Laurell Hamilton - Affliction

‘Our kitten can be quite frightening in his needs.’

‘And that’s it; it frightens you and me, we don’t enjoy topping Nathaniel to a point that satisfies him, but Asher does. In fact, I’m not sure I entirely trust the two of them alone without extra rules from me or you.’

‘I believe it is that edge of danger that delights them both with each other,’ Jean-Claude said.

I nodded. ‘Agreed.’

‘So he is beautiful and good in the dungeon, but that is hardly virtue enough to offset his vices.’

‘True, but he’s also a fabulous lover even without the BDSM,’ I said.

Jean-Claude looked away as if he had to control his face for a moment before he turned back to me. ‘Yes.’ It was one word, but it was enough. There was almost pain in his yes .

‘You think it’s a bad idea to bring him home,’ I said.

‘Don’t you?’ he asked.

We stood there looking at each other. I finally said, ‘Yeah, I do.’

‘Logic would dictate that we leave Asher to his fate,’ Jean-Claude said.

‘You mean let Dulcia kill him?’

He gave a small nod. His face was very careful as he looked at me. He showed nothing, but the very lack of emotion spoke volumes.

‘You’re leaving the decision up to me, aren’t you?’ I asked.

‘I have been in thrall to his beauty and his cruelty for centuries, ma petite . I cannot rule him as he needs.’

‘I can’t let someone else kill him.’

His eyes widened fractionally. ‘I do not like that phrasing, ma petite .’

‘Me either, but when he hit Cynric hard enough to knock him out I thought he’d broken his neck, and damage to the spine can act like decapitation for both vampires and wereanimals. If he had killed Cynric even by accident I would have shot him, Jean-Claude. I would have shot him and I wouldn’t have shot to wound.’

‘That you are strong enough to do it, I have no doubt, but that you could live with it afterward, that I do doubt.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that since Asher left. I know I would have done it. I know that he could still push me far enough that I would do it, but I think it would break something in me that wouldn’t heal. Hell, shooting Ares – knowing that I had brought him into harm’s way. I practically fed him to the big bad vampire, and then I killed Ares. I loved, but I wasn’t in love with Haven, but it killed a part of me to look down the barrel of a gun and shoot him.’

Jean-Claude moved toward me, but I waved him off. ‘No, just no,’ I said.

‘What can I do, ma petite ?’ he asked.

‘You’ve just told me that you believe Asher will need killing and that you can’t do it. You’ve just told me that it’s my job, if it has to be done.’

‘You do not have to do it either. We can let him behave badly and simply let him be a weakness for both of us. I cannot fault you for being no stronger in the face of his cruel beauty than I myself.’

I shook my head. ‘You bastard, you know I can’t do that.’

‘Being who you are, no,’ he said, softly.

‘What are we saying then, Jean-Claude?’

‘Our wise leopard king says we should bring him home, because too many of us miss him.’

‘He didn’t just say that,’ I said.

Jean-Claude smiled. ‘No, he said that we either let Dulcia kill him, or we get him the hell out of her territory so he can try to salvage the goodwill he had built up with her and her hyena clan.’

‘Nathaniel misses him terribly.’

‘As does our Devil,’ Jean-Claude said.

‘Even Richard misses having someone to dominate in the bedroom. It gives him somewhere for his darkness to be aimed. He’s been more moody without Asher to play with and abuse.’

‘ Mon lupe is surprisingly talented as a dominant.’

‘He’s trying to embrace all of himself, and part of him really enjoys tormenting Asher with both floggers and whips and sexual denial. Asher loves being the first guy on to deflower a heterosexual man, and Richard enjoys flaunting himself with Asher and never letting Asher touch him.’

‘They do seem to fill a need in each other, as does Asher for Nathaniel, and you, ma petite .’

‘And you,’ I said.

‘And Narcissus, our own hyena leader, pines for Asher.’

‘So he fills needs that no one else fills for a lot of us,’ I said.

‘It would seem so,’ Jean-Claude said.

‘I wish we didn’t love him.’

‘I have wished that off and on for centuries.’

‘I bet. Asher is just so … damaged, and he won’t go to therapy and work on his issues.’

‘Therapy will be part of the price for his return,’ Jean-Claude said.

‘We can make him go sit in the therapist’s office, Jean-Claude, but we can’t actually force him to do the therapy.’

‘That is true,’ he said.

‘The fact that I want him home, too, means that you aren’t the only one who has a weakness for him.’

‘Love is both a great strength, ma petite , and a great weakness, which depends on the day, the hour, the moment.’

I went to him, and he met me in the middle of the room. We hugged, but I kept watching his face. ‘We bring him home because we’re not strong enough to tell him to bugger off, is that it?’

He smiled. ‘Something like that.’

‘Ain’t love grand?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said, as he bent to kiss me. ‘Yes, whatever it may hold of pleasure, or pain, or even grief, I would not trade it for its absence.’

We kissed, because we needed to feel the touch of each other, to reassure ourselves that we weren’t being damned fools about Asher, or at least if we were being fools, we were in it together. Sometimes love isn’t about being smart. Sometimes it’s about being stupid together. I hated those moments, but I’d grown to understand that love, real love, is full of choices that make no sense, that should go horribly wrong, but you make the choice anyway. Why? Because love is about hope; you hope that this time it will be different. Sometimes it is – Jean-Claude and I were proof of that – but sometimes it isn’t, and Richard and the three of us were proof of that.

Faint heart never won fair lady; I guess the same goes for winning the fair lad. Here’s hoping.

Some of the local police were like Yancey from SWAT and accepted me as one of them because I’d held my shit together under fire, but others … were very busy trying to blame me for what Ares had done. They needed to blame someone, and I’d killed the only other person they wanted to hate, so they hated me.

Dev and Nicky had driven with me to the station. We’d meet up with Edward/Ted and get introduced to Marshal Hatfield and the rest. There were witness statements to read, crime scene photos to look at, and the pictures of the missing, some of whom had turned up as the walking dead of one flavor or another. I hated to waste darkness on doing stuff I could do in daylight, but the vampires in custody were safe behind their lawyer for tonight. Maybe by the time I got to question them tomorrow night I’d have a better handle from reading up on the case. That was what I told myself to keep the frustration down. We had two perfectly good suspects who had seen the big bad vampire that was the real danger, and we couldn’t ask them a damn thing.

The plan was for the men with me to wait out in the public area until I was done, or until they were relieved of duty by the next pair of bodyguards. They knew the drill. They also had carry permits for their guns with them, and they were willing to give their guns up to a lockbox if the local PD demanded it. What we weren’t prepared for was Detective Ricky Rickman to be passing through the check-in desk. One of the things people fear most about shapeshifters is that they look just like everybody else, because they are everybody else. It’s just a disease, and short of a blood test or a change of form, you can pass for straight human. I wasn’t trying to sneak them past anybody; I just didn’t think about it.