“I heard you,” he said. His face, voice, were neutral. Not as neutral as a vampire’s can become. They are the champs of blank expression. But Micah was trying.
“Then wait outside until we’re finished,” I said.
“Cherry is afraid of you,” he said.
I frowned at him, then at her. “Why, for God’s sake?”
Cherry looked at him, and he gave a small nod. She moved away from me towards the door. She didn’t leave the room, but she got as far away from me as she could.
“What in hell is going on?” I asked.
Micah was standing about four feet away, close, but not too close. I could see his eyes better now, and they were so not human. I knew at a glance that they didn’t belong in his face. “She’s afraid you’ll kill the messenger,” he said, voice soft.
“Look, all this tap dancing is getting old. Just tell me.”
He nodded, winced as if it hurt. “The doctors seem to think that you’ve been infected with lycanthropy.”
I shook my head. “Serpentine lycanthropy isn’t really lycanthropy. It’s not a disease that I can catch. You either are cursed by a witch into snake form, or it’s inherited like a swanmane.” That made me think of the three women I’d last seen chained to a wall in the room of swords. “By the way, what happened to the swanmanes in the club?”
Micah frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Without warning, Nathaniel entered the shower. I was beginning to feel positively overdressed in my towel. “We rescued them.”
“The snake leader changed his mind after I got hurt?”
“He changed it after Sylvie and Jamil nearly killed him.”
Ah. “So they’re okay,” I said.
He nodded, but his face stayed serious, his eyes gentle, like someone who’s about to tell you really bad news.
“Don’t you start, too. I cannot catch serpentine shit. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Gregory isn’t into serpentine shit,” he said, the voice as gentle as his eyes.
I blinked at him. “What are you talking about?”
Nathaniel started to come farther into the room, but Cherry caught his arm, kept him near the door for a quick getaway—I think. Zane appeared in the doorway behind them. He was still the six-feet, pale, overly thin, but muscular guy I’d met when he was trashing a hospital emergency room. But he’d dyed his hair to an iridescent pale green, cut short, spiked. The fact that he was fully dressed actually looked odd to me. Of course, it was Zane’s version of street clothes that ran to leather, no shirt, and vests.
I looked at the three of them in the doorway. They were so solemn. I remembered Gregory falling into me during the fight. His claws piercing me. “I’ve been cut up a lot worse by a wereleopard, and I didn’t catch it,” I said.
“Dr. Lillian thinks it may be because the wound was a deep piercing wound, instead of a surface cut,” Cherry said, in a voice that was almost shaky. She was scared, scared of how I’d take the news, or scared of something else, but what?
“I am not going to be Nimir-Ra for real, guys. I can’t catch lycanthropy. If I could . . . I’ve already been cut up enough . . . I’d have turned furry already.”
The three of them just looked at me with wide eyes. I turned from them to Micah. His face was still neutral, careful, but there was a shadow in his eyes of . . . pity. Pity? I did not do pity, not as the object of it, anyway.
“You’re serious,” I said.
“You’re exhibiting all the secondary symptoms,” he said. “Rapid healing to the point that your muscles cramp. A temperature hot enough to boil the brain of a human. Yet when they lowered your temperature you nearly died. You needed to bake in the warmth, the heat of your pard to heal. That’s how we healed you. It wouldn’t have worked if you weren’t one of us.”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe you.”
“That’s okay,” he said, “you’ve got two weeks until the full moon. You won’t change for the first time until then. You’ve got time.”
“Time for what?” I asked.
“Time to mourn,” he said.
I turned away from the compassion in his eyes, the pity. Shit. I still didn’t believe it. “How about a blood test? That should prove it one way or the other.”
Cherry answered, “Wolf lycanthropy shows up in the bloodstream anywhere from twenty-four to forty-eight hours, sometimes seventy-two. Leopard lycanthropy, most of the big cat lycanthropies, take anywhere from seventy-two hours to over eight days to show up in the bloodstream. A blood test won’t prove anything yet.”
I stared at them, trying to wrap my mind around it, and it just wouldn’t wrap. I shook my head. “I can’t deal with this right now.”
“You’re going to have to deal with it,” Micah said.
I shook my head. “Tonight, I have to get Jean-Claude out of jail. I have to show the police he didn’t murder me.”
“Your pard told me that you wouldn’t want to be outted. That you wouldn’t want your police friends to know.”
“I am not a wereleopard,” I said. It sounded stubborn even to me.
Micah smiled, gently, and that pissed me off. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” he asked.
“Like a poor little deluded girl. There are things you don’t understand about me, about where my power comes from.”
“You mean the vampire marks,” he said.
I looked past him to the three wereleopards in the doorway. Something on my face made them all flinch. “So nice to know that we’re just one big happy family with no secrets.”
“I was in on the discussions with the doctors on whether your rapid healing could be merely a side effect of the vampire marks,” he said.
“Of course it is,” I said. But the first thread of doubt was worming its way through my stomach.
“If it will make you feel better,” he said.
I stared into that compassionate face and felt anger wash over me in a line of heat, and with the anger came that trembling energy. Richard’s beast . . . or mine? I let myself think the thought all the way through for the first time. Was it my beast that I’d felt with Micah? Was that why I hadn’t gotten a sense of where Richard was, and what he was doing? I’d thought of him several times during all the hoopla, but had never felt the mark between us open completely. I’d assumed it was Richard’s energy, because it was lycanthrope energy. But what if it hadn’t been? What if it had been mine?
Someone touched my arm, and I jumped. It was Micah, his fingers barely touching my arm. “You look pale. Do you need to sit down?”
I took a step back and nearly stumbled. He had to grab my arm to keep me from falling on the slick, wet tile. I wanted to jerk away from him, but I was dizzy as if the world wasn’t quite solid. He eased me to the floor.
“Put your head between your knees.”
I sat Indian fashion on the floor, the wall to my back, my head bent over my folded legs while I waited for the light-headedness to pass. I never fainted. Not just from shock—occasionally from blood loss—but never from shock.
When I could think again, I raised up slowly. Micah was kneeling beside me, all attentive and compassionate, and I hated him. I laid my towel-wrapped head back against the wall, closed my eyes.
“Where are Elizabeth and Gregory?”
“Elizabeth wouldn’t come to help,” Micah said.
I opened my eyes at that, turning just my head to meet his eyes. “She give a reason for that?”
“She hates you,” he said, simply.
“Yeah, she loved Gabriel, their old alpha, and I killed him. Hard to be friends after that.”
“That’s not why she hates you,” he said.
I searched his face. “What do you mean?”
“She hates that you’re a better alpha as a human than she is as a wereleopard. You make her feel weak.”
“She is weak,” I said.
He smiled, and it had humor in it this time. �
�Yes, she is.”
“Where’s Gregory?”
“Are you going to punish him for contaminating you?” Micah asked.
I glanced back at the other three waiting in the door, silent. I realized suddenly what the group dynamics meant. They were treating Micah as their Nimir-Raj, letting him deal with me, like calling in the husband when the wife has had one too many drinks. I didn’t like that much. But if I concentrated just on the moment, the question at hand, no speculation, no looking for the future, maybe I’d survive.
“If Gregory hadn’t interfered I’d be dead right now. They would have clawed out my heart. It was an accident that he fell into me during the fight.” I was watching Micah’s face, but I felt the relief sweep through the others, felt it from yards away. I glanced up at them, and it showed in the lines of their bodies.
“So where is he? Where’s Gregory?”
The three of them did that hot-potato eye-flick game again. “Did he refuse to come help save me like Elizabeth?”
“No, of course not,” Cherry said. But she didn’t explain, didn’t add to it.
I looked at Nathaniel. He met my gaze, no flinching, but I didn’t like what I saw in his eyes. There was more bad news to come, you could smell it in the air.
I turned to Micah. “Fine, you tell me.”
“When your Ulfric found out that Gregory had made you their Nimir-Ra in truth, he . . .” Micah spread his hands.
“He freaked.” Zane said it.
I glanced at all of them. “What do you mean, he freaked?”
“He took Gregory,” Cherry said.
“What do you mean, he took Gregory?”
“He treated Gregory as an enemy of the pack,” Micah said.
I looked at him. “Go on.”
“If you had been their lupa in truth, if someone injured you it is within the Ulfric’s rights to declare them an enemy of the pack, a criminal.”
I kept staring into those yellow green eyes. “What exactly does that mean?”
“It means that the wolves have your leopard, and they will pass judgment on him for injuring you.”
“No way, I mean, even if I am turning into a wereleopard, which I’m not. It doesn’t hurt me. I mean, I’m just going to be a shapeshifter like them now.”
“Not like them,” Micah said, “like us.”
I tried to read his face, but I just didn’t know him well enough yet. “You have a point, make it.”
“You can’t be the wolves’ lupa and the leopard’s Nimir-Ra.”
“I’ve been both for a long time.”
He shook his head, and again he winced as if his neck hurt. “No, you were a human dating the Ulfric, who declared you lupa. You were a human that was taking care of the wereleopards until you could find a true alpha leopard to take over the job. Now, you’re truly Nimir-Ra, and the pack won’t accept you as one of them.”
“Are you saying Richard dumped me because I’m going to be a wereleopard?”
“No, I’m saying that the pack won’t accept you as his lupa.” Micah glanced down, then up. I could see him trying to put his thoughts into words. “My understanding of what’s been happening with your local wolves is that your Ulfric has taken them from a monarchy where his word was law, to a democracy where the majority rules. He gets a decisive vote, but not the last word.”
I nodded. It sounded like what Richard had wanted for the pack. “It sounds like something he’d do. I’ve sort of been out of touch for the last few months.”
“He has succeeded too well. The vote went against him, against you. The pack will not accept you as lupa when you’re wereleopard and not werewolf.”
I looked past him at the others. “Is that true?”
They all nodded. “I’m so sorry, Anita,” Cherry said.
I shook my head, trying to concentrate and not succeeding. “Alright, fine, fine. Richard can’t make me lupa. I never wanted to be lupa, just his girlfriend. Fuck the wolves. But what have they done with Gregory?”
“Richard went ape-shit when he found out what Gregory had done,” Zane said. “He thought Gregory had done it on purpose, because we were all afraid to lose you as our Nimir-Ra.”
“He accused Gregory of doing it on purpose?” I asked.
Zane nodded. “Oh, yeah, then they took him.”
“They, who?”
“Jamil, Sylvie, others.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Didn’t anyone try and argue with him about this?”
“Sylvie tried to tell him it wasn’t right, that you wouldn’t like it. He hit her, told her never to argue with him again, that he was Ulfric, not her.”
“Shit.”
“Do not blame your leopards for not fighting the wolves,” Micah said. “They are sorely outnumbered.”
“They’d get their asses kicked, I know that. Besides, it’s my job to deal with Richard, not theirs.”
“Because you are their Nimir-Ra,” he said.
“Because I am his girlfriend, sort of.”
“Of course,” he said.
I waved a hand at him. “Look, I can’t deal with all of this right now, so I’m just going to concentrate on the important stuff, I mean the immediately important stuff. Where is Gregory, and how do I get him back?”
Micah smiled. “Very practical.”
I looked at him and felt my eyes go cold. “You have no idea how practical I can be.”
His eyes did change, but it wasn’t fear in them, it was more interest, like my reaction intrigued him. “The situation is complex because you are the lupa that was injured. In effect, you must persuade yourself that Gregory meant no harm.”
“That’s too easy,” I said. “I know he meant no harm. So why do I get the feeling that I can’t just call Richard up and say, ‘Hey, I’m coming to get Gregory’?”
“Because you must convince not just Richard, but the entire pack, that you have the right to Gregory.”
“What do you mean ‘right to Gregory’? He’s my leopard. He’s mine, not theirs.”
Micah smiled, lowering long lashes over his eyes, as if he didn’t want me to read his expression at that moment. “The Ulfric declared Gregory rogue for, in effect, killing their lupa.”
“I’m alive, what . . . ?”
Micah held up a finger, and I let him finish. “You are dead to the pack—as their lupa. In effect, being a leopard makes you dead to them. You may share Richard’s bed again, but you will never be their lupa again. They voted on it, and Richard has destroyed his own power structure to the point where he can’t force a vote on them.”
“You’re saying that he is Ulfric but he doesn’t really rule them,” I said.
Micah seemed to think about that for a second, or two, then started to nod, stopped in mid-motion. “Yes, in fact, very well put.”
“Thanks.” A thought came to me, and I gripped his arm. “They aren’t going to kill Gregory, are they?” Something passed over his face that tightened my grip on his arm. “They haven’t killed him?”
“No,” Micah said.
I let go of his arm and leaned back against the wall. “What are they doing to him, or what are they planning to do to him?”
“The penalty for killing the lupa is death in any pack. But the circumstances are strange enough that I think you will be allowed a chance to win him back.”
“Win him back, how?” I asked.
“For that, you’ll need to ask the Ulfric.”
“I’ll do that.” I looked past him. “Someone get my cell phone out of my Jeep.” Nathaniel went for the door without another word.
“What are you going to do?” Micah asked.
“I’m going to make sure that Gregory isn’t being hurt. If he’s okay for tonight, I’ll go get Jean-Claude out of jail. If Gregory is in danger, then I get him out first.”
“Priorities,” he said, softly.
“Damn straight.”
He smiled again. “I am very impressed. You’ve had several shocks in a very short space of time
, yet you are clearheaded, and moving forward to solve the problems one at a time.”
“I can only solve one problem at a time,” I said.
“Most people let themselves be distracted.”
“I’m not most people.”
He gave that small smile again, shielding his eyes with his long lashes. “I’ve noticed.”
Something about the way he said it made me suddenly aware that he was nude, and I was wearing nothing but a towel. It was time to get on my feet and get dressed. I stood, pushing away his offer of help. “I’m fine, Micah, thanks anyway.” I looked past him at Cherry and Zane still standing in the doorway. “Do I have any clothes here?”
Cherry nodded. “Nathaniel brought your stuff from home. I’ll go get it.” She moved through the door.
“Weapons, too,” I called after her.
She poked her head back around the doorway. “I know.” That left just Zane standing in the doorway. “Do you have a job for me?”
“Not right now.”
He flashed me a smile wide enough to show that he had dainty fangs upper and lower—kitty-cat fangs. Zane had spent a little too much time in animal form to come all the way back. “I’ll go help Cherry then.” He paused at the doorway. “I’m really glad you didn’t die.”
“Me too.”
He grinned and left.
That left me alone with Micah. I looked into his yellow-green eyes and knew that they were also a sign that he’d spent too much time in animal form. We hadn’t kissed, so I didn’t know if he had dainty fangs like Zane. I hoped not, and wasn’t sure why I cared.
“Do you mind if I start cleaning up?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Help yourself. I’m going to go look for my clothes.” But Nathaniel came around the door with my cell phone.
I looked at the slim black phone. I’d only had it a few months. I’d tried not to buy one. If you had a cell phone and a beeper you were never truly free of the office. Of course, I was on vacation. Though, so far, it hadn’t been all that relaxing.
I popped the phone open and dialed Richard’s number from memory. There was no answer, just his machine. I left a message, then knew what I was going to do. I had to know what was happening with Gregory. I thought about Richard, the feel of his arms, the scent of his neck, the brush of his hair, and that prickling rush of energy rolled over my skin. I reached down the mark that bound me to Richard and found him standing on a podium. He was arguing with someone, but I couldn’t see who. I never got as clear a visual through Richard as I did through Jean-Claude. Richard turned as if he could see me standing behind him, then he thrust me out, throwing up a shield so solid I couldn’t feel him on the other side.
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10 Page 209