Anita Blake 24 - Dead Ice (58 page)

I heard voices and knew someone was talking their way past the two guards outside my door. Bram had tattled on me to Fredo, so now I had bodyguards everywhere I went, at least for today. There was a soft knock, and that alone let me know it wasn’t Magda. She knocked like a cop with a knock-and-announce warrant—loud, authoritative, and about to knock your door down. This was a knock you could say no to, and they’d just go away. It had to be Travis.

I said, “Come in.”

Travis peeked around the door. His short curls looked dark brown, instead of their usual brownish blond. It also looked like his hair had grown out a little, and it was only when he’d walked into the room and shut the door behind him that I realized his hair was wet, which made it darker and, with the curls relaxed, longer. My hair wet and heavy was nearly four inches longer in back. He was also wearing nothing but a towel around him, just like me. In fact, the towel covered him from armpit to nearly ankle like it did for me, because we were almost the same height. The extra-big towels were like dresses on both of us, but on Claudia they barely covered the essentials.

“Sorry you’re hurt,” he said.

“Me, too. Sorry I’m interrupting your fight training.”

He smiled then. “I’m not, I hate it.”

“You’re starting to show some muscle definition,” I said, starting to motion at his arms, but having to stop in midmotion because I’d forgotten and tried to raise my left arm.

“Yeah, and if the women I wanted to date were into that sort of thing it’d be great, but they’re more impressed that I can recite Shakespearian sonnets by memory in their ear.”

I gave him a look. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“Haven’t you ever dated someone who was into literature?”

“I thought I had, but maybe I’m wrong, because I think if I’d tried to whisper sonnets for pillow talk they’d have giggled at me.”

“You have to know your audience,” he said. “Mine likes poetry.”

“I didn’t say I disliked poetry, just not that fond of the sonnets.”

“You don’t like Shakespeare?” He pretended to be offended, hand to his chest as if I’d wounded him.

“I prefer the tragedies,” I said.

He smiled again. “Of course you do, but I don’t think whispering Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy would get me laid.”

It was my turn to grin. “I don’t know, depends on the girl.”

“You?”

“No,” I said, still smiling, and it was good to be smiling. It helped chase back the tiredness.

He came and sat on the bed beside me, careful to sit on the side that wasn’t bandaged. “You look beat, Anita.”

“Good to know I feel as bad as I look, or look as bad as I feel, or something like that.”

“I didn’t mean you look bad, you always look good.”

I looked at him. “Now, that is totally not true.”

He smiled, frowned, and finally said, “Is this one of those girl moments that I can’t win? So if I agree with you, are you going to accuse me of not thinking you’re beautiful, and if I disagree with you, are you going to tell me I’m lying?”

I laughed; I couldn’t help it. “If you were a boyfriend, or lover, maybe, but no, I’m not going to go all girl-logic weird on you.”

“Whew,” he said, and pretended to wipe sweat off his brow.

“Am I this tired, or are you funnier than normal, and happier than normal?”

“The second is definitely true,” he said.

“Happier even with the extra gym work?”

He nodded. “I had to shower before I came in here, because I was all sweaty from lifting weights and getting my ass kicked.”

“I know you’re getting intensive training these next four days, so who’s doing your one-on-one fight drills?”

“Fredo.”

“He’s good hand-to-hand, but he’s even better with knives.”

“So I’ve noticed. He says I’m better with blades than my hands. I can’t tell if it’s a compliment, or his way of saying I’m so bad with my fists that I need a knife to win a fight.”

“If Fredo compliments anything you do with a knife in your hand, it’s a good thing. He’s the main blade instructor for the guards, and he’s wicked good at it. I bloodied him once in a practice match. Impressed the hell out of the other guys.”

His pale brown eyes went very wide and made him look even younger. He was actually twenty-five, but he looked closer to eighteen; with his eyes wide and his curls all wet and careless he could have passed for seventeen easy.

“You touched Fredo in a knife match, wow, that is impressive. He’s so fast.”

“Rats and leopards seem to have an edge in speed. Lions have more muscle.”

“Not this lion,” he said.

“I was going to ask you something if we were alone.”

“You don’t remember what it was?”

I shook my head.

He hugged me, careful of my shoulder. “You have had a rough day.”

“Oh, Magda, what’s your take on her? Why is she beating up on Kelly?”

“She wants to be the official first lioness of our pride.”

“Nicky has already turned her down for sex, and I’m his Regina, so she can’t be that. First lioness in our local pride is a pretty hollow title, actually.”

“It is,” he agreed.

“So why is Magda pushing this?”

“I’m not sure, but I know she’s not going to stop.”

“Why not, if it gains her nothing?”

“I didn’t say it gained her nothing, I just agreed that being first lioness is an empty title.”

“Okay, what does it gain her to fight Kelly?”

“I don’t know, but I know she sees some goal. The Harlequin are very goal driven whether they’re the vampire masters”—he made finger quotes around the word
masters
—“or the wereanimal companion.”

I might have asked more, but there was a very purposeful knock at the door. I hadn’t heard any conversation first; either I’d been too busy talking to hear it, or Magda had just come up and glared at the door guards until they let her knock.

“Come in,” I said.

Magda didn’t peer around the door; she just walked in like she owned the room. She was tall for a woman, five-ten, which meant she’d have towered over people back in the day. Her hair was blond, cut so it fell below her ears but never touched her shoulders. The hair was blunt cut, which would have worked with straight hair, but she had waves to hers, so it was just messy like someone had started to style and cut her hair but stopped partway. Her vampire master had absolutely straight hair, as black as hers was yellow. Her eyes were blue-gray, changeable as the sky. They looked bluer now, because she was wearing blue satin pajamas. It had never occurred to me that Magda would own jammies, let alone pastel blue ones, and satin, just not what I’d pictured. Even dressed in something soft she filled the room not with height, but with attitude. She turned those human eyes on us, but it was like her lion was the one seeing out, and the lion thought everything it surveyed belonged to it. Not all the Harlequin were like that, but she was; even the male lion Giacomo didn’t have that air of command to him. It was like a constant slap in the face of any alpha around her, as if she knew she was the strongest, fastest, bestest in the room, unless you could persuade her you were better, but until then . . . it was her room. Magda made me tired, even when I wasn’t. She was like a constant pissing contest waiting to happen. Part of that was a lion thing, but she had more than her share of it.

I was already remembering why I didn’t spend much time with her and she hadn’t been here five minutes yet. How was I ever going to sleep with her on the other side of me? It must have shown on my face, or maybe my scent changed; whatever the cause, Magda picked it up.

“You are not pleased with something I’ve done, and I’ve done nothing yet, not even spoken.”

“Your energy is sort of . . . loud,” I said.

Travis was sitting straighter beside me, not hugging anymore. He was tense; the question was, why?

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

Travis was watching her less like another lion and more like a gazelle. No wonder he had problems with the other lions, and no wonder Magda did, too. They just had opposite problems.

“Okay, I need to sleep and the two of you need to work together to make that possible,” I said.

“We will sleep on either side of you and our lions will mingle with yours and help heal you,” Magda said.

“Yes, but not if your energy makes me feel like I have to prove I’m dominant to you all over again.”

A frown appeared between her yellow eyebrows. You didn’t see a lot of natural yellow eyebrows, not even on blondes. It softened her eyes even more, I think, or maybe black eyebrows would have given them more color; who knew?

“I have done nothing to challenge you, Anita. I acknowledge you as Regina to our Rex, and have never said otherwise.”

“You offered to sleep with Nicky,” I said.

“It’s customary when entering a new pride to offer yourself to the Rex.”

Travis finally said, “No, it’s not.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, and they were suddenly gray as rain clouds. “It was once,” she said, voice growing lower, as if the next sound she made would be a growl.

“That was then, this is now,” I said.

She turned that unfriendly gaze to me. “I am more aware than you will ever be that this is a future unforeseen and very unlike the past I knew.”

“I’m not going to apologize for killing the Mother of All Darkness, Magda.”

She looked genuinely puzzled. “I would not expect it; you do not apologize for conquering an enemy.”

“All right, I’m not going to apologize that my victory cost you a way of life; how’s that?”

“Again, I would not expect you to do any such thing. You do not apologize for winning a war.”

“You should Google the Vietnam War and see how people can apologize for a war, though I guess we didn’t win that one.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Anita is referring to more recent American history, and Vietnamese history. I guess the French and Russians were involved, as well.”

“I will look it up on the Internet,” she said, and walked farther into the room.

Travis tensed. I turned to him. “If she needs to tone down the big bad energy, you need to man up and stop giving off prey energy.”

His pale brown eyes darkened while I looked into them. He wasn’t changing into his lion; he was angry, and it turned his eyes darker. I thought the anger was a good sign; it meant there was more fight in him than he was showing.

“I’m trying, don’t you think I’m trying?” he said, and his voice was a little deeper, too.

“Just because he is a werelion doesn’t mean he is not a lamb, Anita.”

“I am not a lamb,” Travis said, voice lower still, so that it sounded like he needed a wider chest to make that bass.

Magda ignored him, talking directly to me as if he didn’t exist. “You cannot make a lamb into a wolf, Anita. Even if he has the skills to fight, he does not have the will to win.”

I actually feared she was right, but I hoped she was wrong.

Travis’s anger came off him like heat, and his beast rose with it. My skin prickled with the nearness of it. I looked at him and found dark orange lion eyes looking out of his face.

“Do you have such poor control of your beast, boy?”

The boy stood up, and I did not want to see her beat the shit out of him in front of me, nor did I want to get hurt again today trying to stop it.

“This is not restful,” I said.

Travis startled. Magda looked at me.

“I have a limited amount of time to sleep before the FBI calls and I have to leave for work. I haven’t slept in about twenty-four hours, so if you guys are going to fight, take it outside and I’ll find some other bunkmates.”

Magda dropped to one knee but kept her eyes on Travis the way you do in martial arts when you bow before a match. You bow, but your gaze stays on your opponent; otherwise he could kick your ass while you’re not looking. The fact that Magda accorded Travis even that much attention either was a good sign for him, or meant that she was just always that cautious.

Travis knelt, too, though he got tangled in his towel, so it wasn’t as smooth, but he did it. “I’m sorry, Anita.”

“Forgive me, my dark queen,” Magda said.

“First, don’t call me dark queen. I’ll forgive you both if you just stop squabbling and climb into bed, so I can sleep. You guys were not my first choice as a bed duo, and unless you shape up really quickly, you’re going to be off my list of ever bunking over with me, for any reason.”

Magda bowed her head, her eyes on me, but I knew somehow that she was still very aware of Travis. She was just that cautious; she didn’t see him as a real threat. “I am ashamed that I put my own petty grievances ahead of your comfort, my queen.”

“Me, too, Anita, I’m sorry.”

“Fine, I’ll accept the apologies on the understanding that we sleep now, quietly, with no more bickering.” I lay down and slipped under the covers, hoping that would speed things along. I couldn’t lie on my left side, so I had to lie with my back to the door. I couldn’t do it. I sat up in the bed, and tried to think if either of the other two rooms had a bed that was oriented the other way. I didn’t think so.

“Allow me to lie in front of you so that I block anyone who might come through the door to harm you,” Magda said, and slipped her blue pajama top over her head to expose a pale but very fit upper body with high, full breasts, and just below those very nice breasts was a scar that traced below them like an angry red scythe, with a straight line running down from one end of the crescent to vanish below her waistband, as if someone had cut a proverbial death scythe on her body. The fact that it was red meant it was recent, and since she should have been able to heal almost anything, it shouldn’t have been there. She could have had it as an old white scar, but not fresh. Muscles moved in her arms, chest, and stomach as she moved toward the bed. Her body was lean and athletic the way that J.J.’s was, though genetics had let her keep more breast, but other than that she reminded me of the ballet dancer who I enjoyed so much.

“You get front,” Travis said, “because if it’s a real fight all I can do right now is help delay them while you keep Anita safe.” He let the towel fall to the floor and climbed onto the bed, totally unbothered by the fact that he was now nude as he clambered over my legs to get to the wall side of the bed.