Laurell Hamilton - Bullet

When I could see around them it didn’t make sense. Wicked and Truth were standing with our other black-shirted security guards, but they were all standing in the middle of the room with Jean-Claude and Asher on opposite sides of the group. It looked for the entire world as if the guards were trying to keep the two vampires apart. What the hell?

I stepped out with the gun pointed at the floor. “What’s going on?” I asked.

Some of them looked at me, but most of them looked at one of the two master vampires, waiting for them to answer me. I turned to Claudia, the only female guard we had, and the only woman I’d ever known who was over six feet tall. She came toward me, her long black hair in its tight ponytail moving as she stepped to the edge of the group.

“We thought they were going to fight.”

“Fight about what?” I asked, and put my gun up. I wasn’t going to shoot either of them, and they would know that. Unless you’re willing to use it, a gun is just a useless piece of metal. I put my useless piece in its holster.

“I’m not entirely sure,” she said.

“One of you talk to me,” I said.

“We will not come to blows,” Jean-Claude said, and he backed away from the cluster of bodyguards to sit on the big white couch on the far side of the room. He let himself fall into it in that graceful I-don’t-care way, but he ended up looking like he was waiting for some passing photographer to snap a picture of him. He was always beautiful, but this level of care and control over how he looked was usually reserved for guests, and hostile guests at that.

“What happened?” I asked.

Asher backed up to the white loveseat with its gold and silver cushions. He put his arms on the back of the loveseat, careless, but in his own way just as posed as Jean-Claude. Asher’s gold hair spilled over the scarred side of his face so that he sat there like some fallen angel, perfect and coldly beautiful.

“What is wrong with you guys? What’s happened?”

“Nothing’s happened,” Asher said, “and that is precisely the problem.”

We all stood in the white and gold room, and I had no idea what was going on. The bodyguards were huddled between the faux fireplace and the two chairs, the silver by the faux fireplace and the gold with its white cushions by us at the end of the room between the couch and loveseat. The huge glass-and-metal coffee table in the center of everything had food on it, but it was also forcing the guards to move around it, having to be careful of the food and the vampires. It seemed like you shouldn’t have to tiptoe around refreshments when you’re standing between two master vampires, but sometimes you end up between the cutlets and the cutlery, with nowhere safe to stand.

I frowned from one to the other of them and finally turned to the guards. Claudia and her fellow wererat Fredo looked at me. The two newer guards were both werehyenas, one tall and blond, the other a little shorter with skin a few shades darker than Vivian’s, hair tight and curly to his head. They were both looking at Asher. Wicked looked from one to the other of the vampires, but Truth looked at me. I said, “Truth, report.”

The dark-haired vampire stepped away from the T-shirted security and faced me. “Asher is threatening to take his werehyenas and find another city.”

I looked at Asher. “What? Why?”

Micah moved up beside me. “Narcissus’s werehyenas are the third most powerful animal group in this city. He wouldn’t leave and start over.”

“He would, for me,” Asher said.

“Have you made him your animal to call?” Micah asked.

Asher scowled at Micah, and his ice-blue eyes flashed with a hint of glow, a hint of vampire power. “I do not have to answer your question, cat.”

“Fine, then answer it for me,” I said.

He gave me an unfriendly look. “No, no I have not done what Narcissus so terribly wants. I have not made him my animal to call, but if I would, and if I would come to his bed as he wants, then he is willing to leave St. Louis and go where I go.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Micah said, “Narcissus must love you a great deal to be willing to leave a safe city and fight for control somewhere else.”

Asher laughed, and as Jean-Claude’s laughter could be sensual and sexy, Asher’s laugh held sorrow as if the light dimmed. My heart hurt for a moment. “I’m not certain Narcissus is capable of truly loving anyone, but he wants me. He wants me badly enough that he would destroy everything he has built if only I will be his in every way.”

The conversation had the feel of something that had been talked about a lot, but it was totally news to me. I looked at Jean-Claude and said what I was thinking. “How long have you known about Narcissus’s offer?”

“Long enough,” he said.

“And you were going to mention this when?”

“He couldn’t tell you,” Asher said, “because that would have forced him to tell you the reason I want to leave, and that is a conversation he does not want to have, is it, mon bellot ? Ah, but then you are not my pretty one, are you, not anymore?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“It means that if I cannot be loved, then I want the respect due me as a master vampire with his own animal to call.”

“I’m still lost here, guys, explain,” I said.

“I want a formal greeting,” Asher said.

“We are all friends here, mon ami ,” Jean-Claude said.

“No, no we are not all friends here,” Asher said. “I am either a master vampire or your second-in-command or I am not. If I am all those things, then it is within my rights to demand a formal greeting from everyone in the room.”

“I don’t think this is J.J.’s business,” Jason said.

We all looked at him. I wasn’t sure what I would have said, but Jean-Claude said, “You are quite right. She is your guest and this does not concern her.”

“I’ll be right back after I get her settled,” he said, and he led her away to the other side of the curtains and the hallway beyond. She was asking him questions as they walked, her voice low and serious. He just shook his head.

“What do you mean, you want a formal greeting from everyone in the room? That’s what we have to do for out-of-town guests or other dominants and masters. We don’t do that to each other.”

Asher looked at me and with the hair fallen over one half of his face, and all that blue silk, he was all beautiful arrogance, but I knew that was one of the emotions he hid behind. He’d come to us with that as his shield when he was afraid something would hurt too much.

It made me look over the guards’ heads to the painting above the mantel that the whole room had been designed around. It was a picture of Jean-Claude and Asher, and their dead Julianna, back when everyone dressed like they’d stepped out of Dumas’s Three Musketeers .

The Asher in the painting was all gold and white perfection with Juliana sitting in front of him, and Jean-Claude behind them both, in his signature black and white even then. The Asher in that painting was unscarred, and the artist had captured the arrogance I was looking at now.

“When you say everyone in the room? Do you actually mean everyone?” I asked.

“I do,” he said.

“Jean-Claude?” I said.

“We are an informal lot here, but he is within his rights as a master to be greeted formally at every entrance,” Jean-Claude said.

“The formal greeting is a kind of pissing contest,” I said. “We don’t have to do that with just each other.”

“I thought we did not,” he said, and his face was empty, telling me nothing. Shit.

I turned back to Asher. “You’re seriously going to make all of us do this.”