Anita Blake 20 - Hit List (11 page)

“That’s cold,” I said.

“That’s the truth,” Ethan said.

I looked at Donny standing there watching us. “So you leave him here to guard us or be the sacrificial lamb, and you don’t much care which.”

Donny glanced at me, then at Ethan, and even at Edward. “I will go tell Queen Cho Chun what you have demanded.” His eyes flicked to me, then to Ethan, and I realized Donny was nervous. I think my stating so bluntly that he was leaving Ethan to be food had bothered him a little. A lot of people can do awful things as long as they don’t have to look at it too clearly. Lying to yourself doesn’t work if the truth is clear enough.

He turned without another word and walked away. His black clothing melded into the dark corridor within a few yards. They needed more light down here.

We were left standing in the dim corridor in a strangely thick silence. I felt my red tiger stir like a streak of fire called to life from cold wood. It made me close my eyes, take a deep breath, but that was a mistake, because I’d moved closer to Ethan without meaning to, and he didn’t just smell like red tiger. White tiger came out of the shadows where the beasts lived inside me. I knew there were no shadows inside me, or tall ancient trees, that it was just the landscape my mind created to help me cope with the beasts being inside me.

I was standing in front of Ethan staring up into those soft, gray eyes.

“Step back, Anita,” Edward said. I felt his hand hover over my shoulder.

I said, “Don’t touch me right now, Edward.”

He didn’t argue, just dropped his hand. I felt the heat of it get farther away when he stepped back. “Is theardeur rising?”

“It’s trying to, but it’s more . . .” I stepped in close to Ethan. A good guard would have moved back, but he didn’t. I was careful not to touch him, but my face was just above his bare arm, just above the skin; I breathed in the scent of him, deep.

Then another scent and my blue tigress rose and began to pace with the others.

“I thought we had the only blue tiger male alive today, but that’s where the gray curls and eyes come from. The white tiger paled you out, but you’re blue.”

“My grandmother was blue, but you do have the only pure blue tiger male. I’m so mixed up, I’m no color.”

“You’re not just red, or blue, or even white, you’re . . .” I didn’t say it out loud, because the Harlequin were trying to kill all the gold tigers; so far they’d missed them, but here was one that held a touch of that rich, golden power.

“I’m what?” he asked, and just looking up into his face I was almost certain he didn’t know that he held some of that precious bloodline. Interesting.

“How many forms do you have?” It came out as a whisper, with my mouth almost touching the skin of his arm.

“Three,” he said, and his voice was already deepening. I couldn’t tell if it was tiger, or just male reaction.

I wanted to ask, “Not four?” but I didn’t. The weretigers intermarried for genetic diversity, and most of them just looked like one side of their heritage or another.

At home I had Domino, who shifted to black and white, but physically his hair was black and white, showing the mix. If the human form showed just one, then one was what the tiger seemed to have. I’d never met another tiger who could do three colors, let alone four, but there was still that sweet scent of golden power. The gold tiger in me gave a soft, whuffing purr. I tried to think reasonably, but I didn’t feel reasonable. My skin felt heavy with need; things low in my body tightened. The reaction staggered me. Ethan reached out, took my arm, just instinct. Someone almost falls and you try to catch them. I could feel his hand through my jacket like heat and weight, as if his human shape were already only just something to hold all that power.

“Get out, Edward,” I said in a strangled voice.

“What?”

“Go back, see how the hunt’s going, but you can’t be here.”

“You’re going to lose control.”

“I think so,” I said.

“Anita . . .”

“Go, now, Edward, please, just go.” I was worried about my friend, but my eyes were all for the man in front of me. I stared up into those gray eyes and knew now that it was the color of his tiger. This close I could see the differences between human eyes and the tiger’s in his face. His arms had slid around me, drawing me in against his body; my arms were already around his waist.

“You want me?” He sounded surprised.

“Yes,” I said, and four different tigers began to trot up the long dark space inside me. I buried my face against his T-shirt and the chest underneath. He smelled like hot, red flame and the air after a lightning storm when it’s clean and fresh, and under that was candy. He smelled like cotton candy, sugary, sweet, something that would melt on your tongue. I’d found that all the gold tigers smelled like something sweet to me, under the sweet smell of candy was another sweet scent. Clover—white clover on a hot summer’s day—was what his blue tiger smelled like.

Cynric at home smelled like a whole garden in high summer, so apparently blue tigers smelled like green, growing things. Four of my tigers stared up at me, their lips drawn back, to take in the scent of his skin, as deeply as we could breathe it in. They gave a chorus of growling purrs that rumbled up through my body as if my bones were a tuning fork for the beginning of some deep, bass song. It made my knees go weak. Ethan caught me, which pushed our bodies that last inch together. I could feel that his body was hard and eager already. The sensation of it drew a small noise from me. “Yes, I want you.” And theardeur rose up in me like a wave, but this time the tigers inside me weren’t fighting it; their power mingled with theardeur , and I realized something I hadn’t before. I had some of the same power as the old Master of Tigers, but theardeur had turned it into something else, something warmer, kinder, more alive. That aliveness spilled up my skin and over his, so that he cried out, wordless, eyes closing, back bowing, arms tightening around me to simply keep him standing.

“So much power,” he whispered.

I had a moment to wonder if this was just theardeur feeding, or if I would accidentally bind him to me metaphysically. I didn’t need more men in my life, not permanently. The thought helped me push theardeur away, just a little, so I could have another thought. Ethan didn’t deserve to be bound to me forever, not by accident. I didn’t want to take his free will. I didn’t want to trap him, or me.

I was able to climb back into the driver’s seat of my own head. Ethan stared down at me.

“What’s wrong? The power’s fading.”

“Something is wrong with this feeding, Ethan. It’s different.”

“What?”

“There’s a chance that it won’t just be theardeur . That I’ll bind you to me as my tiger to call.”

“Like Alex?” he asked.

I nodded, staring up at him, searching his face. He was handsome in a guy sort of way, cheekbones high, but thin-faced, so the shape was a soft rectangle. He had a dimple in his chin.

“Alex still has his life, his job; you haven’t hurt him.”

“I don’t always know how deep the binding will be, Ethan. Do you understand that? Do you understand that I can’t predict what will happen?”

He blinked down at me, trying to fight free of the pheromones on the air. He swallowed hard and then said, “You’re giving me a chance to back out.”

“Yes.”

“What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

“You could be a bride, as in Dracula’s brides. No real will of your own.” I stopped holding him so tight and tried to give us a little physical space to think. Ethan’s arms tightened against my back. “You can’t want that for yourself.”

“The red clan breeds with other clans. If the child looks like the other clan, it’s sent to them to be raised; if it looks like red clan, it stays here with us. But if the baby doesn’t look like either clan, then it stays with the mother, not because she wants it, but because the other clan won’t take it.”

I kept one arm around his waist but raised the other so I could touch his hair. I touched the white and gray of it, and last I stroked the dark, rich streak of red in his bangs, pulling on it just a little.

It made me smile up at him, and that made him smile at me.

“You’re beautiful, don’t let anyone tell you different,” I said.

His smile widened. “The clan females won’t have sex with me because they don’t want to bring an impure child into the world. I even had a vasectomy three years ago, so I couldn’t get anyone pregnant. I thought that would make me safe enough for the clan females to want me, but they still saw me as impure, as if just my touch would make them less pure-blooded.”

“I’m so sorry that they’ve been stupid, Ethan.”

He smiled, a little sad around the edges. “Me, too.”

Domino back home was a half-black and half-white tiger. He’d been security for the white clan, but just as alone as Ethan was; at least with Domino the white clan had found him in foster care and adopted him. They hadn’t bargained for his birth and then treated him badly. It seemed somehow worse.

I smiled at him. “Since I don’t want to get pregnant by anyone, it’s a plus for me. Your lycanthropy already protects you from any disease, so with me on the birth control, too, we’re about as safe as we can get.”

“Our lycanthropy,” Ethan said.

“What?”

“You’re a panwere, right? You just don’t change shape, so our lycanthropy protects us from any other disease but the lycanthropy.”

I frowned, because I hadn’t really thought about it like that. “I don’t know; since I can carry multiple strains of lycanthropy, I’m not a hundred percent sure I can’t catch other diseases.”

He nodded. “That’s true, so you still have to worry about STDs.”

“If I’m with humans,” I said.

“Are you ever with humans?”

“No, but I bet you do just fine with the human women,” I said.

He smiled, and it was almost shy. “I tried dating humans, but I can’t tell them what I am, and you can’t hide it forever.”

“No,” I said, “you can’t.”

“It’s like denying what I am, who I am. It’s almost lonelier than not having anyone in my arms.”

I nodded. “I had a boyfriend, a fiancé who wanted me to do the white picket fence—so not my gig.”

He grinned at me. “I can feel that you want me.” He leaned over me, sniffing against the side of my face. “I can still smell the scent of red, and white, and blue . . . and something else I’ve never smelled before. You smell sweet and . . . Why do I see gold in my head? A gold tiger.”

“Because part of you is gold.”

“That’s not possible,” he said.

“I can smell the truth on your skin.”

He drew in a deep breath.

“Gods, you smell like home.”

“I was told that gold tigers don’t look for home.”

He shook his head. “Then they must have already found it, because everyone looks for home in someone.” He whispered it as he turned his face against mine and put his lips on my cheek. It was almost a kiss, but not quite. His breath was warm against my skin.

My pulse was thick in my throat, my body tingling with his nearness. “Do you understand what could happen to you?” I tried to sound reasonable, but it came out as a hoarse whisper.

“I think so.”

“We just have to wait for Alex, and then we can think about it. You can have time to think about it.”

His hand cupped the side of my face, sliding his fingers into my hair. He kissed me, ever so softly on the other side of my face. “I don’t want to think.”

I closed my eyes as he rubbed his face against mine, like a cat scent-marking, his hand tightened in my hair enough that I made a small noise for him. “What do you want?”

“I want to go home,” he whispered.

I drew away enough to look into his eyes; they’d already gone soft, half-focused. His lips were parted, and his lower lip was wet as if he’d licked it. Theardeur pushed at me; the tigers slapped at me, raking their claws down the inside of my body so that I half-crumpled in his arms. He caught me, held me, his face all concern. “Are you all right?”

I nodded. I was, but I wouldn’t be if I fought too much longer. I thought about Alex, and I felt him, he was coming, but I felt his irritation with his mother; she’d delayed him. He was too far away, I couldn’t hold out . . . I smelled Ethan’s skin and was honest with myself: I didn’t want to hold out. Yes, it was theardeur , yes, it was the tigers inside me, but it was also his loneliness. I’d been lonely for years; I knew what it was like to be different and have no one love you for it.

“Are you all right?” he asked again, his hands on my arms now, as if he were afraid I’d fall.

“I will be,” I said.

“What can I do?”

I drew back from theardeur , shoved the tigers down, and knew it wouldn’t last. “I need you to understand that I can’t control all of this. I don’t know how much of your free will you’ll lose when we do this. I need you to really understand that, Ethan.”

His gray eyes were very serious as he looked down at me. “I understand.”

“Do you?” I asked.

“No, but for the look in your face just a few minutes ago, for the smell of your skin, for that taste of belonging . . . Don’t leave me here alone.”

I thought at Alex. I thought, too late,Stay away , and then I stopped fighting. Stopped fighting theardeur , stopped fighting the tigers, and stopped fighting myself. I gave myself to the moment and the man in my arms.

IT TOOK TIME to disarm each of us. My concern for my weapons helped chase back theardeur enough that other issues came up—like the fact that the small room Ethan had kicked open was the machinery room. It was bare and concrete floored. I was down to my bra and jeans with a pile of weapons at my feet when I laughed and said, “Where can we have sex that we won’t lose skin doing it?”

Ethan peeled his shirt over his head and dropped it on his own pile of weapons. I would have tried to find someplace more comfortable to have sex, but seeing him shirtless distracted me. The fine muscles I’d seen in his arms hadn’t quite prepared me for how very nice he looked out of the shirt. There was always that moment when you got the clothes off for the very first time. It never grew old for me, that wonder of the first time, from the clothes coming off, to the first touch, the first kiss. Everyone kept telling me that with this many people in my life, and bed, I’d get jaded, but I never did. It was always fresh wonder, and Ethan standing there shirtless helped me chase back theardeur even more, or maybe I just had more control of it now. But whatever the reason, I moved toward him, my hand outstretched so that I could run my fingers down the smooth, muscled grace of his chest. I had other men in my life who were more muscled, had more bulk, but Ethan’s level of muscle was just dandy. I ran my hand over the smooth swell of his chest, avoiding the nipples for now, because I actually wanted to caress him before we raised theardeur too far again.