The Harlequin ab-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "You know, most normal people would call them boyfriends."

  "No one woman could date as many men as you have in your life, Anita. You can fuck them, but you can't date them. I'm having enough trouble having a relationship with one woman; I can't imagine juggling a half dozen of them."

  "Maybe I'm just better at relationships than you are," I said, and my voice was not friendly. I wasn't close to tears; I had the beginnings of a nice anger warming me up.

  "Maybe; girls usually are better at it."

  "Wait a minute. How do you know how many men I'm sleeping with?"

  "You and your little harem are big news in the preternatural community."

  "Are we?" and I let it be hostile.

  "Don't be that way; I'd be bad at my job if I didn't listen to my sources. You want me good at my job, right? Ted Forrester is a legal vampire hunter, a federal marshal, just like you." It had creeped me out when I'd discovered Edward had a badge. It just seemed wrong. But too many of the vampire hunters had failed the firearms test; for the newer ones, too many hadn't made it through the more detailed training. The government had turned further afield to get enough vampire hunter/federal marshals to cover the country. Edward had been grandfathered in on the firearms training, no sweat. But the fact that Ted Forrester had stood up to government scrutiny meant either that Edward had some high-placed friends or that Ted Forrester was his real identity—the name he'd gone into the military with, his actual true name. I'd asked him which it was, and he wouldn't answer. Of course Edward wouldn't answer. Such a mystery man.

  "I don't like being spied on, Edward, you know that." Did Edward know about the ardeur? How long had it been since I'd filled him in on the metaphysics in my life? I couldn't remember.

  "How did your lov… boyfriends take the news of the almost-baby?" he asked.

  "Do you really care?"

  "I wouldn't have asked if I didn't care," he said, and that was probably absolutely true.

  "Fine," I said, "pretty well. Micah and Nathaniel were ready to rearrange their lives to play daddy and nanny, if I decided to keep it. Richard proposed, and I turned him down. Jean-Claude seemed like he always was: cautious, and waiting for me to decide what wouldn't piss me off." I thought about that. "I think Asher was pretty sure it wasn't his, so he didn't offer too much comment."

  "I knew you were living with Micah and Nathaniel. But when did Jean-Claude start sharing you with other vampires? I didn't think master vamps shared well."

  "Asher is sort of an exception for Jean-Claude."

  He sighed. "Normally I'd enjoy playing with you, Anita, but it's early, and I know you've had a hard morning."

  "What's that mean?" I asked, and I couldn't keep the suspicion out of my voice.

  He made a sound halfway between a chuckle and an mmm sound. "I'll tell you the rumors I've heard, and you tell me how big a lie they are."

  "Rumors," I said. "What rumors?"

  "Anita, thanks to my new status I hang with a lot of creature killers. You're not the only one who's got ties to the monsters in their town. Admittedly, you have the most… intimate ties to them."

  "And that means what?" I asked, and didn't try to keep the irritation out of my voice.

  "It means no one else is fucking their local Master of the City."

  Put that way, it was hard to argue with the intimate part. "Fine."

  "The Harlequin only come if you've gotten high enough on the radar to attract the council's attention, for good, or not so good, right?"

  "Yeah," I said.

  "I could just ask you what you've been doing, you and your vampires, that has attracted their attention, but I think it'll go quicker if I ask which rumors are true. I need to get off the phone and start gathering backup. The backup may take longer than transport or the weaponry."

  "Ask," I said, not sure I wanted him to ask at all.

  "That Jean-Claude has become his own bloodline and broken from his old mistress."

  I was surprised, very surprised. "How the hell did that rumor get started?"

  "We're wasting time, Anita, true or false?"

  "Part true. He is his own bloodline. That makes it so he doesn't have to answer to his old mistress, but he hasn't broken with Europe. He's just stopped being Belle Morte's beck-and-call boy."

  "That you've got a string of lovers among Jean-Claude's vamps and the local shapeshifters."

  I really didn't want to answer this question. Was I embarrassed? Yes. "I don't see what my love life has to do with the Harlequin coming to town."

  "Let's just say that the answer to this question will decide me on whether I ask something else, something I didn't believe. Now I'm beginning to wonder."

  "Wonder what?" I asked.

  "Answer the question, Anita—do you have a string of lovers?"

  I sighed and said, "Define string."

  "More than two, three, I guess." He sounded uncertain.

  "Yes, then."

  He was quiet for a second, then continued. "That Jean-Claude makes everyone, male or female, fuck him before they can join his kiss."

  "Not true."

  "That he makes the men fuck you?"

  "Not true, and someone's having a better fantasy life with my life than I am."

  He gave a small laugh, then said, "If you had told me no on the first question, I wouldn't even ask this next one, but here it is. That you're some kind of daywalking vampire that feeds off sex instead of blood. I don't believe that one, but I thought you might be interested in what some of your fellow monster hunters are saying about you. I think they're just jealous of your kill count."

  I swallowed hard, and went back to sit on the edge of the tub.

  "Anita," he said, "you're awfully quiet."

  "I know."

  "Anita, it's not true. You're not a daywalking vamp."

  "Not the vampire part, not exactly."

  "How not exactly?"

  "Do you know the term ardeur?"

  "I know the French word, but that's not what you mean, is it?"

  I explained, briefly, as coldly as I could, just the facts, what the ardeur was.

  "You have to fuck people every few hours, or what?"

  "Eventually I die, but before that I start draining the life out of Damian and then Nathaniel."

  "What?"

  "I have a vampire servant and an animal to call."

  "What!" I'd never heard him sound so astonished.

  I repeated myself.

  "There isn't even a rumor about this, Anita. Human servants can't have vampire servants; it doesn't work that way."

  "I know that," I said.

  "Nathaniel is your animal to call?"

  "Apparently."

  "Does the council know this?"

  "Yep."

  "Well, shit, no wonder they sicced their dogs on you. You're lucky they didn't just kill you."

  "The council is divided on the appropriate action to take about Jean-Claude and us."

  "Divided how?"

  "Some of them want us dead, but it's not a majority vote. They can't agree."

  "So the Harlequin come to break the tie, is that it?" he asked.

  "Maybe; honestly, I'm not sure."

  "Is there anything else you've done that might make them decide to kill you quicker, like before I can get there?"

  I thought about the fact that I might be a panwere. I thought about a lot of things, then sighed. Then I thought of one thing that we'd done that might bother the other Masters of the City in the United States enough to cry for council help. "Maybe."

  "How 'maybe'? Anita, can you wait for me to get backup, or do I need to get a plane and get my ass to St. Louis? That's what I need to know."

  "Truth, Edward, I don't know. Jean-Claude and I did something back in November that was pretty powerful. It might be enough to scare the Harlequin."

  "What did you do?"

  "We had a little private get-together with a couple of the visiting Masters of the City. The two that Jean-Claude calls f
riends."

  "And," he said.

  "And Belle Morte interfered from all the way in Europe. She messed with me and the Master of Chicago."

  "Augustine," he said. "Auggie to his friends."

  "You know him?"

  "Of him," Edward said.

  "Then you know how powerful he is."

  "Yes."

  "We rolled him, Edward."

  "Rolled how?" he asked.

  "Jean-Claude and I fed off him; we both fed the ardeur off him. We fed on him, and through him we fed on every person he had brought to our lands. We did this massive feed on them all. It was an amazing power rush, and all of us, vamps, beasties, anyone tied to either Jean-Claude or me by metaphysics, gained power from it."

  "I'll contact the backup I want; they can join me later. I'll be on the ground in"—he paused as if checking his watch—"four hours, five at the outside. I'll be in St. Louis before sundown."

  "You think it's that serious?" I asked.

  "If I were a vampire, and you had a vampire servant, I might kill you just for that. But if you guys rolled Augustine, one of the most powerful masters in this country, then yeah, Anita, they'll be nervous. I'm just surprised the Harlequin didn't hit St. Louis earlier."

  "I think they needed the excuse of Malcolm and his misbehaving church. The council is truly divided about Jean-Claude and his power base. I think maybe the council wouldn't agree to let the Harlequin near us, but now that they're here checking out the Church of Eternal Life, well, two birds with one stone."

  "Sounds reasonable," he said. "I'll be there as soon as I can, Anita."

  "Thanks, Edward."

  "Don't thank me yet."

  "Why not?"

  "I'll see you in a few hours, Anita. Watch your back like a son of a bitch; if these guys are masters they may have wereanimals and humans to do their daywalking. Just because the sun is up doesn't make you safe."

  "I know that, Edward. I probably know that better than you do."

  "Maybe, but be careful until I get there."

  "I'll do my best." But I was already talking to an empty phone line. He'd hung up. I hung up, too.

  Chapter Eleven

  NATHANIEL WAS ASLEEP in Jean-Claude's red silk sheets. Jean-Claude himself was in Asher's room for the day, but he'd made a point of telling me he'd had the sheets changed to red because the three of us look so lovely against red. Micah's eyes caught the light from the partially opened bathroom door. His curly brown hair was a heavy darkness around the delicate triangle of his face. The door was our version of a night light here, since there was no bedside lamp, and the other light switch was across the room by the door. Micah's eyes caught that faint glow and glittered with it. His eyes were leopard eyes, or looked like leopard eyes. A doctor had told him that the optics were still human, but the eyes themselves weren't. Splitting hairs, I guess. Chimera, the same bad guy who'd made the ambush that caused Nathaniel to pick up a gun and shoot for real, had also forced Micah into animal form so long that he couldn't come all the way back. His eyes were never human. I'd asked him once what color they'd started as, and he'd said brown. I couldn't picture it. I couldn't picture his face with anything but the green-gold of the eyes he'd come to me with. They were simply Micah's eyes; anything else would have made it the face of a stranger.

  His voice was quiet, that voice you use when you're trying not to wake someone in the room. "What did he say?"

  "He'll be here in four or five hours. His backup will be following." I came to the edge of the bed.

  "What backup?"

  "I don't know."

  "You didn't ask."

  "No." Truthfully, it had never occurred to me to ask.

  "You trust him that much?" Micah asked.

  I nodded.

  Micah rolled under the red silk so he could reach my hand. He tried to draw me onto the bed, but in a silk robe, on silk sheets, I'd learned better. They were too slippery. I took my hand back and undid the robe's sash. He lay back and watched me with that look a man can get—the look that is part sex, part possession, part just male. It's not a look that has much to do with love, not the kind that includes hearts and flowers anyway, but it has everything to do with being together, being real. Edward was right. Micah was my lover. Not my boyfriend. We dated. We did movies, theatre, picnics even, at Nathaniel's insistence, but in the end what had drawn us together had been sex. Lust like a forest fire that could have burned our lives down around our ears, but instead had saved us. Or that's how I felt. I hadn't really asked him in so many words.

  "Serious face," he whispered.

  I nodded and let the robe slip to the floor. I stood in front of him naked and had the feeling I'd had from almost the first moment, that my skin was thick with need. He reached for me again, and this time I let him help me climb up on the big bed. The bed was big enough that he could draw me down beside him without either of us touching Nathaniel's sleeping form.

  In November, when Jean-Claude and I had rolled Augustine of Chicago, we'd also figured out something else. My instant lust for Micah, and his for me, had been vampire powers. Not Jean-Claude's, or Augustine's, but mine. My vampire powers, mine and mine alone. My powers may have started with Jean-Claude's marks, but they had mutated with my necromancy and become something else, something more. I was like a vampire of Belle Morte's line, and all of her line had powers dealing with sex and love, though not real love, not usually. That was beyond most of Belle's line. My version of her ardeur allowed me to see the strongest need in someone's heart, and my own, and meet those needs. When Micah had come to me, I'd needed a helpmate, someone to help me run the shapeshifter coalition that we'd just established. Someone to help me with the wereleopards that I'd inherited when I killed their old leader. I'd needed help and someone who didn't see my cold-blooded practicality as a bad thing. Micah had met those needs, and I had given him his greatest wish, to have his own wereleopards safe from Chimera, the sexual sadist who had taken them over. I'd killed Chimera, freed them all, and Micah had moved in with me. Just like that. It had been so unlike me, and in November we'd realized why; my own vampire tricks had made us a couple.

  Micah was under the silk and I was on top of it. His hands danced down my body as our lips found each other. We must have moved too much because Nathaniel made a small noise. It made us freeze in mid-motion and look at him. His face was still peaceful, eyes still closed, his hair a gleam in the near dark.

  Vampire powers had made Nathaniel my animal to call, and made us love each other, too. It was real love, true love, but it had begun with vampire mind tricks. But Belle Morte's powers cut both ways. As Auggie had said, "You can only cut someone as deep as you're willing to be cut." Apparently, I'd been willing to be cut to the heart.

  Nathaniel stirred in his sleep again. His face flexed, frowned. He made another small sound. It was his bad dream sound. He'd had more nightmares of late. His therapist said it was because he felt safe enough with us to explore his deeper pain. We were his safe haven. Why did safety raise all the shit deeper? It seemed like it should have been the other way around, didn't it?

  We reached for him at the same time—Micah's hand going for the bare paleness of his shoulder, my hand going for his cheek. We stroked him wordlessly. Most of the time petting him in his sleep was all it took to chase the bad things away. Real-life bad things weren't so easy.

  There was a soft knock on the door. We both looked toward it and Nathaniel stirred, one arm pulling out of the covers. He blinked awake, his eyes confused, as if he expected to be somewhere else. He saw us and visibly relaxed. He smiled, and said, "What is it?"

  I shook my head, still lying pressed in Micah's arms. Micah said, "Don't know."

  I called, "What?"

  It was Remus, one of the ex-military werehyenas. They'd been hired after Chimera nearly destroyed the bodybuilders and martial artists of the hyenas. As Peter had said, it wasn't real. The hyenas had liked showy muscle that had never seen real battle. They'd learned that just because m
uscle is pretty doesn't mean it's the real deal. "It's the Ulfric. He wants in."

  Ulfric, wolf king, Richard Zeeman was at our door. The question was, why? I wanted to ask what he wanted, but he might take it wrong, so I looked at Micah.

  He shrugged, lying back, one arm still curved around me, holding me along the line of his body. I stayed propped up so I could see the door, and so most of my nakedness was covered. Richard was my lover, but he didn't share nearly as well as everyone else did. I wouldn't get out of bed for him, but I wouldn't make it as bad as it could be by flaunting either. No matter what I did, we'd probably end up fighting. When we weren't having sex, that's what we did. We fought and had make-up sex, and he let me feed the ardeur off him. It wasn't much of a relationship lately.

  "Anita"—Richard's voice—"let me in."

  "Let him in, Remus," I said.

  Nathaniel rolled onto his back so that the covers pooled at his waist, and the expanse of his upper body was naked to the light that came in through the door as Richard came inside. He hesitated at the door, watching us in the rectangle of light from the hallway. His hair had finally grown out enough to go a little past his shoulders in heavy chestnut waves. His hair looked black with a nimbus of gold around it now, but his hair was brown with highlights of gold and copper when the light hit it just right. He was wearing jeans and a jean jacket with a heavy wool collar. He had a small suitcase in one hand. He set it down on the floor as he came through the door.

  I caught a glimpse of the guards in the hallway as he shut the door. Claudia, wererat and one of the few other women who carried a gun besides me, looked a question at me. I shook my head. It was my way of saying, Let it go. I wasn't sure it was a good idea, but I couldn't figure out a way to refuse him access to the bedroom without starting a fight. I didn't want to start the fight.

  "May I turn on the light?" he asked, very polite.

  I looked at the other two men. They nodded, and shrugged. "Sure," I said.

  I was left blinking into the sudden glare. It wasn't that bright a light, but after almost complete darkness it seemed bright. When my eyes adjusted I could finally look at Richard. He was as he had always been: six feet one inch of handsome masculinity. Perfect cheekbones and a nearly permanent tan showed that somewhere back in all that Dutch blood was something darker and less European. I'd always bet on American Indian, but they actually didn't know. He was almost heartrendingly handsome. So why hadn't my new vampire powers made us the perfect couple, too? Because for my abilities to work you had to know what you wanted, what you really wanted. Richard didn't know that. He was too conflicted, too full of self-loathing, to know what his heart's desire was.