I was on my feet, carefully avoiding the body nearest me, before Chimera could push aside another one and help me stand. I really didn’t want him to touch me.
Chimera’s eyes had bled back to human gray. His face was blank, ordinary. That nearly diabolical smile was gone, but I wasn’t looking at Orlando King either. It was somebody else. The question was, was the new personality going to be more helpful or more dangerous?
He pushed back the bodies like holding open a door so I could walk out. I let him do it, but I kept my attention on him, as if I expected him to try and grab me. I guess I did. When I stepped out into a clear space a breath went out of me that I hadn’t even known I was holding.
Chimera stepped beside me, and I moved just a little away from him. Movement caught my attention but it was only the hanging men swinging slowly from where Chimera had moved them. All of them bore marks of some kind; claws, blades, burns. One of them was missing his legs below the knees. I turned back to the man in front of me, and I knew I looked pale. I couldn’t help that. I hadn’t screamed. I hadn’t panicked, much. I couldn’t control the involuntary stuff. I was having enough trouble with the voluntary.
“Where are my leopards?” I asked, and my voice sounded almost normal. I got a zillion brownie points for that.
“Your leopard is here,” he said and moved to a heavy white curtain that took up almost all of the near wall. He pulled on a cord and the curtain parted. Behind it was an alcove, and Cherry was chained by her wrists and ankles to the stone wall. A leather ball gag filled her mouth. Her pale eyes were wide. Tears stained the dried blood on her face. Her face looked untouched, but the blood had come from somewhere.
“She’s healed everything we did to her,” Chimera said. Abuta the snake appeared at Chimera’s side, as if he’d been summoned. The bigger man stroked the snake man’s head, like you’d pet a dog that you liked a lot. “Abuta has shown quite a talent for this sort of thing.”
I swallowed hard and tried not to get angry. Anger wouldn’t help anyone. Help was coming. I just had to stall until it got here. I glanced around the room. There were men chained to the wall all the way around. I didn’t recognize any of them. There was a certain uniformity to them—youngish, or at least not old, well built, some slender, some muscular, all races, all physical types, all attractive. I wondered how long it had taken Narcissus to find this many good-looking men?
Micah wasn’t along the wall. The room in the Polaroid had looked more like the alcove that Cherry was in. I glanced at the still unopened part of the curtain. Was he behind there?
I had moved closer to Cherry without realizing it, because she made a small movement in her chains, and I startled. I turned back to find her looking at Chimera, not me. He hadn’t moved as far as I could see, but something he’d done had frightened her, and I finally realized what. His eyes has gone animal again, and that eerie smile was back. It was Chimera again, and call it a hunch, but I was betting he did most of the pain work for the other two personalities.
“Unchain her,” I said, like I was positive he’d do what I asked. I so wasn’t sure.
He reached out a hand towards her face, and I grabbed his wrist. “Unchain her.”
He smiled that unpleasant smile at me. “I’d hate to lose one of the only women we’ve got up here. Narcissus may go both ways, but he keeps the women out of his pack. Real spotted hyenas are matriarchal. He’s afraid if he brings women in that instinct will take over and he’ll lose his pack, because he’s not woman enough to keep it.”
“I always enjoy learning new zoological facts,” I said, “but let’s unchain Cherry and get her out of here.”
“But what of your lover? What of Micah?”
I met those mismatched animal eyes and fought to keep the fear out of my face. “I figured you were saving him for last, a sort of finale.” My voice had gone from calm to jaded. From the tone, you’d have thought that it didn’t matter to me one way or another, but I couldn’t stop my pulse from jumping in my neck.
His smile deepened, and I watched a human expression fill those animal eyes. Anticipation, anticipation of my pain, I think.
He opened the curtain slowly, revealing Micah chained by his wrists and ankles to the wall, just like Cherry. But unlike her, his wounds hadn’t healed. The right side of his face had been beaten badly. His eye was swollen completely shut, encrusted with dried blood. That delicate curve of jaw was so swollen it didn’t look real. The swelling had twisted his lip to one side. It was so swollen that I could see the pink inside of his mouth and glimpse teeth where his mouth no longer closed completely.
I heard a small sound, and it was me. It was close to a sob, and I couldn’t afford that. If Chimera knew how much this cut me up, he’d just hurt Micah more. I couldn’t stop myself from touching him. I had to touch him, because only then would he be real to me. Seeing was never quite believing with me.
I touched my fingertips to the whole side of his face. His good eye fluttered open. There was a moment of relief, then I think he saw Chimera, and his eye widened. He tried to speak but couldn’t open his mouth. He made small hurt noises.
Chimera touched his bruises, lightly, but Micah winced anyway. I grabbed his wrist, as I had for Cherry, and moved my body in between the two men. “Unchain him.”
“I broke his jaw personally for lying to me.”
“He didn’t lie to you,” I said.
“He told me you were going to be a panwere like me, but you’re not.” He leaned into me sniffing. “I’d smell it if you were. You’re something, and it’s not human. It smells of leopard and wolf.” He took a deep breath just above the skin of my face. “But it also smells like vampire. You aren’t what I am, Anita.” He looked at Micah. “He was just trying to keep me from hurting him or his cats after he saved you from my people, when they came to your house.”
“So I’m not a panwere. Does that mean you don’t want me for your mate?”
He laughed then. “Oh, I don’t know, I enjoy rape, adds spice.” I think he said it just to shock me, but I wasn’t sure. Had he raped Cherry? Had he touched her? I tried to keep the thought off my face, because with the thought came a white, hot wash of anger.
“Oh, you don’t like that idea, do you?” He tried to touch my hair, and I stepped away from him out of the alcove so I’d have room to maneuver. Help was on its way, but a glance at my watch showed another twenty minutes of the hour still left. Maybe the troops would come sooner, maybe they wouldn’t. I couldn’t afford to count on it.
He didn’t try and follow me, just let me inch away. “I could rape you in front of Micah. I don’t think either of you would like that. Though truthfully I might prefer it the other way around. Orlando is homophobic. I wonder why that would be?”
I spoke as I inched down the curtain, drawing him away from Cherry and Micah. “We dislike most in others what we hate most in ourselves,” I said.
“Bravo,” Chimera said. “Yes, I keep a lot of Orlando safe from Orlando.”
“That must be hard,” I said.
“What?” he asked.
“Keeping secrets when you share the same body.”
He followed me slowly around the edge of the wall. “At first he didn’t want to know what we did, but lately he’s become . . . unhappy with us. I think he’d have done himself harm if I hadn’t stopped him.” Chimera motioned towards the hanging men. “He woke up in the dark in the middle of them. He screamed like a girl.” Chimera put his fingers to his lips and said, “Oops, excuse me, you didn’t scream at all. He screamed like a baby until I came and rescued him, but he didn’t seem all that grateful. Like he blamed me.” Chimera looked puzzled, and again I had that impression that he was listening to things I couldn’t hear.
He stared at me. “Do you hear that?”
I widened my eyes at him and shrugged. “What?”
He looked off past the hanging men, and I looked around for a weapon. All this damage and cutting people up, there had to be a blade around here
somewhere. But the room stretched white and empty, except for the chained men. Weren’t there supposed to be pokers, maces, fucking weapons? What kind of dungeon was this, victims but no instruments of torture?
I heard it then, screams, fighting. The battle was on. Though it was still distant. The good news was that help was on its way, the bad news was that Chimera knew what was happening and I was alone with him. Alright, not alone, but nobody chained to the stone was going to be able to help me.
He turned a face so full of rage to me that it was almost bestial, without any shifting of form.
“Why did you take all the alphas?” I asked. I was still going to try and keep him talking; it was all I had.
“So I could rule their groups.” His words came out low and growling through clenched teeth.
“Your snakes are anacondas. The alpha you took was a cobra. You can’t rule over a type of snake you’re not.”
“Why not?” he asked, and he started to stalk towards me, still in human form, but with that tense grace that is more animal than human.
I didn’t have a good answer for that one. “Are the alphas alive?”
He shook his head. “I hear fighting, Anita. What have you done?”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“You’re lying. I can smell it.”
Okay. Maybe truth would help. “The sounds you hear are the cavalry riding to the rescue.”
“Who?” he asked, voice almost pure growl. He was still stalking towards me, and I was still backing up.
“Rafael and his wererats, probably the werewolves by now.”
“There are hundreds of werehyenas in this building. Your cavalry cannot get through them in time to save you.”
I shrugged, afraid to tell the truth, afraid he’d take it out on the werehyenas’ lovers. And I didn’t dare try to lie; he’d smell it. So I just kept backing up. We were almost to the door. If I could get it open, maybe he’d chase me. Maybe I could lead him into an ambush of my own.
Abuta moved in front of the door. I’d forgotten him, and that was careless. Not fatal, not yet, but careless.
I pressed my back to the wall so I could keep an eye on both of them. Abuta stayed by the door, the message clear that if I kept away from the door he’d keep away from me. Chimera, on the other hand, kept stalking closer. I was between a panwere and a snake—not actually a rock and a hard place, but close.
Chimera flowed into his other form. I’ve seen shapeshifters change for years, and it was always violent, or messy. But this, this was almost . . . breathtaking. Scales flowed over him as if they were water. There was no clear fluid, no blood, nothing but the change, as if he stepped from one form into another, like Clark Kent changes into Superman. It was so quick it was almost instantaneous. He didn’t even miss a step. His clothes folded away like the petals of a flower falling to the earth, and he stepped out in the snake form of Coronus. The big snake man stopped moving. He froze in that stillness that reptiles love. I froze when he did. He finally turned his head so he could look at me with a copper eye. It must have played hell with his depth-perception having to do that.
“I remember you. Chimera told us to kill you.” He looked around at the dark room and said slowly, “Where are we?”
Then he bent over as if in pain, and the next form was human but not Orlando’s body. He was Boone and before Boone’s eyes had lost their confused look, he was a lion man. For a second I thought it would be Marco, but of course he couldn’t be both Marco and Coronus; not even Chimera could pull that one off.
He was golden, tawny, muscled, masculine, with a mane around his half-human face that was almost black. The claws on his hands were like black daggers.
“This form is truly mine,” he growled. “The snake and the bear are like Orlando, they still believe in themselves. But I am all there is, and there is nothing but Chimera.” He reached for me, and I bolted. I ran towards the hanging men, because I knew they’d slow him down, then turned at the last second, so fast I fell on the ground and skittered away on hands and feet like a monkey. They would slow him down, but he’d cut them up to get at me. I couldn’t let that happen.
He cornered me on the far side of the room—farthest away from the door and Micah. I think he could have caught me sooner but he wasn’t rushing. I don’t know why. The sounds of fighting were closer, but not close enough.
Chimera came at me like grace contained in violence, a mountain of tawny muscle and fur that gleamed in the lights. He opened his mouth and roared, a sound I’d never heard outside of a zoo before. That coughing roar made me stand a little straighter. Zeke and Bacchus had promised to come get us out of here before the rest of the fighting started. They’d failed, or lied, but I wasn’t going down without a fight, and I wasn’t going down screaming. I watched him come towards me, like a slow-motion nightmare, beautiful and terrible, like some kind of beastial angel.
Suddenly, the ardeur rose inside me like a warm wave, spilling along my skin, drawing a gasp from my throat. The last time it had risen because of Richard’s nearness. This time . . . maybe it was just time to feed again. The moment I thought feed I knew Jean-Claude had awakened, and with his rising, down in the depths of the Circus, the ardeur had risen inside me.
Chimera stopped where he was, shaking his great maned head. “What is that?” he growled.
My voice came breathy. “The ardeur.”
“The what?”
“The ardeur, the fire, the need,” I said. With each word the ardeur grew like a weight, and that weight brushed against my beast. It spilled upward from that tight curled place inside me, and the two separate heats rose up inside, spilling along my body, drawing me forward towards Chimera. I wasn’t afraid of him anymore, because I could smell his fear. You never had to be afraid of anything that was afraid of you. Part of me knew that wasn’t true, that a scared man with a gun is more likely to shoot you than a brave one, but the parts of me that were able to think were sliding away, leaving behind only instinct. What was left liked the smell of fear. It reminded me of food and sex.
Chimera backed away, and we began a slow walk back the way we’d come, this time with me advancing slowly on him. I stalked him as he’d stalked me, and part of me noticed that I was placing my feet one atop the other, almost stepping in my own footsteps, like a cat. The walk was oddly graceful, swaying my hips. My spine was very straight, shoulders back, arms almost motionless at my sides, but there was a tension running through my upper body, an anticipation of action, of violence. Always before the ardeur had overridden the beast’s hunger, but as I stalked Chimera, watched that huge muscular form back away from me, it was meat I was thinking of. Teeth and claws, flesh to rend, to bite, to tear. I could almost taste his blood—hot, almost scalding in my mouth, down my throat. It wasn’t just my beast’s hunger, but Jean-Claude’s blood thirst and Richard’s craving for flesh. It was all that and the ardeur running through all of it, so that one hunger fed into the next in an endless chain, a snake eating its own tail, an Ouroboros of desires.
Chimera stopped running, pressing himself up against the white curtain. We were almost back to Cherry and Micah. There was solid wall behind Chimera, behind the curtain. “What are you?” he asked in a voice that was strangled, full of the fear that rose off of him in waves. He scented the air, nostrils flaring. “You don’t even smell the same.”
“What do I smell like?” I touched his chest with just my fingertips, not sure what he’d do. But he didn’t pull away. I pressed my palm over his heart and felt that thick, heavy beat rise against my hand, as if I could have caressed it, like running your hand over the head of a drum. I knew in that moment what he wanted most of all. He wanted to die. Whoever was at the core, whatever was left of who Orlando King had been, he wanted to end it. He’d been trying to kill himself since the moment he learned he was going to be a werewolf. He’d never changed his mind. He just couldn’t bring himself to commit suicide, not directly anyway.
I leaned in close to him, press
ing our bodies together, lightly, both hands on his chest. “I’ll help you,” I whispered.
“Help me, how?” But his voice was fearful, as if he already knew.
Pain lanced through my chest. My knees collapsed and Chimera caught me, carefully, in those clawed hands. I think it was an automatic gesture. I saw through Richard’s eyes for a moment, saw a werehyena snarling in his face, felt the claws ripping through his chest. The pain was sharp, bones breaking, then numbness, and Richard didn’t fight it. He let the numbness roll over him. I knew in that instant that Richard wanted to die, or rather he didn’t want to live as he was. The pain had made him reach out for me, but his hands were slow, slow to defend himself. He would never admit he’d let himself die, but he wanted it, and it made him slow. Slow enough to have the hyena man carve his chest open like cracking a melon.
Shang-Da was there pulling the hyena off of him, then I was back in my own body, airborne, thrown into the curtain and the alcove beyond. The curtain cushioned some of the fall, and the last remnants of Richard’s numbness made my body limp, so it didn’t really hurt. I lay for a second in a spill of curtain. My hand brushed outward and hit metal. I raised the edge of the curtain and found that this alcove was full of weapons. I’d found the blades. Chimera had thrown me into them, and the shock of Richard’s injury had squelched the ardeur. My hand closed on a knife that was longer than my forearm. I raised it to the light and knew silver when I saw it. The ardeur was gone without my feeding it, and I was armed. Life was good.
Then I heard the sound of claws, or blades, in flesh; a thick, tearing sound of something sharp going through meat. You hear the sound often enough, you know what it is.
I could see the hanging men from here, and they were untouched. My stomach clenched tight and cold, because I knew where Chimera was. I just didn’t know which of them he was cutting up.
I pushed the curtain away from me, started to stand, and Abuta was in front of me. I kept one hand balled in the curtain and flung it at him. He did what anyone would do. He flinched, and I drove the silver blade through the middle of his body, angling up, hunting for the heart.
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10 Page 259
