Anita Blake 18 - Flirt (11 page)

Nicky breathed against my hair, “Put your beast in the deep freeze, Anita, please.” He was holding me tight enough that I knew his body was happy to be pressed against mine. He meant the
please
.

My skin felt so hot, but it didn’t feel bad like a fever; it felt wonderful. Part of me wondered what it might be like to finally give in and shift, but not today. I couldn’t afford to think that today.

Jacob’s phone started ringing as if on cue. He looked at me. “I have to get this, and you have to regain your control.” He kept his grip on my face, but used his other hand to get his phone out of his pocket.

He watched my face like he’d memorize it, but spoke: “Stand down, just follow and observe.” He started to put the phone away, but it rang again. “Yeah, no, just observe, just follow. Stand down until further orders.”

I realized that was three calls. All of them were safe unless Jacob called back and told them to shoot them. Him dead or unable to phone would fix that.

“Chill,” Nicky said, “chill, damn it.” His words made sense, but he was starting to nuzzle my hair. The lioness had slowed and was sniffing the air. I ground my hips into Nicky just a little bit. He made a soft wordless sound.

“Shit,” Jacob said. He moved his free hand along my neck until he found the hilt of the big knife under my hair and jacket. He got a handful of my hair, moving it out of the way as he drew the knife out. Nicky moved back enough for him to do it. The size of the blade put more of a damper on their amour than anything I could have done.

Jacob held it up to the light. It gleamed, and the edge was as sharp as it looked. “This is as big as her forearm; how the fuck did you miss it?”

Nicky blinked up at the blade. “I was searching her when the lioness did its thing. My bad.”

Jacob sighed, and lowered the blade. I couldn’t read the look on his face. It was partly sad and partly something else. “It’s okay, Nicky. You’ve never been around a Regina when she’s in heat. A pride can tear itself apart before she picks a mate.”

The lioness rolled onto her back, rolling on the ground like any cat. It made me writhe against Nicky, and he didn’t exactly fight the sensation. I was going to lose control, and sex would be the least of what we might do. I tried to think.

“My first pride died that way, because the Regina wanted the strongest Rex, so she waited for the winner. I promised myself I would keep my men away from shit like that.”

Nicky changed his grip, letting me have my arms, picking me up around the waist, lifting me off the ground. My hands went to his arm, holding on, but not fighting. I was out of weapons. What would help me? What would help me stop them? I mean, I was good at sex, or so the men in my life told me, but good enough to make them turn down a shitload of money and betray their other men? I wasn’t that good. No one was that good. If sex wouldn’t help me, I had to stop what was happening. Chill, he had said. I tried to call my necromancy, like I had in the restaurant, but the lion was too loud in my head. I could smell lion. I think it was Nicky, but it was as if the world were drowning in the thick musk of it. I couldn’t breathe past it. I didn’t want cold blood, I wanted hot.

Nicky collapsed onto the leather couch with me under him. The height difference meant that he wasn’t lined up for anything, but his hands slipped under my skirt, and I struggled out from under him, spilling myself to the carpet. Nicky stayed on the couch, staring at me with one wide eye, his breathing labored.

I crawled backward away from him, and he let me, but I’d forgotten about the other lion. It was too careless for words, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. The lioness was eating what made me
me
. I understood in that moment that I didn’t have to shift to lose myself. I crawled into Jacob’s legs and started forward, but he reached down, grabbed my arms, and pulled me to my feet. I was suddenly staring into his face from inches away as he bent that tall body down to me. He said, “Oh, God.” It was more a cry for help than a sound of passion.

I felt his other arm move and went to block it without thinking. My hand traced down his arm to find my knife. “Is this really what you want to stick in me, Jacob?”

He swallowed so hard it sounded painful. “Don’t do this.”

“You first,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Call off your cats, don’t earn the second half of Bennington’s money.”

He shook his head. “You aren’t my queen yet.”

Nicky came behind me, hands sliding over my back. Jacob growled at him, but the younger man said, “We don’t have to fight. She shares just fine.” He ground himself into me from behind, shoving me against Jacob. I was suddenly held between both of them, and they were both hard and ready. I couldn’t help but react to it, writhing between the two of them. It was Jacob who pulled me back from the other man, and said, “I’m Rex of this pride. I don’t share.”

“That’s what destroyed your first pride,” Nicky said. “Didn’t you learn anything from that?”

“I learned that if you are king, then be king.” He kissed me, hard and fierce, so that I had to open my mouth, let him inside, or he’d have cut my lips on my teeth. He was all hands and mouth and need. My lioness didn’t like him. She snarled inside my head. He didn’t share; the pride was all about sharing. My life was all about sharing. The group mattered more than anything else. The group had to survive.

I pushed him back enough to break the kiss. I snarled into his face. “I rule myself! I don’t need another king.”

Something crashed into him, and I had a breath to realize it was Nicky, and then they were rolling on the ground fighting for real. I didn’t stay to watch. Jacob had dropped my big blade. I picked it up and ran for the door that Bennington had gone through. If he died, the job died with him. That worked for me.

A lion roared behind me, and I didn’t look back to see who it was, but I used the speed that my beasts had given me and ran. I had the speed but not all the senses, so I had a second before the door opened and I was staring at a tall, dark-haired man. He smelled like lion. The blade struck out in a blur of silver. Action was so far ahead of thought that I had sliced him from ribs to belt, and was starting to bring the knife back for a second blow, as his fist struck out at me. I was able to move back a little, but the speed was too much, and I was too committed to moving forward. His fist blurred out and hit me in the face. It was like being hit by a baseball bat: pressure, momentum, no pain, just a stop. The inside of my head just stopped like my brain had run into a wall. There wasn’t even time to think,
Oh, he hit me
. It was just the blow and I was down. The lights went out and so did I.

THE FIRST SENSATION I had was of bare dirt under my hands. The ground was cool against the backs of my thighs through the hose. I could feel walls around me, that enclosed feeling, but there was a thread of wind as if there were a window open somewhere. The wind smelled of trees and grass. The dirt smelled fresh and cool. A few night insects called, sluggish in the unusually cool summer temperatures. I drew in a bigger breath, and smelled soap and af tershave, and under that the nose-tickling scent of lion. That made me open my eyes to the sloping roof of a shed. The window above me was partially broken, and there were plenty of gaps between the boards on the walls, so the wind eased through at will. I heard the wind in tall trees high above us. It was blowing harder higher up. I’d expected whatever werelion was guarding me to say something, but I had to turn my head slowly to find Nicky sitting beside me in the dark. He had his knees drawn up to his chest, hugging them, his cheek resting on them so his good eye could see me. The moon was bright enough through the broken windows to let me see him clearly. The brightness of it reminded me that it was only two days until full moon. That might have been one reason they had so much trouble with my beast. The closer to full moon, the harder it was to control your beast.

Nicky gave a small smile. “Good, you’re not dead.”

“Was I supposed to be?” I asked.

“When Silas hit you and you dropped like that”—he shrugged—“it was a thought.”

“I didn’t even have time to worry about it. He was so fast.”

“You managed to move a little out of the way or he’d have snapped your neck.”

I started to try to get up, but he touched my arm. “Stay down a little longer. Once you get up, then you have to raise the dead.”

“Did you win the fight with Jacob?”

“You nearly dying sort of stopped it.” He grinned, a sudden whiteness in the dark. “And we had to help patch up Silas. You opened him up from”—he sat up so he could use his own body to demonstrate—“here at just under the ribs, across the stomach, to the upper intestine. I got to see his intestines on the outside. That is one sharp blade.”

I heard footsteps rustling the leaves, and the crooked door opened to show a dark shadow that turned out to be Jacob. “It wasn’t just the blade, Nick. She knows how to use a knife.” Apparently he’d heard us, too. He walked across the dirt floor and stood on the other side of me, looming over us both. I didn’t like that, so I tried to sit up.

“Slowly,” Nicky said, “you’ve been mostly dead all night.”

I stopped in midmotion. “Did you just quote
Princess Bride
?”

“I may not be able to quote books, but movies, those I can do.”

“He’s right, though,” Jacob said, and he reached down to offer a hand, “move slow; there’s no way to tell how much you’ve healed.”

I thought about not taking the hand, but I still needed to get out of this with all my people alive, which meant friendly was still better than unfriendly. His hand closed over mine and it was just a hand. He’d shut down his shields on his power so tight that nothing leaked out. When you’re as powerful as he was, that’s a lot of shielding. The less powerful, or the newbies, will leak faster, and leak more the closer to the full moon it gets. For Jacob it was just hard to hide that much light under your bushel basket. He lifted me gently to a sitting position. The world stayed steady, but a headache started on the right side of my face from jaw to temple, as if it had waited for me to sit up.

Jacob knelt on one knee beside me, still holding my hand. “How does it feel?”

“My head and face hurt, but honestly I’m surprised that it’s not worse. Aspirin would be great.”

“No, just in case you’re bleeding inside your skull you don’t want something that thins your blood.” He took his hand back and I let him. “You seem steady enough. Sit here for a few minutes, and then Nick will help you try standing. I’ll go comfort our client again.” He sounded disgusted, but he walked out, having to lift the crooked door to close it behind him. It still left an outline of moonlight on almost every side of it. The shed was so old that I could have torn out a board from the backside and gotten out; maybe Nicky was in here with me to see that I didn’t do that very thing.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“In an old shed,” he said.

I gave him the look the comment deserved. It made him smile. “You know what I meant, Nicky.”

“I think this used to be the caretaker’s shed, but now it’s a place to hide you out of sight, until you’re well enough to raise the dead.”

I took in a deeper breath and realized I could smell old marble. I’d been around it most of my adult life, and it actually did have an odor, if you were close enough to it, or surrounded by enough of it. “I take it this is the cemetery where Ilsa Bennington is buried.”

“How do you know we’re in a cemetery?”

I thought about lying, but decided to save my lies for later. “I can smell the marble headstones.”

He drew in a deep breath. “I can, too, but I wasn’t sure you could. You don’t shift, or that’s what we’re told.”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Why say it that way?”

I shrugged. “There’s always the chance that my body will complete the change someday. My situation is too rare to really know what will happen in the long run. So, is this where Ilsa is buried?”

“Yep, he found an old, out-of-the-way one so we wouldn’t be interrupted.”

“Yeah, without the right permits you can get arrested for disturbance of a corpse, or worse.” I turned my head, and the ache intensified as if some of the muscles or ligaments were bruised. Since I should have been dead, I was okay with that. Jean-Claude’s vampire marks had made me damn hard to kill. The thought made me realize that it was after dark and I could contact him by thought alone.

“You won’t be able to use metaphysics to contact your vampire master, or anyone else, Anita.” It was almost as if he’d read my thought, though I was pretty sure it was only coincidence.

“I didn’t . . . ,” I said.

“You were stronger metaphysically than we planned, so Jacob called in our team witch. She’s done something so that while you’re on this land you won’t be able to contact anyone mind to mind.”

“What if they try to contact me?”

He shook his head. “Nope, Ellen is good, and very thorough, and we’re also over two hours outside your city. Even if your guys break through, they’ll never be able to get to you in time to stop Jacob from telling the snipers to finish the job.”

It was my turn to try to tell if he was lying. I took a deep breath of the cool, earthy air, and there was nothing. He was as peaceful and empty as a still pool of water. It was strangely Zen, and very unlike most of the shapeshifters I knew.

“Besides, if Jacob or Ellen senses you trying to break through the barrier she’s put up, then Micah Callahan dies.” He said it with almost no change in inflection, and only the smallest speed of pulse.

My stomach clenched tight at that lack of inflection. It seemed worse that it didn’t bother him to talk about destroying someone I loved, someone who was a linchpin on which my happiness revolved. That it didn’t matter to him both helped and hurt. It hurt because lack of emotion can make people harder to manipulate, and helped because it made me calmer, made me understand the rules, or lack of them. I could play this game.

I fought the urge to search for the barrier the witch had put up, the same way I’d try a locked door, just in case. If this Ellen was any good at all, she’d sense me trying her barrier. I couldn’t risk what her reaction would be; if it had been a real door I could probably have rattled it a little without my “guards” getting upset, but how do you rattle a metaphysical barrier just a little? My powers tended to rely on brute force more than subtlety. I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk Micah like that. My voice came out steady; point for me. “Not that I’m complaining exactly, but why do you keep threatening to kill him first?”