Laurell Hamilton - Affliction

‘I don’t mean just sex and feeding the ardeur with him, Anita. I mean using him to really make a triumvirate of power, the kind that Jean-Claude wanted to forge.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

He glanced in the rearview mirror again, but this time there was no car to reflect in his eyes, so there was just a shadowed outline of him. ‘Nathaniel, is she lying to me or to herself?’

‘I would say leave me out of this, but …’ He sighed, heavily.

I looked at him. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I feel how drawn you are to all your animals to call and to Jean-Claude. I know how tight we are wound metaphysically, but Damian is always left out. I feel the lack of him, Anita. I can’t describe it any other way, but sometimes when you raise power it’s like there’s a link to him, but it’s less. It’s …’ He looked out the window as if searching for inspiration.

‘It’s what?’ I asked.

He turned back to me, and even in the dark I could feel the weight of his stare. ‘It’s broken. I don’t know how, or what, but it’s damaged, and that break keeps the three of us from being everything we could be as a power.’

‘It’s not just me,’ I said. I pulled on my hand, but he held on, and I wasn’t upset enough to force the issue. ‘Damian doesn’t want to be bound closer to you and me. He’s afraid of being consumed by the ardeur , and he’s damn near homophobic.’

Nicky gave a harsh laugh. ‘Homophobic, really? That’s too funny.’

‘Why is it funny?’ I asked.

‘Because if you’re not at least comfortable sharing Anita with another man and sleeping in the bed afterward in a big kitty pile, then you are out of fucking luck.’

‘London doesn’t like other men, or an audience,’ Nathaniel said.

‘Is that why he’s been sent visiting other vampire territories?’ Ares asked.

‘Part of it,’ I said. What neither Nathaniel nor I shared with our two newcomers was that London was addicted to both the ardeur and gained power from every feeding. Belle Morte, Beautiful Death, the maker of Jean-Claude’s sourdre de sang , had addicted London, not me. He had freed himself from her hold and gone cold turkey, running away to England until he’d come to us, and the old addiction had risen again. He was the perfect food for me, but he was already a few centuries older than Jean-Claude and a master vampire. The fact that London had gained power levels from being my food meant that he’d rapidly approached Jean-Claude’s own power level, so I’d had to back off. We had sent him to four different territories out of state hoping he’d find a good fit and become someone else’s second-in-command. He was powerful enough to be a master of his own territory, but he wasn’t good enough at the modern politics needed now. He was still at his last trial run. I couldn’t even remember what state he was in this time.

‘Damian doesn’t want to join with us as deeply as he could, for a lot of the same reasons that Richard fights,’ I said.

‘I think that if you would take the lead, Damian would be more comfortable sharing a bed with the two of us with you in the middle. He’s not as strong as Richard. I don’t think he could fight free of us, the way the Ulfric can.’

‘You’re basically asking me to mind-fuck Damian and forge a stronger triumvirate between him and us, even if it’s a kind of metaphysical rape.’

‘Put that way, it sounds wrong.’

‘It doesn’t just sound wrong,’ I said.

‘You didn’t have any trouble doing it to me,’ Nicky said.

‘You and your pride of lions had kidnapped me and had snipers ready to kill Nathaniel, Micah, and Jason. I was out of options when I made you my Bride.’

‘If it’s any consolation, I’ve never been happier,’ he said.

It was some comfort, but out loud I said, ‘For someone who’s supposed to want my happiness and comfort above all else, you say some of the most uncomfortable things.’

He shrugged as much as the muscles would allow and said, ‘Sometimes what you need to hear isn’t comfortable.’

‘Are you saying that you tell me things I need to hear?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Which make me uncomfortable, and it makes you anxious if I’m uncomfortable?’

‘Sort of.’

I frowned at him and didn’t know if his night vision was good enough for him to see it, but I had to frown. ‘I’m not sure that I really understand what a Bride of Dracula is supposed to be.’

‘We’re whatever you need us to be,’ he said.

‘That you actually mean that,’ Ares said, ‘makes me glad Anita can’t call hyena as one of her animals.’

Nicky turned and spoke directly to Ares. ‘Master vampires turn normal humans into Brides of Dracula. Theoretically, it should work on you.’

Ares shivered so hard I could see it in the darkened car. ‘Let’s not test that theory, okay?’

The red brake lights on Al’s car flared and it turned onto a narrow, unpaved road. I’d thought it was dark, but as the trees closed on either side of the car I realized I’d been wrong. This was darker, and I knew it would be even darker under the trees themselves. I’d been raised in the country going camping and hunting with my father. I knew night in the woods. I’d never been afraid of the dark in the woods as a child, only in the house at night. The monsters of my imagination had lived under the bed and in the closet, not in the woods. As a grown-up, I could think of few things I hated more than hunting rogue shapeshifters, or vampires, in the woods. I was just glad we weren’t on a hunt tonight. The thickness of the night on the road where there was still some moonlight and starlight overhead let me know that under the trees was going to be thick black night.

I wasn’t the only one thinking it, because Ares said, ‘It’s going to be damn dark under the trees.’

‘You have better night vision than I do,’ I said.

‘Better, but in human form not that much better.’

‘You can be the kitty on a leash, then,’ Nicky said.

‘Hyenas aren’t cats.’

‘More closely related to cats than dogs,’ I said.

He glanced in the rearview mirror again. His face was just a darker shape this time. ‘Most people think we’re related to dogs.’

‘Actually, more closely related to mongoose, meerkats, and civets, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is. How do you know that?’

‘Biology degree, and honestly, I read up on hyenas when I realized that it was the second or third largest animal group in St Louis.’

‘Better to know your enemy,’ Ares said.

‘Yes, but you said it yourself, Ares, I don’t have metaphysical ties to the hyenas. I don’t ken them the way I do lions, or leopards, or wolves, or any of the wereanimals that I can call as mine, or carry a piece of their beast inside me. The werehyenas and wererats are what taught me that a lot of my way with shapeshifters is just another flavor of vampire power. I have to study harder on the beasts I don’t carry.’

‘Why study? Why not ignore the groups that aren’t yours?’

‘Micah believes that the Coalition can help all the shapeshifters come together and be a stronger lobbying group, and so do I. It’s a good idea, and the only way it’s going to work is if we all try to find the things that make us alike, not the things that divide us.’

‘That’s a politician’s answer,’ Ares said.

‘Maybe, but it’s still the truth.’

I got another of those dark glances in the rearview mirror, and then Nicky said, ‘I think we’re here.’

Ares and I both looked ahead. Al had parked his cruiser. We were here, wherever the hell ‘here’ was.

We were in the Arapaho National Forest. The air smelled like pine, with the ghostly paleness of aspens scattered throughout the darkness of the evergreens. The air hadn’t felt that thin down in Boulder, but up here it did. It made me wonder how those of us who had just stepped off a plane from St Louis, which was four hundred fifty feet above sea level, would do above eight thousand feet if we had to run, or fight.