Sucker Punch

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  She was putting on her jacket as she said, “What kind of exception?”

  “Blondes. Perhaps I should try blondes just once.”

  When he said once, he looked at me. I knew what once with a woman meant for him. The thought of him taking all that intelligence, skill, and perky beauty away through torture made me sick to my stomach, and then the fear rose. I was afraid of him and what turned him on. His desires were so terrible, there was no way of taming what he wanted, no way of channeling it into dating. I saw the truth of him painted on his face aimed at another woman to get from her the kind of reaction he’d once gotten from me, and I hated him. Hated the complication of him, the fact that someone like him was one of only a handful of preternatural marshals who were as good as I was at this job. What did it say about me that someone like Olaf was one of my few equals at killing, or that I had more official kills than he did? Nothing good.

  Behind us Newman was thanking Livingston for his help. If Kaitlin hadn’t been spooked, only Olaf and I would have known how much of Olaf’s mask had slipped. He enjoyed showing it like that in the middle of things to unsettle you, but only if he wasn’t hunting you at that moment. If you were just prey, then he hid like a lion in the tall grass waiting until the antelope came a little closer. Kaitlin had gotten moved to my old category. It was more like a cheetah walking among the antelopes in plain sight, no cover, no pretense. The antelopes just didn’t know when the cheetah was going to start running and which one it was going to run after. I was not a goddamn antelope.

  I worked so hard to have control of my inner beasts, but in that moment, I wanted Olaf to remember that I wasn’t food anymore. Yeah, he was bigger and stronger than I was, but that didn’t make him king.

  It was like the thought called my lioness, or maybe the thought came from her. Not in a human one-for-one way, but in her own way, she understood me and my world better than any of the other animals inside me. She’d made herself known to me in ways that were more about communicating than about trying to break out of the prison of my body and become more real. In the past she’d communicated her needs, and they hadn’t been my needs, but this time I agreed with her: Fuck you and your king of beasts, we both know who does most of the hunting.

  Olaf sniffed the air and shifted his gaze from Kaitlin to me. “I smell . . . I like your new perfume, Anita.” He’d changed what he was about to say so that he didn’t give our secret away. Yes, the others knew we both carried lycanthropy, but that wasn’t the same thing as telling the humans that we smell like lion. Only lycanthropes—Therianthropes—seemed able to smell that phantom perfume when the beasts moved close to the surface.

  “I’m wearing it just for you,” I said, and my voice was an octave lower than normal.

  “What’s going on?” Kaitlin asked as she looked from one of us to the other.

  Livingston rubbed his arms as if he was cold, but I was betting the skin on his arms was running in goose bumps. He’d sensed the power in the cell with Bobby and me, but that had been much closer to the surface. If he could feel it now, he was even more sensitive to it than I thought.

  “You need any more help, Marshals?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, “but thanks for offering. We’ve got this.” I was looking straight at Olaf when I said the last part.

  “Do we?” Olaf asked, and his voice was a little lower, too.

  “We do,” I said.

  My lioness stalked up that long path inside me, each footfall carefully placed like she was creeping up on a gazelle at a watering hole. We would not be able to sneak up on him, I thought. My lioness stared at me with those golden amber eyes, and I suddenly knew just what she meant: Olaf would not expect us to fight him. We were sneaking up on him in plain sight.

  “If you both say so,” Livingston said, and then, to the other men, he added, “Duke, Newman, why don’t you step outside and see us off?”

  “You go ahead,” Newman said. “I just want to double-check something with my fellow marshals.”

  Duke started to protest, but Livingston took his shoulder and started talking about something to do with this year’s chances for the local sport’s team. It was enough to distract Duke and get him through the door.

  “You should go with them, Newman,” Olaf said.

  “I’m good right here.”

  I had a moment of hesitation. On one hand, I didn’t want to be alone with Olaf more than I had to be; on the other hand, I wasn’t sure I wanted Newman at ground zero. The lioness gazed up at me with golden amber eyes, and thought/asked/translated my feelings that Newman was our cub, a big grown male cub, but still one we wanted to protect. She was right. I was treating Newman like a child, and he wasn’t one. My confusion puzzled her, and she began to fade into that darkness inside me, but she left me with one thought: She wanted a mate but not one that would kill the cubs. No, it wasn’t a word-for-word translation, but that was the gist of it.

  I stood there, just me, the scent and the feel of her fading around me. But even with her gone, I still had the message. “Go out with the others, Newman.”

  “Blake, are you sure?”

  “Yes,” I said. I was strangely calm as I stared at Olaf.

  He was still sitting down; even with my lioness thick on the air, he hadn’t thought either she or I was danger enough to stand for. “You heard her,” Olaf said.

  “I wasn’t asking you,” Newman said.

  “Go, Newman,” I said. “We just need the room for a few minutes. It won’t take long.”

  “It’d better not. I can’t distract Duke for long.”

  I felt him move and heard the door shut behind him, but I kept my attention on Olaf.

  “Where has your lioness gone, Anita?”

  “She’s still in there, here, and she has a message for you. We both do.”

  He smiled so arrogantly. He’d been the biggest kid on the playground for most of his life, and now he was a werelion. There’s a certain arrogance that runs in them, too, because they’re usually the biggest, baddest animals on the playground. I wondered if his attitude would have been better if he’d been turned into a wolf, or a leopard, but now we’d never know. The die was cast. Lion it was.

  His smile was fading around the edges. I think I stared at him too long. He wasn’t sure what I was doing, and he cared what I did now. It was a chink in his armor, just like my fear of him had been for me.

  “What is the message, Anita?”

  “She likes you. She thinks you would be strong enough to be my lion to call, and her mate.”

  The arrogant smile flared back. “Your inner lion is wise.”

  “She didn’t understand why I didn’t just jump at the chance to have you in Florida, but she understands why I hesitated now. We can’t have a male that kills all the cubs. We’ll be alone before we let that happen.”

  “Cubs? You have no children.”

  “Kaitlin is a cub, or a fellow lioness, and we are not okay with you playing cat and mouse with her.”

  “I was teasing. You know I do not like blondes.”

  “You did the same kind of teasing with me once.”

  “Are you jealous?”

  I sighed and tried to think how to explain this to him. “Look, Moriarty. If I really am your Adler, then you know that I’m not okay with you threatening other women. You know that doing shit like that is not the way to my heart.”

  He frowned up at me now. “So now I cannot even tease and taunt other women? I have given up doing other things with them, because I know you will not approve. You have no idea what it has cost me to give up certain . . . things.”

  I took in a deeper breath and let it out even slower. “I have some idea, and I really appreciate that you’re trying to behave yourself.”

  He stood up then, and he was angry. I had no idea why he was angry, but it made the heat in the room rise as if he�
�d turned up the thermostat. His beast’s energy prickled along my skin. Jesus, he was powerful. My lioness stirred inside me, flashing golden eyes at me. If we could tame him, she liked him, but she finally understood that I thought he was a cub killer, and that wasn’t okay with her either.

  “I am not a child, Anita, to behave myself!”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Yes, you did. All your men are pussy-whipped, but I will not be unmanned, not even by you.”

  Olaf took a stiff step toward me, his big hands in fists at his sides. I wanted to take a step back. The room wasn’t that big, but he was so angry. It made me sniff the air as if rage had a scent, and in a way, it did for me now. His beast was warm, but his anger was hotter. A heat that would feel so good to drink down. My stomach almost cramped with the nearness of such a bounty. All I had to do was touch his skin with mine, and I could feed on all that rage.

  I hugged myself, not trusting that I wouldn’t do just that if he crossed the distance between us, because if anything would push me from would-be girlfriend to victim in his mind, it would be turning him into my gazelle.

  I decided to try for truth between us. “You’re not the only one that’s trying not to make one of us into their victim, Olaf.” We were alone, so I could use his other name.

  He took another slow step. I should have been afraid, but I knew he wouldn’t kill me just like that. He wanted too many things from me that a quick death wouldn’t satisfy. “I have tried so hard with you, Anita. Harder than with anyone else.”

  “I know, and I’m trying to give you the same courtesy.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked, and there was a growl in his voice now.

  My lioness was crouched inside me, ready to spring, but would that hurt me more than him? “It means I can feed on things besides sex, and I’m trying very hard not to feed on you.”

  “I know you are trying not to have sex with me.”

  Great. It was like he’d edited what I’d said and heard only the sex part. I should have known he would. “That’s not what I said, Olaf.”

  “It is the truth.”

  “Yeah, because you can’t guarantee that you would be satisfied with plain sex. Aren’t we both worried that if we have sex, you’ll want to push it to that next serial killer level?”

  “I told you, Anita, there are things I want to do with you that require you alive and whole. I do not want just one night with you, but many, and for that, I have to find a different path with you.”

  The anger was beginning to fade a little. It helped that aching need inside me to let go of me. I’d eaten physical food recently. I’d fed the ardeur before I left home. I shouldn’t have been having this much trouble with it yet. I was usually good for twenty-four hours at a time now with no ill effects. So why was his anger so tempting?

  “And I’m trying to let you do that, but I feed off anger, too. Olaf, do you understand what that means for you and me?”

  He frowned at me. “What do you mean, you feed on anger?”

  “I mean I can feed on the emotion.”

  He frowned harder. “I don’t understand.”

  “Have you ever fought a vampire that fed on fear?”

  He nodded.

  “Like that, but instead of fear, I feed on rage.”

  “So, when I became enraged just now, it tempted you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you do not want to feed on me.”

  “No, not like that.”

  “How long have you been able to do this feeding on anger?”

  “A couple of years.”

  “Is this another of Jean-Claude’s abilities you share?”

  “No.”

  “Then where did you inherit it from?”

  “We think another master vamp, but it may just be my own special thing. We’re not advertising it, and I do my best not to use it.”

  “Why? Is it so terrible?”

  “When it first started, I would wipe out a person’s short-term memory, which was kind of hard to explain.”

  “And now?” he asked.

  “It seems to weaken them physically, and either way they aren’t angry anymore. It siphons that emotion out of them for a while.”

  “The vampires that feed on fear frighten their victims more, and each time it is more to feed upon.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I had one guy that was pissed at what I was doing, and he just kept getting angrier. I drained him until he couldn’t stand up anymore.”

  “Did you do it on purpose?”

  “Not at first, but that last time, yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “He sexual-harassed one of the other female guards, and then he disrespected me even after I told him who I was.”

  “One of your own bodyguards did this?”

  I nodded.

  “You had to establish dominance over him, Anita.”

  “Yeah, I did, but that’s not what we’re trying to do with each other. If I fed on your anger, it would be disrespectful and more than that. I think you’re like me. I think that anger is the core emotion for you.”

  “I’m not certain I understand what you mean by core emotion.”

  “If I don’t know what else to feel, I’m angry. There’s this big endless pit of rage inside me that’s been there since at least my mother’s death. I think you have your own version of that rage.”

  “Are you saying that I am some poor little boy angry at the world?”

  “I share with you that my mother’s death has fucked me up from childhood, and you try to take an insult from it.” My own anger started to rise as it usually did.

  “That is not what I meant to do,” he said.

  “Then stop taking insult where I don’t mean it. I’m trying to explain to you that I think we both run on a core of wrath.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, face thoughtful, like he was trying to think with me, trying to understand.

  “If we both run on rage, then feeding on yours would be like feeding on your soul. I don’t want to do that.”

  He studied me, and I could almost hear the gears grinding in his brain as he tried to catch up with my reasoning. “I think you complicate things, Anita.”

  “I do, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

  “You could have kept this ability secret from me and used it if I ever attacked you for real. It would have been a good defense.”

  “I thought about that, but we’re trying not to get to that point, right?”

  “Right,” he said.

  “I can’t always control the feeding-on-anger thing. I’ve gotten better at it, but I’ve done it by accident more than any other ability that I have, and just now your rage smelled yummy.”

  “The sheriff has been angry enough. Why have you not fed on him?”

  “I thought about it, but his anger didn’t appeal to me. He doesn’t appeal to me.”

  “But my anger did appeal to you?”

  “Yes. I just said that, right?”

  He smiled. “You did. You said it smelled yummy.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “Maybe a different word would have been better, but it gets the meaning across.”

  “I like that you find my rage yummy, Anita.” He took another step closer to me, but it wasn’t a stiff, angry step. It was almost gentle as he reached out toward me.

  I wanted to step back, but didn’t want to give ground, and he hadn’t done anything to hurt me yet. Part of me said Back up! Hell, run! But I couldn’t keep running forever. I either had to make peace with him or kill him. If there was a third option, I couldn’t think of it.

  He started to touch my face and then hesitated. “May I touch your face?”

  If he’d just touched me, I’d have accused him of not paying attention to the talk at breakfast, but he
’d asked first. “Sure,” I said. My voice wasn’t sure at all, but it was the best I could do.

  He put that big hand along the side of my face in a touch gentler than I thought he was capable of. He looked down into my upturned face. We studied each other; that was the only word I had for it. I admit that there was sexual tension between us, even on my end, but I thought, What a shame he’s so broken. I don’t know what he thought about me, but it couldn’t have been too bad, because he asked, “May I kiss you?”

  “I usually don’t kiss until at least the first date,” I said, trying for a joke, but my voice was breathless. You can’t make a joke without the right delivery, and I had fumbled it.

  “May I kiss you?” he asked again.

  I didn’t know what to say. Yes was logical, but no was safer, or maybe it was the other way around. I was beginning to lose the fight to keep my pulse and heart rate even. The hand on the side of my face was so big that he could have palmed me down to my neck, but the touch in that moment was gentle. He was playing by the rules I had so recently given him. I’ve always believed that effort should be rewarded.

  I whispered, “Yes.”

  He leaned down toward me. I had a memory of the only two times we’d kissed before; both had involved us taking the heart and head of a vampire so that our arms were covered in blood. The violence and gore had excited him. How could I let him kiss me now? But I did. It was like his hand on my face, the gentlest of touches, and my pulse raced up into my throat so that I could feel his lips but taste my heartbeat on my tongue.

  He drew back from me and whispered, “You’re afraid of me now. Why?”

  I had to swallow before I could answer, because my mouth had gone dry. “I remembered when we kissed before.”

  He smiled, and it filled the dark caverns of his eyes with happiness. “So did I.”

  I stepped back from him then and almost got hit by the door when it opened behind us.

  “Are you coming outside, Blake?” Leduc asked as he looked at the two of us.

  I nodded. “Yeah, just need some air.” I pushed past him and stood in the cool air outside, taking in deep, even breaths of it.

  “Are you okay?” Newman asked.