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Nicky was standing between me and the door. They’d found dark blue scrubs for him that fit him only a little tight through the chest. He looked great in the color, but we wanted hyena, not lion. “Who’s outside?” I asked.
“Jane and Seamus are on the door with Kaazim while Echo decides where everyone else will go,” Ethan said.
“I know this is going to sound weird, but I need to smell Seamus. My hyena is kind of insisting.”
“She doesn’t smell that strongly on you,” Nicky said.
“She’s not like the other beasts, when she insists it’s quieter, but she wants to smell the hyena on the other side of the door.”
“Take a bite of something, and we’ll open the door,” he said.
She made a low evil sound in her throat that trickled from between my lips. “She won’t take orders from a lion.”
“That’s new,” Ethan said.
There was a knock on the door, and Kaazim opened it enough to say, “Jane says that you need her and Seamus inside the room.”
“She’s right,” I said.
Jane was dressed in the black tactical clothing that all the guards wore, but she still looked like a petite blonde with more curves than was fashionable now and a pair of big blue eyes. I knew she wasn’t just strong for a vampire, but strong because she trained hard; regardless, nothing took away her curves, which hid the muscle, so she looked like she was playing dress-up. A pale, porcelain doll-like Barbie dressed up in combat Ken’s clothes; even though the clothes fit her perfectly, they didn’t suit her.
Seamus, on the other hand, looked like he was made to wear tactical gear. He was all tall, lean muscle with skin almost dark enough to be called black and mean it. His eyes were the same reddish brown of my hyena, though you had to get up close to realize the pupils were slit instead of round, so most people never noticed that he had hyena eyes in his human face. He’d been kept too long in animal form a few centuries back and never been able to change back, like Micah’s eyes stuck in leopard form.
There was no emotion on Jane’s face as she looked at me. Whatever she felt was locked away so that she had no affect; no emotions played across her face ever, really. It was another reason she seemed doll-like. It stole something from her face, so that instead of beautiful she was just slightly unnerving. Her nickname among her fellow security people was Ice, because she was so damn cold.
Seamus’s face showed more, but he’d learned to be careful around the vampire he served. Jane had been the one who kept him in animal form as punishment for some misdeed. She had stolen his ability to come fully back to human, but where she fought and trained cold, cool and collected, he flowed like dark water, always faster than you thought such a big man should be. The other guards had nicknamed him Water because of how well he moved. Water and Ice, they fought well together, but more than any other vampire andmoitié bêtepair we had, they seemed the most disconnected. They weren’t friends like Magda and her master, or lovers like Fortune and Echo; they weren’t an abusive couple like Mischa and Goran or Nilda and her master. It was like they were frozen—not friend, not foe, but still together forever or until one of them died.
Jane unnerved me and because she didn’t like him working without her, I didn’t have Seamus on my guard detail much either, but tonight I was glad to see them. I sniffed the air, drawing in the scent of hyena. I’d never been attracted to Seamus before. He was handsome enough, but he belonged to Jane, so he couldn’t be the hyena that my female finally chose. My face was inches above his dark skin,breathing in the clean scent of him, the slight sweetness of something he’d used in his hair, but underneath all that was his hyena. That was what we wanted.
I went to Jane and sniffed along her skin, and found that she smelled like hyena and Seamus, too. They weren’t lovers to my knowledge, my hyena didn’t smell sex on them, but they’d shared a bed, or a coffin. Did he sleep curled around her smaller body? If they weren’t lovers, or even friends, why would that be the sleeping arrangement?
Jean-Claude was in my head whispering,Because the only constant in their lives for centuries has been each other. That made sense, I guess.
My hyena sat down inside me puzzling over the two of them. She had no trouble with the idea of stealing Seamus from Jane, if the vampire wasn’t strong enough to keep him from us, but just as the pair unsettled me, my hyena couldn’t figure them out either. It was like whatever had made them master and servant was broken somehow, but the break didn’t tear them apart, it just broke them both. Someday when I had time to poke at it I’d ask them more questions, but tonight my hyena needed something less complicated than these two.
“Go back to the door,” I said.
“Your power is seeking a hyena to be yourmoitié bête,” Jane said.
“I know, but Seamus is already spoken for, so go back to guarding.”
“You must pick someone soon, my queen, or the beast inside you will choose for you. Trust me when I say that you do not want to be trapped for all eternity with someone you chose in extremis.”
“As you chose Seamus,” I said.
She nodded.
I had so many questions.
Ethan held out a grilled cheese sandwich for me. I looked at it, then at him. “Trust me, it was the best sandwich left in the cafeteria.”
I made a face at him.
“You wouldn’t have touched the burgers,” Nicky said.
Ethan held out a Coke for me; that cheered me up. I was waybehind on caffeine, and coffee did not work with grilled cheese. “I’ll feed this hunger and hope it helps the others,” I said.
“Of course,” Jane said, and then they both went back toward the door. I realized Seamus hadn’t said a word. It made me want to call him back, but Ethan opened the Coke for me, and it smelled way better than it should have. I was dehydrated and hungry, and neither was helpful for controlling my metaphysical abilities.
