Лорел Гамильтон - Cerulean Sins

"Aren't we all just food on the hoof?" I tried to make a joke of it, but Jason looked offended.

"You of all people should know better than that."

"Maybe," I said, feeling my own smile slide away from my face. "Okay, I'm sorry, no offense meant, but I've had too many shape-shifters threaten me to have any illusions about where I am on the food chain. And there are an awful lot of shapeshifters that still believe they are at the top."

"I don't buy that radical crap about us being the top of the evolutionary ladder," Jason said, "if we were really the perfection of evolution, why have we been around for thousands of years, but yet, you poor humans outnumber us, and usually outkill us?"

I parked near the back door and turned off the engine. Jason opened his door, but said, over his shoulder as he was getting out, "Don't fool yourself, Anita, plain old humans kill more of us than we ever will of them." He smiled, but not like it was funny, "They even kill more of each other than we kill of them." Then he was striding across the parking lot. He never looked back.

I had offended Jason. Until that moment I hadn't been sure it was possible to offend him. Either he was growing up, or I was getting less diplomatic. Since I couldn't possibly get less diplomatic than usual, Jason must have been growing up. For the first time in a while, I wondered if he would always be content to be Jean-Claude's lap wolf and appetizer. And stripper, too. But you can't strip and feed the vampires forever, can you?

Bobby Lee met me at the door. Tall, light-haired, and almost shiny compared to the dim storeroom behind him. But his mood was not shiny. "The police should have let me stay with you."

"I don't think they believed my story about making you all deputies."

"You should have just said that we were your bodyguards."

"I'll do that next time, Bobby Lee." I filled him in on what I'd learned at the police department while we walked down the nearly endless steps that led from the storeroom to the lower parts of the Circus of the Damned. The stairs were wide enough for four people to walk abreast, but the steps themselves were oddly spaced, as if whatever they were originally carved for wasn't very human. They definitely had not been made for bipeds.

"I don't know the name Heinrick," he said.

I looked at him, so suddenly, that I stumbled, and he caught my arm. I realized in that moment that I didn't know that much about Bobby Lee, not really. "You work for Rafael, you can't be a white supremacist."

He let go of my arm when he was sure I was solidly on one of the odd wide steps. "Honey-child, I know white supremacists that specialize in hating people a little darker than Rafael."

"Real Southerners don't say honey-child."

He grinned at me. "They do if you Northern bastards expect it."

"We're in Missouri, that ain't exactly north."

"It is from where I came from."

"And that was?"

His smiled widened. "When we're not in the middle of an emergency we can sit down and share personal time over a beer, or coffee. Right now, concentrate, honey-child, cause we are neck-deep and sinkin'."

"If you don't know Heinrick, how do you know we're sinking?"

"I was a mercenary before Rafael's people recruited me. I know people like Heinrick."

"What would somebody like that want with me?"

"They were watching you for a reason, Anita, you probably know what that reason is, ya' just got to think of it."

I shook my head. "You sound like a friend of mine. He's always telling me that when the shit hits the fan that I should know why the bad guys are after me."

"He's right."

"Not always, Bobby Lee, not always." But the conversation did make me think of Edward. He'd started his professional life as a hit man, then killing humans became too easy, so he switched to monsters. Monsters covered a lot of ground for Edward. No, among the vampires and shape-shifters, he'd include serial killers, snuff film actors, anyone and anything that caught his fancy. Though the price had to be right. Edward didn't work for free. Well, not often. Sometimes he'd work simply for the thrill of chasing something that scared the rest of us mere mortals to death.

"Does anyone in Rafael's operation have contacts in nongovernmental channels? I don't want anyone owing anyone a favor for this. I don't want anyone getting in trouble. I just want to know what the regular government channels either don't know, or aren't sharing with the St. Louis police department."

"We have some ex-military, special forces, things like that. I'll ask around."

I nodded. "Good." And I'd call Edward, see if he knew Heinrick. I started walking down the steps again. Bobby Lee fell in beside me, though since he was six feet and I so wasn't, it was probably an awkward stride for him. He didn't complain, and I didn't offer to speed up. I wasn't exactly looking forward to seeing Jean-Claude or Asher again. I still didn't know what to say.

We were within sight of the big heavy door that led into the underground areas. It was partially ajar, waiting for us. "By the way, Jean-Claude and Asher request your presence in Jean-Claude's room."

I sighed, and my unhappiness must have shown on my face, because he touched my arm. "Don't look so glum, honey, they said something about owing you an apology."

My eyebrows went up at that. An apology, them owing me. I liked the sound of that. I liked the sound of that a lot.

It wasn’t the apology I was expecting, but under the circumstances, any apology was better than none. Especially if I wasn't having to give it. Of course, it took them nearly five minutes to get me to hear the apology, because once I got a good look at the two of them in their banquet finery, I was rendered speechless, deaf, and damn near blind to anything else.

I don't think it was magic or vampire trickery. They just looked fine. Asher wore a jacket of pale gold with darker gold embroidery, and an edge of true metallic gold thread shot through the embroidery itself. There was a touch more gold at collar, lapels, wide cuffs. Just enough extra sparkle to mingle with the gold of his hair as it cascaded over his shoulders and add emphasis to the gestures of his hands. His shirt was a foam of white frills at chest and wrist, like a tamed cloud. I knew from rifling through Jean-Claude's closet that the shirt wasn't nearly as soft as it appeared. The pants were the same pale gold as the jacket with a line of embroidery down either side of his leg. Boots the color of oyster shells graced his legs, their tops folded down just above the knees, tied with pale brown leather belts and small gold buckles, which could be glimpsed as he moved.

I noticed Asher first, maybe because of his powers, or maybe because he was all shiny and gold and eye-catching. It was like noticing the sun. You couldn't help but see it, to turn to face the heat of it, to bask in the glory of it. But often when the sun is high in the sky, the moon is up there, too. A dim memory of what she will be in the night, but there, nonetheless, dim and misty, hard and white. At night, there is only the moon, the sun is nowhere to be seen. There are no distractions when the moon rules the night sky.

Jean-Claude's coat was a black velvet so soft and fine that it shown like fur. It was opera length, flowing down to his ankles. There was embroidery on the lapels and wide cuffs, a deep royal blue. The embroidery on the coat matched that on the black vest, but the shirt that showed in all that black and royal was the same shade of blue of the silk sheets on the bed. Cerulean blue, a color caught between the skies of day and night. It brought out the blue of his eyes so that they were like living jewels set amid the black of his hair, the near pure whiteness of his skin.