Laurell Hamilton - Affliction

‘I want to help,’ he said.

‘It’s not your job,’ I said.

‘Anita, in leopard form I’m better than in human form.’

‘Better at what?’

‘Fighting, surviving.’

‘Why?’

It was Nicky who answered from the front seat, turning so his yellow hair was a ghost-pale fall covering the shadow of his face. ‘The beast lets us react more selfishly. We don’t think of the better good or shit like that; we react, we survive. In leopard form Nathaniel will take care of himself more.’

‘Really?’ I asked, and I was caressing his hand with my fingers as I held it, as if just holding hands weren’t enough.

‘Yes,’ Nicky said. ‘It’s one of the reasons we’re so dangerous in beast form. We don’t reason as well. It makes us more dangerous.’

‘Half-man form helps you think better,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘But I’ll need to be in full leopard form for this,’ Nathaniel said.

‘Your sense of smell is better,’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘I understand,’ I said.

‘You think because Nathaniel can strip on stage and change into his leopard form but not attack the crowd that somehow it’s still him in there, but it’s his beast with a layer of him in it.’

‘So his human form has a layer of beast in it?’ I asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘Because you carry all beasts inside you, but you don’t shift, it makes you miss some things about the rest of us,’ Nicky said.

‘Like what?’

‘That we are our beasts, and our beasts are us.’

‘I don’t think I understand.’

‘I’m still me in leopard form,’ Nathaniel said, ‘but I’m also still my leopard in this form.’

I frowned. ‘Micah doesn’t talk about his beast like that. Neither does Richard.’

‘Don’t even compare us to St Louis’s local wolf king,’ Nicky said. ‘He’s too conflicted to truly integrate his two halves.’

‘What about Micah?’ I asked.

‘He fights hard to be civilized, human,’ Nicky said.

Ares added, ‘Micah is still dealing with the trauma of surviving the attack. Those of us who come over involuntarily have more issues.’

‘You, too?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, I hated being a werehyena. I mean, if I had to be attacked by an enemy shapeshifter, why couldn’t it be something with a cooler reputation, like a lion or a leopard. Big cats and wolves, now that’s sexy.’ He laughed, but not like he was actually pleased, more self-deprecating, which I’d never heard from him.

‘Are you saying you’d have hated it less if you’d been a different animal?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, at first, yeah.’

‘And now?’

He glanced in the rearview mirror. I got a flash of his eyes as a car passed us on the narrow road. Human eyes didn’t reflect like that, which let me know that even in human form his superior night vision was part of his beast.

‘I’m a hyena. It’s a rougher, more violent world than any other shapeshifter society. We earn our stripes, no pun intended for my stripey brethren. No one, not even the lions, demands the level of toughness that hyena society does. There are many clans of us, but the few that do exist in this country rule whatever city they’re in if they go old-school.’

‘What do you mean, old-school?’ I asked.

‘Back before shapeshifters were mainstreamed into human society we handled things less civilized, more naturally.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means the different animal groups would have wars,’ Nicky said.

‘I thought most animal groups left one another alone outside St Louis and the Coalition.’

‘Wereanimals were made legal before vampires were,’ he said, ‘so you missed the old days when we were able to go into a city and just destroy everything in our path. As long as there weren’t any bodies for the cops to find, people just disappeared and my pride and I got paid, and we moved on. Other animal groups hired us to take out their rivals, and we did it without mercy.’

‘Wereanimals have been legally humans with a disease for ten years, longer in some states. You can’t be that much older than me.’

Nicky leaned into his seat in the dark, his face lost in shadow, only his hair gleaming to show me where to look. ‘Lycanthropes age slower than humans, Anita; you know that.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Thirty-one,’ he said.

‘So only a year older than me.’

‘Yes,’ he said, his voice low and strangely intimate in the darkness.

‘You don’t look older than twenty-five,’ I said.

‘You look early twenties, too,’ he said.

‘Good genetics,’ I said.

‘Are you sure it’s just good genetics?’

I looked at his shadowed face as we drove farther into the night-black mountains. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I’ve made you uncomfortable. I can feel you’re unhappy and I have to stop. I’m your Bride, which means I’m all about you being happy.’

‘I’m not her Bride, or her animal to call; hell, she doesn’t even have the ability to call hyenas, so I’ll say it,’ Ares said.

‘Say what?’ I asked.

Nathaniel started petting my hand, soothing me.

‘You try to ignore Damian, Anita, but he is your vampire to call. He’s your vampire servant, and you did fourth-mark with him and Nathaniel.’

‘By accident,’ I said, and even to me it sounded defensive.

‘Doesn’t matter how, just matters it happened. I know that Jean-Claude has been waiting to see if Damian starts to age, or if you stop aging, before he brings up sharing the fourth mark with you and Richard.’

‘Traditionally, you can’t have more than one fourth mark from more than one vampire. You’re the human servant of just one vampire,’ I said.

‘Traditionally, but you’re human, not a vampire, and you have a vampire servant, not a human one. There’s nothing traditional about you, Anita.’

‘What’s your point?’ I asked.

‘You’re the first true necromancer in over a thousand years. The rules don’t apply to you, Anita.’

‘So?’ And I sounded sullen. I fought wanting to hunch in the seat. I wanted to take my hand back from Nathaniel and just sulk. I fought the urge off, but just wanting to do it meant this was hitting an old, old issue for me. I wasn’t sure which issue it was hitting, but the fact that I wanted to stop touching Nathaniel meant it was something that pre-dated me letting myself love him and all the people in my life.

I forced myself to sit up very straight and keep touching Nathaniel, but his hand had gone very still in mine. I made myself take a nice, even breath and let it out slow. ‘Do you have a point, Ares?’

‘Jean-Claude’s triumvirate with you as human servant and Richard Zeeman as his wolf to call is crippled because Richard won’t man up and be the Ulfric we all need him to be.’

‘He’s doing better,’ I said.

‘As Ulfric, our wolf king, yes, but as the other third to Jean-Claude’s triumvirate he blows. He uses you and Jean-Claude as a booty call and he misses dominating Asher. He can say he doesn’t, but it met a need for him to torment Asher. I think Richard misses the bondage games with Asher as much as Nathaniel and you do. He just won’t ever admit it.’

‘I’m still waiting for your point; so far you’re just telling me shit I already know.’

‘You have a triumvirate of power with Nathaniel as your leopard to call and Damian as your vampire servant.’

‘Again, shit I already know,’ I said.

‘Do you?’ Ares demanded. ‘Because the whole time I’ve worked for you guys I wouldn’t know it. You almost never interact with Damian.’

‘He’s monogamous with Cardinal, and I’m respecting that.’