Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter #16 - Blood Noir (33 page)

BloodNoir

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44

ONCE THE DOOR
shut behind us, I wanted to run to Richard and be held. I wanted to demand to know what was wrong with Jean-Claude. But we had a stranger in the room. A stranger whom I really couldn’t afford to kick out, not until I knew what the weretiger inside me was going to do. That much I remembered from last night.

I looked at Richard. He was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. His hair was piled up under the hat so he looked like he had short hair. He was wearing a bulky jacket. He had come, but he was still hiding. His day job was as a junior high science teacher. Parents don’t like the monsters around their children. Too many fairy tales about the big bad wolf, maybe. So he hid to keep the job he loved, but it was like Clark Kent trying not to be Superman. In real life it’s harder to pull off.

“This is Crispin,” I said. “He’s one of the Las Vegas tigers.”

“What are you doing in town, Crispin?” Richard said, and his voice wasn’t quite as friendly as it had been in the hallway.

“I was flown in for a bachelorette party upstairs. Then I felt the little queen call, and I had to answer.”

Richard lowered his glasses enough so I could see the dark, perfect brown of his eyes. The look in them was not friendly either. “He’s already calling you pet names.”

“Ulfric,” Jamil said, “business, please.”

Richard sighed, deep enough that it made his broad shoulders rise and fall. He took off the jacket, revealing a plain white T-shirt. It set off his summer tan nicely.

“You’re right, Jamil. Business first.” He looked at the weretiger. “We need to talk in private and there is no place in this room far enough away that you won’t hear us.”

“I’m not sure it’s safe for him to leave, Richard. The weretiger went very, very strange last night. I don’t know what would have happened if Crispin hadn’t been nearby.”

“Who’s this?” Shang-Da asked. He was looking down at the now-naked man on the floor at the foot of the bed. Apparently, my stranger had shifted back. He was still unconscious, but he wasn’t furry anymore.

“He’s another weretiger.”

“Why did you need two?” Richard asked.

“Crispin is a white tiger, but this one is red and black. I remember enough to know that it was like the tiger inside me needed a variety. One tiger didn’t fix what was wrong.”

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We couldn’t talk in front of Crispin because he belonged to Max of Las Vegas. We couldn’t afford for another Master of the City to find out that something was wrong with our power structure. But I was afraid to have Crispin leave, too.

I finally said, “Okay, we can’t talk in front of Crispin freely, but tell me this, is Jean-Claude all right?” I had to know at least that.

“He’s fine,” Richard said, “honest, he’s fine.”

I must have looked like I didn’t believe him, because he repeated it. A tightness in my stomach loosened, and I felt tears press at the back of my eyes. God, why was I about to cry?

There was a sound from the bed. We all turned to it. Jason moved just his head enough to see us all. “God, what happened?” His voice sounded choked, and thick with either old screams or long disuse. It occurred to me to ask what time it was.

“There’s a better question,” Richard said, softly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“What day is it?” His voice was gentle.

I stared at him. “No, no way.”

“It’s not the next morning, Anita. It’s the day after.”

“Jesus,” Crispin said, “my boss is going to be pissed.”

“Jean-Claude has been in contact with Max in Vegas.”

I started to go to the bed and sit down, but there was a naked stranger by the bed. “Shit, Richard, what happened? What the hell happened?”

“What we’ve told Max is that you seem to carry a variety of beasts inside you. That you’re a panwere. But being Jean-Claude’s human servant prevents the beasts from manifesting completely.”

I almost said out loud,
Is that really the truth?
but I let it go. Richard had very carefully said,
This is what we’re telling Max
, the Master of the City of Las Vegas. The ultimate master of the weretiger I’d borrowed for two days.

“A panwere,” Crispin said, “that’s like not possible. I mean it’s legend, but…”

“I’ve seen it for real,” I said, softly. “He was one of the most frightening…he was evil, and I don’t use the E-word lightly.”

Jason’s voice, still thick with sleep, or whatever, said, “
Little queen
isn’t a pet name, Ulfric. It’s what the tigers call dominant females that could be powerful enough to break off and form their own group, if the main queen allows it.”

I nodded. “I remember part of that conversation before everything went dark.”

“We need to talk, Anita, and we can’t talk freely in front of him.” Richard pointed at Crispin. file://L:\Azures L_Disc Shared Dowloads\EBooks\Anita Blake Series 1-17\(Book16] - Bl... 10/18/2009

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“I don’t know if I have a room to go to,” Crispin said. He frowned. “Why didn’t Lucian come and find me?”

“Lucian is the vampire who came to strip with him at the party,” I explained.

“Truthfully, I half-expected to find him here with you,” Richard said. I gave him the look the comment deserved. “Thanks, Richard, you always know just what to say.”

He sighed. “Yeah, to piss you off.”

I nodded. “Don’t knock it, Richard, you have a real gift for it.”

“Wouldn’t it be good to know who this one belongs to?” Jamil said. He was standing over the last unconscious man.

“Check his wallet,” Crispin said, “it’s got to be on the floor somewhere.”

It was a good idea. It made me think better of him. I don’t know about Richard. It would take a lot more than one good suggestion for him to like a strange man who had had sex with me for two days in a hotel room. Then I had a thought, a really bad thought. I went for the bathroom and my travel kit. The one that had things in it like toothbrushes, razors, birth-control pills. I knew what I’d find. Knew it. But I had to look, had to make sure. I put the gun on the back of the toilet while I got out the little round of pills. There was an extra pill. Well, fuck.

Richard was in the doorway. “What’s wrong?”

I just held up the pills. “Guess.”

He looked stricken, like someone had hit him in the gut. “Mother of God.”

I nodded. “I had sex with three men for two days and I’ve missed a pill.”

“You didn’t use condoms?” he asked.

My body chose that minute to remind me that what goes in, comes out. I shook my head. “We were all metaphysically mind-fucked, so no, we didn’t take precautions. I need some privacy.”

“Anita…”

“I need to clean up, Richard, okay?” I fought not to cry, or scream at him. I wasn’t mad at him. I was too confused to be angry with anyone.

“This isn’t your fault,” he said.

“The
ardeur
went crazy, why?” I asked.

He stepped in, and whispered, “It had help going wrong.”

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I stared up at him. “What are you talking about?”

“We need privacy to talk.”

“Shut the door, I’ll turn on the shower. I need some answers, Richard. Hell, I need a morningafter pill.”

“Doesn’t that tread a little too close to abortion?” he said.

“Could you watch me be pregnant with some stranger’s baby? Could you help me raise a stranger’s baby?”

He opened his mouth, shut it. “I don’t…no.”

“No,” I said. I shook my head. “Micah and Nathaniel were willing to help me when we thought I was pregnant from someone we knew, one of my lovers, our friends. But this is a stranger. God, Richard, God!”

He came to me then, wrapped his arms around me. I stayed stiff in his arms for a moment, and then I collapsed into his body. I clung to him. I let his strength and his nearness hold me. I let him hold me while I wept and screamed and wailed. I lost it completely, and Richard held me while I did it.

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45

I CRIED UNTIL
my knees went weak, and then Richard’s arms tightened around me and held me. He held me standing, pressed against his body, when my own body would have fallen to the floor. When the crying began to quiet and he could feel that I was standing again, he loosened his hold on me enough to bend back and see my face.

“We’ll get through this,” he said.

I looked up at him. His hair was trailing down from the edge of the hat. Shoulder-length waves of brown with that hint of gold in the lights trailed around his face and the long firm line of his neck. I wanted to see all that hair loose around those perfect cheekbones. I went on tiptoe, found it hurt a little, but did it anyway. I lifted the hat off, and watched a little more hair spill down, but not all. He turned his head so I could see the really bad bun that someone had done for him. I started to reach for it, to free his hair, but he gripped my wrists and set me back flat-footed in front of him.

“Leave it.”

“Why?” I asked.

He gave me a gentle smile. “Because once you start playing with my hair you tend to get distracted. We can’t afford that right now.”

I nodded, agreeing with him. “I’m too sore to get too distracted for a while. I wondered why I felt so awful, but two days of it, that explains it.”

He kissed my knuckles on both hands, then let go of them. “Your face looks so lost.”

I nodded again. “I feel lost.” I looked up at him. “What happened to me, Richard? Why can’t I sense Jean-Claude?”

He seemed to think about it, then said, “Turn on the water. The sound will help drown things out from the tiger.”

I went to the shower without another word. I needed to get clean anyway. I could smell the men on my skin, whiffs of it as I moved. It wasn’t a bad smell, really, but it was the smell of strangers. I had woken up with the perfume of someone’s skin against mine before, but never a scent I did not know. I knelt, slowly, careful of all that hurt, and turned on the water. Richard started talking, “Do you remember Marmee Noir?”

I tried to look over my shoulder, but found that the big claw marks on my back hurt too much to do that, so I turned more of me to look up at him. “The Mother of All Darkness is kind of hard to forget.”

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He looked relieved. “Good, Jean-Claude wasn’t sure how much of your memory she’d wiped.”

I stared at him. “What are you talking about, Richard? Marmee Noir didn’t wipe my memory. I remember every time I’ve seen her, even in dream.”

I did not like the look he gave me; it was too soft, too gentle, too…too you-poor-baby. “No, you don’t.”

“Stop hinting and just tell me, Richard.”

“She rolled you two days ago. She’s the reason the
ardeur
went crazy.”

I tried to think back. What was the last thing I remembered clearly? But it was like the harder I thought at it, the more my mind kept sliding away, as if the surface of the thoughts were slippery and I couldn’t hold on. I shook my head. “I’m a necromancer; vampires can’t just mind-fuck me. Especially not from thousands of miles away. She’s in freaking Europe. She couldn’t have rolled me this completely from there.”

He shrugged those wide shoulders. “Then why can’t you remember what happened? What caused the
ardeur
to rise out of control worse than it’s ever been before?”

“I don’t know, but…” I swallowed hard enough that it sort of hurt. The water was too hot now, steam rising from it. I added more cold and tried to think about what he’d said.

“The tiger inside me went crazy first. It did things that none of my other beasts have ever done.”

“Like what?” he asked.

I told him the quickest version I could think of. When I was done, he looked way too grim for comfort. “What is it, Richard? Why that look? What the hell is wrong with me?”

“We’re not a hundred percent certain, but you put out a call to all the weretigers in this country. Maximillian, the master of Vegas, called Jean-Claude with all sorts of threats. Said you’d stolen or were trying to steal away one of his weretigers. He didn’t mind you sleeping with him, but you weren’t allowed to call him as a mate.”

“What does this ‘call’ mean? Crispin talked about it, too. Like it should be in capital letters or something.”

“Christine was the only weretiger we had to talk to, but she’s not a natural-born. She survived an attack, so she’s not an expert, but the ‘call’ is a way for the dominant tigresses to get lovers, and eventually a mate. Only the very dominant can do it, and if Max’s fit was accurate, your call blanketed the country, or damn near. Max thought it was just his clan because you had his tiger, but when his wife contacted the other clans, just to see…they were all hit by this ‘call.’”

“What does that mean,
hit
?” I asked. The water was the right temperature now. I badly wanted to get clean, but I wanted the information, too.

“Apparently, the unattached males all felt your call. Only the strongest dominant queens were able to keep their males from getting on the nearest plane, train, or bus to answer that call.”

I stared at him. “What?”

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He spread his hands and knelt beside me. “It wasn’t you, Anita. You’re good, but you’re not this good.”

“You’re saying that Marmee Noir used me to call the tigers here.”

“Yes.”

“Why? What does she gain from it?”

“First, Jean-Claude wants neither you nor Jason to tell anyone that it was Marmee Noir that did this. He’s afraid that if the other vampires know she can use you like this, they may kill you to keep her from gaining more power.”