AN HOUR LATER we were in Jean-Claude's living room waiting for the lions. Haven had agreed to almost everything I'd asked with almost no negotiating. He'd kept two guards, his two enforcers, which was typical for a shapeshifter leader. If he'd not asked for them to come down the long staircase with him I wouldn't have let him come at all, because to me that would have meant he was planning to force me to kill him. I was still hoping to save this from becoming a clusterfuck of mammoth proportions. Haven had suggested that he bring the two new female lions for us to meet, and thanks to Auggie's little talk with me, I said sure.
Jean-Claude sat beside me on the big white couch that faced the curtains and the outer door beyond. We'd showered, but we hadn't had time to do more than put hair goop in and go with our hair still in damp curls around our shoulders and down our backs. The hair being wet had precluded silk shirts, so Jean-Claude had opted for another pair of his omnipresent leather pants that looked painted on. His shirt was a long-sleeved black mesh T-shirt that covered all that pale chest yet let you see his skin like a ghost through the fabric. He'd chosen one of my favorite pairs of his boots, the ones that laced up the back of his leg from ankle to the tops of his thighs, so that the pants seemed almost redundant, as if the boots had been designed to be worn with very short shorts.
Richard was back in the jeans he'd begun the night in, but his red T-shirt had gotten stained beyond repair, so a leather vest that still fit over his more muscled upper body was shirt enough. His brown hair looked very dark, almost brunet, fresh from the water. He'd tied it back in a ponytail so that it gave the illusion he had short hair. I'd honestly expected him to leave before we met with the lions. He'd said, "The last time Haven was in this room he tried to seriously injure some of your other lions, and I had to beat the shit out of him to get him off them. I can't leave until I know everyone's going to be safe. Jean-Claude may need his triumvirate tonight."
I couldn't argue with his logic, but for the first time in a very long time Richard was sitting on the other side of Jean-Claude, so that our "master" was in the middle. Shang-Da and Jamil stood behind the couch at his back with Wicked and Truth behind Jean-Claude. Claudia and Domino were behind me. Fredo, two more wererats, and a werewolf were by the door. The wererats weren't an animal I could call, but they'd proved they were loyal to me more than once. They both took my orders before Jean-Claude's, and Claudia actively disliked Richard. She thought he was just another guy who wanted his girlfriend barefoot and pregnant. Since I felt that way part of the time, too, it was hard for me to talk her down about it.
Domino's black-and-white curls matched his black-on-black look. Normally he'd have worn a red T-shirt to show that he was willing to be a blood, or sex, donor, but Jean-Claude had wanted us to look like we were on the same side. I hadn't argued. Domino hadn't, either.
Crispin was down the hallway out of the fight. He wasn't trained with a gun. Hand to hand he did well enough, but if we had to kill the lions tonight it would come to guns. Anyone who wasn't a shooter on our side had to get the hell away from this meeting. Jason was in his room with J.J. I'd suggested he take her to a hotel for the night, but she'd refused to go. Cardinal was in Damian's room waiting for him. We were as civilian-free as we could manage.
Even after everything we'd done in bed together, Richard had still not wanted to put Jean-Claude in the middle of us, but Nathaniel was next to me with Damian beside him. Jean-Claude thought it was time that I take my own triumvirate out for a drive. He'd be there to help me, and I'd have what he'd just done with Richard and me to learn from, but Haven was my kitty to call, not Jean-Claude's. Auggie was right; the cats were mine. I had to make them behave; unless we could figure out a way for Jean-Claude to gain power over the lions it was up to me. I did think about him sleeping with one of the new female lions. I tried to wrap my head around the idea of him sleeping with another woman, and asked myself as honestly as I could how I'd feel about that. I wasn't sure, but having more than just me to control the lions directly would have been really good right that minute.
Nathaniel and I were both in regular black T-shirts made out of that soft jersey material. His was almost too snug for the muscles of his chest, so that the cloth covered and managed to give hints of all that lay underneath. Mine fit well, but thankfully not that tight, over the black seamless bra I was wearing. I was in black jeans and a pair of black over-the-ankle boots. They were a compromise between the jogging shoes I wanted to wear and the higher heels Jean-Claude had wanted. The boots were actually comfortable and I could move in them. Nathaniel had on a pair of blue jeans so washed they were almost white, with holes here and there. It was the kind of thing shapeshifters wore when they thought they might have to change fast and didn't want to ruin something nice. He was curled barefoot beside me on the couch, again in case he had to shift quickly. His hair was in a braid down his back. He was ready to fight, and I didn't like it. Richard was a much better fighter, and he'd almost lost to Haven. If it came down to hand to hand between the lion and Nathaniel, I'd just shoot Haven. I'd already made that decision.
I was wearing my Browning BDM in its custom-made shoulder holster and had my backup gun in a holster at the small of my back. The custom holster let me carry a silver-edged knife as long as my forearm down my spine. My hair hid the hilt. I even had my two wrist sheaths with their silver-edged blades. I'd thrown one of my black suit coats over it so I didn't look so well armed. The only concession to not killing Haven, really, was that the clip I had in my Browning was regular lead. It would hurt, and make his body have to heal, but it wouldn't kill him. My backup gun was all silver. If I used fourteen bullets on Haven and had to go for my backup, then I wouldn't be shooting to wound.
I'd left only one thing in the bedroom that I normally wore to a fight: my cross. Since I was going to try to make my own triumvirate come online and that was technically a vampire power, wearing a holy object that glowed when vampire powers were used seemed like a bad idea. It had never glowed when I did vampy stuff before, but it would be a bad time for that to change. The only thing around my neck on my gold chain was the small amulet with its multiheaded cat on it. Keeping out the Mother of All Darkness seemed like a really good idea; in fact, I'd be sleeping in it from now on, and just putting the cross in the bedside table. The amulet, charm, whatever, didn't seem to mind what kind of vampire shit happened around it.
Damian was on the other side of Nathaniel in black dress slacks with a matching jacket, his white T-shirt very stark in all that black. His long, wet red hair looked like red neon against the black jacket.
The two overstuffed chairs with their silver and gold cushions had been drawn up to either end of the couch. Micah sat in the chair closest to Damian . . . that is, my triumvirate. He was in a black suit, but with a deep pine-green T-shirt that made his chartreuse eyes more green than yellow. Normally the shirt made his eyes look very green, but Damian was sitting too close to him and he had the greenest eyes I'd ever seen.
Asher sat in the big overstuffed chair on the end closest to Richard and Jean-Claude. It was in front of the faux fireplace. In spite of the potential disaster of the Mother of All Darkness rearing her scary head tonight, Asher was the most happy and relaxed that I'd ever seen him. Well, me personally. I had memories from Jean-Claude's long-gone past, but for this time and place Asher was a very happy boy.
He was curled in the chair in that boneless comfortable way that Jean-Claude could do, or Nathaniel. Asher wore a pair of leather pants as painted on as Jean-Claude's, but his boots were plain midcalf black. Asher had topped the outfit with a black T-shirt made of some shiny, clinging material, so maybe T-shirt wasn't the right word for it.
His shoulder-length gold hair was browner wet from the shower, but against the black of the shirt the gold shone through more. I knew the contrast would grow as his hair dried.
The fact that he was willing to be seen so publicly with his hair wet enough that he couldn't hide the scars on his face said more than almost anything about how good he was feeling. It was nice to see. Jean-Claude glanced at me, and I caught a smile. I wasn't the only one happy to see our moody boy more upbeat. I fought not to glance across at the other moody boy with his werewolf bodyguards. Funny, they were both behaving great. Haven seemed to be trying to make up for both of them. Maybe we were only allowed so much happy without moody to balance it? Someday I'd like to try everyone being in a good mood at the same time, but it wouldn't be today, or rather tonight.
Asher's two werehyenas were on one side of his chair, but he seemed more interested in Jean-Claude and even Richard, who he'd asked if he could touch outside the bedroom. Richard had wisely said, "Define touch." Which was guy-speak for no. Jean-Claude had told Asher not to push it, though in much more polite words, but it amounted to the same thing. Asher hadn't even gotten upset, again a first.
I'd made Nicky go farther into the underground to the area where the wereanimals kept food for fresh changes. Food was livestock, most of it pretty small, or fresh meat. He hadn't wanted to leave my side, but since he was one of the major sore points for Haven, having him standing beside me in his half-lion form, especially all naked, was probably not going to help things.
Micah had two guards at his back, too, but like me he didn't have enough leopards to go around. He had Lisandro, tall, dark, and handsome with shoulder-length black hair pulled back in a ponytail. He was around six feet tall; only Claudia was taller, though the guard beside him gave Lisandro a run for his money. Abraham, Bram for short, was new to St. Louis. His hair was shaved close and tight to his head, leaving the high cheekbones and sculpted look of his face very bare. It managed to look both stark and like some walking piece of art, as if the bone structure were too perfect and hair would just have distracted from it. His skin was so close to black that it shone with blue and purple highlights in bright light. I'd never seen anyone so dark. In leopard form he was a blond. It turned out that it wasn't the genetics of the host human that dictated the color of the animal form. It was the genetics of the shapeshifter who'd infected them. Micah and Nathaniel were brought over by black leopards, so their animal form was black. Bram had been brought over by a yellow leopard, so he was yellow. The same held true for wolf fur, which was why Richard had the reddest fur of anyone in his pack; he'd contracted lycanthropy in a bad vaccine batch, and not from a pack member.
Micah had explained, "That's why some extinct subspecies still exist as strains of lycanthropy when the real animal is completely wiped out." Cool.
Bram still stood military straight. The haircut was from that, too. He hadn't been a civilian long, but once he couldn't pass a blood test without the lycanthropy showing, he was given a medical discharge. One of the new werehyenas, Ares, was on the lookouts at the top of the Circus along with wererats who were sniper trained. Asher had called him to come when we weren't sure if the other werelions would just go away and let their leader come inside without them.
Ares had been part of a group of snipers and their spotters who were sent in when the bad guys had a shapeshifter on their side. The snipers used silver-coated ammo to take out shapeshifters from a nice safe distance. Apparently, a werehyena had figured it out and gotten very not nice, not safe, and oh-so-close. Again, once Ares' blood test showed the lycanthropy, it was policy to do a medical discharge even though he'd gotten the "disease" in the line of duty. Ares still had a golden tan from somewhere hot and dry, his yellow hair buzzed as short as Bram's, but beyond a certain military bearing they weren't much alike. Bram had said, "Snipers think differently than my specialty."
"And what is your specialty?" I'd asked.
He'd given me a little smile and said, "Up-close work." And that was all he'd say.
Micah looked small with Lisandro and Bram looming over him, but I guess no smaller than I looked with Claudia and Domino behind me, or for that matter sitting with the two six-feet-and-over guys on either side of Nathaniel and me. Micah had a gun at the small of his back, too. One of the things I had liked about Micah from the very beginning was that he was a shooter. We both had spent years being the smallest person in the room, and when everyone in the room is more than human-strong, and either as trained a fighter as you are or better, you want the gun. And the rule is, if you carry a gun you must be willing to use it. If you hesitate with a gun you might as well not carry one, because hesitation will get you killed quicker than not having one at all. There are people every year who get their own gun taken away from them by a bad guy and then the bad guy shoots them with it. If you carry, you have got to be willing to pull the trigger; if you think you'll hesitate, then don't carry. Micah didn't hesitate, and neither did I. We liked that about each other.
I knew that everyone at my back was armed and would not hesitate. If Haven wanted to die tonight, he'd come to the right place. I felt that part of me that helped me look down the barrel of a gun and pull the trigger open up, or close down, inside me. I felt distant and empty. It was almost a clean feeling: no distractions, no doubts, just what had to be done. I wasn't quite to that white-static center where I pulled the trigger, but I was headed that way. The moment I felt myself go all distant and empty, I would know that part of me had decided to kill Haven. Part of me wanted to keep him alive, but it wasn't as big a part of me as I'd thought. I felt a little bad about that, but not a lot. A year ago, I'd have poked at the feeling, but not now. Now I waited to see if Haven would give me a reason to keep him alive or give me an excuse to kill him.
We'd actually gone to little earbud headsets for the guards, and for me and Jean-Claude. I had to green-light the shooters. A voice on the earbud made me jump; I still wasn't used to it. "Eagle here, darling." Bobby-Lee's southern drawl was almost startling after so many months without him. He'd been away on some hush-hush job for the wererats. They did mercenary work to bring in money for their group. Bobby Lee had been away for a long time. He'd come back more tanned than when he'd left, thinner, too, and worn around the edges. The old British saying was You've been in the wars. Probably closer to true than I wanted to know.
"Yeah," I said, my pulse in my throat from jumping, "I mean Black Queen here." Eagle was whoever was in charge of the guards overall on a shift. Black Queen was my call sign. No, it wasn't my idea, but until I thought of a better one I couldn't bitch too much. Yes, Jean-Claude was Black King. Like no one was going to figure that out.
"The lions are on their way down. It's the Rex, two bodyguards, the two new female lions, and two other males that Haven's okay with you feeding on, just like you negotiated, darlin', but the two feeders are a little worse for wear."
"Stop calling me darling, and what does that mean . . . Eagle?"
"Means someone has beat the shit out of them. They're being carried down to you all."
"What the fuck," I said.
"Are ya asking why he beat 'em to shit?" Bobby Lee asked.
"Yeah, I am," I said.
"White King seems to think you've fucked them more than you've fucked him. He didn't like that." White King wasn't the code for Haven, but for any VIP of a visiting vampire or animal group. You had to be more welcome here to have your own code sign.
"Jesus," I whispered, "I haven't fed on many . . . Oh, shit. No, he didn't."
"You'll have to finish a sentence there, Black Queen, before I can give you an answer," Bobby Lee said.
"Shit, I don't know how to do this and not say names." I looked at Jean-Claude.
He covered his earbud and spoke low. "Who do you fear it is?"
"Noel and Travis," I said. They were in college and were two that had survived from the old pride's leadership to Haven's new regime. I had used them to help me control my lion when Nicky wasn't available, but I hadn't fed the ardeur on them, because they were too young. They were legal, but young in experience. As far as I could discover, Noel was a virgin. I was so not going to be his first. I had tried to persuade the old Rex, Joseph, that they were too tender to throw to the ardeur, but he hadn't understood. Apparently Haven hadn't understood, either. It was just a different misunderstanding.
Jean-Claude spoke to that invisible voice. "Joe College and Christmas are who the Black Queen is concerned about."
"The concern is well placed, Black King."
"Shit," I said.
"Yep," Bobby Lee said, "that about covers it, Black Queen."
I didn't want to have to deny I'd had sex with Travis and Noel over the open airwaves, as it were; besides, I'd learned a long time ago that you can't prove a negative. You can prove that you did something, but it's the devil to prove you didn't do something.
Nathaniel said it for me since he wasn't on the headset. "You haven't had sex with Noel and Travis."
"I know that, but apparently the White King doesn't believe that." I fumbled at the neckpiece, trying to turn it off for a minute, but I couldn't remember how. I was angry. I hadn't been angry until now. It gave me an idea.
"Eagle, how angry is White King?"
"Angry enough to fry your bacon from a distance."
"You know, you can give the quaint southernisms a rest, Eagle."
"Are you disparaging my heritage there, Black Queen?"
"No, just cranky." I turned to Jean-Claude. "Help me turn this off."
He pressed something and I was suddenly alone in my own head again; yea. "You've thought of something," he said.
I nodded. "I can feed on anger, remember?"
"I remember, ma petite."
"Haven is angry; I'll feed on it."
"If you feed on his anger, he may take that as a form of attack," Richard said.
I looked past Jean-Claude to him. "If he's hurt Noel and Travis as badly as Bobby Lee says, then I'm not sure I care if he thinks he's being attacked."
"If you kill him, fine, but make sure you kill him because he needs killing, Anita, not just because you're pissed at him," Richard said.
I started to say something angry back, but Nathaniel touched my arm, and Damian touched my shoulder a moment later. They were both calmer than I was, and some of that calm seeped into me. It helped me take a deep breath and let it out slow. I nodded. "Point taken, but I can't let him hurt them like this and get away unpunished. If I do, then we won't have control of the lions, and Haven will do something worse."
Micah said, "He's like a teenager acting out. He wants your attention even if it's negative attention."
"Are you blaming me for this?" I asked, and the anger was just there again. Damian's hand tightened on my shoulder. Nathaniel put his hand in mine. It helped me push the anger down again, but it was there and if I wasn't careful it could raise my beasts and then we would be in a mess.
"I'm just saying that Haven thinks like the fifteen-year-old he was when he joined the werelions. He's stuck there emotionally. It makes him react to things."
"What do I do?" I asked, and that I asked him was a mark of what we meant to each other. I didn't ask many people's opinion.
"Save Noel and Travis first; get them on this side of the room, then see if Haven is willing to be reasonable."
"Reasonable how?" I asked.
"Sex, maybe."
"I don't want to fuck him; I'm so mad at him I can't see straight."
"May I offer an opinion, ma petite?"
I turned back to the man at my side. "Please, at this point I'm taking suggestions. I am in over my head here." I said out loud what I'd thought earlier. "This would be easier if you had a tie to the lions, and not just me."
Jean-Claude looked at me. His face was unreadable, but it was a long, considering look. "Augustine said he spoke to you about the lions and certain possibilities."
"We don't have time for coy, Jean-Claude. He told me that there was a chance, if you slept with the women of some of the cat-based animal groups, that you might gain them as your animal to call, too. He thinks you might be able to gain an animal through me, instead of me always gaining through you."
"Are you saying you want us to sleep with the female cats?" Richard asked.
I looked at him. "No, I'm saying maybe Jean-Claude should sleep with them." I added, because he was looking at me, "Jean-Claude makes me feel secure. You don't yet, Richard. Jean-Claude has hung in there while I fucked a lot of other men. He's been a good sport, so maybe it's my turn to be a good sport."
"Ma petite, the lions will be here in moments; I want to be very clear between us. Are you saying that you would be open to me sleeping with the female lions while you sleep with the males?"
I fought not to cross my arms or look pouty. "I think so, oh, hell, I don't know. As a theory, I think it's got merit."
"Merit?" Jean-Claude said. "That is not a strong enough word to get me into another woman's bed, ma petite. I think merit would come back and, how would you say, bite me on the ass."
I couldn't blame him. "I need help, Jean-Claude. The leopards work because Micah is reasonable and wants to help me, and he's leopard king to my queen. The tigers work because so far the only males in town are mine. We don't have a tiger group to get pissy with me. The rats and swans work not because they're our animal to call but because their leaders value the order you've brought to the city and they want to help that along."
Jean-Claude spoke into the air, into his earpiece, whatever. "Give us a moment." He forgot all about code names as he turned to me. "The lions are outside the door, and making Haven wait will not help things. Do you want me to try to seduce one of the women into my bed? It must be yes or no."
"Can I think about it?" I asked.
"No. Yes or no."
"No sex for tonight, but make friends so that maybe another night soon you can."
"Not precise enough," he said. "I will not be punished for doing what you tell me to do. Tell me to seduce them, or tell me don't, and tell me now."
I stared at him and didn't know what to say. But he was right; I had to decide now. Fuck. "I don't know how I feel about you with another woman that I haven't met. Can I meet them first and then ask me again?"
He smiled at me. "You may." He spoke back to the headgear. "Let the White King through." Silence and then he said, "Yes, the Black Queen and the Black King are in agreement, bring them through."
I didn't bother to turn my own headset back on because I was pretty sure that I wouldn't want anything I said in the next few minutes on an open frequency, and I didn't have to worry about giving a green light to one of our snipers. The lions had all gone home except the ones pushing their way through the curtains now. All the dangerous things were in here with us.