Affliction ab-22

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  ‘Is wolf his animal to call? Is that why you were so polite with the local pack?’

  ‘Non, ma petite, he does not have an animal to call. I was political with the main animal groups because that is how Micah would wish it. We are building our power structure on the equality of all preternatural beings, not just the superiority of the vampires. It is a novel approach, very American, very progressive. The younger among us approve; the older ones distrust it, or even disapprove of welcoming the lycanthropes into a broader position of power.’

  ‘Fredrico is an ex-conquistador, so that makes him older. Does he have a problem with us including the furry in the power structure?’

  ‘Not that he has stated.’

  ‘No animal to call makes him pretty low-power for a Master of the City,’ I said.

  ‘It does, which was why his territory was initially in a rural area. No one could have foreseen the spread of human cities until his countryside lands became part of a city rich enough with life to make him a much more important master.’

  ‘If he’s that weak, I’m surprised someone didn’t challenge him years back.’

  ‘He kept up his sword practice, and as they challenged him he was able to choose the method of the duel.’

  ‘You’re saying he won because he’s a kickass swordsman.’

  ‘As long as the challenger is not a member of the council, then as the challenged he may choose his weapon, and it would be considered cheating to use animals to call when he has none.’

  ‘So his weakness becomes a strength,’ I said.

  ‘In part.’

  ‘But you are a member of the council, so how does that change things?’

  ‘You fought beside me when the Earthmover came and tried to destroy us. As a council member he could have insisted on using every power he possessed. He could have used the very earth against us and reduced our fair city to rubble.’

  ‘The Earthmover wanted to make humans afraid of vampires again. An earthquake wouldn’t have done that, because no one would have believed a vampire did it.’

  ‘True, but he would still have been within his rights to do it.’

  ‘So, if you fought Fredrico we could bring all our wereanimals, everything, and just destroy his ass.’

  ‘And put a master of our choosing in his place, oui.’

  ‘So, we play nice, and let him save face.’

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘Okay, I understand that.’

  ‘Good, now talk to our Nathaniel. Do you wish me to call Fredo and tell him we need a new guard?’

  ‘I’d rather help choose the substitute.’

  ‘Then cut short your talk with our pussycat.’

  ‘I will,’ I said. ‘Love you.’

  ‘Je t’aime, ma petite.’

  I switched back to Nathaniel. He said, ‘You’re on speakerphone; I had to keep packing.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘What did Jean-Claude want?’

  ‘I’ll tell you on the plane; right now I have to finish arranging the bodyguards.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said.

  ‘Love you,’ I said.

  ‘Love you more,’ he said.

  ‘Love you most.’

  ‘Love you mostest,’ he said.

  I guess both of my wereleopards were feeling a little insecure. Hell, me, too.

  5

  I’m usually phobic of flying, and as I tightened the seat belt in my roomy, cushioned seat, it didn’t make me like it any better. The seats were bigger, but the plane was narrower. Did I mention that I’m also claustrophobic? It’s the combination that makes flying such fun. But the moment Micah sat down beside me and reached for my hand, I stopped worrying about my fears and worried about him. His face was passive behind the dark sunglasses, but tension sang through his hand, his arm, so I knew his body was thrumming with it. In all the rush to get ready to leave, this was the first time I’d seen him since I had to tell him the bad news.

  ‘Are you all right?’ As soon as I heard it out loud I knew it was stupid, but it’s what you say.

  He smiled, but it was sad, and self-deprecating, and held a little anger. It was the smile he’d first had when he came to me. It was a smile, but so full of other emotions that it was never really happy. I was sad to see it back on his face.

  I leaned in and wrapped my arms around him, drew him in to me, and let him wrap his arms around me. My seat belt kept me a little pinned so he had to come to me more, but he didn’t seem to mind. My chin tucked over his shoulder, because he was the same height as me. He was the only man I’d ever dated who was five foot three just like me. We could wear each other’s T-shirts, and some of our jeans. He was the shortest and most physically delicate-looking man in my life, but the strength as he hugged me wasn’t delicate. I knew the body under the designer suit moved with lean muscle … He ran miles every week, usually outside in all weather. He called it his thinking time.

  He spoke with his face buried in my hair. ‘I don’t know how to do this.’

  ‘See your folks?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  I kept hugging him but raised one hand to stroke the thick curls of his ponytail. ‘I’m so sorry you’re having to go home like this.’

  He squeezed me so tight that I almost had to tell him, too tight. He loosened his grip before I could do any more than tense. He was a wereleopard, which meant he could crush most metal in his hand, but he was always very aware of his strength.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and drew out of the hug to sit back in his seat, resting his head against it.

  I took his hand again and stayed turned toward him. ‘It’s okay, you’re upset.’

  ‘I’ll be upset this whole visit probably. How do I see them again, Anita? How do I deal with my dad hurt … maybe dying?’

  He turned his head, still resting against the seat, and spoke directly on a topic that we’d hardly ever talked about. ‘I can’t imagine losing a parent as early as you did. This feels awful already.’

  I nodded. ‘It is awful, but I was only eight when my mother died. You grew up with both your parents until you were ready to go off to college. I had just my dad until I was ten, and then a stepmom that I totally didn’t get along with and a stepsister my own age, and then they had Josh together. I can’t even imagine what my life might have been like if my mom had lived.’

  ‘I’ve got a stepfather and half-brothers.’

  ‘You never said.’

  He shrugged. ‘I wasn’t close with my mom’s second family. I was on Dad’s side after the divorce. I loved my mother, but she left him. He never really found anyone else to love, just her, as if he could only love one person.’

  ‘You were what, twelve, when they divorced?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I studied his face, tried to read behind the sunglasses. It wasn’t that bright in the plane, but he was used to wearing them in public to hide his leopard eyes. He’d lost his ability to regain full human form because Chimera, the sadistic leader who took over his leopard pard, had punished him by forcing him into animal form so long that his eyes hadn’t come back and never would. I loved his green-gold eyes, especially with his summer tan that he got so easily. I had my father’s Germanic skin, always pale, never tan.

  ‘You said you had brown eyes originally – whose eyes do you have, colorwise?’

  He smiled and this time it was a real smile. ‘My father’s.’

  The smile was full of love, happiness, memories, of a son’s pride in having his father’s eyes. I knew that Micah had been his father’s hunting buddy, as I’d been for mine. We’d both grown up hunting and camping.

  ‘So you look like your dad?’

  ‘He’s a little taller, but we’re built alike. He knew to put me into gymnastics and martial arts as a kid, not peewee football. He loves watching the games, but he was always too small to play, and he knew I would be, too, so he didn’t put me through the frustration of it the way his own dad did.’

  ‘Your gran
dfather?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, he’s five-eight, built bigger. Dad and I are built like my grandma’s side of the family. I don’t know why it never occurs to big, burly guys that when they marry the tiny cheerleader some of the kids may look more like her, even the boys. They never think it through.’

  ‘I take it your grandfather isn’t your favorite person.’

  ‘My dad and he had issues with my dad not being big enough for regular sports, though Dad went to college on a baseball scholarship. He was good enough for college, but he didn’t have the size for the power hitting you need in the majors, and he knew it.’

  ‘Baseball is a manly sport,’ I said.

  Micah grinned. ‘Granddad Callahan played football and wrestled. He also muscled up better than we did. More like Nathaniel.’

  As if just saying his name had conjured him, our other sweetie walked up the little steps and into the jet. His shoulders were broader than Micah’s, and at five foot seven he carried the extra muscle well. He’d actually had to stop lifting as much in the gym because he was bulking up too much to keep the flexibility he needed as a dancer. Micah fought for every bit of muscle in the gym. Nathaniel’s dark auburn hair must have been pulled back into a tight braid because it gave the illusion that his hair was short. He was still wearing his sunglasses, not to hide his eyes, but because it was bright outside. With his eyes hidden and his hair back and a charcoal-gray suit hiding all his body, there was just the line of his face, with nothing to distract the gaze from the near-perfect line that ran from his temple to the cheekbones, the chin that managed to be both masculine and soft. It was the lips that did it, I think, wide, curved lines, just full enough to soften what might have been handsome to make it beautiful. It was his face unadorned, but that was like saying Michelangelo’s David was unadorned marble.

  Micah’s hand tightened in mine, and it wasn’t sorrow now. Had his pulse sped up, too, just watching our other third walk into the plane? His hand tightened a little more and we turned and looked at each other at the same time. I had a moment of looking at the delicate triangle of his face with his fuller lips that dominated more of his face, and then he burst out laughing, and I joined him. It was as if some horrible tension had just floated away.

  Nathaniel smiled and then said, ‘Did I do something funny?’

  ‘No,’ Micah said, ‘just God, you are … so …’

  ‘Beautiful,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ Micah said.

  Nathaniel blushed and gave us one of those big, bright, utterly happy smiles. It made his whole face glow with it, but the blush, that was the rarest of all.

  ‘I’ve never seen you blush,’ I said.

  He actually ducked his head as if embarrassed, which I’d never seen either. It was Micah who got up first and went to him. I tried to stand up and the seat belt jerked me back to my seat, reminding me that I’d been a little too safety conscious. It meant I got to sit there and watch them hug each other. It started out as the good-friend guy hug, only upper bodies touching, that distinct hip distance kept, and then Micah moved back enough to look up at the taller man and I had a moment to watch them look at each other. With both of them in sunglasses, suits, hair back, I was treated to their faces in profile in a way I almost never got to see. If Nathaniel was carved marble, then Micah was something more delicate, like carved ivory, if ivory could tan dark and have an edge of curls framing its face even with the ponytail. His hair, like mine, was too curly to behave like Nathaniel’s.

  They kissed, and I held my breath, watching their lips move, their arms tighten around each other, Nathaniel’s hands tensing against the back of Micah’s suit jacket so he could feel the muscles underneath the elegant conservative cloth.

  They broke from the kiss and looked at me, both of their faces full front, nearly side by side, so that I got the full impact of those clean, sculpted lines, the half-parted lips, their arms still loosely around each other.

  I’d like to say I said something profound, or poetic, but what I actually said was, ‘Wow.’

  Nathaniel grinned. ‘I think she liked watching.’

  Micah smiled and held one hand out to me, an invitation to join them.

  I tried to get up and forgot my seat belt again, and then it was as if I’d forgotten how it worked. I had to fight with it, and the men were laughing as I said, ‘You have kissed me stupid and I wasn’t even part of the kiss.’

  ‘Do you need help?’ Micah asked, his voice full of laughter.

  I got free and went to them. They opened up the circle of their arms to bring me in to them. I was suddenly in the circle of their bodies with their deeper masculine laughter, the warmth and weight of them around me, and it was better than almost anything I had ever imagined having. Once I’d thought I could only be in love with one person at a time, but I loved Jean-Claude, and I loved the two men in my arms. I loved them together; as a unit, we were three. Jean-Claude was his own entity, and he and I, even with all the other bed partners, were more a couple. I was in love with him, too.

  I stood there in their arms and loving them, and their loving me, didn’t take away from Jean-Claude and me; it added to it. All of the relationships added to one another, until we were all happier than we’d ever been. I didn’t believe in happily-ever-after, but I did believe in happier-than-we’d-ever-been, because I was living it.

  I raised my face and Nathaniel leaned down to kiss me, while Micah held us both, or we held him, and I knew once this kiss was done there would be another one from Micah. Life was great. We could get through this, whatever came when we landed in Micah’s old hometown; we could do this, because we loved one another. Love doesn’t conquer all, but it can help you conquer everything else.

  6

  Voices from outside the plane made us look up from the warm circle of us. I tried to look down the steps to see what was making people raise their voices, but I couldn’t see past Nathaniel’s broad shoulders and chest. He could see, and Micah had a better angle, so I asked, ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nicky is blocking the stairs and the other guards aren’t happy about it,’ Nathaniel said.

  ‘Nilda isn’t happy about it,’ Micah added.

  They moved to either side so I could see for myself. Nicky stood at the bottom of the foldout steps like a wall of blond muscle. He was just under six feet, so Nilda towered over him by five inches; at six foot four she was the second-tallest woman I’d ever met and she hit the gym seriously. It had given her long arms smooth tone and muscle, but she was one of those women who didn’t put on muscle easily. She looked strong and imposing, but Nicky’s shoulders were almost as wide as I was tall, a huge spread of muscle that nothing would give Nilda no matter how many weights she lifted. I muscled up faster than she did. It was just one of those genetic things. Her summer tan was a light gold that contrasted strongly with her white-blond hair and made her blue eyes stand out in the high cheekbones of her strongly Scandinavian face like an advertisement for Norwegian Vacations-R-Us. Her full name was Brunhilda, after one of the Valkyries, and yelling into Nicky’s face, her shoulders and arms straining with tension, her face enraged, she looked it. She was one of the Harlequin who had been the bodyguards, spies, assassins, judges, and executioners of vampirekind for centuries. So deadly that to even speak of them could get a vampire hunted down and killed. They had been the elite guards of the Mother of All Darkness, the legendary first vampire, the darkness made flesh, and she had used them to keep her control absolute. Then she grew bored, or old, and fell into a ‘hibernation’ for centuries and her control slipped, and the Harlequin began to fracture into those who believed in their original purpose and those who didn’t. Nilda was the animal to call of one of the master vampires who had been Harlequin, and she was now with us. There were days when I was pretty sure Nilda would have stayed on the other side with the Harlequin who were still pissed that we’d destroyed their mistress, but Nilda’s master was old-school, which meant it had never occurred to him to give her a choice. She
was his animal to call, and to the old-school vampires that meant she was just an extension of the vampire, a walking, talking, fighting machine that he occasionally fucked, but sometimes I think he saw it more as masturbating, as if she weren’t real to him. No, I didn’t like Nilda’s master much, but I wasn’t particularly fond of her either. She was on this detail in an effort to merge the Harlequin guards into our own, but some of them fit better than others. I wondered what Nicky had done to set her off. Nilda had a temper, but this was off the charts.

  I moved toward the open door and could see two of the other guards sort of off to one side. Dev, short for Devil, which in turn was a nickname for Mephistopheles, was standing there grinning like he was enjoying the show. His handsome golden face was shining with happiness, only his blue-hazel eyes were softer, more careful. I didn’t have to be closer to know that his body would be tensed and ready to do something if the argument got physical. He was halfway between the other two in height at six foot three; even his shoulders were halfway between Nilda’s and Nicky’s in width, though both of them had more muscle development than Dev. He was naturally big, naturally athletic, and it made him a lazy cat in the weight room. He worked out like a son of a bitch in weapons and hand-to-hand training, but he didn’t like lifting the way the other two did.

  Ethan watched it all, face serious, body language unhappy. He was only five-eight, one of our shorter guards, but he seemed to work all the harder for it. He was always the last to leave the practice mat and first to volunteer for learning something new. His short hair was a soft mass of curls, longer on top, so that it almost did a natural pompadour. His curls were a blond that was almost white with what looked like gray highlights in it. There was one streak of dark red from the back of his head to his forehead as if he’d added it for dramatic effect, but it was all-natural color. His eyes were a soft gray that matched the highlights.

  ‘I’ve never seen Nilda lose it this bad,’ Nathaniel said.