Laurell Hamilton - Affliction

I threw the toilet paper in the toilet and flushed away my lunch, and then I let go of Nicky’s pants leg and held my hand up to him. I didn’t need the help to stand, but it was a way of apologizing and letting him know how much I’d appreciated the help in these last few minutes, how much I appreciated him.

He looked down at me, his face arrogant, unreadable; the one blue eye staring down at me was harsh and unfriendly. I wasn’t the only one who’d had old issues hit in the last few minutes.

There was a moment when I thought he wasn’t going to relent, and that in a few thoughtless moments we’d ruined something between us. ‘Just tell me to take your hand, help you up, and I have to do it.’

‘I don’t want you to do it because you have to, I want you to do it because you want to.’

A look came over his face; it was almost pained. ‘Why do you keep giving me choices, Anita? You don’t have to.’

‘Maybe that’s why,’ I said. ‘Because I don’t have to.’

‘That makes no sense,’ he said, but he reached down and took my hand. He lifted me to my feet and backed out of the stall at the same time, so that we ended up out in the main part of the bathroom. He just kept staring down at me, as if he couldn’t figure out what, or who, I was.

‘I feel like I missed something,’ Domino said. ‘Did you guys just have a fight?’

‘Almost,’ I said.

‘Are you all right?’ Nicky asked.

‘I feel fine now.’

‘I’ve never seen you get sick like that,’ Domino said.

I shrugged. Nicky and I were still holding hands as if we were both afraid to let go. ‘I used to throw up at crime scenes pretty regularly.’

‘You keep saying that, but we’ve never seen you do it before,’ Nicky said.

‘This wasn’t a crime scene,’ Domino said. ‘What made you sick?’

‘I smelled the decomp coming from his father’s room and it was too close to last night.’

‘The smell didn’t bother you last night,’ Nicky said.

‘Trust me, it did,’ I said.

Nicky gave a small smile and squeezed my hand. ‘It bothered all of us, but not that much.’

‘I have no idea why I got sick just now,’ I said.

He drew me in so that our bodies touched. He was back to staring at my face, but it was a different look now, not arrogant or harsh, more like he was thinking about something really hard.

‘What?’ I asked.

He just shook his head. ‘Maybe you need more sleep.’

‘Always on a case,’ I said.

Domino offered me a breath mint.

‘You’re carrying breath mints in with your ammo?’ I said.

‘We’re lycanthropes, Anita; sometimes we eat stuff that a human isn’t going to want to smell on our breath.’

I took the mint and spoke around it as I rolled it in my mouth. ‘But you only eat stuff like that in animal form; once you change back to human it’s a different mouth.’

‘Is it?’ he asked.

I frowned while I thought about it. ‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘Just think of it as a precaution,’ Domino said.

I squeezed Nicky’s hand, then let go so I could go to the sinks and wash my hands. I looked at him in the mirror as I asked, ‘Do you have breath mints with you?’

‘No, clan tigers are prissy bastards; lions aren’t.’

‘I suppose lions eat raw meat and then just suck the juices off each other, no mint needed,’ Domino said.

‘Yeah, we do.’

Domino rolled his eyes, as if the tougher-than-anyone-else talk was old hat from Nicky. ‘I know, I know, only the werehyenas are a tougher society to survive in than the werelions. Weretigers are complete pansies compared to you guys.’

‘Not in St Louis they’re not,’ Nicky said.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, as I dried my hands.

‘I don’t know exactly how Narcissus got to be head of the werehyenas in our city, but he’s seriously fucked with their societal norms.’

‘How so?’ I asked, and started for the door.

‘Hyenas aren’t tougher to fight than lions, but they are tougher on each other. They’ll brutalize each other to a degree that we won’t.’

‘They brutalize each other,’ I said, thinking of some of the ‘play’ rooms I’d seen at the club Narcissus in Chains. Lycanthropes could heal almost anything that wasn’t done with silver, or fire, which meant that if you liked BDSM there were options that humans would never survive.

‘I don’t mean the bondage stuff. I mean they fight just to fight, and fights that break out at the spur of the moment can totally change their clan structure. Every other animal group has rituals for dominance fights. A fight that gets out of hand doesn’t necessarily change anything, because if it’s not formal, then the rest of the group can join in and take sides, or in some animal groups an informal fight doesn’t count even if it results in a death.’

‘Really,’ I said.

Nicky opened the bathroom door and checked the hallway automatically before I followed him.

Domino answered. ‘I don’t know about every animal group, but if someone killed Queen Bibiana in Vegas outside of ritual combat, the challenger would die with her. Her guard, her son, or her husband would see to that.’

I thought about Bibiana, who was as delicate as I was, but all white and ladylike. She was horribly powerful metaphysically, but I hadn’t thought about her having to defend herself in ritual combat. ‘I can’t quite picture her taking on all challengers in one-on-one combat,’ I said.

‘The White Tiger Clan allows the queen to pick a champion if she is a good enough leader that we don’t want to lose her.’

Nicky went a half-step in front of me, and Domino a little behind. We didn’t usually do the formal bodyguard stuff when I was carrying my badge. I might have said something, but I actually wanted to ask Domino another question.

‘What if the queen wasn’t a good leader and the clan didn’t support her?’

‘Then a vote can be called and if enough of the clan votes no, she has to fight her own battle.’

Nicky glanced back and said, ‘Sounds like a way to assassinate a leader without actually doing the job yourself.’

‘It’s a way to spread the guilt around,’ Domino agreed, as if there were nothing wrong with it.

‘If you want the leader dead, you have to do it in a one-on-one fight. There are no substitute champions in our culture,’ Nicky said.

‘Of course, there aren’t,’ Domino said, ‘because werelions are just that awesome.’

Nicky glanced back again, and it wasn’t a friendly look. ‘This is one of the main problems with the Coalition, Anita. We are different animals, different cultures, with very different rules. It’s hard to bring us together when we can’t even decide how to elect a leader.’

‘Micah adapts to whatever animal group he’s visiting,’ Domino said.

‘I’ve never gone out of town with Micah before,’ Nicky said.

‘I don’t think he’s gone up against any lions yet.’

The phrasing sounded odd to me. We walked around the corner and could see the police outside the room again, but I stopped walking. ‘What do you mean, gone up against?’

Domino’s face suddenly got as blank as he could make it. He was perfect bodyguard empty, with an edge of angry intimidation around the edges. His energy prickled down my skin, and the fact that he’d lost control of his beast that much meant my question had stressed him.

I turned completely around to face him. Nicky took up his best bodyguard position at my back, but standing so he could see both up and down the hallway; again it was more guarding than I liked them doing around the police work, but I let it go, because I had a bad feeling about why Domino was suddenly nervous.