Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10

by Laurell Hamilton

  “This time it wasn’t silver. But fail me again, Elizabeth, in anything large or small, fail any member of this pard, and I will kill you.”

  She’d finally gotten enough air to talk. She spat out blood and the words, “Bitch, you don’t even . . .” more blood, “have the guts . . .” dark blood from her mouth, “to shoot me for real.”

  Staring down at her, I realized something I hadn’t before. Elizabeth wanted me to kill her. She wanted me to send her to wherever Gabriel was. She probably didn’t realize that’s what she wanted, but if it wasn’t a death wish, it was close enough.

  She lay there and healed, and cursed me, and told me how weak I was. I shot her in the chest again. She writhed and jerked, and the pool of blood just grew wider underneath her body.

  I let the ammo clip fall into my hand from the gun, put it in my other pocket and got my main clip back in the gun. “Silver now, Elizabeth. Any more smart remarks?” I waited until she had healed enough to talk. “Answer me, Elizabeth.”

  She stared up at me, and there was something in her eyes, something that said we finally had an understanding. She was afraid of me, and sometimes that’s the best you can do with people. I’d tried kindness. I’d tried friendship. I’d tried respect. But when all else fails, fear will do the job.

  “Good, Elizabeth, I’m glad we understand each other.” I turned to the others. They were staring at me like I’d sprouted a second head—a nasty one. Micah held out my clothes to me, and I slipped the shoulder holster off and the clothes on. No one said anything while I dressed.

  When everything was back in place, I said, “Shall we go to the house now?”

  Caleb looked positively ill. Micah looked pleased. So did Merle, and Gina, and all my leopards.

  “You will not be allowed guns tonight in the lupanar,” Merle said.

  “That’s what the knives are for,” I said.

  He looked at me as if he wasn’t sure whether I was serious or not.

  “Smile, Merle, she’ll heal.”

  “I’m beginning to agree with what the wererats said.”

  “And what was that?”

  “That you were scary enough all on your own without being Nimir-Ra.”

  “This isn’t even close to as scary as I get,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrows at me. “Really?”

  It was Nathaniel who said, “Really.” My other cats echoed him, nodding.

  “Then why aren’t you afraid of her?” Gina asked.

  “Because she doesn’t try to be scary to us,” Zane said. He looked down at Elizabeth on the ground, still unable to move much. “Of course, maybe the rules have changed.”

  “Only for bad little leopards,” I said, “Let’s get to the rats and go see the wolves.”

  “And the swans,” Micah said.

  “Swans?” I asked.

  He smiled. “You just keep making conquests, Anita, even when you don’t mean to do it.” He held his hand out to me. I hesitated, then, slowly, I took it. Our fingers interlaced, and we walked together hand-in-hand down the road, and it felt good, and right, like I’d found a piece of myself that was missing. I left Zane behind to make sure Elizabeth didn’t get run over by a car. We’d send Dr. Lillian back for her. The rest of the leopards followed behind Micah and me, and for the first time since I’d inherited the cats, I felt like I really was Nimir-Ra. And maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t fail them.

  21

  RAFAEL THE RAT king had a black limo. He’d never struck me as a limo kind of guy, and I said as much. He said, “Marcus and Raina used to put on quite a show for things like this. I and my rats are not willing to make a spectacle of ourselves, so the limo.”

  “Hey, I wore makeup,” I said. That had made him smile.

  We were riding in the back of the limo, with one of his wererats driving. Merle and Zane were in the front with the driver. Merle, because he’d objected to us all being split up among people he didn’t know, and Zane, because I just didn’t completely trust Merle yet. Though I had no illusions about which of them would win the fight, if it came to that. Richard had a werewolf or two that I would have bet on against Merle, but there was something downright scary about Micah’s head bodyguard, a “something” that all of my leopards lacked. Not ruthlessness, more an ultimate practicality. You just knew Merle would do whatever needed to be done, no hesitation, no sympathy, just business. When that’s pretty much how you operate yourself, you begin to recognize it in other people, and you watch them closely.

  All the leaders got to ride in the back of the limo, which smacked of elitism to me, but it did allow us all to talk together, and no one else seemed to have a problem with it. I wasn’t sure why it bugged me, but it did.

  Rafael was tall, dark, handsome, and strongly Mexican. He spoke with no trace of an accent, or rather he sounded like he was from Missouri. He sat facing us. Yes, us. Micah and I sat across from him. We were not holding hands. We were not casting longing glances at each other. In fact, strangely, once I was away from the other leopards, I was uncomfortable around him. Maybe it was my usual discomfort that always set in after intimacy. But I wasn’t sure, it felt different. Or maybe it was the closer we got to seeing Richard, the more I wondered what the hell I was doing. Was I really going to tell Richard that I’d taken a lover, another shapeshifter? We’d broken up before and gotten back together, but if Richard thought I’d taken a permanent lover besides Jean-Claude, it was over. I didn’t want it to be over, though part of me wasn’t at all sure that dating Richard was healthy for either of us. We weren’t really good for each other. Love is like that sometimes.

  I pushed away serious thoughts and looked at the last member of our little party. Donovan Reece was the new swan king in town. He was about six feet tall, though it was hard to tell exactly while he was sitting down. His skin was that flawless milk and cream complexion that the beauty aids promise when tan is out for a year or two, but Donovan’s was the real deal. He was whiter than I was, as white as Jean-Claude, but there was a slight pink flush to Donovan’s cheeks, like perfectly applied blush. You could almost see the blood flowing under his skin, as if it were nearly transluscent. He not only looked alive, but very alive, as if he’d be hot to the touch.

  His eyes were a pale blue-gray that shifted with his moods like a summer sky that couldn’t make up its mind whether it wanted to be peaceful with fluffy white clouds or rain all over your head. He was handsome in a clean-cut, preppy sort of way, as if he should have been on a college campus somewhere pledging to a frat and chugging beers. Instead he was going with us into a gathering of werewolves where he would be the only nonpredator there. That didn’t sound like a good idea to me.

  “You saved my swanmanes, Ms. Blake. You nearly got yourself killed doing it. I couldn’t risk the girls coming, they are not . . .” He looked down at his folded hands, then raised those changeable eyes to me. “They are like your Nathaniel—victims.”

  “Nathaniel is driving my Jeep with the rest of my people in it,” I said.

  Reece nodded. “Yes, but the shape of his beast is a predator. My girls are not. If they lost control and changed during the meeting, they would be meat.”

  “I agree with you, Mr. Reece, but doesn’t the same logic apply to you?”

  “I am a swan king, Ms. Blake, I will not change shape unless I will it so.”

  Will it so. I’d never heard anyone put it quite that way. Donovan Reece had a bad case of arrogance. I wasn’t going to talk him out of this. Rafael had been trying to before I arrived. Micah never offered. He’d been very good about letting me do all the talking. I liked that in a man.

  “Can you fight?” I asked.

  “I will not be a burden, Ms. Blake, don’t worry.”

  I was worried, because I could smell the blood just under his skin. I could almost see it flowing under his flesh. He smelled like meat and blood, and heat. He smelled like food. I’d been around shapeshifters that were prey animals, but I’d never realized you could tell by s
mell what wasn’t a predator. I knew by the gentle scent of him that Reece’s beast was something soft and easily killed. Something that would struggle but not hurt me. I had to swallow hard, trying to slow my pulse, but it would not slow. I wanted to drop on my knees in front of him and sniff his skin, rub my face against his bare arms until the short sleeves of his button-up shirt stopped me. A white undershirt peeked out the top of the blue and white striped shirt. I wanted to rip the shirt open, send the buttons popping through the air, take a knife from my wrist sheath and slit the undershirt, bare his naked chest and stomach. But it wasn’t the ardeur, it wasn’t sex I was thinking about. I wanted to see his stomach bare, to feel the soft tissue under my mouth, my teeth, to bite into . . .

  I covered my eyes with my hands, and shook my head. What was wrong with me?

  Micah touched my arm, gently. “Anita, what’s wrong?”

  I lowered my hands and looked at him. “He smells like food.”

  Micah nodded. “Yes.”

  I shook my head again. “You don’t understand what I’m thinking. It’s . . . frightening.” I couldn’t say it out loud. I wanted to feed on him, or at least sink my teeth into his flesh. I think I could keep from actually feeding, but the urge to mark that flawless skin was so strong that I almost didn’t trust myself.

  “When you told me why you marked Nathaniel I knew it was the hunger.” Micah said the last word like it should have been in capital letters. “It usually takes a few days, or weeks, before your first full moon, to have the hunger become a problem. It’s okay to have thoughts, images in your head about feeding. It’s normal.”

  “Normal.” I laughed, but it was a harsh sound. “What I’m thinking isn’t even close to normal.” Again I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.

  “What do you want to do to Reece?” Rafael asked.

  I looked across the seat at him. I opened my mouth to say, then glanced at Reece and stopped. “No, it’s like telling a sexual fantasy in front of the stranger you just had the fantasy about. It feels that intimate.”

  “It is that intimate,” Rafael said.

  I looked back at him, and his dark eyes held my gaze. “If you tell Mr. Reece what you’re wanting to do to him, then maybe he’ll fly home.”

  “A rat is a prey animal, too,” Reece said.

  “Everything that is smaller is a prey animal,” Rafael said, “but rats are omniverous. They eat anything that crosses their path, including humans, if they can’t get away. A wererat is not a small thing, Mr. Reece, we are large enough to be the predators that our namesakes cannot be.”

  Reece was scowling at us all now. He shook his head angrily and leaned forward and shoved his wrist into my face. “Get a good whiff, all of you seem to like it.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” Rafael said.

  “Listen to him, Reece,” Micah said.

  I didn’t say anything because the scent of his flesh so close was intoxicating. It was like the most exotic perfume spread across silk sheets, with an undertone of fresh baked bread and some sweet jelly spread over flesh. I had no words for it, but it smelled better than anything I’d ever smelled in my life.

  I was holding his wrist, pressing the thin skin against my lips, before I realized what I was doing. The skin was so tender, and I could smell the blood under that paper-thin layer of skin. I wanted to do more than smell it. I wanted to taste it, to feel his flesh give under my teeth, to have the blood gush warm in my mouth, to . . . I jerked away from him and crawled across Micah, across the seat to huddle in the far corner as far away from the swan king as I could get and not jump out the door.

  There must have been something on my face, in my eyes that scared him, because his eyes widened, his full mouth opened slightly. “My God, your control really is that bad.”

  I managed to say, “Sorry.”

  “Do you really want to put yourself in the midst of hundreds of us?” Rafael asked.

  “I won’t be bluffed,” Reece said. “You won’t hurt me. From everything I’ve heard about Anita, and you, Rafael, you’re the good guys.” His gaze flicked to Micah. “Him, I don’t know, but I do know that the swans have never thrown their allegiance to anyone. We’ve been autonomous. The fact that I’m supporting Anita and her pard will mean something to the wolves. We are weak as battle allies, but that any animal other than her own would ally with her pard will mean something to their Ulfric.”

  I huddled on the far corner of the seat, arms hugging my legs to my chest, a position not really meant to be performed while wearing a shoulder holster. But I was literally holding on to myself, hugging my control and my body. How was I ever going to get through tonight without doing something embarrassing, or deadly? How much worse was my control going to get?

  “Your last swan king answered to their now-deceased lupa,” Rafael said.

  “So I’ve heard. Though technically he was a swan prince, not a king. I don’t know what he owed the old lupa, but I’d guess it was something blackmailable, because I’ve found some polaroids that would make you blush.”

  I had to clear my throat twice before I could talk. “Kaspar refused to be in Raina’s dirty movies, but the price for that was that he helped audition people for the films.”

  Reece looked at me. “Audition, what do you mean?”

  I huddled and talked, but I was talking over the pulse in my head, the rush of blood in my body. I wanted to be next to Reece. I wanted to take a bite. Instead, I talked. “Kaspar could change form from swan to man at will. Raina used him to see if non-shapeshifters freaked when he changed in the middle of sex.”

  I felt Micah’s reaction even from a distance. Reece looked horrified. “You saw this?”

  “No, but Raina took great delight in telling me about it in detail. She tried to get me to watch one of his auditions, but I had better things to do.”

  “He did this willingly?” Reece asked.

  “No,” I said. “It was most definitely not his choice. He seemed to hate it.”

  “We see the fact that we can change forms at will as a great gift. We’re one of the few shapeshifters that can do it with ease.”

  “Is that because your gift is either a curse or a born talent, rather than a disease?”

  “We think so,” he said.

  “Kaspar was under a curse,” I said.

  “Are you wondering about me?”

  Actually I was watching the way his Adam’s apple bobbed when he talked, and wondering what it would feel like to fix teeth in his throat, but that was probably a fact best kept to myself. I kept talking, but I think both Micah and Rafael knew how ragged my control was. I hugged myself and kept talking, because silence filled with awful images, terrible desires.

  “Yeah, I’m wondering,” I said.

  “I was born a swan king.”

  “You were born a swan king, not a swanmane. Does that mean you’re male? Is swanmane only used for women?”

  He looked at me, studying my face. “I was born to be their king. I’m the first king in over a century.”

  “Everybody else is chosen to lead, or fights for the right, but you make it sound like a hereditary monarchy,” I said.

  “It is, but it’s not bloodlines that makes the difference, though being a swanmane either runs in your family or it doesn’t. But I didn’t inherit the title.”

  “Then how did you know?” I asked.

  His eyes had gotten dark, dark gray like storm clouds. “The answer to that is somewhat intimate.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

  “I’ll give you the answer you seek, if you answer a rather delicate question for me.”

  We stared at each other. My heart rate was almost normal again. I could look at him without smelling the blood under his skin. Talking, listening, doing somewhat normal things had helped. I was a person, with speech and higher functions, not an animal. I could do this. Really. I eased out of my little ball, slowly.

  “Ask and I’ll let you know,” I said
.

  “Did you kill Kaspar Gunderson, the last swan king?”

  I blinked at him. That was unexpected. The sheer surprise made my pulse rate speed up a touch. “No, no, I didn’t.”

  “Do you know who did?”

  I blinked at him again. I wondered if I could lie and if he would be able to tell, or not. I finally stuck to the truth. “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  I shook my head. “That I won’t answer.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I would have killed Kaspar myself if he hadn’t gotten away.”

  “I know he was responsible for several deaths, and that he tried to kill you and some of your friends,” Reece said.

  “It was a little more diabolical than that,” I said. “He was taking money from hunters and supplying them with shifters.”

  Reece nodded. “He also made the swanmanes in his care into victims. I think that’s what he and the old lupa shared—sexual sadism.”

  “That’s why your girls, as you put it, were at the club with Nathaniel.”

  “Yes, I don’t play those sorts of games, and they’ve grown to crave it.”

  I nodded. “I sympathize,” I said.

  “You’ve answered my questions truthfully, I can do no less.” He started unbuttoning his shirt.

  I looked at Micah, who shrugged. I looked at Rafael, who shook his head. Nice that none of us knew why he was undressing.

  He left the overshirt tucked in but started pulling the undershirt out of his pants. He was about to bare his soft underbelly, and I wasn’t a hundred percent sure my control was up to seeing it. My pulse was in my throat again. Since apparently neither of the men was going to ask, I asked, “Why are you undressing?”

  “To show you the symbol of my kingship.”

  I stared at him. “Excuse me?”

  Reece frowned at me. “Don’t worry, Ms. Blake, I’m not about to flash you.”

  “I’m not worried about you flashing me, Reece, it’s that . . .” but I never finished, because he’d bared the white, white skin of his stomach. In the darkened car I could still see the pulse just behind his belly button. Hell, I could almost taste it in my mouth, as if I’d already sunk teeth into that tender flesh, as if I was already eating my way through to more vital things. Something was odd about the hair on his chest. It was almost too fine, too thin, too delicate, running in a dainty white line down the center of his chest and spreading in an upside down triangle around his belly button then down into his pants.