Bullet ab-19

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I managed to focus my eyes enough to look at him where he lay half on us. “I know that Mephistopheles is the devil in the play, but why is it your nickname?”

  “My twin sister’s full name is Good Angel. When I was little I asked what my name meant. My mother told me it was the name of the devil in the play. My sister said, ‘I’m the Angel, and you’re the Devil.’ It stuck. Besides, almost anything is better than Mephistopheles.”

  He had a point, but . . . “So your twin sister is Angel and you’re Devil?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did that give you a complex of some kind as a kid?” I asked.

  It took him two tries to turn more on his side so he could look at me better. “Do you mean did we live up to our names?”

  “Yeah.”

  He smiled, sudden and bright. “Are you asking if I’m the evil twin?”

  It made me smile. “Yeah,” I said.

  The smile faded around the edges, and his eyes were all serious when he said, “You better hope not.”

  44

  NEWS OF WHAT happened in Atlanta had spread through the vampire community faster than the human one. Those who had been reluctant to give up their power to Jean-Claude earlier were suddenly on board with the plan. The Lover of Death and his dark rider had done in hours what would have taken us days, or even weeks. They had frightened the vampires into turning to the only one who had a plan. When people are scared enough, they’ll give up their freedom, their rights, everything, in a bid to be safe. Being undead didn’t change that. Scratch them deep enough and vampires were just people, and people will follow a calm leader with a plan.

  The first part of the plan was to introduce me and Jean-Claude to the tiger clans now that I had a gold tiger bound to us. It was an us. Micah and me, me and Jean-Claude, him and Richard, us and Asher, me and Nathaniel and Damian, none of it was solitary. It was as if the power and loneliness of the vampires’ world had combined with the group-oriented puppy-pile world of the shapeshifters and made something new.

  But as usual with Jean-Claude and the vampire world, the next step involved a party. All right, a big gathering, but if I have to get dressed up it’s a party and not in a good happy way. We were in Jean-Claude’s bedroom when the door opened and the guards let in the women who were going to help me dress to impress.

  High heels clicked sharply over the stone floor. Cardinal strode toward us in four-inch spike sandals as if she were on a catwalk and photographers were snapping her picture. The dress looked like it had been inspired by a 1920s beaded flapper dress, but the colors were orange and yellow, in every shade they could come in; with her red curls spilling around her shoulders she looked like she was wearing fire. The dress was short enough that her bare, creamy legs went on forever. With the sandals she was well over six feet.

  Meng Die was behind her in a dress just as short, but black, with a collar of clear faux gemstones catching the halter top of the dress. Her black high heels were spike-toed, with at least four inches of spike. Her straight black hair was shiny, bobbing as she moved. The hair caressed her bare white shoulders, the ends of the hair flipped under. They were both wearing distinctive but artful makeup, so that Meng Die’s brown eyes looked huge and even more exotic than usual. Cardinal had gone for the fresh-faced, sexy girl-next-door look, which meant she was wearing more makeup than it looked, but most men wouldn’t figure it out. Hell, even I didn’t know everything she had on her face.

  What really bothered me was that she had a clothing bag over one arm and her makeup case in the other. Meng Die was carrying a shopping bag.

  “We don’t have time for me to get dolled up,” I said.

  “We don’t have time for you not to,” Cardinal said. She held up the garment bag over her arm and started unzipping it as she towered over me.

  “Don’t be a baby about this, Anita,” Meng Die said, as she knelt on the floor and started taking shoe boxes out of the bag.

  “You have great skin. We won’t need much makeup. You’ll be ready in twenty minutes or less,” Cardinal said as she shook the dress free of its bag. It was as short as I’d feared, but the real problem was that the black material was utterly sheer from the scoop neck to the hem. There were black sequins catching the light here and there sort of randomly around the hem and skirt and a little on the bodice.

  “Oh, don’t look so shocked,” Meng Die said, and drew a black slip out of the bag of shoes as if it had been on the bottom of everything.

  “Where are my weapons going to go in that?” I asked.

  “If you need a gun today, then we’ve lost,” Meng Die said as she held the slip up to Cardinal.

  “I’m lost now,” I said.

  Meng Die looked up at me from where she knelt. “Anita, you need to go in there on Jean-Claude’s arm and sell this dress, this attitude, all of it. I’d do it if I could, but I’m not his lady, you are.” There was real bitterness to that last, as well as the implication that if she were, then this would all go so much smoother.

  “Off with the clothes,” Cardinal said.

  “How much am I going to hate all of it?” I asked.

  “You have no idea what we went through to get these. We had to send someone out shopping, because we can’t go out in daylight,” Cardinal said. “The guards may be good at guarding us, but they are not personal shoppers. You should see the crap they brought back. This is the best of the lot, Anita. Most of the dresses won’t fit your curves. It would work for either of us, but once breasts pass a C cup they’re just a real challenge for cocktail dresses.”

  “I have dresses,” I protested.

  “You have last season’s dresses, or heaven help us, three seasons ago. You never get rid of anything as long as it fits you,” Cardinal said.

  “Why should I?”

  The two women exchanged a look. “Wait until you see what the other women are wearing,” Meng Die said. “You’ll understand then.”

  I looked at Jean-Claude. “They came to impress, ma petite. They came to be pretty.”

  “How did they get new dresses this fast?” I asked.

  “They had them,” Cardinal said, and started tugging my shirt out of my jeans.

  “I’ll do it, I’ll do it.”

  “Then do it,” she said.

  Meng Die started holding the shoes against the dress, which was hanging from her other hand. “Most women try to buy at least one nice dress per season so they’ll have it, Anita. If you have the money that’s what you do. Some women change out their entire wardrobes once or twice a year.”

  “I like my clothes, and sometimes what’s in for the season is ugly.” I stripped off my shoulder rig, started to hand it to Jean-Claude, thought better of it, and reluctantly handed it to Nicky. I had to push Cardinal’s hands away from my shirt so I could pull it over my head myself.

  “See, I told you she’d have nice underwear on,” Cardinal said.

  “Glad you approve,” I said, and didn’t try to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

  “You may dress like one of the boys, but you always have really nice underthings,” Cardinal said. “We counted on that.”

  “The guards could not have shopped for lingerie,” Meng Die said, standing up with the shoes in one hand and the dress in the other.

  “Hurry, Anita,” Cardinal said.

  I didn’t want to hurry. I didn’t like the dress.

  Micah kissed me on the cheek. He was dressed in a tailored black suit, except it was made of soft black leather. His shirt was white and made his summer tan look very dark. The collar of it was open to expose the bite marks on his neck. The idea was that we would all show the vampire bites to demonstrate that Jean-Claude kept the best stuff for himself. It was a way of emphasizing he was still master, even though a lot of the metaphysical stuff with the tigers would seem to come mostly from me.

  “You’re okay with this?” I asked.

  “Anita, after last night and what happened in Atlanta, I’d wear the dress myself if it would help
us be safe.” Jean-Claude looked at me, and there was something of weight, and sorrow, and just him, that made me take his hand.

  “If I really thought the dress would help us be safe, I wouldn’t mind.”

  Micah kissed me. “Anita, have I ever asked you to just do something?”

  I thought about it and shook my head.

  “I’m asking now.” He looked sad.

  “Did I miss something? Has something else happened?”

  “Anita, it’s afternoon. We have about six hours until full dark. Whatever we are going to do with the tigers, we need it done before dark.”

  “But Europe isn’t on the same daylight schedule,” I said.

  “If they are underground, ma petite, the council does not sleep much. They await our darkness, not their own,” Jean-Claude said.

  “Richard is in the other room wearing a hell of a lot less than I am. He’s sucked it up and is playing host while the rest of us are in here holding your hand. You’re about to throw a fit because the dress is sheer. Anita, honey”—and he took my hands in his—“Richard is doing what we need him to do; are you going to do less?”

  I sighed. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I’m just not the exhibitionist that—oh, hell, Micah. I’m just not comfortable mostly nude in front of a roomful of strangers.”

  “I’m sorry for that, but we need to play to our strengths. Those are sex, psychic ability so strong they won’t know what hit them, and bluntness. The dress is sexy, and blunt.” He smiled. “Honey, it’s you. I’ll go help the other men with our guests. Okay?”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  He kissed my cheek again, gave Jean-Claude a look I couldn’t quite understand, and went back down the hallway to our guests. And just like that, I stopped protesting. Micah’s attitude brought home more than anything else could have that modesty was no longer a virtue. It was the proverbial midnight, and the clock was striking. Whatever we were going to do before that last strike, we had about six hours to do it.

  45

  THE SLIP HADN’T worked with the dress, so I wore it with just the nice black bra and panties under it. The shoes were three-and-a-half-inch heels, a little wider than spikes, thank God, but with panels on the closed-toe heels that were silver, clear, clear black, and ended up being mostly clear like the dress, so that the silver heels were the thing you noticed most about the shoes. Meng Die had produced a pair of thigh-highs from her bag so that the shoes weren’t rubbing as I walked. With the sheer dress, the sheer black hose just seemed to make it all lingerie, but it beat the hell out of having blisters before I’d walked a few yards, which was what the shoes promised without hose.

  Cardinal had applied makeup in a record speed. She even had a mirror so I could see that she’d made my eyes large and exotic; the lipstick was a red so deep and rich that it was going to be distracting just to watch me talk. Of course, my breasts might distract any heterosexual man in the room from ever seeing my face. There was way too much yummy mounded goodness going on in front of me for me to be entirely comfortable meeting a roomful of strangers, but I hadn’t protested anymore. Micah had made his point. I kept my mouth shut and just let the two women do their jobs. Besides, the dress didn’t hide a damn thing, so my breasts being obvious should have been the least of my worries. One of the interesting side effects of the dress being see-through was that every vampire bite was very visible. So were the scars I’d gotten in the line of duty, but the bites were actually more attention-getting. They were fresh, after all. The fact that I’d started wearing thongs since I found some that were actually comfortable meant that my ass was bare, though at least the front was well covered with black lace. I had other thongs that were pretty much nudity with decoration. That would have been worse, or that’s what I told myself.

  I’d divided my weapons among Nicky, Wicked, and Truth. They’d rotate around me and Jean-Claude. The only jewelry I had left was the gold chain with the charm on it. I felt very underdressed without the weapons or my cross. But since Jean-Claude might have to pull out some serious vampire powers to help me tame the tigers, a holy object that would start to glow seemed like a bad idea.

  The gold tigers and Jake himself were going to stay out of sight until we’d done the tigers, because we were pretty certain there’d be spies among them. Since even the Harlequin never saw all of them unmasked, not everyone knew what the others looked like, so Jake had a high-percentage chance of not knowing the bare face of the spies. It was one of the things that made the Harlequin so effective even to each other.

  The big dining room had begun life as a speakeasy, back when Prohibition was the law of the land. It was a huge natural cavern with gas lamps in the walls, giving a soft, warm glow to everything. The big table had been moved to one side of the room and had candles on it, so that the only light in the big cave came from gas and candles. There was enough light to see everything, but it was soft-edged and there were lots of shadows, as if the flames that lit the room filled it with both light and darkness.

  Except for the light and shadows it was a cocktail party, with everyone standing around sipping drinks, eating hors d’oeuvres, and chatting. I hated cocktail-party small talk mainly because I’d always sucked at it, but all the men in my life seemed really good at it. As long as Jean-Claude or Micah or Nathaniel or Asher or Jason was on my arm they took the conversation and I just smiled and nodded. That I could do.

  Damian and I were both almost equally bad at this kind of thing, so he kept Cardinal on his arm, and we waved at each other.

  I was on Jean-Claude’s arm when we met Victor, weretiger and son of the Master of Las Vegas and the white tiger queen, Bibiana. Victor was still tall, broad-shouldered, and handsome with his short white hair carefully cut, looking as if someone styled it one hair at a time. His suit was expensive and tailored, and looked almost as good on him as Micah’s had on him, but in very different ways. Victor was built more like Richard. Victor’s tiger eyes were a rich, deep blue, bluer than Crispin’s. I liked Victor’s eyes; in fact my white tigress liked everything about him. He took my hand when I offered it, and the moment he touched me I wished he hadn’t. His power breathed along my skin in a warm wash. It made it hard to breathe for a moment, and I watched his eyes go a little wider. His breath came out in a shaking line as he let go of my hand. It took visible effort for him to stop touching me.

  He laughed, and that shook, too. “Is it my imagination or are you even more captivating now than you were a year ago?”

  “Thank you, and I don’t know.” The white tiger inside me wanted to touch him. I took a step forward without realizing it. Victor actually backed up a step, before he caught himself.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce us?” A woman came to lean against him in a possessive way that some girlfriends have. My white tiger didn’t like it, and I had a moment to fight the instinct to mark him as some sort of territory. I’d met him twice, and slept with him twice, and had sex only one of those times. I had no right to mark him as mine, but wasn’t I supposed to do exactly that? Shit, I didn’t know.

  The woman had long pale curls, mostly white, but with edges of pale golden brown here and there, and I knew that meant her white tiger would have stripes the color of her darker curls. She had the same lush curves as Bibiana, but on a body that was nearly a foot taller. Part of it was silver stiletto heels, but her legs were almost longer than I was. Her dress was silver, too, and managed to both cling and billow as she moved. She, like me, had to be wearing a bra under the dress or things wouldn’t have stayed put.

  Her eyes were a blue so pale they were gray, but with a line of black around the iris so that it echoed the eyeliner around her large, uptilted eyes. The effect was startling, and beautiful, even to me.

  “Julia, this is Anita Blake, Jean-Claude’s lady.”

  She held out a perfectly manicured hand. The nails were French-tipped with white. Cardinal had buffed my nails and declared them hopeless. I didn’t really care about nails, so I smiled sweetly and
held out my hand.

  She wrapped her hand around mine and sent a flash of power into me. My white tiger was just suddenly there, roaring up through my skin, not to tear me apart, but to spill around me like some white phantom.

  Julia tried to take her hand back, but I held on, and my tiger spilled over and through her. I tasted her tiger, saw it in its pale stripes, and knew she was no queen. She tried to slap me, like a girl, but my other arm was there blocking hers.

  “Let go,” she said, but her voice was high, and afraid. Fear meant food. Fear meant weak.

  I started to, honest, but Jean-Claude was at my side. He said, “She began this, ma petite. You must finish it.”

  I glanced at him, and my tiger seemed to look at him, too.

  “She challenged you,” he said. “Answer it.”

  I glanced past the woman to Victor, who had moved so he wasn’t touching her. “You must answer her challenge, Anita. Either you are queen, or you are not.”

  It was as if some faint piece of resistance melted away. We were supposed to play to win.

  “Let go,” she said again.

  “Make me,” I said, and I knew that though human words were coming out of my mouth, the attitude wasn’t human. The white tiger in me knew that Julia had tried my power with hers; it was something you did only if you thought the tiger in question was lesser. Julia was about to learn she’d made a mistake.

  Victor and Jean-Claude had moved a little back from us. The other white tigers had formed a little circle around us. I could feel the rest of the tigers beyond the white like a distant hum, but in that moment the white tigers were what I wanted, needed. One color at a time.

  She tried to use all that otherworldly strength to pull me off my feet, but my sport of choice was judo, and that was all about leverage and balance. She pulled, and I went with it, so that I was suddenly up against her, her hand still in mine, and my leg went behind hers at the same time that I pushed on her with my other hand, and down she went. She didn’t know how to fall, so she hit hard. I was suddenly on top of her, straddling her waist, my hands in her hands. I wasn’t holding her down. I couldn’t by strength alone, but there are other ways to make someone stay on a floor.