Hit List

11

RABORN STOPPED US on the way to the car. “Where are you two going?”

“To see if I can find a clue,” I said.

“So you’ll miss the hunt just because they wouldn’t give you the warrant ?” he said.

“We’ll be back for the hunt,” Edward said, and went around to the driver’s side of the car, which left me with Raborn. Perfect.

“I heard a lot of rumors about you, Blake, but I never heard that you’d leave before the monster was dead. Everyone said you were tough.”

“I am tough,” I said. “You let the dogs do their best, but they won’t find these things, not today, not just with dogs.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

Edward leaned over and pushed the door open as a sort of hint that I needed to get in now. “Call it experience,” I said, and climbed in the open door. He was still frowning at us as we drove off.

I had Alex Pinn’s cell number and I’d called it, but he didn’t answer it. A man I didn’t know answered it. “Alex’s phone, whom may I say is calling?” It sounded way too formal, and I was betting an assistant of some kind.

“This is Anita Blake, to whom am I speaking?”

Edward glanced at me as he pulled out onto the highway, but he didn’t ask questions he knew I’d explain later.

“Then, this is the phone of Li Da of the Red Clan, son of Queen Cho Chun. Why are you calling our prince?”

“I think that’s private between Alex and me.”

“You are not alone?” He made it a question.

“No.”

“Can the person with you not be trusted?”

“He can be, but I share as few secrets of the clan with outsiders as I can.”

The man was silent for a moment, then said, “That is wise.”

“I do my best. What is your name?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m talking to you and it’s polite to know someone’s name when you address them.”

He hesitated and then said, “You can call me Donny.”

“Call you Donny,” I said.

“It will do until we see how much you can be trusted.”

“Okay, Donny, where’s Alex and why are you answering his phone?”

“Li Da is with our queen. She knew you would call him.”

“She did, did she?”

“Queen Cho Chun said you would not be able to resist the call of each other, and she was correct.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I was trying to feed the ardeur, basically a metaphysical booty call, but from the moment I’d accidentally tied Alex to me, his mother had been pushing for it to be more. She’d have preferred he settle down with a nice little weretigress, but she wanted me to choose among the clans and make Alex my official tiger king, which would make the red clan the top cat in the world of weretigers. I had no intention of doing that for a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones was that neither Alex nor I wanted it. Not to mention that Jean-Claude and all the other men in my life would probably get pissy if I ever actually married anyone, especially if that one wasn’t any of them. But I’d found that all the clan queens were pushy bitches, and serious as a heart attack about bloodlines, power, and marriage.

“Look, Donny, Alex is your clan prince, that’s true, but he’s also my tiger to call.”

“Come to our meeting place, and if you can call him away from our queen’s side then he is yours, but if you cannot then you are not the Mistress of Tigers.”

I swore softly under my breath. “Are you all aware that I’m in your city trying to solve murders? I’m trying to save the lives of other weretigers.”

“None of the dead are clan tigers; they are all survivors of an attack. Their deaths are unfortunate, but not clan business.”

“Do you understand that if they finish up the lone tigers that aren’t part of a clan, they may turn on the clans themselves?”

“We can defend ourselves, Anita Blake.”

“Pretty to think so, but no tiger clan has faced these guys in hundreds, if not thousands of years. They wiped out all of you guys in your homeland, all the weretigers regardless of clan color.”

“Legend says we were unprepared. We will not be this time.”

I listened to the certainty in his voice and knew it was a mistake, but I also knew that nothing I could say over the phone would change his mind. I even knew that it wasn’t his mind I had to change; it was Queen Cho Chun that I needed to convince. This was her certainty, her arrogance.

“Fine, Donny, just tell me where to meet and we’ll go from there, but I really do need to see Alex sooner rather than later.”

“You would feed on our prince as if he were the lowest prostitute on the street. We do not approve of how you treat him.”

Again, I knew it was the queen talking, but I let it go. Donny was a good little mouthpiece, and arguing with the help never changed any boss’s mind, so I didn’t try.

“That’s between Alex and me,” I said.

“What affects our prince affects the clan.”

I was beginning to see why Alex had stayed the hell away from his clan for years before I met him. He was a reporter, and a good one. He’d done an amazing piece on the war in Afghanistan that had won a Peabody, which was a very big deal if you were a journalist. He was also in deep cover pretending to be human. He wore brown contacts to hide his yellow-gold eyes with their rim of orange red, like the sun rimmed in fire. He was pure clan; his eyes and hair proved that. The hair he passed off as a funky dye job, but the eyes, he had to hide those.

“Fine, I am the Mistress of Tigers, I am the first vampire in a thousand years to be able to use that title, and I do not argue with underlings, Donny. Tel me where to meet Alex and his mom, or I will call him to me across the city, but bear in mind that I’m not real precise when I do a roll call for tigers. I could end up with every unmated male in your clan coming to me, and then how would they pretend to be human?”

“You cannot do that.”

“Do you mean I can’t, or I shouldn’t?”

He was silent for a moment, and then he said, “We felt your call when you bound our prince to you. I know you can do what you say . . . Mistress, but I would ask you not to do it.”

“It’s not my first choice, Donny, I just want some alone time with my red tiger to call, that’s all.”

His breath came out heavy, and then he said, “I will give you the address to meet our guards. They will escort you in to see the queen and prince.”

“Great.” I opened my phone up so I could jot the address down as a note, and said, “I’m ready to write it down, shoot.”

He told me. I typed it in, and then the phone call was over. Donny didn’t seem to like me. Fine with me, I wasn’t here to win any popularity contests.

I gave Edward the address and he started heading that way. He seemed to know Seattle a lot better than a man on his first visit. I’d asked him if he was familiar with the city, but he’d just smiled that mysterious smile of his and not answered. Mr. Secret.

“Could you do what you threatened to do? Could you call all their unmated males to you like some sort of succubus Pied Piper?”

I thought about it, then finally said, “I’m not sure; maybe. The tigers tell me I put out a call to all the unmated males in the country when I first hit this power, and that was accidental. The clans managed to keep the men from getting on buses and planes and coming to me, but that was an accidental call. If I did it for real and really meant it, I don’t know if they could stop them. I also don’t know how bespelled they’d be when they got to me, and if they’d all expect sex.” I laughed, but it was a nervous laugh. “The red clan numbers in the hundreds. I’m good, but I’m not that good.”

“Then best not put out the welcome mat,” he said, as he turned onto a narrow side street.

“It was a threat, Edward. I make a lot of threats I hope I don’t have to carry out.”

“I don’t,” he said.

“I know, you mean every threat.”

He turned and looked at me as he waited for the light to turn green. Sunglasses hid his eyes, but I knew his face well enough to know the whole look. It was his cold stare, the I-could-kill-you-and-not-blink look.

“Save the scary for someone else, Edward.”

“I can’t let you go in there without me unless I trust them to keep you from getting kidnapped by Marmee Noir.”

I sighed. “I figured you’d say that. You have to promise me that nothing you see or learn today will ever be used against them on a hunt.”

He frowned at me. “I hate it when you do this.”

“The light’s green,” I said, just as the car behind us honked.

He drove forward, but said, “If I don’t promise, you’ll go in without me.”

“Yep.”

“Damn it,” he said, softly.

“Yep,” I said.

“I promise,” he said.

I smiled at him. “I knew you would.”

“Don’t push it,” he said, and he sounded genuinely angry. But he’d work through it, and once he promised, he’d keep his word. The red clan was safe from Edward, and I was safe because he was keeping me that way. Now, if I could just get through the interview with my would-be mother-in-law, the day would be perfect.