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30
Caleb had climbed into the back of the Jeep to get the plastic I'd started carrying, for when I transported something messier than chickens, and spread it on the seat so Nathaniel could drive. I'd tried to insist on driving but Jason had growled at me. He had a point, I wasn't feeling my steadiest. Nathaniel, his eyes bled back to their normal lilac, had told me, "You passed out. You stopped breathing. Jason shook you, and you did this sort of gasp." Nathaniel shook his head, face very serious. "We had to keep shaking you, Anita. You kept not breathing."
If they'd been human I might have argued with them, that they only thought I'd stopped breathing, but they weren't human. If a bunch of shape-shifters were unable to hear or see me breathe, I had to believe them.
Had Mommy Dearest tried to kill me? Or had it been accidental--or incidental? She wouldn't have meant to kill me, but she might have done it by accident. And I'd touched enough of her thinking to know it wouldn't bother her. She wouldn't be sorry, she would feel no guilt. She didn't think like a person, or rather she didn't think like a nice, normal, civilized human. She thought like a sociopath--no empathy, no sympathy, no guilt, no compassion. In a strange way, that must be a very peaceful existence. Did you need more emotions than she possessed to be lonely? I'd think so, but I really didn't know. Lonelywas not a word I would have applied to her. If you didn't understand the need for friendship or love, could you be lonely? I shrugged and shook my head.
"What is it?" Nathaniel asked.
"If you don't feel love or friendship, can you be lonely?"
He raised eyebrows at me. "I don't know. Why do you ask?"
"We've all just brushed up against the Mother of all Vampires, and she's more like the Mother of All Sociopaths. Human beings are rarely pure sociopaths. It's more like they're missing a piece here and there. True, pure sociopathy is really pretty rare, but Mommy Dearest qualifies, I think."
"It doesn't matter if she's lonely," Caleb said.
I glanced back at him. His brown eyes were very large, and underneath his fading tan he was pale. I sniffed the air before I could think, and the car was a playground of scents; the sweet musk of wolf, the clean vanilla of Nathaniel, and Caleb. Caleb smelled . . . young. I wasn't sure how to explain it but it was as if I could smell how tender his meat would be, how fresh his blood. He smelled clean, the scent of some lightly perfumed soap coated his skin, but underneath was another scent. Bitter and sweet all at the same time, the way blood is salty and sweet at the same time.
I turned as far as the seat belt would allow and said, "You smell good, Caleb, all tender and scared."
He was the true predator, not me, but the look he flashed me was all prey--huge eyes, face soft, lips opened just a breath. I watched his pulse beat against the skin of his neck.
I had an urge to crawl into the backseat and run my tongue over that frantic pulse, set teeth into that tender flesh, and set that pulse point free.
I had this image of Caleb's pulse like a piece of hard candy that would come free all in one piece and be sucked and rolled around in my mouth. I knew it wasn't like that. I knew that if I bit down the pulse would be destroyed, that it would die in a spill of red blood, but the candy imagery stayed with me, and even the thought of blood spraying in my mouth didn't seem terrible.
I closed my eyes so I couldn't see Caleb's neck beating and concentrated on my own breathing. But with every breath I drew in more of that bitter sweetness, the taste of fear. I could almost taste his flesh in my mouth.
"What's wrong with me?" I asked that out loud. "I want to tear Caleb's pulse out of his throat. It's too early for Jean-Claude to be awake. Besides I don't usually want blood. Or not only blood."
"It's close to full moon," Nathaniel said. "It's one of the reasons Jason lost enough control to change all over your seats."
I opened my eyes, turned my face to look at him, and away from Caleb's fear. "Belle tried to get me to feed off Caleb, but she couldn't. So why suddenly does he smell tasty?"
Nathaniel had finally found another exit back onto 44. He eased in behind a large yellow car that needed a major paint job, or maybe was in the middle of getting one, because half of it was covered in gray primer. I caught movement in the rearview mirror. It was the blue Jeep. It was at the end of the narrow street with cars on either side. It had.just cleared the corner, and seen us, and now it was hanging back, hoping, I think, that we hadn't seen it.
"Shit," I said.
"What?" Nathaniel asked.
"That damned Jeep is at the end of the street. Nobody look back." Everyone stopped themselves in mid-motion except for Jason. He hadn't even tried to look back, maybe wolf necks didn't work that way, or maybe he was staring at other things. I realized that he was looking at Caleb.
I looked at that huge shaggy head. "Are you thinking about eating Caleb?"
He turned and gave me the full force of that pale green gaze. People say that dogs are descended from wolves, but there are moments when I doubt that. There was nothing friendly, or sympathetic, or even remotely tame in those eyes. He was thinking about food. He met my gaze because he knew I'd caught him thinking about eating someone that was under my protection, then he turned back to gaze at Caleb, and think of meat. Dogs never look at people and think food;hell, they don't even look at other dogs and think that. Wolves do. The fact that there is no recorded account of a North American wolf attacking a human being for food has always amazed me. You look into their eyes, and you know that there is no one home that you can talk to.
I knew that lycanthropes want fresh meat when they first change shape. New lycanthropes are deadly, but Jason wasn't new anymore, and he could control himself. I knew that, but I still didn't like the way he was looking at Caleb, and I liked even less that he was projecting his need onto me.
"What do you want me to do about the Jeep?" Nathaniel asked.
I jerked my attention back to Nathaniel and away from the hunger. It was an effort to think past it, but if the Jeep was full of bad guys, then I needed to be concentrating on them, not some metaphysical craving.
"Hell, I don't know. I don't get followed that much. Usually people just try and kill me."
"I have to either pull out onto the highway, or turn the other way. Just sitting here, they're going to know we saw them."
He had a point, a good one. "Highway."
He moved us forward, angling for the ramp. "Once we're on it, where are we going?"
"The Circus, I think."
"Do we want to lead the bad guys there?" Nathaniel asked.
"Jason said it earlier, most people know where the Master of the City bunks during the day. Besides, the wererats are still there, and most of them are ex-mercenaries, or something in that ballpark. I think I'm going to call ahead and ask Bobby Lee's opinion."
"Opinion about what?" Caleb asked, from the backseat. His eyes were still too wide, and he still smelled of fear, but he wasn't looking at the wolf on the seat beside him. Whatever he was afraid of wasn't something that close.
"About whether we catch them, or turn around and try to follow them."
"Catch them?" Caleb said, "Catch them how?"
"Not sure, but I know that I know a lot more about catching bad guys than about following people to see where they lead me. I'm not a detective, Caleb, not really. I can spot a clue if it bites me on the ass, and give an opinion about monster-related crime, but at heart I'm in a more direct line of work than detective."
He looked puzzled.
"I'm an executioner, Caleb, I kill things."
"Sometimes you have to track things in order to kill them," Nathaniel said.
I looked at him, that serious profile, his eyes searching the traffic, his hands on the wheel at exactly two and ten. He hadn't had his license a year, yet. If I hadn't insisted, I'm not sure he'd have ever had one.
"True, but I don't want to kill them, I want to question them. I want to know why they're following us."
"I don't think they are," Nathaniel said.
"What?" I asked.
"The blue Jeep didn't follow us onto the highway."
"Knew we spotted them, maybe."
"Or like everyone else knows where the Master sleeps. So it's not hard to find his girlfriend," Nathaniel said, voice quiet, eyes on the road. But he knew I hated being the Master's girlfriend, or at least being called that. Truthfully, he had a point. If you knew who someone was dating and where they lived, eventually, you could locate them again. I hated being predictable.
Jason's great shaggy head came around my seat and rubbed against my shoulder, the ruff of his face tickling along my cheek. I reached up and petted that great head without thinking, the way I would have done if he'd been a dog. The moment I touched him, the hunger thrilled through me from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. The hair on my body stood to attention, and it felt like something was trying to crawl up the back of my skull, because the nape of my neck was prickling so badly.
The wolf and I turned as one to stare at Caleb. If my eyes could have bled to wolf, they'd have done it then.
Caleb looked terrified. I think if he'd just stayed still we'd have been okay, but he didn't. He unfolded his arms from his nearly bare chest and eased across the seat.
Jason growled, and I was out of my seat, on the floorboards in the back, before I had a chance to think, unseatbelted in a speeding car, bad idea. I think that would have put me back in my own head space, but Caleb ran. He spilled over the backseat, and Jason and I spilled after him. It was like being water, following the natural course.
We didn't pin Caleb, so much as kneel and sit around him. Caleb was pressed tight in the corner of the cargo area, his hands tight against his chest. He tried to take up as little space as possible. I think Caleb knew that touching either of us would be bad. Jason sat on his haunches, flashing fangs and letting the trickle of growl slide out. You didn't need words to know what it meant, don't move, don't fucking move.Caleb didn't move.
I was on my knees in front of Caleb, and all I could see was the pulse in his neck, thudding, thudding, against the skin, trying to break free. I wanted to help it.
I could suddenly smell forest, trees, and the scent of wolf fur that wasn't Jason. Richard breathed through my mind like a sweet-scented cloud. I saw him in my bathtub all those miles away. An arm darker than the tan Richard carried most of the year was across his chest, propping him up in the water, holding him. Jamil being a good Hati, making sure his Ulfric didn't drown. It was what Jason had done for me earlier, minus the sex. Richard was a little homophobic. He didn't like men who reminded him they liked men, especially if that man was himself. I couldn't throw stones on that one; I was pretty much the same way around women. No matter how sophisticated I was supposed to be, I kept forgetting that another woman could find me attractive. Always caught me by surprise.
Jamil's face hovered on the edge of Richard's, but it was as if in this dream vision all that was truly clear was Richard. I caught glimpses of his body through the water and the faint candlelight. Lycanthropes sometimes had light sensitivity problems, so there were no bright overheads, but the candles made the water dark, and hid more of Richard from view than I wanted. I felt like a metaphysical Peeping Tom. But the hunger was so easily turned to a different kind of hunger, it always had been.
Richard looked up at me, and the sight of his face, shorn of hair, caught at my throat. I wanted to ask, why?but he spoke first. It was the first time we'd spoken mind-to-mind like this, and it startled me. I'd known Jean-Claude and I could do it, but not Richard and me.
"The hunger's mine, Anita, I'm sorry. Something that creature did to me stripped most of my control." For a second I thought he meant the Mother of All Darkness, then realized he meant Belle.
I gazed down at Caleb's frightened eyes, and my eyes were drawn again to his neck, then down the line of his chest to his stomach. He was breathing hard enough, scared enough that there was a pulse low in his belly, vibrating through that line of hair that led down into his pants. The stomach was soft and tender, lots of flesh there.
"Anita," Richard said, "Anita, hear me."
I had to blink the image of Caleb's quivering flesh away, and I was suddenly seeing Richard's image more clearly than what actually lay in front of me. "What?" I knew that one word wasn't said out loud, only in my head.
"You can turn the hunger to sex, Anita."
I shook my head. "I think I'd rather eat Caleb than fuck him."
"You've never eaten anyone, or you wouldn't say that," Richard said.
I couldn't really argue with that. "Are you seriously saying you'd be okay with me fucking Caleb?"
He hesitated, the water flickering in the flame light, as his body moved restlessly. I caught a glimpse of knee, and thigh. "If it's a choice between eating him, or screwing him, yes."
"You didn't even like sharing me with Jean-Claude."
"We're not dating, Anita."
Ouch. "Sorry, forgot that for a moment," I said. The momentary flare of pain like a half-healed wound helped me think a little more clearly. "Jason is in wolf form Richard. I don't do furry."
"That I can do something about." I saw his beast like some golden shadow leap out of him and into me. It was like being on the receiving end of a metaphysical knife, until that power stabbed through me and into Jason, and I was suddenly in the middle of all that power, all that pain, all that rage. The beast feeds on pain and rage, sort of the ultimate id. I was left kneeling, gasping, too breathless to scream.
Jason screamed for me, and I felt his beast slide away from him, no, into him, like stuffing something impossibly huge into a suitcase that was already full. But this suitcase was Jason's body, and it hurt. I felt the bones twist, the muscles pop and reattach. Fuck, it hurt. I caught a distant thought from Richard that it was hurting so much because it was forced. When you fight the change it hurts more.
It was as if the fur was absorbed back into the pale flesh that rose through it, like something caught in ice, melting back to the surface. Jason's body melted back, and the fur sank into him, the longer bones, the muscles. It just all sank into him until he lay pale and shivering on a bed of clear liquid. The fluid had soaked my jeans from the knees down. Jason had changed, but not fed, now he'd been forced to change again less than a half-hour later. Maybe if he'd been allowed to feed he'd have been alright, but now, he lay, shivering, curling into a ball to hold himself and to keep in what warmth he had left and to take up as little space as possible. I think Jason, like Caleb, knew touching me would be bad.
Jason wasn't a danger to Caleb anymore. Until he rested, he wasn't a danger to anyone. In fact . . . I stared down at the curve of his butt, so smooth, so firm, so tender. I gazed on him nude, and didn't think about sex at all. All Richard had done was give me a choice of meals.
I looked at Richard down that vision that held him crystalline, and everything else hazy. "All I can think about is sinking teeth into his flesh. You've made him helpless, and I still need to feed, because you still need to feed."
"I'll find something here to eat. I will feed, but you don't have anything safe to hunt, Anita. You don't want to hurt either of them."
I screamed, loud and long, letting the frustration fill the Jeep, pour out of my mouth, scald up my throat, ball my hands into fists, and lash out, smashing the side of the Jeep. I heard the metal groan, and that made me blink, look at what I'd done. I'd dented the metal. A rounded dimple the size of my fist. Fuck.
Caleb made a small sound, and I looked down at him, and all I could see was the soft flesh of his stomach, I could almost feel it under my teeth. I was crouched over Caleb, my face sniffing along his stomach. I didn't remember getting this close.
Richard called to me, "Anita!"
I looked up, as if he were really in front of me. He pushed Jamil's arm away and leaned back against the side of the tub. He ran his hands over his chest, fingers tracing his nipples, one hand trailing lower, as he pushed himself out of the water. It cascaded down his body in silver flame shot lines, and that hand traced lower, lower. Over his stomach, down the line of hair, and finally to cup himself, play with himself. I watched him grow larger, and the hunger changed like turning a switch. But the moment the hunger became sex, the ardeurflared to life. It came from the center of my being like a flame, spreading, spreading, and Richard's hand, Richard's body fanned the heat, brought it in a roaring sheet over my skin.
But Jean-Claude wasn't here to help us, this time, and Richard couldn't shield today. The ardeurran down that metaphysical cord and hit Richard like a truck at full speed. It bowed his back, convulsed his hand where it gripped his body, made him fall back on the edge of the tub, his legs trailing into the water.
I looked into those big brown eyes, that face so empty without its mane of hair, and watched terror fight with desire. I don't think he'd ever felt the full force of the ardeurbefore. It overwhelmed him, left him breathless, immobile, but that wouldn't last. I knew it wouldn't last.
I told him what he'd told me, "You can turn the ardeurto hunger, but we're going to have to feed on something, or someone, Richard. It's too late for anything else."
Even his voice in my head seemed strangled, "I feel better and worse. I think I can hunt now. I couldn't have moved that much before."
"Everything has its upside, Richard, and it's down." I was angry with Richard, a fine hot rage that helped keep me treading the water of the ardeurthat was trying so hard to engulf me, drown me in desire. But I held my anger to my chest and treaded water for all I was worth.
I felt his hunger change, felt his belly tighten with need for flesh and blood and tearing, and only distant, very distant was the thrill of sex. "I'll hunt an animal, and I'll be fine, I think."
"That won't help me much, Richard," and I let the anger trail down the binding between us.
"I am sorry, Anita, I didn't understand."
I knew in that moment that I could force his hunger back into the ardeur.That just as he forced Jason to change form, I could force Richard's hunger to be the form of my choosing. I knew I could run magic down his skin and force him to feed the way I was going to have to feed. But I didn't. He'd done what he'd done in innocence; I couldn't return the favor, not deliberately.
"Go hunt your animal, Richard."
"Anita . . . I am sorry."
"You're always sorry, Richard. Now get out of my head before I do something we'll both regret."
He pulled away, but it wasn't a clean break. Normally, his shields were solid like metal doors clanging down. Today, it was like taffy pulling apart, clinging to each other, huge tendrils of sticky, melting candy that even when pulled apart was still two halves of a whole. I wanted to pull us together, to melt into the heat until we were one big hot sticky mess, and today Richard couldn't stop me. He didn't have the control to keep me out of him.
Jean-Claude woke. I felt his eyes flash wide, felt him take that first gasping breath, felt life fill him. He was awake.
Jason was gazing at me with his sky blue eyes. "He's awake."
I nodded. "I know."
Nathaniel spoke as if he'd understood way more of the unheard conversation than he should have, "We're almost to the Circus, Anita."
"How long?"
"Five minutes, less."
"Make it less," I said.
The Jeep leapt forward, accelerating. I crawled into the backseat and fastened the seat belt tight across me. It wasn't to keep me safe in case we had an accident. It was to remind me not to let myself loose until we got to the Circus, and Jean-Claude.
