Ah, shapeshifter politics. I hated shapeshifter politics. "Why? The wereleopards are no threat to anyone."
"Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die."
A literate kidnapper, refreshing. "What do you want, Marco?"
"My alpha wants you to come down and rescue your cats, if you can."
"What club are you at?"
"Narcissus in Chains." And he hung up.
2
"DAMN IT!"
"What's happened?" Ronnie asked. I'd almost forgotten her. She didn't belong in this part of my life, but there she was, leaning against the kitchen cabinets, searching my face, looking worried.
"I'll take care of it."
She gripped my arm. "You gave me this speech about wanting your friends back, about not wanting to push us all away. Did you mean it, or was it just talk?"
I took a deep breath and let it out. I told her what the other side of the conversation had been.
"And you don't have any clue what this is about?" she asked.
"No, I don't."
"That's odd. Usually stuff like this builds up, it doesn't just drop out of the blue."
I nodded. "I know."
"Star 69 will ring back whatever number just called you."
"What good will that do?"
"It will let you know if they're really at this club, or whether it's just a trap for you."
"Not just another pretty face, are you?" I said.
She smiled. "I'm a trained detective. We know about these things." The humor didn't quite reach her eyes, but she was trying.
I dialed, and the phone rang for what seemed forever, then another male voice answered, "Yeah."
"Is this Narcissus in Chains?"
"Yeah, who's this?"
"I need to speak with Gregory?"
"Don't know any Gregory," he said.
"Who is this?" I asked.
"This is a freaking pay phone, lady. I just picked up." Then he hung up, too. It seemed to be my night for it.
"They called from a pay phone at the club," I said.
"Well, at least you know where they are," Ronnie said.
"Do you know where the club is?" I asked.
Ronnie shook her head. "Not my kind of scene."
"Mine either." In fact the only card-carrying dominance and submission players that I knew personally were all at the club waiting to be saved.
Who did I know that might know where the club was, and something about its reputation? I couldn't trust what the wereleopards had told me about it being a safe place. Obviously, they'd been wrong.
One name sprang to mind. The only one I knew to call that might know where Narcissus in Chains was, and what kind of trouble I'd be in if I went inside. Jean-Claude. Since I was dealing with shapeshifter politics it might have made sense to call Richard, with him being a werewolf and all. But the shapeshifters were a very clannish lot. One type of animal rarely crossed boundaries to help another. Frustrating, but true. The exception was the treaty between the werewolves and the wererats, but everyone else was left to fend, and squabble, and bleed, among themselves. Oh, if some small group got out of hand and attracted too much unwanted police attention, the wolves and rats would discipline them, but short of that, no one seemed to want to interfere with each other. That was one of the reasons I was still stuck baby-sitting the wereleopards.
Also, Richard didn't know any more about the D and S subculture than I did, maybe less. If you're wanting to ask questions about the sexual fringe, Jean-Claude is definitely your guy. He may not participate, but he seems to know who's doing what, and to whom, and where. Or I hoped he did. If it had just been my life at stake, I probably wouldn't have called either of the boys, but if I got killed doing this, that left no one to rescue Nathaniel and the rest. Unacceptable.
Ronnie had kicked off her high heels. "I didn't bring my gun, but I'm sure you have a spare."
I shook my head. "You're not going."
Anger makes her gray eyes the color of storm clouds. "The hell I'm not."
"Ronnie, these are shapeshifters, and you're human."
"So are you," she said.
"Because of Jean-Claude's vampire marks, I'm a little more than that. I can take damage that would kill you."
"You can't go in there alone," she said. Her arms were crossed under her breasts, her face set in angry, stubborn lines.
"I don't plan on going in alone."
"It's because I'm not a shooter, isn't it?"
"You don't kill easily, Ronnie, no shame in that, but I can't take you into a gang of shapeshifters unless I know that you'll shoot to kill if you have to." I gripped her upper arms. She stayed stiff and angry under my touch. "It would kill a piece of me to lose you, Ronnie. It would kill a bigger piece to know that you died because of some shit of mine. You can't hesitate with these people. You can't treat them like they're human. If you do, you die."
She was shaking her head. "Call the police."
I stepped away from her. "No."
"Damn it, Anita, damn it!"
"Ronnie, there are rules, and one of those rules is you don't take pack or pard business to the police." The main reason for that rule was that the police tended to frown on fights for dominance that ended with dead bodies on the ground, but no need to tell Ronnie that.
"It's a stupid rule," she said.
"Maybe, but it's still the way business is done with the shifters, no matter what flavor they are."
She sat down at the small two-seater breakfast table, on its little raised platform. "Who's going to be your backup then? Richard doesn't kill any easier than I do."
That was half true, but I let it slide. "No, I want someone at my back tonight who will do what needs doing, no flinching."
Her eyes were dark, dark with anger. "Jean-Claude." She made his name a curse.
I nodded.
"Are you sure he didn't plan this to get you back into his life, excuse me, death?"
"He knows me too well to screw with my people. He knows what I'd do if he hurt them."
Puzzlement flowed through the anger, softening her eyes, her face. "I hate him, but I know you love him. Could you really kill him? Could you really stare down the barrel of a gun and pull the trigger on him?"
I just looked at her, and I knew without a mirror that my eyes had grown distant, cold. It's hard for brown eyes to be cold, but I'd been managing it lately.
Something very like fear slid behind her eyes. I don't know if she was afraid for me, or of me. I preferred the first to the last. "You could do it. Jesus, Anita. You've known Jean-Claude longer than I've known Louie. I could never hurt Louie, no matter what he did."
I shrugged. "It would destroy me to do it, I think. It's not like I'd live happily ever after, if I survived at all. There's a very real chance that the vampire marks would drag me down to the grave with him."
"Another good reason not to kill him," she said.
"If he's behind the scream that Gregory gave over the phone, then he'll need better reasons to keep breathing than love, or lust, or my possible death."
"I don't understand that, Anita. I don't understand that at all."
"I know," I said. And I thought to myself it was one of the reasons Ronnie and I hadn't been seeing as much of each other as we once had. I got tired of explaining myself to her. No, of justifying myself to her.
You're my friend, my best friend, I thought. But I don't understand you anymore.
"Ronnie, I can't arm wrestle shapeshifters and vampires. I will lose a fair fight. The only way I survive, the only way my leopards survive, is because the other shifters fear me. They fear my threat. I'm only as good as my threat, Ronnie."
"So you'll go down there and kill them."
"I didn't say that."
"But you will."
"I'll try to avoid it," I said.
She tucked her knees up, wrapping her arms around those long legs. She'd managed to get a tiny prick in one of the hose; the hole was shiny with clear nail polis
h. She'd carried the polish in her purse for just such emergencies. I'd carried a gun and hadn't even taken a purse.
"If you get arrested, call, and I'll bail you out."
I shook my head. "If I get caught wasting three or more people in a public area, there won't be any bail tonight. The police probably won't even finish questioning me until long past dawn."
"How can you be so calm about this?" she asked.
I was beginning to remember why Ronnie and I had started drifting apart. I'd had almost the exact conversation with Richard once when an assassin had come to town to kill me. I gave the same answer. "Having hysterics won't help anything, Ronnie."
"But you're not angry about it."
"Oh, I am angry," I said.
She shook her head. "No, I mean you're not outraged that this is happening. You don't seem surprised, not like ..." She shrugged. "Not like you should be."
"You mean not like you would be." I held up a hand before she could answer. "I don't have time to debate moral philosophy, Ronnie." I picked up the phone. "I'm going to call Jean-Claude."
"I keep urging you to dump the vampire and marry Richard, but maybe there's more than one reason why you can't let him go."
I dialed the number for Circus of the Damned from memory, and Ronnie just kept talking to my back. "Maybe you're not willing to give up a lover who's colder than you are."
The phone was ringing. "There are clean sheets on the guest bed, Ronnie. Sorry I won't be able to share girl talk tonight." I kept my back to her.
I heard her stand in a crinkle of skirts and knew when she walked out. I kept my back facing the room until I knew she was gone. It wouldn't do either of us any good to let her see me cry.
3
JEAN-CLAUDE WASN'T AT the Circus of the Damned. The voice on the other end of the phone at the Circus didn't recognize me and wouldn't believe I was Anita Blake, Jean-Claude's sometimes sweetie. So I'd been reduced to calling his other businesses. I'd tried Guilty Pleasures, his strip club, but he wasn't there. I tried Danse Macabre, his newest enterprise, but I was beginning to wonder if Jean-Claude had simply told everyone that he wasn't in if I called.
The thought bothered me a lot. I'd worried that after so long Richard might finally tell me to go to hell, that he'd had enough of my indecision. It had never occurred to me that Jean-Claude might not wait. If I was so unsure how I felt about him, why was my stomach squeezed tight with a growing sense of loss? The feeling had nothing to do with the wereleopards and their problems. It had everything to do with me and the fact that I suddenly felt lost. But it turned out he was at Danse Macabre, and he took my call. I had a moment for my stomach to unclench and my breath to ease out, then he was on the phone, and I was struggling to keep my metaphysical shields in place.
I hated metaphysics. Preternatural biology is still biology, metaphysics is magic, and I'm still not comfortable with it. For six months when I wasn't working, I was meditating, studying with a very wise psychic named Marianne, learning ritual magic, so I could control my God-given abilities. And so I could block the marks that bound me to Richard and Jean-Claude. An aura is like your personal protection, your personal energy. When it's healthy it keeps you safe like skin, but you get a hole in it, and infection can get inside. My aura had two holes in it, one for each of the men. I suspected that their auras had holes in them, too. Which put us all at risk. I'd blocked up my holes. Then only a few weeks ago, I'd come up against a nasty creature, a would-be god, a new category, even for me. It had been powerful enough to strip all my careful work away, leaving me raw and open again. Only the intervention of a local witch had saved me from being eaten from the aura down. I didn't have six more months of celibacy, meditation, and patience in me. The holes were there, and the only way to fill them was with Jean-Claude and Richard. That's what Marianne said, and I trusted her in a way that I trusted few others.
Jean-Claude's voice hit me over the phone like a velvet slap. My breath caught in my throat, and I could do nothing but feel the flow of his voice, the presence of him, like something alive, flowing over my skin. His voice has always been one of Jean-Claude's best things, but this was ridiculous. This was over the phone. How could I possibly see him in person and maintain my shields, let alone my composure?
"I know you are there, ma petite. Did you call merely to hear the sound of my voice?"
That was closer to the truth than was comfortable. "No, no." I still couldn't gather my thoughts. I was like an athlete who had let her training go. I just couldn't lift the same amount of weight, and there was weight to wading through Jean-Claude's power.
When I still didn't say anything, he spoke again. "ma petite, to what do I owe this honor? Why have you deigned to call me?" His voice was bland, but there was a hint of something in it. Reproach perhaps.
I guess I had it coming. I rallied the troops and tried to sound like an intelligent human being, not always one of my best things. "It's been six months ..."
"I am aware of that, ma petite."
He was being condescending. I hated that. It made me a little angry. The anger helped clear my head a little. "If you'll stop interrupting, I'll tell you why I called."
"My heart is all aflutter with anticipation."
I wanted to hang up. He was being an asshole, and part of me thought I might deserve the treatment, which made me even angrier. I'm always angriest when I think I'm in the wrong. I'd been a coward for months, and I was still a coward. I was afraid to be close to him, afraid of what I'd do. Damn it, Anita, get ahold of yourself. "Sarcasm is my department," I said.
"And what is my department?"
"I'm about to ask you for a favor," I said.
"Really?" He said it as if he might not grant it.
"Please, Jean-Claude, I'm asking for help. I don't do that often."
"That is certainly true. What would you have of me, ma petite? You know that you have but to ask, and it will be yours. No matter how angry I may be with you."
I let that comment go, because I didn't know what to do about it. "Do you know a club called Narcissus in Chains?"
He was quiet for a second or two. "Oui."
"Can you give me directions and meet me there?"
"Do you know what sort of a club this place is?"
"Yeah."
"Are you sure?"
"It's a bondage club, I know."
"Unless the last six months has changed you greatly, ma petite, that is not one of your preferences."
"Not mine, no."
"Your wereleopards are misbehaving again?"
"Something like that." I told him what had happened.
"I do not know this Marco."
"I didn't figure you did."
"But you did think that I knew where the club was?"
"I was hoping."
"I will meet you there with some of my people. Or will you allow only me to ride to your rescue?" He sounded amused now, which was better than angry, I guess.
"Bring who you need."
"You trust my judgment?"
"In this, yeah."
"But not in all things," he said softly.
"I don't trust anyone in all things, Jean-Claude."
He sighed. "So young to be so ... jaded."
"I'm cynical, not jaded."
"And the difference is what, ma petite?"
"You're jaded."
He laughed then, the sound caressing me like the brush of a hand. It made things low in my body clench. "Ah," he said, "that explains all the differences."
"Just give me directions, please." I added the "please" to speed things along.
"They will not harm your wereleopards too greatly, I think. The club is run by shapeshifters, and they will smell too much blood and take matters into their own hands. It is one of the reasons Narcissus in Chains is no-man's-land, a neutral place for the fringe of our groups. Your leopards were right, it is usually a very safe place."
"Well, Gregory wasn't screaming because he felt safe."
"Perhaps n
ot, but I know the owner. Narcissus would be very angry if someone became overzealous in his club."
"Narcissus, I don't know the name. Well, I know the Greek mythology stuff, but I don't recognize it as local."
"I would not expect you to. He does not often leave his club. But I will call him, and he will patrol your cats for you. He will not rescue them, but he will make sure no further damage is done."
"You trust Narcissus to do this?"
"Oui."
Jean-Claude had his faults, but if he trusted someone, he was usually right. "Okay. And thank you."
"You are most welcome." He drew a breath, then said quietly, "Would you have called if you had not needed my help? Would you ever have called?"
I'd been dreading this question from either Jean-Claude or Richard. But I finally had an answer "I'll answer your question as best I can, but call it a hunch, it may be a long conversation. I need to know my people are safe before we start dissecting our relationship."
"Relationship? Is that what we have?" His voice was very dry.
"Jean-Claude."
"No, no, ma petite, I will call Narcissus now and save your cats but only if you promise that when I call back we will finish this conversation.
"Promise."
"Your word," he said.
"Yes."
"Very well, ma petite, until we speak again." He hung up.
I hung up the phone and stood there. Was it cowardly to want to call someone else, anyone else, so the phone would be busy and we wouldn't have to have our little talk? Yeah, it was cowardly, but tempting. I hated talking about my personal life, especially to the people most intimately involved in it. I had just about enough time to change out of the skirt outfit when the phone rang. I jumped and answered it with my pulse in my throat. I was really dreading this conversation.
"Hello," I said.
"Narcissus will see to your cats' safety. Now, where were we?" He was silent for a heartbeat. "Oh, yes, would you ever have called if you had not needed my help?"
"The woman I'm studying with ..."
"Marianne," he said.
"Yes, Marianne. Anyway, she says that I can't keep blocking the holes in my aura. That the only way to be safe from preternatural creepy-crawlies is to fill the holes with what they were meant to hold."
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