Affliction

50

The front desk clerk of the very nice hotel took one look at the four of us as we walked through the doors at an hour till dawn and assumed that something was wrong at the hotel. I wanted to see Jean-Claude before dawn, so I didn’t have any patience left for it.

‘We’re just going to our room,’ I said.

He looked us up and down, and his face said clearly he didn’t believe we had a room in his fine establishment. I think the room rate was probably above most cops’ salaries.

It was Edward who touched my shoulder and made me realize I’d taken a step toward the desk clerk. He spoke under his breath. ‘Ease down.’

I tried to swallow past the pulse that was suddenly trying to jump out of my throat. What was wrong with me? I nodded to let him know I’d understood.

It was Dev who smiled and charmed the man, flashing the room card that he had. He’d actually seen the rooms while I was off in the mountains hunting vamps with Nicky and Ares. Thinking his name caused that tightening of the chest, the reaction in the gut that would happen for a while. At least he hadn’t been a lover, and the moment I thought it I felt bad for being relieved that I hadn’t been closer to him, but I was relieved all the same.

We had a suite of rooms, and basically Jean-Claude had taken over a floor of the hotel, which was why we’d invited Edward to come stay the night. There’d be a bed somewhere, or so Dev had said. I might not want him as my backup on a warrant of execution, but I trusted him to report the rooms and the sleeping space available. There are a lot of people I trust to coordinate my life who I wouldn’t trust to guard my life, just as there were people I trusted at my back in a fight who would have sucked at the organization part of things. We all had our skills.

I watched Dev, his hair still slimed on one side with drying blood, charm the frightened hotel clerk. He wasted that smile on him that was usually reserved for sexual prospects, and either the clerk was into guys or Dev was just that charming. I didn’t know which, and if it would get us up to our rooms sooner I didn’t much care which.

The three of us went to the elevators, and Edward had me hold the door while he and Nicky loaded in the bags of weapons; normally I would have insisted on helping load, but it would be bad to have the doors close with our bags in there and none of us with them. So I held the door while the men loaded until there was barely going to be room for us to stand. Edward leaned on the open door, holding it, and Nicky and I got in, and when he put his arm around me I didn’t protest. I cuddled under his arm, as close as the body armor would let me get. I let him hold me and tried not to feel much, except that it felt good. Dev trotted up to us, and Edward stepped in and let the doors close.

‘He offered us help with our bags,’ Dev said.

‘Is the clerk into guys, or is your ability to charm devoid of sexual promise?’ I asked.

He grinned at me. ‘Devoid of sexual promise; you must not be as tired as I thought.’

I scowled at him.

Nicky hugged me a little tighter, and I scowled at him, too.

Dev’s grin did not fade; in fact it widened. ‘Yeah, the clerk is into guys.’

‘You imply that you might see him later?’ Edward asked.

‘Nothing as strong as that,’ Dev said.

‘What does that even mean?’ I asked, and it sounded grumpy even to me.

‘It means he didn’t pimp himself out, but he let the clerk think that he liked guys, too,’ Nicky said.

I glanced up at him from under his arm, so it felt like being a child and too small and … I moved out from him.

‘What did I do wrong?’ he asked.

‘How did you know that?’

‘Flirting for distraction is the same no matter if it’s women or men, Anita.’

‘You’re saying you’ve done the same thing.’

‘I’ve been the young, cute distraction on a few jobs back when I was with my first lion pride, so yeah.’ His face was neutral as he said it, empty of emotion. It was the way he hid when he was feeling something, because Nicky wasn’t a born sociopath; his feelings had gotten tortured and abused out of him. It meant he still had feelings, but they were … hidden and a little twisted.

‘You do more than just flirt on the job?’ I asked.

‘Don’t do this,’ Edward said.

I glared at him. ‘Do what?’

‘Pick at the people you love, because you’ve finally got a minute that isn’t an emergency and all the feelings you’ve been shoving down inside are trying to find a way out, and if you won’t give them a nice clean exit wound, they’ll tear their way out of your life and everyone near you.’

We looked at each other. I wanted to ask who he had torn up that had been close to him, because I knew it wasn’t Donna and the kids; whoever he was referring to had been before that, before I knew him. If we’d been alone I would have asked, but he wouldn’t answer in front of anyone but me, and maybe not even me.

The doors opened and Dev moved first like a good bodyguard. It moved Edward to check the hall and Nicky to move so that his broad body blocked me from view, though knowing that I loved him meant that him taking a bullet for me had taken on a whole new suck.

There was a murmur of male voices, and then I heard more clearly, ‘Sorry, man, but it’s orders.’

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, fighting the urge to peer around Nicky’s body.

Edward answered from the door that he was holding open. ‘Claudia is in charge of the detail and apparently she’s upset.’

‘Why? What’d we do?’ I asked.

‘You aren’t in trouble,’ Dev said. ‘We are.’

‘Why?’ Nicky asked.

‘Apparently, for letting Anita get hurt.’

‘When I’m on the job you guys can’t protect me.’

A second male voice said, ‘Claudia got put in charge of Jean-Claude and Anita’s safety, so she’s going to yell at both of you.’

‘Lisandro, is that you?’ I stepped around Nicky then, and he let me, only sliding his hand into mine so we walked out hand in hand.

‘It’s me,’ he said, and there he was, six feet of tall, Hispanic handsome, his long black hair tied back in a ponytail. He was wearing a black T-shirt under a black suit jacket, over black jeans and boots. The suit jacket didn’t hide the gun at his waist as well as it would have if his waist had been less slender and his shoulders a little less broad, but Lisandro did the same workout as the other guards, and unlike Dev he worked hard at it. He was built more slender than Nicky and would never muscle up like that, but what muscle he had looked good on him. He was better in a fight than he looked, but …

‘You aren’t supposed to travel out of town on guard work,’ I said.

‘When Jean-Claude decided to come out here, Rafael wanted the best guarding him, so Claudia is in charge and I’m her second-in-command, because we are the best.’ He said it with no trace of attitude, just a statement of fact.

I opened my mouth and closed it, because what was I supposed to say, that ever since he’d nearly died on an out-of-town guard detail with me, I hadn’t wanted him with me again, because I didn’t want to tell his wife and kids why their father had died keeping me alive? Or that we’d had one emergency feeding of the ardeur when the Mother of All Darkness and the Lover of Death had messed with us, and his wife had told us no harm, no foul, but if he ever had sex with me again then she was divorcing his ass and taking his kids, and I didn’t want to risk it?

‘Hey, that makes me the best, too,’ and it was Emmanuel, who was five foot eight with short, pale brown hair and the only blue-gray eyes I’d ever seen on someone who was Hispanic. He tanned in the summer, but never as dark as Lisandro was normally. Emmanuel was also one of our younger guards, under twenty-five, though I wasn’t honestly sure just how much under.

‘You must have been training behind our backs, because last I checked you couldn’t beat me in anything.’ Dev said it with a smile that let the other man know he was teasing.

‘Well, you didn’t do so hot at keeping her safe, did you?’

And that was a little too close to home, because Dev stopped smiling. In fact, for a moment a much more serious person looked out of that handsome face, and the first trickle of otherworldly energy whispered through the hallway, which meant he was really pissed, because the golden tigers prided themselves on ultimate control over their inner beast.

‘Hey, I’m sorry,’ Emmanuel said. ‘That was out of line.’ He looked genuinely embarrassed, and he should have.

‘We’re supposed to turn Anita over to the guards in the main room and then escort the two of you to Claudia. I don’t have orders for … Marshal Ted,’ Lisandro said.

‘I figured we had room for him, and if it’s a fight, him with us is better,’ Dev said.

‘I can’t argue about the fighting part, and you’re right, we have the whole floor to ourselves, so there’s a bed for him.’

‘Thanks,’ Edward said in his Ted voice, even smiling.

Lisandro gave him narrow eyes, because he knew exactly who Edward was; the Ted was so he wouldn’t forget around the other cops.

‘I didn’t think Claudia traveled out of town for guard duty either,’ I said.

‘We didn’t have time to get Bobby-Lee back in town to be point on this, and Fredo had a family event, so that left Claudia and me.’

‘I’m sorry for that,’ I said, and I wondered if he understood what I was apologizing for.

He smiled bright in the dark handsome of his face. ‘You almost died, and you’re apologizing because we had to travel out of town at the last minute.’ He shook his head.

‘I want my weapons in the room near me; if we all carry stuff it’ll be quicker,’ I said.

They didn’t argue. We all picked up bags and Lisandro led the way to a door. He gave a knock that sounded like a signal: two short, one loud. The door opened, though I couldn’t see who opened it around everyone’s taller and broader bodies. I was used to being the smallest person in the room and certainly the smallest person when the guards were with me. They deposited the dangerous bags just inside the door, because though the room was large there was barely space for this many new bags.

I finally got to see the hotel suite. I’m sure it had looked roomy once, but with all the coffins in it there was barely room to thread a path from the window to the bathroom. Jean-Claude could have slept in the bed just fine, but two things. One, a lot of the older vampires preferred to travel with a coffin. Two, a maid opening the drapes, by accident or on purpose, would be very, very bad. A lot of the maids were devoutly religious and from sections of the world where vampires weren’t legal and could still be killed on sight, if you could manage it before they killed you. It just wasn’t worth the risk. Some of the newer vamps traveled with mummy sleeping bags. They folded up better in your carry-on bag. Coffins were for vampires who had servants and flunkies to tote and fetch. Jean-Claude had those. In fact, some of the coffins were for the flunkies.

I kissed Nicky good luck as Lisandro led him off to get yelled at by Claudia, about something that wasn’t his fault, but I understood chain of command enough to know that my interceding for him would just piss her off more. Claudia was six foot six, the tallest woman I’d ever personally met, and had the shoulders and muscle to go with her size, though she still managed to look feminine, dangerous but beautiful. With no makeup to grace the high cheekbones, and her long hair usually pulled back into a tight ponytail just like Lisandro’s, she was still one of the most striking women I’d ever met.

Lisandro led them and Edward off to find her and a bed for Edward and his own bags of dangerous toys. Dev poked his head back in at the last minute. ‘You still going to help me clean up?’

I smiled at him, I couldn’t help it. ‘Yeah.’

He grinned at me, and Emmanuel gave him a halfhearted push through the door. ‘You are such a horndog.’

‘Yes, I am,’ Dev said, and the door closed behind them. I turned to see past the bags, mine and the mountain of Jean-Claude’s, and the coffins, to find what guards I’d been handed off to, and smiled.

The Wicked Truth had come as Jean-Claude’s bodyguards. Wicked and Truth were tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, with shoulder-length hair. Wicked’s hair was straight and thick and very blond. Truth’s hair was brown with a slight wave to it. They both had gray-blue eyes, which meant that sometimes they looked blue and sometimes not so much. Once Truth had an almost-beard, nicely scruffy, but he’d shaved it and like most vampires he wasn’t able to grow it out once he’d shaved it, so now you could see that they both had a deep dimple in the square, manly chins. Without the facial hair the brothers looked even more like twins, though I knew they’d been born a year apart. I also knew that Wicked had dressed them both in designer suits; his was a pale gray with a blue dress shirt that made his eyes look very blue. Truth was in charcoal gray with a shirt almost the same shade of blue so his eyes were as blue as I’d ever seen them, so that when they turned and looked at me it gave a startling mirror image, and then Wicked’s arrogant, teasing smile spoiled the illusion. Truth was far too serious for that smile.

Wicked was still smiling as he said, ‘It doesn’t do any good to send bodyguards with you if you keep insisting on hunting monsters without us.’

‘You are a fool, brother,’ Truth said, and moved toward me through the coffins. It looked like an undertaker’s showroom.

‘I had a bodyguard with me,’ I said, quietly.

‘I am a fool,’ Wicked said, ‘and I am so sorry about Ares.’

Truth hugged me, and I let him. I let the strength and solidness of him hold me close. I could trace his shoulder rig under the suit jacket, and my hands found his weapons without thinking about it. The suit jackets were tailored to hide the guns and blades. His torso was long enough that he had a short sword down his back in a back sheath modeled after one I used to hold my biggest blade, though I was short enough that mine was just a big knife. His short sword was longer than my body from neck to waist. I knew that somewhere in his luggage was the great sword, his real sword. He’d fixed up a back harness for it, too, but there was no way to actually wear it concealed, just more modern-looking. His battle-axe didn’t really fit under modern clothing either, but then axes are like machine guns; concealment isn’t really the point, intimidation and blood is the point. He had several smaller axes, too, but only the smaller throwing axes actually fit under modern jackets, and then barely.

I liked that hugging Truth was always an obstacle course in weapons placement. Some of the men in my life probably felt the same way about me, though I wasn’t sure about the ‘liking’ part.

He stroked my hair and just held me close. Truth was a man of few words, which meant he didn’t expect much from others. There were moments when that was a very good thing.

Truth and I pulled back from the hug at about the same time. I looked up into his face and those surprisingly blue eyes and found them grayer than when we’d started the hug. I realized his eyes had changed shade because he was sad, or knew I was; blue-gray eyes did that.

Wicked was at our side now. His handsome face was very serious as he said, ‘We understand what it is like to be forced to kill a friend and comrade in arms, Anita.’

I realized that they meant it. Centuries ago the head of their bloodline, their sourdre de sang, had gone insane and been possessed by a blood frenzy that had spread through all the vampires he’d created, except for the two brothers standing with me. They had executed the others of their line, a bloodline known for its warriors, before the Vampire Council’s executioners could arrive to carry out the death sentences.

I wrapped an arm around Wicked’s waist, while still having a loose arm around Truth. They hugged me together, but it was Wicked who bent over for a kiss. He was the bold one in certain areas.

‘We were never allowed such liberties with our Dark Mistress,’ a man’s voice said.

We turned, and it was one of the executioners sent to carry out that death sentence oh so long ago. Mischa was one of the Harlequin; he had been Graziano, one of the early names of the Dottor or Doctor in the Italian Comedy. He’d spent centuries wearing a mask that matched that name. The only people who saw his real face had been those he spied upon or those he killed. His real face had been the last sight on earth for thousands, maybe millions. Some of the Harlequin were more than two thousand years old. You could rack up a pretty impressive kill count in that space of time.

Many of the Harlequin were what real spies looked like: nondescript for their day, or their country. Real spies weren’t James Bond; you didn’t want to stand out or attract too much attention. If you were well known enough that bartenders all over the world knew you preferred your martini shaken and not stirred like old-school Bond, then you were a stalking horse, not a spy. You were sent in to attract attention so the real spies could be sneaky and find out things, or assassinate from the shadows and then vanish back into those shadows.

Mischa was tall for one of them, almost six feet. He had thick blond hair that was as straight as Wicked’s, but his hair was a paler, almost white blond, which meant it must always have been that pale, because sunlight hadn’t touched his hair in more than a thousand years. Wicked’s hair was an almost golden blond from lack of light to pale it.

Mischa looked at us with blue eyes that should have looked like warm summer skies, but they were cold, no matter how pure the blue of them might be. Wherever he’d been recruited for the Harlequin, it had been somewhere that all that pale hair and those bright blue eyes would have fit in without anyone blinking – somewhere Scandinavian.

‘Anita is a kinder mistress than the Mother of All Darkness,’ Truth said.

‘Jealous?’ Wicked said.

‘The Mistress of us all isn’t supposed to be kind, she’s supposed to lead.’

‘Anita leads us where we need to go,’ Truth said.

‘You believe she leads well enough,’ Wicked said. ‘You are just jealous that we have her favor and you do not.’

‘That is not true, and you know it. You say such things only to try to anger me.’

‘I was jealous of the other guards who shared her bed until I was added to the list,’ Wicked said.

‘That is you. I am made of sterner stuff than that,’ he said, and walked farther away from what looked to be a large bathroom behind him.

‘You have yet to best me at sword practice or outdo my score at the firing range with a handgun,’ Wicked said.

Mischa flushed, hands curling into fists at his side; for a really ancient vampire he was surprisingly easy to bait. Most of the really old ones could control their emotions to a degree that was frightening, almost … inhuman.

‘I have bested you both with knife and long gun,’ he said, hands in tight fists.

‘But neither of us with sword or handgun,’ Truth said, ‘and you won’t even try to practice with me and an axe.’ Truth would have stayed out of it, but the other vampire had said both. Truth would seldom start a fight, but he would finish one. Wicked would pick a fight but leave it laughing without caring who won most of the time. Truth cared more once you got him going.

‘Even I’ve bested your score with a handgun,’ I said.

‘That is at the range, not real combat,’ Mischa said.

‘I shoot just fine in real combat,’ I said.

Mischa looked almost pained as he said, ‘I was impressed with the shot you made on the news. I would not have thought you capable of it.’

‘I had to make it, so I did.’

He nodded. ‘Needing to make it does not automatically give you the ability to do it, Anita Blake. That you had the skill within you under trying conditions was … impressive.’

‘Bet you hate saying that,’ Wicked said.

Mischa glared at him. ‘Our Dark Mistress was a weapon; she had no need of guns and blades and training with us. She was more dangerous than any of us could ever be.’

‘So does that mean that Anita is more dangerous than all the remaining Harlequin?’ Wicked asked.

‘No.’ Mischa almost spat that one word.

‘You said that the Mother of All Darkness was more powerful than any of you; then wouldn’t whoever killed her be more powerful than any of you, too?’ Truth asked.

Mischa shook his head but said nothing.

‘They debate between themselves on how a mere human woman could have slain their dark mistress.’ A man stepped out from the adjoining bedroom. He was taller than Mischa by several inches, broader through the shoulders, just bigger all over. He had short brown hair that curled carelessly and eyes that were deep reddish brown. If you didn’t know what you were looking at you’d think they were human eyes, but they weren’t; they were bear eyes, big fucking ancient cave bear eyes. His name was Goran and he had been a werebear before most of the great cities of the world had been more than a wide place to sell your cattle, and Mischa was even older. If I let down my shields and let my necromancy feel them, they were old enough to make the bones along my jaws ache.

‘There isn’t a human being in this room,’ I said. ‘Where’s Jean-Claude?’

‘He’s on the phone in the other room,’ Wicked said, and there was the faintest tone to his voice. Whoever Jean-Claude was talking to, he didn’t like it.

Mischa had no problem saying out loud what he didn’t like. ‘Our lord and master is on the phone to the sodomite who has him pussy-whipped.’

‘Sodomite?’ I asked.

‘He’s talking to Asher,’ Wicked said, ‘but I wouldn’t let Jean-Claude hear you talk about his beloved that way, Mischa.’

‘Wait, you can’t be both a sodomite and pussy, or did the slang change?’ I asked.

‘It didn’t change, he’s just trying to be objectionable,’ Truth said, and gave the other vampire an unfriendly look.

I walked toward the vampire and his big bear of a sidekick. ‘I can’t argue the sodomy part, but wouldn’t it be pecker-whipped, or maybe cock-whipped?’

Mischa glared at me; he knew I was making fun of him, but he wasn’t quite sure how. I’d noticed that almost all the older vampires had trouble with modern slang; even the ones who’d mastered some of it hadn’t mastered all of it. Slang didn’t travel well from one language to another either.

Truth was at my back, and Wicked was moving up through the coffins on the other side of the huge conference table that dominated the main part of the room. There was also a couch and coffee table pushed to one side of the room to make room for more coffins. The kitchenette wasn’t movable, so it just took up the room it took up.

‘The fact that our Dark Master is begging that sodomite to come back to St Louis is embarrassing to all of us.’

‘I let you call him that once,’ I said, ‘and I let you know I didn’t like it, but maybe I’m too tired for subtle.’

‘You yourself said that you cannot argue the charge of sodomy against them,’ Mischa said.

‘What we all do in the privacy of our bedrooms doesn’t matter to you unless you’re our lover, and since you’re not, why does it matter to you what we do or who we do?’

‘It is an insult to all of us who call him our prince that he lets another man use him so.’

I frowned at him. ‘So you’re objecting because you think Jean-Claude is bottoming to Asher?’

Mischa seemed to think about it, and then he nodded. ‘I’ve never heard it called that, but bottoming is quite accurate under the circumstances.’

I smiled, almost laughed, and was just too tired to not say what I was thinking. ‘Well, if that’s all that’s bothering you, don’t worry about it, Mischa. Jean-Claude isn’t bottoming to Asher; he definitely tops him, not the other way around.’ The fact that I was using BDSM terms that really had little to do with actual sex, homosexual or otherwise, went over the vampire’s head, way over.

‘You mean Jean-Claude uses him and is not used by him?’

‘If you want to put it that way, yeah.’ I had recovered myself enough to think, but not say, As far as I know, when I’m with them. If they switched the other way around when I wasn’t with them, that was their business and I wasn’t sure it bothered me anyway, but I hadn’t seen it swing that way, but that didn’t mean … oh, hell. I was too tired to worry about something that didn’t bother me anymore.

‘You know, Mischa,’ I said, ‘I like men. I like watching the men I love together, knowing that all that strength and beauty will be aimed at me later, so stop being all homophobic. I’m too fucking tired to mess with it tonight.’

I don’t know what he would have said next, because the door opened behind them and Jean-Claude stepped out. Mischa gave a look to us, and the look was enough. He would never have said what he’d just said to me to Jean-Claude. The ex-Harlequin might have been saying mean things about Jean-Claude and Asher, but he said them only to me, which showed a lack of respect for me. He feared what Jean-Claude would do, but not what I would do. I filed the thought away for later when I wasn’t achingly tired and covered in the drying blood and bits of the dead I’d helped make deader.

Jean-Claude’s eyes widened just a bit. ‘Ma petite, you have had a busy night, I see.’ His French accent was as thick as I’d heard it in a while, which meant he was feeling strong emotions that he couldn’t quite hide, but he was trying. I appreciated the effort, because the accent alone meant that what he wanted to say was his version of, You are covered in blood and worse, which means you were in horrible danger and probably nearly died … again! How can you keep risking yourself like that when I love you so much? Instead of picking a fight he just glided toward me and held his hands out to me, as graceful as if he meant to dance when he got to me.

It was one of those moments when I felt very ordinary, or maybe clunky. I had good hand-eye coordination, and speed, and skill at using my body, but I would never rival his grace and beauty of movement. He had too many centuries of practice on me, and nearly all of it showed as he walked toward me. It was that, that finally clued me in on the fact that maybe fear of my being in danger wasn’t the only strong emotion he was fighting not to show.

He’d been talking to Asher. The conversation had gone either really well or really badly. Even as he took me into his arms, I couldn’t tell which. I went up on tiptoe to meet him bending down over me, and the moment his lips touched mine I felt the excitement in him. The kiss grew from our normal tender, but fairly chaste kiss in front of the newer guards to one so passionate that I had to work to make sure we didn’t cut my lips on the dainty fangs just inside his mouth.

I drew back from the kiss breathless and smiling almost stupidly up at him. I was energized, befuddled, and entirely too happy. It wasn’t vampire powers; it was just the effect Jean-Claude had on me.

He smiled down at me so broadly that he flashed fangs, which he almost never did with just a smile. He was so obviously pleased with himself that I knew the talk with Asher had gone well, better than well.

‘It is almost dawn, my lord; there is no time for sex,’ Mischa said in a voice that dripped with disdain.

Jean-Claude looked at him, and the look was enough. Mischa bowed, sweeping his arm down and close so that you could almost see the hat with its feathered plume that should have been in the hand to go with that gesture. All the Harlequin had great bows and gestures of obedience, but a lot of them also had Mischa’s gift for making the gesture only after they’d insulted us or turning the gesture into a snide remark of its own. The only thing that made them worth putting up with was that they were almost as good as they thought they were, and good enough that when Claudia wanted to bring the best with her she’d picked some of them.

Jean-Claude’s voice came smooth and nearly devoid of accent, centuries of control sliding back into place within seconds. ‘Tell me, Mischa, how did you stay alive being so snide with the Mother of All Darkness?’

There was the faintest stiffening of his shoulders, but Mischa’s voice was rich and almost empty of emotion as he said, ‘She valued my skills as an assassin and spy above petty concerns of flesh and hurt feelings.’

It was another insult, and perhaps even a threat. I wasn’t the only one who thought both, because Wicked and Truth moved up on either side of us, a little ahead, not blocking our view of the other men, so not technically between us, but they were in place if needed.

‘Do you delude yourselves that you could win in a real fight outside the practice arena?’ Mischa asked.

‘Yes,’ Wicked and Truth said together. Their hands were already near weapons. I stepped away from Jean-Claude’s embrace so I could have my hands free for weapons, too. Logically, Mischa was just being shitty, which was very him, but logic is seldom what starts a fight.

‘I value your skills, Mischa, Goran’ – Jean-Claude nodded at the second man – ‘or I would have left you both back in St Louis, but I do not value your skills enough to be insulted, and if I will ask plainly, did you mean to threaten me?’

‘No, my lord, I did not,’ but his voice was tight when he said it, as if the words and the emotion behind them didn’t match.

‘Then you are admitting that your language is that imprecise,’ Jean-Claude said in a voice that was mild, even pleasant.

‘No,’ Mischa said, as we’d all known he would.

‘Then you did threaten me.’

Mischa looked confused. ‘No, my lord, not …’ He seemed to think about what he’d said and finally added very lamely, ‘not on purpose.’

‘Goran, is your master this much a disaster as a spy?’

‘No, my lord Jean-Claude,’ Goran said, but there was the quirk of a smile on his lips as he bowed. He was so much bigger than Mischa that you expected the movement to be less elegant, but it wasn’t. The werebear’s bow was as graceful as the vampire’s had been. I guess he’d had nearly as many centuries to practice.

Mischa’s hands were in fists at his side. He was obviously fighting to control his temper, and that was just weird in a vampire this old. They were the ultimate in control. He’d been like that from the moment I met him, whereas most of the other Harlequin were smooth and controlled, even empty, as if they waited for the next emotion to be given to them, rather than already owning it themselves. I found that a little disturbing, but that was just vampire creepy; Mischa had a temper.

‘It must gall you and many of the other Harlequin that I am your new lord and master. I know that the Dark Mother sent out her guard to spy on the vampires she felt were powerful enough to be on her council, or powerful enough to be a threat. I am betting I wasn’t on the watch list, that I never entered her mind as a threat or rival to anyone, let alone her, am I right?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ Mischa said.

‘It was a game of patience and subterfuge worthy of one of us,’ Goran said, and he smiled as he said it.

‘A lovely compliment,’ Jean-Claude said.

Mischa scowled at them both.

‘What bothers you more, Mischa: that Belle Morte’s concubine is your ruler, or that none of the all-knowing Harlequin saw me as a power to be reckoned with until it was too late?’

‘You make them wonder what else they might have missed,’ Goran said. ‘It undermines their sense of superiority.’ He smiled when he said it.

Mischa whirled in a movement faster than the eye could follow, or faster than mine could. I actually didn’t see him hit Goran in the face, just the blur and the big man staggering backward, blood scarlet on his mouth.

Wicked and Truth were just there, one second beside us, the next on either side of Mischa. Truth was there to block Mischa’s arm as he tried to strike Goran backhanded as his fist returned its arc from the first blow. Mischa’s other hand came at Truth, and he blocked that, too, which led to a knee coming up, and the fight was on.

I had trouble following the moves, but it looked like neither of them was landing a blow on the other, so it was like a full-speed, full-contact practice bout, except they meant to harm each other, if they could get through the other’s guard. Then Goran moved at Truth’s back, but Wicked was there to back the bigger man up, and suddenly we had two impressive fights in a space barely big enough for one.

Why didn’t the guards from the hallway come rushing into the room? Because they were all nearly silent; only the impact of flesh against flesh and sharp exhales of breath, cloth, shoes on the carpet, noises I never heard when I was fighting were suddenly loud in the silence of the room. Jean-Claude watched, and I debated on what to do. They were all four our bodyguards, his bodyguards, and here they were fighting one another. They could end up wounded themselves, until we’d be down some more guards. If it had just been me I might have tried to stop it, but Jean-Claude was right there, and he was the king, the prez, the head of all the vampires. If he didn’t stop it, was it my place to step in, or did I wait? Question was, what was I waiting for, and if I did decide to try to stop the fight, how would I do it?

Mischa tried for the beginnings of a roundhouse kick, but there wasn’t room, and his leg hit a coffin, which stopped the movement and tumbled the coffin over. It also made him stumble, hesitate, and that was all Truth needed.

He hit Mischa in the solar plexus enough to double him over and followed it with a blow to the face that spun him half around and collapsed him over another coffin.

I heard the outer door open and glanced away from the fight long enough to see Lisandro and Emmanuel spill into the room, guns drawn. I held up my hand, not sure if it was needed; I didn’t want anyone to get shot, but the silence was suddenly nothing but the labored breathing of fewer men. I turned back to find Goran collapsed on the ground and Mischa still draped motionless over the coffin.

Wicked and Truth stood, chests rising and falling with their breaths, which you didn’t always see in vampires, because they didn’t always breathe. It meant they’d worked hard to win the fight, but they had won; more than that, they’d knocked them both cold, which wasn’t easy against either a vampire or a wereanimal. The brothers grinned at each other, a fierce baring of happy teeth. Wicked grinned wide enough to flash fang, which I’d never seen him do; I could only see the back of Truth’s head, so I missed seeing his fangs do their happy, tired flash. Blood started to trickle down the side of Wicked’s face, proving that Goran had landed at least one blow.

‘Wow,’ said Emmanuel.

‘I can smell that Goran’s alive, but is Mischa?’ Lisandro asked. His gun was pointed at the carpet, but not holstered.

It hadn’t even occurred to me that when vampires fight among themselves, they might be able to kill each other by snapping the spine. I said out loud, ‘Mischa’s too ancient and powerful to die from a snapped spine, isn’t he?’

Lisandro shrugged.

I glanced at Jean-Claude.

He sighed and started forward.

Truth started to bend over Mischa, as if to check for a pulse.

‘No,’ I said, loud and firm.

Truth looked at me but kept back from the fallen vampire. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Other than the fact that you may have killed one of our bodyguards?’ I said.

Truth had the grace to look embarrassed then, but he said, ‘Yes, besides that.’

I took out the Browning Hi Power and placed it against Mischa’s temple, gun to flesh. ‘Now check for signs of life,’ I said.

Truth looked a little puzzled, but he bent over the fallen vampire.

I didn’t keep looking at where my gun was pointed; I’d feel if his head moved. I looked farther down the body like you do in a fight; you look at the center of the body where the arms and legs attach to see if they move, because if the center does not move, nothing moves. I saw his hand tense not on his holstered gun, but near it.

‘Don’t move, Mischa, not an inch.’ My voice was low, careful, honed down with practice and control, because when you have the barrel of your gun pressed to someone’s temple, your finger on the trigger, you have to have control, because without it you might flinch and blow their brains out.

‘How did you know he was bluffing?’ Truth asked.

‘I hunt vampires, remember?’

‘Lisandro is going to disarm you, Mischa, just until you cool down.’

‘I can disarm him,’ Truth said.

‘No, you can’t,’ I said. ‘If you touch him he might try to kill you, and then I’d have to shoot him.’

Wicked said, ‘Goran is coming around.’

It was Jean-Claude who said, ‘Goran, can you hear me?’

The werebear’s voice was a little shaky and too deep from the dregs of the extra testosterone from the fight. ‘I hear you, my lord.’

‘This fight is over, do you understand me?’

‘I understand.’

‘Lisandro is going to disarm your master so he will not do anything unfortunate.’

Mischa spoke carefully, and I could feel the small movements against my gun as he enunciated his words. ‘That won’t be necessary. I am quite calm.’

‘You were going to shoot Truth as he bent over you,’ I said.

‘I thought about it,’ he said, ‘but your gun against my head dissuaded me.’

‘And when my gun isn’t against your head, what’s to dissuade you then?’ I asked.

‘My temper is hot, but your cold steel has dampened the flame of it.’

‘Fancy talk, but how do I know you won’t get all hot and bothered later?’

‘Mischa,’ Jean-Claude said.

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Give us your word of honor that you will not in any way, through any means, seek retaliation against Truth, or Wicked, for this incident.’

Mischa went so profoundly still that I could feel the change in his body through the barrel of my gun against his head. I knew that if I’d dared to raise my gaze from his center body mass to his face, it would have that unreadable emptiness to it that the old vampires got when they went very still, as if they were well-crafted statues rather than people.

‘Mischa,’ Jean-Claude said, ‘give your word.’

‘And if I do not?’

‘Then ma petite will finish this argument for you.’

‘My death may take Goran’s life, as well.’

‘It would be a shame to lose him for such an inexplicable reason, but he understood the risks when he joined the battle at your side.’

‘Truth stopped Mischa from hitting you a second time,’ Wicked said. ‘Why did you join the fight on his side?’

‘He is my master,’ Goran said, as if that explained everything.

‘Wives attack the police when they try to take their abusive husbands to jail. It’s one of the reasons that police hate to go on domestic disturbance calls,’ I said.

‘Why would you help your abuser?’ Truth asked.

‘I don’t know, but they do,’ I said.

‘Better the devil you know than the unknown,’ Jean-Claude said.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Never mind, ma petite; Mischa, give us your word and we can all go to bed for the day.’

Now that he’d said it, I could feel the press of dawn above us like the hand of some giant hesitating over a butterfly, except we were the butterflies and knew what was about to happen.

Mischa gave his word.

‘You may put up your gun, ma petite. Old-school vampires are many things, but we are not oath breakers.’

I hesitated for a fraction of a second, but he was right. It was one of the few things that made dealing with the really old vampires better than dealing with the weaker modern ones. Modern vampires lied just as easily as people did, and their word wasn’t worth shit.

I took my finger off the trigger and eased my gun back. The mark of my barrel was imprinted on his skin where I’d pressed it tight. If he’d been human it might even have bruised. I stepped back before I raised my gaze enough to meet his blue eyes. I expected to see anger in his eyes, but instead I saw respect, even admiration. I had not expected that.

‘May I get up?’ he asked.

Jean-Claude said, ‘You may.’

Mischa kept looking at me and didn’t move.

‘You heard your lord and master,’ I said.

‘But he will not kill me and you will.’

‘He won’t shoot you,’ I said. ‘That’s not the same thing as not being willing to kill you.’

‘Fair enough, my dark queen, but you have the gun and he does not.’

‘Get up, Mischa, but don’t do anything stupid.’

He sat up carefully, never taking his gaze from me. ‘You would have killed me.’

‘It’s my job description,’ I said.

‘Killing someone you have a warrant of execution for, who has already taken human life, is one thing, but you would simply shoot me for thinking about harming Truth. Either you value him as your lover more than we thought, or you would have done it to protect any of your guard.’

‘I don’t point a gun at someone unless I’m willing to pull the trigger. I don’t pull the trigger unless I’m willing to kill. And I never bluff, Mischa; do we understand each other?’

‘No, but if you are asking, do I believe that you will kill me, then yes, yes, I do. I’m looking in your eyes and there is no remorse, no relief that you didn’t have to shoot me. You simply don’t care one way or the other, no real emotion at all about what has just happened. I didn’t know that about you.’

‘Know what?’ I asked.

‘That you killed coldly. I thought you would kill in hot blood like you fuck.’

‘I don’t enjoy killing,’ I said. ‘I enjoy sex.’

‘I enjoy killing,’ Mischa said, and smiled just a little bit when he said it, which was disturbing. He watched my face and I knew he’d caught that flicker of distaste from me. ‘That bothered you, that I enjoy killing. Why did that bother you? I am no worse than your werelion, Nicky, but he is your lover. If you were squeamish about such things, why would you fuck him?’

‘Enough,’ Jean-Claude said, and his voice was harsh enough that everyone looked at him.

Mischa and Goran bowed low again. Truth and Wicked did more bows from the neck and put their right fists over their hearts. I couldn’t see what Lisandro and Emmanuel did, but I doubted either of the wererats showed that formal a reaction. I just stood there not quite sure why everything had turned so stylized.

‘Dawn is almost upon us.’ He held his hand out to me and I went to him, holstering my gun as I moved. He took me in his arms and kissed me less thoroughly than he had earlier, but I could feel the sun on that edge of hovering nearness. There had been nights when I fought just to have the sun rise and help save me from the vampires, and now I was in the arms and heart of the biggest vampire in the country. The irony wasn’t lost on me, but I’d stopped worrying about it.

Jean-Claude spoke low, but quickly. ‘Asher will be here tomorrow night. The territory he is visiting is close enough that he will be driven here and then fly back with us when we leave.’

‘And he wanted to see you sooner,’ I said.

‘He wanted to see all of us,’ Jean-Claude said.

I sort of doubted that, but I kept it to myself. I knew who Asher loved best, and it sure as hell wasn’t me, or Nathaniel. I was pretty sure it was Jean-Claude but wasn’t positive where Dev fell in the list of Asher’s affections.

‘So the talk went well?’ I asked.

‘Very well,’ Jean-Claude said, and smiled, giving that flash of happiness I’d noticed when he first walked out of the back room. It made me smile and I went on tiptoe to press my smile against his, because when someone you love is happy, you’re happy for them, even if what they’re happy about is another love of their life. Or that’s how it works for us. The only person in our little group who suffered from jealousy was Asher. Here was hoping that when he came back to us, he left the green-eyed monster behind. I’d have crossed my fingers if they hadn’t been too busy touching Jean-Claude.