Anita Blake 19 - Bullet (25 page)

“Anita Blake.” The voice coughed as if to clear something.

“Yes. Who is this?” But my speeding pulse already knew the answer, before he said, “I am Clayton, Master of the City of Atlanta, Georgia, but my true masters have filled me with purpose. Do you know what that purpose is, Ms. Blake?”

“To slaughter as many people as you can so that your true masters can feed off the death.”

“You do know what’s happening.” He hung up.

I screamed wordlessly into the dead phone. It took everything I had not to fling the phone across the room. I dialed Finnegan’s number. He picked up, voice rushed. “Morgan isn’t picking up his phone.”

“He’s probably dead,” I said.

“How do you know that?”

I told him how I knew.

“Clayton isn’t supposed to be a rotting vampire. He’s never shown any sign of it.”

“He was hiding, Finnegan. People may want to be vampires, but not if they think they’ll be spending eternity looking like decayed corpses. That’s not sexy enough for people to volunteer.”

“How many others are hiding in plain sight, Blake?”

“I don’t know.”

I heard sirens, lots of sirens. “I’m almost there. I’ll call you, let you know how bad.”

“Finnegan, wait, you need an extermination team with flamethrowers. He walked out in daylight; only fire will kill him.”

“That’s not standard issue to cops,” he said.

“I know that.”

“Fuck,” he said, and this time he didn’t apologize. “If we all live through this I’ll call you back.” He hung up.

We were hundreds of miles away with no way to help them. “Motherfucker.” Or were we? I reached out for Jean-Claude down that metaphysical pipeline and he was there. He looked up and whispered,
“Ma petite.”
I didn’t try to tell him everything, I simply opened my mind and he knew what I knew.

I asked out loud to the room, “Is there anything we can do from here? Can you help me control him from here?”

“I am sorry,
ma petite
, but no. He is a Master of the City, as am I. His ties to the land and the vampires there will keep us from interfering.”

“Damn it!”

“I am sorry,
ma petite
.”

My phone rang. I hit the screen almost yelling. “Finnegan, what’s happening?”

“I’m sorry, I’m not Finnegan,” a male voice said.

“Who is this?”

“Sorry to catch you on a bad day, Anita, but this is Jake. I gave you some jewelry once.”

I think I stopped breathing for a moment. The turn of events was too fast. My hand went to the charm around my neck. “I’m wearing it now,” I said.

“You do remember, then,” he said.

“Yeah, though an amazing number of our people don’t seem to.”

“We need to stay secret, Anita.”

Jake was the wolf to call of one of the Harlequin. They were the closest thing to police that the vampire world had. They were supposed to be some of the finest warriors to ever live, or unlive.

“If you’d come to kill us you wouldn’t be calling, so why are you calling?” Jesus, didn’t I have enough disasters on my plate without the Harlequin? Some days it doesn’t rain, it fucking drowns you.

“Your Nimir-Raj put out the word that he’s wanting clanless weretigers. He wants to honor all the weretigers and not just the clans.”

“Micah’s very fair-minded.”

“He is,” Jake said.

“You just want to bring us some tigers,” I said.

“I’d also want to come back to work as security for you.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Are you saying you can’t use another guard?”

“No, extra manpower is going to come in handy.”

“I want the kittens safe, Anita, and things are getting very dangerous out here.”

“Kittens?” I made it a question.

“The weretigers, someone’s hunting and killing them. It started in Europe, but I’m afraid it will spread to here.”

“Funny coincidence that we’re calling for weretigers and someone else is killing them.”

“Do you really believe in coincidence?” he asked.

“No. How soon can you get here?”

“I’m in your parking lot in a van being watched by your guards. If you’ll ask them to allow us inside, I would beg an audience with you alone before you meet my tigers.”

“Just me?”

“I think at first, yes.”

“Jean-Claude won’t let me see you alone.”

“Fine, choose the guard you would most want to stake your life on, but the fewer who know the truth the better.”

“What truth?” I asked.

“Please, Anita, let us inside where it will be safer, and I will tell you everything.”

I wasn’t sure I believed that last part, but there was nothing I could do for the cops in Atlanta. Hell, I couldn’t even leave the Circus until we had a plan for the hit men who had almost killed Richard. I wasn’t sure that he and Jean-Claude would be as good at healing me, and there was always the chance that I’d take Nathaniel and Damian to their graves. It wasn’t just my life anymore, in a very real way.

“Fine, I’ll tell the guards to let you in, but you don’t get into the underground with your tigers until I know what’s going on.”

“If you insist, but if not the underground, then where do you wish to meet?”

“Do you know where Asher’s office is in the Circus?”

“Of course, I did work security here once.”

“I’ll see you there,” I said. I got off the phone and started trying to find a number for one of the wererats who wasn’t wounded and could plausibly be in charge. I guess we were down to Bobby Lee, who was finally back from parts unknown after a lengthy job out of town. I didn’t know details, and with some of the business that the wererats did around the world I probably didn’t want to know. Plausible deniability is good when you play with criminals but carry a badge.

“Anita,” Damian said, “it isn’t safe to meet Jake like this.”

“He saved my life.”

“He’s also an assassin.”

“Who is this guy?” Nicky asked.

“Jake is what he calls himself.”

“But who is he?”

“Since you get to sit in on the conversation, you’ll find out. Just stand in the corner and look intimidating unless he does something bad.”

“Then what?” he asked.

“If he tries to hurt me, then kill him.”

He widened his one good eye. “You’re usually all about taking ’em in alive.”

“Not this one. If he’s on our side we are going to be very happy, but if he’s not, then he’s too dangerous for anything but killing.”

“He must have hurt you bad last time he was in town.”

“Actually he saved my life and gave me this.” I touched the charm again.

“But you’ll let me just kill him if he tries anything.”

I nodded.

“I’m missing part of the story, aren’t I?”

“Yep, and you can’t repeat anything you hear in the room unless he kills me, in which case, tell everyone.”

“If he’s this dangerous, why meet with him at all?” Nicky asked.

“Because if he really wants to be on our side, maybe he isn’t the only one.”

“Anita, don’t do this,” Damian said.

“If he meant us harm he wouldn’t have called,” I said.

“Unless the council ordered him to lure you into a false sense of security.”

He had a point, but . . . “They weren’t too happy with Mommie Darkest last time Jake was in town. I’m thinking that everything that’s happened won’t have improved that.”

“You’re honestly thinking that they might join with us?” Damian asked.

“It’s a thought.”

“Who are
they
?” Nicky asked.

I dialed Bobby Lee as I said, “You’ll find out.” Bobby Lee wasn’t thrilled that I wanted to meet Jake with just Nicky as backup. He’d been out of town the last time Jake was here, but I was the boss, or the Black Queen, since we were back to using code names even on the phone. I pointed out, “You know, me being the Black Queen isn’t hard to figure out.”

“Then come up with a better code name.” And that was the theme of the day. Me bitching and the people I was complaining to throwing it back in my face and saying,
If you can do better, then do it
. I’d try.

I WOULDN’T LET Damian come with me. I didn’t really think Jake would try to hurt me, but just in case I wouldn’t put both Damian and me within reach of one of the finest close-in assassins in the world. Nathaniel might survive my death, but there was no way he’d survive both Damian and me dying. I’d almost lost Nathaniel just hours ago. I wouldn’t risk it. Jean-Claude wasn’t coming for the same reason. I knew that the guards had picked up Richard still in wolf form. Some of them were waiting for a tow truck and doing their best to keep it from being reported to the police. It would be hard to explain all the blood on the front seats without Richard being hurt. Again, playing Clark Kent was a problem for our furry Superman.

But right that moment I was more concerned with the werewolf sitting across the desk from me than the one down in the underground. Asher’s office was at the top of the seats in the one permanent circus tent inside the Circus of the Damned. The office was set up almost like a press box for a ball game, but there were drapes over all the glass windows and the door in the back wall led into a bedroom. The outer office was still very plain: a desk and chair, two client chairs, and a small loveseat against one wall. The drapes at the back of the desk hid the door to the back room. It looked the same as when I’d first entered it years ago, when it was Jean-Claude’s office. Asher had added nothing of himself to it. That seemed sad.

Nicky leaned against the wall, closer to me than to Jake, so that the other man would have to get past him to reach me. Jake looked like I remembered him: short dark hair, medium complexion, and brown eyes, attractive in a manly-man kind of way, but even there he was almost too ordinary. He was nondescript. He was even an average height. He would blend in, and since the Harlequin were supposed to be spies that was probably right for the job. The weretigers who had come with him were the opposite: eye-catching blonds, tall, and beautiful, or handsome, and somehow unworldly, as if they’d only recently been let out of their cages.

Jake slumped down in one of the client chairs, looking at everything and nothing with his brown eyes. “Are you sure about talking in front of him?” he asked.

“Nicky’s okay,” I said. I didn’t feel the need to explain that he was my Bride and couldn’t repeat anything we said unless I told him he could.

Jake shrugged. “I have to trust your judgment since I trust you with the pretty kittens.”

“You’re a werewolf. How did you end up with so many weretigers?”

“I’ve known these kittens their whole lives. I think they’d be safer here with you.”

“I don’t know, Jake, you may be bringing your lambs to the slaughter.” I told him about the assassination attempt on Richard.

“Amateurs,” he said.

“I agree, but they almost killed him. If they’d hit his heart with that second bullet, I don’t think we could have saved him.”

“I think Jean-Claude could have kept the rest of you alive, but you would have been down a wolf.”

I frowned at him. “You say that like it’s no big deal.”

“I don’t mean it that way, Anita.” He rubbed his eyes as if he were tired, and I realized that there were lines around his eyes that I didn’t remember from last time.

“Why are you here, Jake? Why did you bring me weretigers? The truth.”

“I do think they’re safer here with you, but ask me why I think they’re safer.”

“Pretend I asked, now answer the question.”

He smiled. “Direct. I like that after dealing with all the old vampires. They’re almost never direct.”

“Then be direct back, Jake,” I said.

“They aren’t survivors of an attack, Anita. They’re pureblood tigers.”

“You said they were clanless. The purebloods all have clans.”

“One color doesn’t have a clan.”

I frowned. “We only have one blue tiger, so Cynric doesn’t have his own clan, but other than that they all have clans.”

He shook his head. “Yellow doesn’t.”

“Because the last yellow tiger died here in St. Louis after she killed one of our people and did her best to kill more.”

“Including you,” he said.

I nodded. “Including me.”

“She belonged to one of the Harlequin,” he said quietly.

I blinked. “Last I checked it was against the rules to say that word out loud unless we were contacted by them first. In fact, saying it out of school is a death sentence.”

“But you know that I am the animal to call of one of the Harlequin.”

I nodded. “Most people don’t remember that you revealed that. Even some of the powerful shapeshifter guards act like ordinary humans, as if you mind-fucked them and made them forget.”

“My master thought it would be better that way.”

“Are you contacting us officially?”

“Yes, and no. I am here as an agent of some of the Harlequin, but I am not sanctioned by the council to be in St. Louis.”

“I’m listening.”

He gave a small smile. “Almost anyone else would ask questions, at least be astonished, that I’m telling you that the Vampire Council’s own spies, police, and executioners have broken with them.”

“Let’s just say we had some remote-viewing visits from a few council members.”

“Then you know what has happened,” he said.

“You tell me what you know and I’ll tell you what we know and we’ll see how deep the shit really is.”

He nodded, the smile fading. “The Mother of All Darkness isn’t dead.”

I nodded.

“She’s visited you,” he said, sitting up from his comfortable slump.

“Sort of.”

“When she felt her body destroyed by the bomb, she sent her essence out in search of a home. She found fertile ground in some of the council. Once, so long ago that most do not remember, that was what the council was, Anita. They would come to sit in their great chairs, but the deep dark secret was, once they took their places on the council the Mother possessed them. She had more trouble possessing some than others, but she took them all. The council only pretended to vote and be fair; in truth they were all her puppets.”

I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and nodded. “I’m not surprised.”

“The Traveller seems free of her; he and his human servant are running for their lives. They are hiding somewhere; even we do not know where.”

“Are some of the Harlequin on her side, still?”

He nodded. “We are at war with each other. It is a very quiet, deadly little war, more like a series of assassinations, but we are at odds with each other.”

“Do you really think we can hide you from some of the greatest warriors and killers that ever lived? We’re good, Jake, but I’m not sure anyone’s that good.”

“No, I come to offer my gun and my strength to help fortify your safety, not the other way around.”

“You think the other Harlequin will come for us?”

“I know they will.”

“When?” I asked.

“It depends on how fast we can kill the ones that want to kill you. If our side loses enough manpower, then they’ll come for you. Right now they see the other Harlequin as their greatest threat. Once we are neutralized, then they will turn to you.”

“So it behooves us to help you guys.”

He smiled. “I didn’t come here for that, Anita. We will live or die as we always have, by our own hands.”

“Then what do you want from us?”

“Depending on how our private feud goes with the other Harlequin, others of us will come to your aid, or to spy on you. There are some who are more neutral, because they do not believe that you and Jean-Claude and your two triumvirates could be Master of Tigers.”

I stared at him. “Did you guys bug our phones again?”

He grinned. “No, your wererats sweep very effectively for listening devices now.”

“We may be a little slow, but once we learn something we don’t forget it.”

His voice was all serious, suddenly. “The last remaining tigers that are not red or white belong to the Harlequin as their animals to call. When Mother Dark took the power of Father of the Day, she gave some of that power to us. We gained the tigers through it. Your blue boy is not the last of the blue, there is one more, but she is busy fighting for her life alongside her master, so soon your Vegas teenager may be the only blue tiger left in the world.”

“Are she and her master on our side?”

“They are,” he said.

“So, you have a black tiger or two,” I said.

“We have one. We had two, but when the Father of the Day regained some of his power, he called Sebastian away from us.”

“Funny, Sebastian never mentioned he was one of you guys.” I felt a little spurt of anger, because I had let him go when I could have turned him over to the police, or just kept him.

“Sebastian was and wasn’t one of us. He had been, but the Father of the Day was truly his master, so the Mother of All Darkness didn’t trust him. She allowed him to live, but he had no one. My master and I kept track of him, but he has been on his own for a very long time.”

“Tell me who’s on our side and who isn’t, Jake.”

“The remaining black tiger’s master is not. We have one male gold tiger, and he and his master have agreed to be on your side if we can prove to them that you can be Master of Tigers.”

“How do we do that?” I asked.

“Funny you should ask.”

“One more oblique answer, or question, and I’m going to get pissed.”

“I’m sorry.” He sat up and almost shook himself like a bird settling its feathers. “When the Mother of All Darkness declared the gold clan to be destroyed, some of us hid a few of them. We helped them escape to various parts of the world, including the New World. We’ve been helping them to hide, waiting for another Master of Tigers. One who wasn’t evil.”

“Or a sexual sadist,” I offered.

He gave a very small smile. “That, too.”

“The other clans think the gold is destroyed and the strain of lycanthropy inside me is the last remnant of them,” I said.

“They would be wrong.”

“You’ve hidden the gold tigers since the first emperor of China; that’s twenty-two hundred years. You’ve been planning this for that long?”

“We’ve been hoping for that long.”

I raised eyebrows at him. “That’s a long damn time to hope.”

“When you live forever and don’t age, it gives you the time to hope.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I shrugged. “So you’re saying the tigers with you are gold, yellow, whatever.”

He nodded.

“They are the purest of their line that we have been able to preserve. There are some who are like your Domino, of more than one clan. We have found that the tiger survivors mated with the gold breed mostly true.”

“I’m an American, Jake. It means that pure blood is sort of overrated. We’re a nation that’s all about the melting pot.”

“The tigers are not. It’s important to them.”

“So, I pick one and do what?”

“Bond with them, Anita. Pet them, fuck them, mind-fuck them, whatever it is you do when you gain a tiger to call.”

“I can also make them my Brides.”

“Like your werelion,” Jake said.

I fought to keep my face neutral. “How did you find out?”

“Rumors that you’ve just confirmed. And I’ve seen other Brides over the centuries; they have a certain smell to them.”

Nicky moved against the wall, as if he’d say something, but he just settled back like a good bodyguard, seen and not heard.

“I think we need one of the tigers to call you master in the way that your wolf and leopard call you master. I don’t think making one of them a Bride would be as impressive.”

“You left out my other lion,” I said, and studied his face, though no matter how human he looked, I knew that after enough centuries you could get pretty good at keeping your thoughts off your face.

“No games, Anita. We heard what happened to your local Rex. We know that you need a new Rex, and you haven’t chosen a lion to call, which was one of your old Rex’s bones of contention.”

“You have spies in with us,” I said.

“We have spies everywhere, Anita; don’t feel special.”

“Oh, it’s not special I feel, trust me.”

“The Mother of All Darkness is trying to turn the council back into her puppets. We must stop her.”

“How? How do you fight something with no body of its own? How do you fight something that can jump from body to body?” I asked.

“By being powerful enough to cut her off from each body in turn, until she is nothing but spirit and spite. We believe she will fade then.”

“But you don’t know,” I said.

“If I said we were sure, you’d know I was lying.”

“How do we cut her off from their bodies?”

“The way you cut her off from Belle Morte.”

“No one in that room told you.”

“Belle told us, Anita. She has turned to us to hide her.”

I just stared at him.

“Why do you look surprised?”

“I’m not sure, but Jake, we used the powers of Belle Morte’s own line to free her. We don’t carry the power of anyone else.”

“Now who’s lying?”

“I’m not.”

“Anita, you carry the power of every line that’s attacked you. You collect vampire powers like butterflies. The Master of Beasts attacked you and now you can call all manner of wereanimals. The Dragon barely touched you from a distance and you can feed on anger. I heard you even did her nifty trick of using the vampire’s own aura against them to cut like glass.”

“Only once, and Jean-Claude was driving the metaphysical bus.”

“We want him to gain the powers, too, Anita. We need him to be powerful enough.”

“Enough for what?” I asked.

“To head the council in America.”

I shook my head. “Damn, word does travel fast. You must have spies in every major city.”

“Not every city, but the ones that are powerful enough to be helpful, yes.”

“So I choose from the boys. Who’s the girl tiger for?”

“You can choose anyone you want, but knowing your preferences the girl is more for Jean-Claude.”

“More for—what does that mean?”

“It means this works better if you like everyone in your circle of power. Your line of power is based on sex, lust, even love, so your liking everyone who sleeps over is a good thing. Maybe even a necessary thing for you.”