Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter #16 - Blood Noir (39 page)

“Thanks, but no thanks,” I said.

“If you truly sent out a call this powerful by accident, Anita, it will happen again. It’s not a conscious thing always. It happens when you come into your power. Sometimes at puberty, but most of the time somewhere in your twenties. You look about the right age for it.”

“I’m older than I look,” I said.

“Not by much,” he said.

Crispin tugged a little against Alex’s arm. Not like he meant it, but more like he didn’t realize he was doing it.

“I’m almost thirty,” I said.

“You do look younger. I’d have pegged you for under twenty-five.”

I shrugged. “Good genetics.”

“If you say so,” but he didn’t sound like he believed it.

Frankly, with marks of at least two vampires on me, who was I to say that I wasn’t aging a little slower than normal. Not to mention that wereanimals aged slower than human-normal, too. I guess he was allowed his skepticism.

“Please, Anita,” Crispin said, tugging a little harder against the other man’s hand on his arm. I’d seen that look in enough faces to understand it. Alex could say it was tiger magic, but it looked like what I’d accidentally done to a few of the vampires and wereanimals in St. Louis. It was file://L:\Azures L_Disc Shared Dowloads\EBooks\Anita Blake Series 1-17\(Book16] - Bl... 10/18/2009

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Belle Morte’s power to be able to roll someone with lust, love, heart’s desire. I had the ability to own someone. Trouble was I wasn’t much into ownership. If I wanted to own something that would give me undying loyalty, I’d buy a dog.

I looked into those blue tiger eyes, and Richard was right, it was the look that Requiem had given me once. We’d freed him, because he was a master vampire, and had enough power, with help, to free himself. The help had been telling him that I’d never touch him again unless he freed himself. Reverse psychology, but it worked. Sort of. Requiem still liked me a lot better than I wanted him to like me.

“Go with Alex, Crispin. When you’re both cleaned up, call first, but I won’t just cast you out. Okay?”

The look of relief in his face made me a little sick to my stomach. I hadn’t done this on purpose. Shit.

“Why aren’t you as affected as he is?” Richard asked.

Alex answered, “I told you, it hits the young men harder. Ones who haven’t been mated before. I’m older than I look, too.”

“I’d say thirty, maybe a little over,” Richard said.

“You’re off by a decade and some change.”

“Do all the weretigers wear this well?” I asked.

“Those of us of pure blood, yes.” He put his sunglasses on, then reached for the doorknob with a firm grip on Crispin’s arm.

“So you shouldn’t have been forced to answer my call,” I said. He looked back at me, his eyes lost behind the black lenses. “No, I shouldn’t have. Only the head of a clan can call all the unmated males regardless of age or experience. If you were a real weretiger from just one clan, it would be seen as a direct challenge to the clan leader’s authority, and she’d have to kill you.”

“But because I called to all the clans, they don’t know what to do with me,” I said.

“I’d bet that, but then I’ve spent the last two days with you, here. I’ll try to call my family and see what my queen is planning to do. Just like you want privacy to talk with the wolves, I want it to talk to the tigers. So we’ll clean up. I’ll make some calls. We’ll call you, and we’ll go from there. Hopefully, I’ll drop Crispin off here, then go to work.”

“Why
hopefully
?” I asked.

“I may not be looking at you with big doe eyes, but trust me, girl, I do feel it. You’ve rolled me, make no mistake about that, but I am Li Da of the Red clan, son of Queen Cho Chun. If I’d been female I would have been groomed to lead after her. But even being just a man, my bloodline means something. It gives me certain protections from the powerful bitches. My mother has conspired for years to get me close enough to one of the clan queens to be called to breed. She’ll be thrilled that you managed to get through all my shields. Baby or no baby, she’ll invite you to join our clan, because file://L:\Azures L_Disc Shared Dowloads\EBooks\Anita Blake Series 1-17\(Book16] - Bl... 10/18/2009

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once you’ve broken a male tiger to your call this roughly, I can’t really say no. Not if you force it.”

His voice was so bitter that it almost hurt to hear it.

I don’t know what I would have said to all that, but Shang-Da saved me from having to say anything. “You don’t look Chinese or Korean.”

“We never did. It’s one of the reasons they were able to kill us off. We couldn’t blend in. Those of us who escaped to other countries were forced to intermarry with the humans we found. There haven’t been pure Chinese bloodlines since the time of Emperor Qin Shi Huang.”

“The emperor who unified China and burned all books that he didn’t agree with,” Shang-Da said.

“Yeah, that one,” Alex said.

“That’s more than two thousand years ago.”

“Clan tigers talk about going home the way that Jews talk about the Holy Land. We are in exile, and as long as the communists rule we always will be. A few of us went back when the emperors were overthrown, but the communists saw us as western spies. They killed us along with their rebels.”

“My family has never spoken of this,” Shang-Da said.

“The emperor destroyed any writings about us.”

“The fox people still live in the homeland. Hidden, but they are there.”

“Are the dragons still there?”

“No,” Shang-Da said, “the last of them fled when the communists took over. Communists may not believe in God or magic, but they hired wizards to clear the land of rebels. Rebels were anything non-human.”

I knew that dragons in China weren’t just animals like they were in most of the rest of the world. In China they’d been shapeshifters; people. I didn’t say it out loud, though. If I kept my mouth shut they might just keep talking. Sometimes if people forget you’re there, you learn more. Silence can be a greater asset than any question.

“So we are all in exile.”

“As you say, there are still fox people there, but they hide in plain sight.”

“They can look like everyone else,” Alex said.

“Yes,” Shang-Da said.

Crispin was looking from one to the other of us. He almost looked like the history lesson was as new to him as it was to me. Interesting.

“Las Vegas is our home. We don’t talk about going anywhere else,” Crispin said. file://L:\Azures L_Disc Shared Dowloads\EBooks\Anita Blake Series 1-17\(Book16] - Bl... 10/18/2009

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Alex looked at me, then back to Crispin. “We need to go and clean up. Let’s try to avoid any of my fellow reporters. I really don’t want to have to explain why I’m coming out of this room in a robe, with another man in a robe.”

“Homophobic?” I said.

He shook his head. “Being considered bisexual would be fine, but Crispin is a known weretiger. Your boyfriend in the shower is a known werewolf. It’s not my sexual preference I’m trying to hide.”

“I’ve got another friend who’s a reporter who basically said the same thing.”

He leaned in toward the door and drew in a long breath of air. “I smell the guards, but no one else. We’ll go and take the stairs.”

Alex opened the door. Crispin moved as if to come farther into the room again. Alex took hold of his arm and pulled him toward the partially open door.

Crispin pulled against the other man’s arm. He looked at me. His face was raw with need, and something else. Was it fear that I saw in those blue eyes?

“Come on, Crispin, we need to clean up. I think I may even have some clothes that will fit you.”

Crispin stayed at the door, staring at me. I knew what the look was now. Pain, fear, and longing, all on his face, so raw that it hurt to see it.

“You’ve rolled him,” Richard said.

“Not on purpose.”

“No, but unlike some of the others you’ve accidentally rolled, this one is…” He shook his head.

“Young.”

I knew what he meant. It wasn’t the actual age. Twenty-one was plenty grown-up. Requiem had been several hundred years old when I accidentally bespelled him. That gives a man a lot of character to draw on, to help him break free. As Alex Pinn had said, it hits you harder when you’ve never been called before.

I sighed and went to him. He smiled at me in a way that you never want a stranger to smile. Too warm, too damn happy. It frightened me. I’d made Requiem break free of my powers, but he was a master vampire. He had his own power. Crispin was a weretiger, but there was no feel of power to him. I wasn’t certain he had enough of him inside yet to break free of me, and without his willing help, I didn’t know how to free him of what I and Marmee Noir had done. Shit. Crispin touched my arm when I was close enough. I didn’t try to stop him. But the moment he touched me, I thought, why did I want him to leave? It was silly. He could stay, of course he needed to stay. He was my tiger, my white knight, my…

I jerked back from him. I ignored the hurt look on his face. “Go with Alex. Clean up, get some clothes. Or see if your vampire friend—Lucian, right?—is still here.”

Crispin nodded.

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“See if he’s still in the hotel. Your own luggage might be here somewhere. Your own clothes. Go, do what I ask.”

“Can I have a good-bye kiss?”

Richard and I said, “No,” at the same time.

I glared at Richard, but said, “Alex, get him out of here.”

I kept my face turned away as the tigers left. I went across the room to the luggage. I needed clothes.

“What happened when you touched him just now?” Richard asked.

“I didn’t want him to leave. It was like a lighter version of what you did to me when you were projecting your emotions all over me. I thought it was just you, but if Crispin did it, even a paler version, maybe it’s something that Marmee Noir did to me.”

“What?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” I laid the Browning beside the suitcase, and started pulling clothes out.

“You need to know what she did to you.” This from Shang-Da.

I was surprised that he cared enough to comment. “I need to call Jean-Claude.”

“Can’t you just open the marks?” Richard said.

“Yeah, but when I fed off your anger, he shielded. He wasn’t sure how to digest anger. I think the phone will be safer.”

“You’re afraid whatever is happening will leak onto Jean-Claude,” Richard said.

“Yes.” I had enough clothes to make me happy. Now I just needed to change. If it had just been Richard, I might have simply gotten dressed, but I didn’t want to dress in front of Jamil and ShangDa. I know it sounds weird. I mean I was naked in front of them, and they were cool about it. So why was getting dressed more intimate? I don’t know, it just was. I don’t like men who are not my boyfriends watching me put on clothes. There’s always a moment when they let you know with their eyes that they are watching, and not in a completely neutral manner. Or maybe not, maybe it’s just my hang-up, but regardless, I wanted privacy.

“Why go into the bathroom to dress?” Richard said.

“Either I go into the bathroom, or Jamil and Shang-Da go into the hallway.”

“You’re already naked, Anita,” Jamil said, “we can’t see more.”

I shrugged. “Humor me.”

The men all exchanged glances, and then Jamil said, “Do you want us in the hallway, or her in the bathroom?”

“I don’t want her alone with Jason in the shower.”

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I might have protested that, but we all have our weakness. Seeing an attractive man all wet was one of mine.

Jamil went for the door, and Shang-Da trailed him. No one argued. The door shut behind them, and we were suddenly alone. The silence was thicker than it should have been. I glanced at him, and there was that look in his eyes. That look that was very Richard. He was such a Boy Scout most of the time, such a good son, a good boy, a good teacher, a good man. Then, sometimes when we were alone, he’d look at me with those dark eyes. That one look that said underneath all the goodness was someone who liked to be bad. Someone who understood the darkness in me, as well as the light. If he hadn’t hated the darkness in his own soul so terribly much, I could have loved him forever. But you can’t love someone who hates himself so much, and hates you for loving the parts of himself that he hates the most. It’s too complicated a dance to ever win. I ignored that dark look, and tried my best to pretend he wasn’t there. I actually turned my back on him to dress. It worked for a while, and then I felt him behind me, close behind me. I turned in time to keep his outstretched hand from touching me. I had jeans on, and a bra, but the shirt was still on the bed with my gun.

“Anita,” he said.

“Richard, don’t.”

“Don’t what?” he asked.

I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see him. That always made it a little easier to turn away. “When you touched me earlier, it was like magic. If it hadn’t hurt, or Crispin hadn’t pulled me away, I would have let you do anything. It’s not real. It’s some metaphysical problem.”

“How can you say that?” he said, and his voice was closer. He moved so close that I could feel the heat of his body against my bare skin. It wasn’t his otherworldly energy I was sensing. It was just him.

I stepped back, eyes still closed, and nearly knocked the bedside lamp over. We both grabbed for it, and it put his body next to mine. His hand over mine around the lamp. We had one of those frozen, awkward moments.

I looked up at him, and he was so close, too close. He bent in to close that distance and kiss me. I threw myself backward onto the floor, knocking the trash can over, as I crab-walked back until my back hit the bathroom door hard.

“Richard, please, please, don’t you feel that something’s wrong? We’re always attracted to each other, but not like this.”