? I love them, and I love seeing them together.’

  ‘I guess I thought you tolerated it, but the look on your face just now … You looked so happy.’

  I frowned at her. Micah drew back from the kiss, and Nathaniel just sort of wrapped himself around the other man, putting his head on one of Micah’s shoulders, so his face was buried against him and he wasn’t looking at Juliet.

  ‘I was happy,’ I said.

  ‘Why wouldn’t Anita be happy to watch us kiss?’ Micah said, holding the other man easily, familiarly.

  Juliet had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘I don’t know; I guess I’d be jealous, or … I wouldn’t want to see two men together.’

  ‘It made you uncomfortable,’ Micah said, his voice quiet and almost neutral.

  ‘I’m sorry, but yeah, a little. I didn’t know you liked guys.’

  ‘I don’t, not really, but I love Nathaniel.’

  ‘Trust me,’ Dev said, ‘there is a trail of brokenhearted boys back home who wish so much our luscious Micah liked men better than he does. Sadly, where men are concerned he’s a one-man boy.’ He gave a pouting face as if he were five, and then that slow grin spread across his face. I wanted to frown at him, but that damn Cheshire grin did me in every time. How could someone so big, so grown up, do mischief so well?

  Micah looked at Dev. ‘There are one or two men back home besides Nathaniel that I notice.’ His voice was utterly mild.

  Dev’s grin faded around the edges, and his eyes were thinking way too hard. You could almost see him reviewing every interaction he’d seen between Micah and the men back home. It was why Micah had said it: to bedevil our devil.

  I turned away to hide my own grin.

  Juliet said, ‘You tease like friends.’

  ‘We are that,’ Micah said, his voice still quiet and mild.

  ‘Close friends,’ she said, with a little too much emphasis on close.

  ‘Dev is bisexual, cheerfully so, but I’ve already told you we aren’t lovers.’ He stroked Nathaniel’s hair with the other man still entwined around him. ‘If we were, I wouldn’t hide it.’

  She looked at what she could see of Nathaniel. ‘I guess not.’

  ‘It bothered you to see us kiss,’ Micah said.

  She looked down, frowning, then back up, and nodded. ‘I’m sorry, but it did. I was all open-minded about it, until …’

  ‘It’s why we kissed in the car, because you are open-minded compared to some of our family. But it’s not just our family; it’s the other police, it’s everyone. As men we have to be more cautious, or we can end up with other men up in our face.’

  ‘Yeah, I’d rather not have to guard you against a cop. That could be legally … awkward,’ Dev said, at last.

  ‘You’d be up on assault charges,’ I said.

  ‘So what do you want me to do? The police are like a lot of manly men; they react badly to gay.’

  ‘But you’re bisexual,’ Juliet said, and it was brave of her to make the distinction.

  ‘You’re either straight or gay to most people,’ Dev said, ‘and if a guy touches another guy he’s gay, period.’

  Nathaniel drew away from Micah enough to say, ‘Just like a lot of the gay community thinks a man who touches a woman isn’t gay enough. They think bisexual means you haven’t made up your mind or won’t admit the truth.’

  ‘Really?’ Juliet said.

  He nodded. ‘The gay community can be just as narrow-minded as the straight community.’

  Dev said, ‘Nicky is almost here.’

  I looked out toward the parked cars and the electric glowing darkness but couldn’t see him. ‘Am I too short to see him from the backseat?’

  ‘Yep,’ Dev said.

  ‘I can see him,’ Juliet said, ‘but I hadn’t seen him until your bodyguard said something.’

  ‘Once Nicky gets here,’ Dev said, ‘if there’s still no one in the parking lot, I’ll get out first, and when I give you the signal Anita gets out next.’

  Juliet looked at the other man. ‘You were looking at the parking lot this whole time?’

  ‘Most of it,’ he said, and reached for his door handle.

  ‘Why does Anita get out next?’

  ‘Because she’s the next best with weapons after me.’

  ‘I’m better with edged weapons,’ I said.

  He grinned back over his shoulder. ‘Yeah, but I make my own edged weapons.’ Dev slid out of the car and looked around with the door still open around him.

  ‘What did he mean by making his own edged weapons?’ Juliet asked.

  ‘He’s a weretiger,’ I said.

  Nicky was on my side of the car. He glanced down long enough to give me a small smile, then went back to gazing around the parking lot. They were bodyguards first tonight, friends and lovers second. Dev was in charge of the passenger side of the car and Nathaniel. Nicky was taking my side of the car and me. Micah, being in the middle, could get out on either side, and whichever side he used, that guard would have him to keep safe, too. Nicky opened my door, which meant I could finally get out without either guard yelling at us.

  ‘I don’t understand; how does being a weretiger mean he makes his own knives?’ Juliet said.

  ‘Not knives, claws,’ Micah said.

  Nicky offered me his hand to get out of the car, which he almost never did. Because it was rare, I took it, though I was perfectly capa
ble of getting out without his hand in mine, but as his hand closed over mine it felt good. He drew me to my feet, and I left Micah to explain our reality to his cousin. I had a moment to look up into Nicky’s face; most of the right side was covered by the triangular fall of hair, but the one blue eye that I could see smiled down at me, echoing the smile that curled his lips. I started to go up on my tiptoes to kiss that smile, but his head moved and his expression went very serious. ‘Police,’ he whispered.

  He let go of my hand so I could join Micah and Nathaniel on the other side of the car. Nicky took up his post with Dev at our backs, as Micah reached for my left hand and pulled me forward like a safety net as he and Juliet said hi to three different flavors of uniform. It was reunion time, and thanks to his father being a sheriff, a lot of the members of that reunion would be wearing a badge. The fact that I hadn’t realized we’d be wading through police officers at the hospital had been stupid of me. It just showed how much I’d been thrown by his mother’s phone call. I’d been thinking I’d have kept Ares and Bram with us. They smelled like military, and being ex-military would have given them clout with the cops. Nicky and Dev were just going to set off their bad-guy sensors, and nothing about the two handsome, physically imposing, armed men was going to endear them to the cops. Crap.

  10

  Deputy Al Truman was tall and thin, with disproportionately large hands and feet, as if he’d hit that growth spurt in his teens where the extremities are big and clumsy and his body never caught up with the rest of him. It made me expect him to be awkward, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t grace personified, but he was normal, and I was betting I wasn’t the only person who had been fooled into thinking he’d be clumsy. I wondered how many suspects had expected him to move badly and gotten surprised.

  He took off his cowboy hat with its official-looking band. In another part of the country it would have been a more typical Smokey Bear hat. Those big hands rubbed the hat brim over and over like a nervous habit of long duration. His brown hair was crushed by the hat but looked like it had some wave to it, but whoever cut his hair had managed to butcher it so that it was just a mess, hat or no hat.

  ‘I hate that you’re coming home to this, Mike.’

  Micah nodded. ‘Me, too, Al.’ He turned to me and Nathaniel. ‘Al and I went to high school together.’

  ‘I was best friends with Richie. We went through boot together.’

  Al assumed I knew the family tragedy that had turned Micah into a wereleopard, and he was right, but I thought the assumption was interesting. I was betting that Micah’s mother, or someone, had told him who I was, and then he said, ‘You must be Anita,’ and he offered to shake hands. Yep, someone had been talking.

  ‘How did you know …’ Micah started to ask.

  ‘Your mom said you’d be bringing your fiancée. Congratulations, we were all thinking you were going to be an old maid.’

  It took me a second to realize he was still talking to Micah and not me.

  ‘I just had to meet the right people,’ Micah said. I don’t know if anyone caught the ‘people’ part, but the next officer stepped up and offered his hand and introduced himself.

  Sergeant Michael Horton kept his Smokey Bear hat on; it went with his Colorado state trooper uniform. He was younger than all of us, except Nathaniel and Dev, though I’d noticed that people assumed Dev was older than he was, because he was tall. The taller you were, the more years people added to your age at an earlier age, just like they thought you were younger if you were shorter. Most people would have added years onto Sergeant Horton’s age because he was over six feet, but I didn’t add them; I knew better. He was twenty-five tops, which would actually make him a couple of years older than Dev and Nathaniel.

  The hair that showed around his hat was buzz-cut short and if he hadn’t spent a few years in the military I’d lose a bet with someone. I would have bet even money it had been the Marines.

  ‘Sheriff Callahan is a good man,’ Horton said as he shook Micah’s hand.

  ‘Thank you.’

  But Horton looked behind us all at Dev and Nicky, one big, physical guy sizing up the competition. That he discounted the rest of us made me take points off his I-would-depend-on-him-in-a-crisis card.

  Sergeant Ray Gonzales stepped into the silence. He was with the Boulder Police Department. He was just under six feet, but built big like Nicky so he seemed taller. His shoulder width didn’t come out of a gym, and there was even a slight stomach bulge starting to fight with his equipment belt. Gonzales was just a big-framed man, built like a huge rectangle. He was going a little soft with age, which had to be closing in on sixty, but most of him was more solid than he looked. He reminded me of one of our guards, Dino, who looked out of shape and ran like a lumbering elephant, but all that bulk was solid and he was one of the few guards who I never, ever wanted to hit me for real.

  He hugged Micah. ‘I’m glad you came, Mike. It’ll mean a lot to Rush.’

  ‘I just wish I’d come sooner.’

  ‘You’re here now, that’s what counts.’

  ‘I know,’ Micah said, and something about Gonzales had made him more emotional.

  ‘I’ve known Mike since he was a baby,’ Gonzales said, ‘and Al, too, come to think of it. Rush and I are the old guys now.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the plainclothes cop said, and offered his hand to Micah. ‘Detective Rickman, Ricky; I work with Ray up in Boulder and I wish the younger officers were half as tough as you and Rush.’

  ‘I didn’t say we weren’t tough,’ Ray laughed. ‘I said we were old.’ He reached a hand out to me and used two hands to shake it. His smile was warm and open. ‘I’m glad you’re here with Mike.’

  ‘Thanks, me too.’

  Detective Rickman said, ‘Your reputation precedes you, Marshal Blake. Nice to know one of our hometown boys could make you settle down.’

  I didn’t like him, and I didn’t like the phrasing. I looked at Micah, asking with my eyes how he wanted me to play it.

  ‘I need to get them inside before Aunt Bea hunts me down,’ Juliet said. She actually started walking, trying to move us along.

  ‘Who are your friends?’ Rickman asked. ‘And what’s with the dark glasses at night? It’s a little Hollywood for here.’

  I decided to be a distraction, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to give full names to Detective Rickman of our friends and sweeties. Nobody was wanted for anything, but it didn’t mean that everyone had unblemished records. I didn’t want to mess with it, and I’d just realized that no one here had seen Micah’s leopard eyes. He told me he’d had brown eyes once, and that was the color that everyone here would be expecting. ‘Detective Rickman, Ricky, no one makes me do anything, and as for settling down I’m not sure what you mean by that.’

  ‘Marriage, Marshal Blake, Anita; that’s usually what settling down means.’

  Gonzales said, ‘Horton, go do the errands that Bea needs.’

  Horton opened his mouth as if to tell Gonzales he wasn’t the boss of him, but something in the older man’s face made him stop. He looked at Rickman. ‘You okay with that, Detective?’

  ‘Yeah, we can handle it.’

  Horton did what he was told, which was pretty obedient for a sergeant who wasn’t in their chain of command and wasn’t an old family friend. Either Gonzales had a great reputation or Horton was hoping to get on the Boulder PD and politically he was trying to keep both Ricky and Gonzales happy.

  Micah said, ‘No one makes Anita do anything, but as for the dark glasses, did you know that if a lycanthrope is forced to stay in animal form too long that sometimes their eyes don’t come back to human normal?’

  Gonzales and Al said, ‘No.’

  Rickman said, ‘Are you saying your eyes aren’t human anymore?’

  ‘Yes. I know that most police are told to watch a lycanthrope’s eyes and if they change color then it’s the beginning of the shift, but my eyes don’t go back to human anymore.’

  ‘What color are
your eyes now?’ Juliet asked. Her voice was full of some emotion that I couldn’t quite read, maybe sadness?

  Micah slid the glasses off his face and turned toward the brightest light from the streetlights. Juliet made a sound that was almost a sob and put her hand over her mouth. Gonzales’s dark face looked like a world of sorrow had just climbed onto him. Al looked away and seemed sadder than before. Rickman flinched, but he wasn’t sad.

  ‘If you could all pass the word to the other local officers, I’d appreciate it,’ Micah said. ‘I’d really like to be able to concentrate on my dad and family without having to worry about being shot because someone sees my eyes and misunderstands.’

  ‘I’ll call up Gutterman and let him pass the word to the cops outside Rush’s room,’ Al said, and reached for his shoulder mic.

  ‘Good idea,’ Gonzales said.

  Al spoke low into his shoulder mic and we all waited, while he said, ‘It’s the sheriff’s son, Mike Callahan, and his eyes are stuck on animal.’

  A crackly voice said, ‘How the hell are his eyes stuck?’

  ‘Just one of those things that can happen with shifters,’ Al said. ‘Tell the other guys up there. Mike doesn’t need someone pointing a gun at him, thinking he’s about to shift while he’s here.’

  ‘Weird shit,’ the voice, I presumed Gutterman, said. ‘I’ll pass the word around.’

  ‘Thanks, Gutter,’ Al said.

  Rickman asked, ‘You ever have anyone think you’re shifting when they see the eyes?’

  ‘A time or two,’ Micah said. He slipped his glasses back on, hiding the exotic flash of his eyes.

  This was news to me. I turned and looked at Nathaniel, and the look on his face said it was news to him, too. If we hadn’t been with so many unknown people I’d have asked Micah to elaborate. Nathaniel gave a small nod, and just like that I knew we’d both be talking to our shared boy later.

  ‘I’m going to walk them in,’ Deputy Al said.