Bullet ab-19

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I raised eyebrows at that. “Graham and Clay meet standards.”

  Dino smiled. “They aren’t our best hand-to-hand fighters, and Clay seems weirdly awkward with anything but a gun, but they do the training. They hit the gym just like the rest of us. Rafael wouldn’t trust the safety of Jean-Claude and you to any guard he didn’t trust.”

  I thought about that. “Of the other werelions, who’s the best? Who do you guys like?”

  “Payne is too much like Haven,” Dino said. “He’s a thug and not a deep thinker.”

  “Jesse is okay,” Nathaniel said.

  “I think he’d be softer if he were in a pride that let him,” Dino said.

  “I agree,” Nicky said.

  “What about the women?”

  “We haven’t seen them,” Dino said.

  “Haven ran his pride like some of the ultramale prides do,” Nicky said. “The women are second-class citizens, almost cloistered away from any other wereanimals. Most werelions take a lot of pride in the fact that their lionesses don’t want or need to go outside the pride for sex.”

  “Most animal groups stay within their own animal, right?” I asked.

  Everyone agreed.

  “There’s a reason for that,” Stephen said quietly. “If we go outside our animal groups, we can have misunderstandings just based on being different beasts.”

  I almost let it go, but in the end I did the girl thing and said, “You and Vivian aren’t having troubles because you’re a wolf and she’s a leopard.”

  He looked away. “I know that.” His tone, his body language all said, Leave it alone. I did the guy thing; I left it alone.

  “So the fact that so many of the St. Louis wereanimals interdate is unusual?” I asked.

  “Very,” Dino said.

  “Haven saw your rejection of him for Nathaniel and Micah, and all the rest of us, as a direct challenge to both his maleness and his lion,” Nicky said.

  “I couldn’t make him my one and only, and he didn’t share well enough to sleep in big kitty piles with us.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Nicky said.

  “Am I missing something here?”

  “Anita, you can’t save everyone,” Nathaniel said.

  “I’m a cop, I know that.”

  “Do you?” He took my hand in his, and I let him this time. “You’re blaming yourself for Haven and Noel, but the only thing you could have done differently would be to have killed Haven sooner.”

  I met those serious lavender eyes. I studied his face. “You believe that, don’t you?”

  “Even if you’d let Nicky fight him, Haven would still be dead.”

  “But Noel wouldn’t be,” I said.

  Pity, sorrow filled his face as he took both my hands in his. “Anita, how do you think I feel? Noel died saving me. If it had been one of the guards, I’d be sad, but it’s their job. It wasn’t Noel’s job to die for me.”

  “God, Nathaniel, I hadn’t thought . . .” I hugged him. “I’m sorry; I’m being a selfish bastard. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t ask Noel to do it.”

  Nathaniel pulled me away from him enough to see my face. “It isn’t your fault, either, and you didn’t ask Noel to give his life for mine.”

  We stared at each other, inches away, our hands on each other’s arms. There was pain in both our faces.

  “I don’t mean to be callous,” Nicky said, “but whatever you’re feeling, get over it. We need both of you to meet the tigers and be charming and sexy. Guilt is not sexy.”

  I gave him an unfriendly look, but Nathaniel said, “He’s right.”

  I looked back at him. “How can you just . . .”

  “Forget?”

  I nodded.

  “I won’t forget, but we need to make this city, this territory, as safe as possible. That means we need the tigers, Anita. We need for you and Jean-Claude to be the Master of Tigers.”

  “I don’t know if I can do this, be this.”

  “Just go make nice with the tigers that Micah picked, that’s all, don’t worry about more.”

  “I could have sex with them, I think, but it’s the idea of keeping them. They’re strangers and suddenly they get to be in the bed with us, too. I’m not getting enough alone time with you and Micah now.”

  He smiled then and drew me into his arms. “I miss it just being the three of us, too.”

  “Should my feelings be hurt?” Nicky asked.

  I looked at him, but he was smiling. “Yes, they should be,” I said, “but they aren’t, are they?”

  “No, because my primary drive is for you to be happy. Micah and Nathaniel make you happy.”

  “Aren’t you allowed to work for your own happiness?” I asked.

  “I don’t think that’s what a vampire’s Bride is for,” he said, and he sounded so calm about it.

  “What are they for?” I asked.

  “Cannon fodder, unquestioning obedience, I don’t know.”

  “You were afraid of what I did to Jamil and Shang-Da in the hallway.”

  He frowned and looked uncomfortable. “Yeah, that scared me.”

  “But if you have to obey me, then if I asked, you couldn’t refuse me, could you?”

  He frowned, thinking about it. “I think I’d let you do anything you wanted to me, but I’d rather not. That was so much power and it felt so good when you shared, but I wouldn’t want to be the wereanimal you were sucking energy off of.”

  “Is that where all that energy came from?” Dino asked.

  The three of us nodded.

  “It was more powerful than the ardeur when you share that,” Stephen said.

  “I wasn’t feeding off their sex. I was feeding off their lives, their energy. It’s more power because I’m taking more away, I think.”

  “Did they understand what they were volunteering for?” Nicky asked.

  “They offered it to save their Ulfric,” Nathaniel said.

  “They’re his Sköll and Hatí; they’re supposed to be willing to give their lives for their Ulfric,” Stephen said.

  “After seeing the looks on their faces afterward, I don’t think they’ll want me to feed from them again.”

  “They were scared of you,” Nicky said.

  I nodded. “My allies shouldn’t be afraid of me.”

  “It’s better to be loved than feared, but if you can’t be loved, then fear will do,” Dino said. “I’m butchering the quote, but I like what it says.”

  We all looked at him, and we must have looked surprised because he said, “Hey, I read.”

  “I didn’t know you read Machiavelli,” I said.

  “He was an interesting guy,” Dino said.

  “That’s one way of putting it. But honestly, Dino, even though I do it myself, I worry that when you start quoting Machiavelli to justify your actions, you have ceased to be one of the good guys.”

  “No, quoting Nietzsche does that. Machiavelli is just cool.”

  Nathaniel said, “Just go meet the weretigers, Anita, no strings, no expectations. Just meet them and we’ll go from there.”

  “Sounds fair,” I said.

  “But . . . ,” he said, smiling.

  I shrugged. “Let’s do this.”

  “You’re feeling all monster because you killed Haven,” Dino said.

  “I hadn’t thought that, exactly.”

  “Yeah, you had,” he said, and that big, dark face had way too much going on in the eyes. He was so big and so much muscle that sometimes you forgot that there was a good mind in all that heavy packaging.

  “It’s not that I killed Haven. It’s that I was able to look him dead in the eyes, the same eyes that I’d looked at during sex, and I looked into those eyes and pulled the trigger. I stared him in the eyes and turned his brains to mush. How could I do that? How could anyone do that and not be a monster?”

  Nathaniel put his arms around me, and I let him. I held on, because I believed what I’d said.

  “I would say, I could have done it
, but we all know without your control I’m a sociopath,” Nicky said, “so that isn’t comforting.”

  “If it was a woman I might hesitate,” Dino said, “but if she had a gun I could do it.”

  “Don’t look at us,” Gregory said. “Guns are not our thing.”

  Stephen just nodded.

  “I couldn’t kill someone I loved,” Nathaniel said, “but I’d kill to protect someone I loved, and that’s what you did, Anita.” He kissed my forehead and put his hands on my face, sliding his fingers into my hair so he could make me look at him. “You protected me.”

  “There were guards all over the place, from what I hear,” Dino said, “and any of them would have done it for you. It wouldn’t have cost them this kind of pain.”

  I turned from Nathaniel, his hands still in my hair, so I could see Dino. “That’s why it had to be me. It was supposed to matter. It was supposed to hurt.”

  “You were raised Catholic, right?” Dino asked.

  “Yeah, why?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. One more quote, and this is Nietzsche: ‘Is it better to outmonster the monster or to be quietly devoured?’

  “What?” I asked.

  “You heard the question, now answer it,” he said.

  I took a deep breath in and let it out slow, laying my head against Nathaniel’s chest with his hands still cradling my head. I hugged him once and then pushed away so I was standing on my own. “I won’t be quietly devoured.”

  “So you vote monster,” he said.

  I thought about it. “If there are only two choices, yeah.”

  “Me, too,” he said.

  “Me, three,” Nathaniel said.

  We went around the room and everyone voted to be a monster. “Haven picked on Travis and Noel because they let him devour them slowly,” Dino said.

  “They weren’t good enough monsters,” Nicky said.

  “Travis is still alive; don’t talk about him in past tense,” I said.

  “If he wants to stay that way, he needs to get better at fighting back,” Dino said.

  “Can I order him to start going to the training sessions?” I asked.

  “You’re the local Regina, Anita, and they’re fresh out of kings; you can order Travis to do anything,” Nicky said.

  And there it was again, being in charge of someone’s life to a point that I didn’t want. But Dino and Nicky were right; Travis had to learn how to defend himself better or find a pride that was a little less lionlike.

  Nathaniel took my hand and started leading me toward the door. “Travis is safe here, so worry about him later.”

  “You really are okay with me adding more people to our bed,” I said.

  He grinned at me. “I like making new friends.”

  I frowned at him.

  He kissed me, soft and sudden. I couldn’t frown while he kissed me; I couldn’t do anything but kiss him back. When he drew back I was left staring up into those eyes. “You really are a little excited to meet them, aren’t you?”

  He put his forehead against mine and whispered, “I like watching you with other people, and you know that.”

  “Does Micah like watching?” I asked.

  “He likes watching us together, and he likes Jean-Claude. He likes Jason.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned in against him. “I just want to sleep between the two of you for like a couple of days.”

  “We get through this, and we will.”

  I moved back enough so I could see his face. “Promise,” I asked.

  His face went very serious and he said, “Promise.”

  I nodded and stepped away. I stood up straight, because I’d been huddling in on myself. I could do this. We could do this. And then when this was over we’d find a bed for just the three of us and sleep until I wasn’t tired anymore. It felt like I’d need about a hundred years to catch up, but I’d settle for eight uninterrupted hours. Sometimes you take what you can get.

  39

  THE DRAPES HAD been stripped around the living room so that the carpeted area looked like an island in the middle of the bare rock walls and the uncarpeted floor that led farther into the underground. The light and warmth of the area looked like a stage set surrounded by all that naked rock.

  I must have hesitated, because Nathaniel’s hand tightened on mine and he kept us moving forward. I glanced at him and found a welcoming smile just appearing on his face, but then his day job as a stripper had taught him how to smile and be charming when he really didn’t feel like it. None of my jobs taught me how to be charming, strangely.

  Nicky and Dino were at our backs. Stephen and Gregory had stayed back in the kitchen, but with both Nicky’s and Dino’s shoulders behind us there really wasn’t room for anyone else.

  Micah came to us. It almost looked odd to see him in nice black jeans and a T-shirt. He wore suits for work and relaxed in faded jeans and colorful T-shirts. He really wasn’t that fond of black outside his suits. The black shirt tucked into the black jeans with a black belt and silver buckle made his waist look tiny. In fact the whole outfit emphasized how almost delicate he was, especially for a man. The saving grace was the way the tight T-shirt showed off the muscled upper body, but it looked all done in miniature, especially after just exercising with so many of the guards. Most of the time I didn’t think of Micah as that small, because we were the same size, but as he walked toward us, smiling, hand out, his long, dark brown hair curling free past his shoulders, framing that triangular face, with those startling eyes, he was simply beautiful in a very girl way. I understood why he wore suits most of the time; it helped make him look like a grown-up. The same for keeping his hair back from his face. Why had he picked now to dress so unlike himself ? It being Micah, I knew he’d have a reason.

  He kissed me, light but good. It made me smile. He smiled back, and with his hand still on my arm he leaned up and kissed Nathaniel. He stiffened for a second, startled I think, because other than the kiss at the dance recital they didn’t kiss in public. But Nathaniel recovered almost instantly and kissed him back, even putting a hand on the other man’s shoulder. Maybe Micah had just gotten more comfortable with it, but I was betting that like the clothes he had done it on purpose. I knew that later I’d ask and he’d explain, but not now, not in front of company. Since they were most likely the very people he was doing it all for.

  He took Nathaniel’s hand to lead us forward, because to take mine he’d have had to take my gun hand. I’d taught them both that I didn’t like that. Now I would have preferred his hand in mine rather than the gun hand free, because what was waiting for us wasn’t a matter of guns.

  Micah led us toward the carpeted area, but I couldn’t resist looking toward the corner where Haven had died. I noticed Nathaniel looking at the floor where he and Noel had lain. As far as I could tell the blood was cleaned up, though as we passed the place where Noel had bled out I caught the sharp scent of bleach. I knew if I could smell it that all the wereanimals would smell it more. Our guests would know there was blood underneath all that bleach, but there was nothing we could do about it.

  Jake stood on the far side of the room with Claudia beside him. He’d already adopted the black T-shirt that was the unofficial uniform for our guards. Claudia looked like her normal self, with her muscles smooth and her hair in a tight braid. If I hadn’t seen her shot I wouldn’t have known that she’d even been hurt. The fact that she’d healed this completely this fast said just how powerful a wererat she was. She gave a small nod at me, and I gave one back.

  Wicked and Truth were near the fireplace because the loveseat had been put close to it at an angle, and that’s where Jean-Claude was sitting. Unlike Micah, he’d gone for his normal look: tight pants and tall black boots, both made of intricately sewn leather, so that his lower body looked like it was bound in thin leather strips, and where the boots left off and the pants began was hard to see. His white shirt had a lacy front tucked into all that leather. His jacket was black and velvet, cut short e
nough that it hit barely at his waist. He’d pinned the lace in place with the antique cameo pin that I’d gotten him for one of the first Christmases we exchanged gifts. Asher was beside him on the loveseat with his unbound golden hair spilled along one side of his face so it hid the scars. Asher had dressed to match Jean-Claude, so he was also in leather pants and boots, but his were smooth leather, so smooth that it looked painted on. His white shirt was a tuxedo shirt with the collar unfastened at the neck, but beyond that it fit his upper body tight. To my eyes you could see the difference in skin from one side of his chest to the other as he rose from the loveseat and glided toward us, smiling. But I knew that smile; it wasn’t a real one. It was a smile that could either be happy or turn to harsh cruelty. There was something about our guests that Asher didn’t like.

  The big cinnamon-brown wolf trotted at Asher’s side. I had a moment of not knowing how to greet Richard in wolf form. Asher took my free hand, my gun hand, and raised it for a kiss, but as he rose from it he let me see his eyes. They were unhappy. I wanted to ask what was wrong, but since Asher and I weren’t able to talk mind-to-mind I’d have to wait for privacy.

  The big wolf bumped my leg with his head. I wasn’t ready for it, and it staggered me a little. I reached both hands down to pet him. He stared up at me with wolf eyes, but the look in them was human. He wasn’t happy, either. What the hell could have put Asher and Richard on the same side of unhappy? Other than both being pissy, they didn’t have a lot of the same issue buttons.

  I had to fight the urge to ask him, What’s wrong, boy? like he was Lassie or something. Asher offered me his arm and I slid my hand through his; if I had to go for a gun I was screwed, but with Wicked, Truth, and Claudia in the room, if my gun was the one that saved us, then things would have gone too wrong for one more gun to make a difference. The wolf walked ahead of us and lay down beside the loveseat at Jean-Claude’s side like a good dog.

  There were two men I didn’t know in the overstuffed chairs, which had been moved to the side of the room where the loveseat normally sat. That put Jake and Claudia at their backs. They had to be the gold tigers.

  Since I still had Nathaniel’s hand and he still had Micah by the hand, Asher led us all to Jean-Claude, as if the tigers weren’t sitting there. Nathaniel took some cue because he let go of my hand and Asher twirled me onto the loveseat beside Jean-Claude. Asher kissed my hand again and moved away, as Micah sat down on the other side of me. Maybe that was what was upsetting Asher, that he had to move off the loveseat. Maybe, but his and Richard’s mood had made me tense, looking for something wrong. There better really be something wrong and not just the two of them being pissy, because for my tension level to rise this way there better be a damn good reason. I didn’t have the energy to spare for anything but good reasons.