I got up on all fours, debated on whether I could stand, thought I could, and tried it. I was a little unsteady but I managed. Away from the two wereanimals the beasts had slowed, but they hadnt gone away. I could still see them behind my eyes like a waking dream.
If its true, Crispin said, I volunteer to help in any way you need.
I shook my head without looking back at them.
Jason said, Ive got it covered, thanks.
I dont think you do.
A low growl came from behind me, and I didnt think it was Crispin. Get out, Jason said.
I think if it comes to a fight, you wont win, Crispin said.
Let me be clear here, tiger. Im grateful for the help, but dont threaten Jason. Hes my friend, my lover, and my masters pomme de sang.
He wants to kick me out, but I can feel your tiger, Anita. I can feel it. Its not gone. Im the only weretiger within a hundred miles or more. You need me tonight.
I need his wolf, too. I finally turned and looked back at them. Jason was standing, but the weretiger was on the floor. Hed rolled away from the wet spot wed made on the carpet, but he was lounging more catlike than human. If hed been a cat it wouldnt have been erotic in the least, but he so wasnt a cat. All the fur in the world wouldnt change what he was, and what he was not.
I smell the wolf, but you cant be both, can you?
I shook my head, again. Long story.
Anita, you need to feed, Jason said.
I know, but every time Im close to you, Jason, the wolf seems stronger.
Ill help, Crispin said.
I gave him a hard look, which didnt seem to faze him in the least. The tiger reacts to you. I dont know whats wrong tonight.
I took you to a room that was so thick with sexual tension you could have walked on it, Jason said. We both know that can make it hard on the ardeur, on you. I wanted to see the girls. I wanted to flirt and be flirted with, and I forgot my duties. He shook his head. You and Jean-Claude trusted me to take care of you and I failed. We have to feed you again. I think once we do that the beasts will calm.
By the way, Crispin said, what the hell is with that necklace of yours?
I glanced down at the charm on its chain. It was back to being dull and almost unreadable. But I had the image burned inside my mind, as if I would never forget it.
Crispin went to all fours and started crawling toward me, in that graceful I-have-muscles-in-places-you-cant-see way that they could do in this form, or even human form. It was just a little more disturbing in this form.
No closer, Crispin, I said.
Jason stepped between us. You heard her.
Crispin growled, a sound that made my body react both for sex and for the tigers crowded at the back of my wolf. No fighting, I thought, as hard as I could. The beasts could fight inside me, and it hurt like hell. Stop it; stop it, both of you. I am having real trouble here with both the tiger and the wolf. I dont need you to make it worse.
Then you should stop calling to me, Crispin said.
I didnt.
Yes, you did. He sat back on his haunches, hands hanging down between his knees so that at least he was covered and I could look at him without worrying about staring at his groin. I tried not to stare at strange mens genitalia; just politeness, I guess. Or squeamishness.
I didnt mean to, I said.
You call to me like a little queen.
You dont mean that as a pet name, do you? Jason said.
He turned those strange blue eyes to the other man. No, little queen is what we call our dominant females who would be powerful enough to eventually break off and form their own clan if our queen would allow it.
What happens if she doesnt allow it? I asked.
She kills the little queen, or has her killed, after shes bred at least once.
I just stared at him. I couldnt read the tiger face quite well enough. Jason said, I think hes serious.
I am. He held his arm up, and showing through the white fur was a raw burn mark. What is this mark on me?
Jason, I said, you look at it. I dont think closer to the tiger is better.
Jason did what I asked, and Crispin raised his arm up obediently. Its the charm. The symbols in a circle and the many-headed tiger inside it. Youve branded him.
I didnt mean to, I said.
What is that charm supposed to do? Crispin asked.
I debated on what to say. It was supposed to keep Marmee Noir from taking me over from far away in Europe. It was designed so she couldnt be as big and bad a vampire as she truly was, but I was beginning to wonder if the charm could do other things that no one had told me about. Had the werewolf who gave it to me known that it had other magic in it? Was it a trap instead of a treasure? Shit. I needed Jean-Claude. I needed to be home, not out here in some strange city with just Jason. If the metaphysical shit hit the fan, I needed more help.
Your face, Crispin said. Youre afraid to tell me.
I can say this, that its never reacted to anyone like it did tonight.
Am I the first weretiger youve been around since you got the charm?
A very logical question. One other, but sheweve been very careful around each other. I didnt add that Christine was an attack survivor. I was beginning to wonder if a born tigertheir word for itwas different enough to make the charm react this differently. Maybe. Or maybe Marmee Noir was figuring out ways around its magic. I needed help.
He is the first male youve been around, Jason said.
I looked at him. So?
He gave me a look. Anita, come on, your magic is based on sex, and girls just dont do it for you. Not that that doesnt disappoint me sometimes.
Hey, fantasize about your little girl-on-girl mnage trois on your own time. Ive still got wolf and a herd of tigers staring at me in the dark inside my head. I dont know whats wrong, Jason, and I dont know how to fix it.
You need to feed.
I nodded. We need some privacy, Crispin. Thanks for the help, and sorry youve got like a brand, but I need to feed now.
You mean you and the wolf are going to have sex.
I closed my eyes and counted slowly to ten, then said, calmly, Yes, that is what I mean.
The tiger inside you may not like that.
I looked at Jason. He hung his head. Honestly, your beasts have been quiet. I would never have brought you with just the two of us, if I thought you needed all your animals with you. I mean, at least its only the two. This is a small town, Anita. There arent going to be that many wereanimals.
Only the two, Crispin said, standing. What does that mean? Are there more inside you? He started toward me, and again Jason moved in his way. The tiger gave a low, rumbling sound from that wide chest. He towered over Jason, but he, like me, was used to being towered over. It didnt impress either of us. But we were used to playing these games at home with people we knew, or who knew us. Playing where we had other people to back us. Crispin didnt know us, didnt understand us, and we didnt understand him.
He went from standing there to attacking Jason. One minute fine, the next claws and teeth, and Jason was still in human form. Blood spattered; Crispin hitting him too fast, too much for him to change. Fuck.
The Browning was on the floor on the other side of them, which said more than anything else how messed up I was. I had a choice of wading into a fight with silver blades, or going for the gun. I went for the gun.
I had the gun in my hand, was raising it up to aim at that tall white figure, when he threw Jason at me, literally. I had just enough time to point the gun up so that it didnt accidentally go off into Jasons body, and then I was on the ground with him on top of me, stunned by the force of the blow, and the weight.
His blood spattered my face, and my wolf started running. No, no!
There was a white blur above me like an out-of-focus mountain. Clawed hands pinned my gun hand and tried for Jasons throat. Jason put up an arm to block the blow. I tried to move my hand for an angle that would let me fire into the weretiger. Jasons hands f
umbled at my sleeve, ripped it. He drew my silver knife and struck out at the tiger. Blood spilled across me in a hot arc. I waited for the tigers to chase my wolf, but they looked into the dark. There was something in the dark that was not my beasts.
Id told Chuck and the guards that a vampire didnt have to be in the room with you to fuck you over, but I hadnt realized just how true that was about to be.
Marmee Noir had tried to mark me, and failed as a vampire, but she was truly a shapeshifter, an older strain of both that could live in the same host body. The darkness inside my mind wavered and I heard her voice. Your control is formidable, necromancer. I need it gone.
One moment there was a fight, the next the ardeur was free. She tore my shields down. She destroyed me. She made of me something that simply needed. If it had been blood lust she had raised, I would have torn out Jasons throat, anyones throat. There was nothing but the need. It rose up out of the darkness that she had planted inside me. It hit the cross that shone on my chest, and I tore it off, threw it away. It hit the charm, made it glow, and that, too, went spinning away.
There was no gun, no knife. There was only flesh, and hands, and mouths, and bodies. Then there was only darkness.
41
A SLIVER OF light across my eyes woke me. I blinked up into a lamp. I tried to turn my head away from it and found the pillow stiff and sticky with some fluid. That made me open my eyes wider, and I found that there was a wolfman in bed with me. The long snout, the furred body, all so much taller than Jason in human form.
I had this jumbled memory of sex and him changing in the middle of it. It was a first for us, and I wondered if hed remember any more of it than I did. Why couldnt I remember?
The bed moved on the other side of me. It made me tense and turn like you do in those horror movies when you hear something and know, suddenly, you arent alone. The white-haired stripper from the party last night lay on his stomach beside me, nude. I had a confused image of him in tigerman form above me. The memory was definitely sexual. What the hell had happened last night?
I looked down at my own clothes, and it looked like theyd been torn off me. I had bits and pieces of cloth and leather clinging to parts of me, but for the most part I was nude, too.
I tried to think back to the last clear memory, but it made no sense. It was a fight. Crispin, that was the tigers name, he had attacked Jason. Jason was hurt, and I was trying to shoot the weretiger, but hed pinned my arm to the floor. Jason had gotten one of my silver knives from my free arm, and cut the weretiger. Blood on my face, so hot. Thenthen nothing. Nothing. Just bits and pieces.
Sex, andsomething. But it was as if the harder I tried to think of it, the fuzzier it all got. I remembered feeding the ardeur. I remembered sex with Jason and him shifting in the middle of it. I remembered sex with Crispin already in half-man form. The visual of him going in and out of my body was embarrassingly clear. But how we got to the sex was a blur, no, worse than a blur, missing. Shit.
Missing, something was missing, but what was it? I touched my neck and found my hair plastered to my shoulders with that clear gunk that the lycanthropes lose when they shift. The bed was thick with it. Jason had shifted on the bed, I remembered that now.
Had the ardeur risen up and stopped the fight? Had it just overpowered us? It had never done that before. Which raised the question, was Crispin our enemy? When he woke, would he try to hurt us again? Where was my gun? Where were my knives? My cross, that was it, I was missing my cross.
I needed off this bed. I needed my cross. I needed weapons. Shit. My weapons were still in the hotel safe, but my gun was here, somewhere, and at least one extra magazine of ammo, and my knives. I needed to be armed, and then Id worry about the rest.
Jason was still in wereanimal form, which meant he was probably still hours away from waking. Crispin was in human form, which meant he would wake first. I needed to be armed before that happened.
I tried to ease to a sitting position and let out a small pain sound before I could stop it. I ached deep inside my body almost up to my belly button. I knew what the sensation was: really good, but really rough sex with someone well-endowed enough to put the deep into deep fucking. Jason was very good, but he wasnt big enough for this. Not in human form anyway.
I glanced at him, but he was lying on his stomach, and I wasnt touching anyone in this bed. I wanted out.
I started easing out from between them and had to bite my lip not to make more noise. I was actually a little raw between my legs. What the hell had we done last night?
I hurt other places, too, like Id been in a real fight. My right arm had fresh claw marks covered in dried blood. From the feel of things there were other marks on my back and legs. I fought not to look for what hurt, but just to keep inching closer to the end of the bed. Once I was armed Id look at all my injuries.
I was at the end of the bed, one leg half off the edge, when I froze, staring at what lay on the floor.
A second weretiger, still in tigerman form, was curled on his side. His fur was red and black stripes. The sight of him brought a flash of memory like a broken picture. I remembered being above him, straddling him, his claws in my back. Not a fight, but sex. For the life of me I couldnt remember him in human form. I couldnt remember how, or when, he joined us. Oh, my God.
Fear ran over my skin in a cold wash. What had I done? What had the ardeur done to me? Shit, shit, shit.
Weapons, then call Jean-Claude. Someone had to know what the hell was happening. Didnt they?
I angled to the corner of the bed, where Id touch Jasons furred legs. I knew enough about lycanthropes to know that being in tiger form meant the red tiger would not be waking anytime soon, but I had the horror-movie image in my head of me stepping off the bed and him grabbing my ankle. I knew better, but still I couldnt make myself step close to his clawed hands. I climbed over Jasons unresisting legs rather than risk that imaginary grab. God, I needed Jason to shift and get closer to waking. I did not want Crispin to wake first and be the only one awake with me.
I was finally on the floor; yea! I hadnt woken either of the weretigers; double yea! I stood there a moment in the hush of the hotel room, only the sounds of the mens breathing deep and even competing with the air conditioning. I enjoyed simply not being on the bed with them. I felt a little less trapped.
Standing, I ached more, as if bruises and cuts had been waiting to tell me they were there. I ignored them as best I could while I scanned the floor for weapons.
The floor looked like a clothing store had put up a fight and lost. I saw the remnants of Jasons blue shirt tangled with a mans white dress shirt. Jeans lay beside dress slacks. A mans suit jacket lay whole and untouched near the doors, as if when the red tiger hit the door he had immediately taken off his jacket. It had to be his, unless another man was hiding in the room somewhere.
I really wished I hadnt thought of that. I pushed the thought away and concentrated. One problem at a time. Finally, in a tangle of my shirt and jeans I glimpsed my shoulder holster, which meant the Browning couldnt be far behind. I walked toward it, and it hurt to walk, as in I had to fight not to limp or put a hand over my stomach as I moved. Fuck. Something was wrong with my back, too, as if some muscle or other was hurt.
Kneeling was an experience in controlled movement and not reacting to everything that hurt. I knelt on carpet that was stiff with dried fluids, and tried not to think too hard about what some of those fluids might be. I remembered now that this was where I lost most of my clothes. I checked the Browning to make sure it was still loaded as the memories washed over me. Crispin and Jason and I on the floor. Thered been no more fighting. Whatever the fight had been about, theyd shared me just fine. Oh, God.
I remembered sex with the weretiger here and on the bed. Jason had lost human form here during sex, too, but I also remembered sex on the bed with him. Dear, God, what in hell had gone wrong with the ardeur?
With the gun in my hand I felt a little better, a little more myself, but I h
ad still woken up in a hotel room with three men, two of them strangers, and apparently wed had sex. Lots of sex, and I could remember only bits and pieces of it. That had never happened before with the ardeur. I was supposed to be gaining control over it. I looked at the wreck of the carpet and finally back at the bed and the men there. This was so not gaining control of anything. No, this was definitely losing control.
I was digging through the clothes trying to find my cross when there was a sound from the bed. It froze me; I held my breath like an idiot. All wereanimals could hear a heartbeat, and there was no way to hold that.
The sound wasnt repeated, so I went back to searching and found my cross. The chain had been snapped. Damn. I gripped it in my hand and that was a little better. I felt that prickling energy of lycanthropy, like a wash of electricity across my skin. I turned to the bed, gun pointed. No one moved, but one minute Jason was all movie wolfman and the next his wolf body was melting away and his human body rising up through the receding fur like an island rising from the ocean. The larger wolfman body melted back into the more compact human form. He was still probably a couple of hours or more from waking, but it was progress.
If it had been Micah, or Richard, or a few others, they wouldnt have had to pass out for hours after the change, but Jason and apparently the two tigers werent powerful enough not to fall into the coma just before the shift and just after. OrI lowered the gun, having thought of another awful possibility.
Had the massive ardeur feeding taken too much of their energy? It was possible to drain someone to death with the ardeur. Logically, I knew that if they died they would revert to human form. But fears like this have nothing to do with logic. I suddenly went from afraid of the two weretigers to wondering if Id killed them. No, no Id seen Crispin and Jason breathing. Id heard it. But I hadnt really looked that closely at the red tiger. I stared at him now, trying to see the rise and fall of his chest.
I actually held my breath trying to see that wide striped chest move. I thought for a heartbeat he was dead, and then his body moved with his breathing. I let out the breath Id been holding in a long sigh.
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