vampires to execute. We are going to be cutting it close.”
“If we use guns, we can do it,” he said.
“If they’re all out in plain sight and we don’t have to play
“What choice do we have?” he asked.
“None. Get your asses out here; if you’re late, I go in without you.”
“I don’t remember giving you the address,” he said, “just that it’s out by you.”
Shit, I was more tired than I knew. “Give it to me.”
“Nope, Captain Storr and Kirkland both warned me you’d go all Lone Ranger if I did, and they were right.”
I cursed silently. “Are you really picking me up, or will you give me the address when you’re closer?”
“I’ll pick you up; it really is on the way.”
“I’ll be ready; hurry, Brice. You do not want to be inside the place when that many vamps wake for the night.”
“No, I don’t,” he said, and hung up.
Nathaniel hugged me tighter around the waist, nuzzling past my fingers to kiss along my hip. He knew better than to say,
Micah looked at me and took my hand in his. “Be careful.”
“I will be.”
We had a moment of them holding me, and me not wanting to go. I’d have much rather snuggled back down into the warm nest of sheets and body heat. Once I’d enjoyed hunting the monsters, taken a lot of pride in being the best at killing them, but lately, I just wanted to go home and be with the people I loved. Zerbrowski said I was having the ten-years-on-the-job moment. I told him I hadn’t been on the job that long. His reply: “You work what amounts to serial killers, or sex crimes, violent crimes; everyone burns out on those details, even you.”
I sat there in the dark with that thread of sunlight across the sheets, giving enough light for me to see Micah and Nathaniel by, let them wrap me round with the warmth and strength of them both, and I didn’t want to go. Twenty vampires minimum was a lot to kill in less than two hours. I was pretty sure that Jean-Claude could keep my death from dragging any of my other metaphysical sweeties down to die with me, including Nathaniel, but… I’d never been as happy as I was right now. Does happiness make us cowards? If someone had threatened the people I loved, I would have been ruthless to protect them, but there was no threat to me and mine. I was about to leave this warm bed, these warm arms, this happy family, and the rest of our family that stayed mostly at Circus of the Damned, for my job.
It was great to get the bad guys. Wonderful knowing I’d saved them from killing other innocent victims, but Nathaniel was so warm cuddled against me, his lips so soft on my skin. Micah felt solid and real, and so good in my arms. I snuggled against them, and we held each other, and for the first time ever, if one of them had asked me not to go, I might have done it.
I let myself think in the front of my head what I must have been thinking in the back for a while. Maybe the world would be safe without me being Marshal Anita Blake. Maybe new Marshals like Arlen Brice could save the day and I could find a different way to… live.
24
I HAD TIME for coffee, which is usually a good thing, but it turned into a trap, as if the coffee were the goat the hunter had staked out to lure the leopard into firing range. I stood in my kitchen with the fresh cup of perfect coffee in my favorite baby penguin mug, and was so not happy. Cynric had made the coffee, and it was perfect, but it was a trap. I knew the feel of “the talk” in the air, and I didn’t want to have it. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to do it, or talk about it, or deal with it. I especially didn’t want to deal with it when Brice and SWAT could be outside in just moments. I’d even said that, and his reply had been, “There’s never a good time to talk about us, Anita. You’re always ass-deep in alligators.” It was hard to argue with that, so I didn’t try. Arguing when someone says something so very true just makes you look stupid.
I fought not to be sullen about it, and to be a reasonable grown-up. In that moment the grown-up in the room wasn’t me. I leaned my back against the cabinet, leaning back on my butt, so it was a type of reclining. Cynric stood in front of me. He’d let his hair grow out in the year and some change he’d been with us, so that now it touched his shoulders. He usually brushed it out when it was wet and tied it back tight in a ponytail. His hair managed to be thick and luxurious rather than just soft. I think he had the thickest straight hair I’d ever touched. He had it back in a ponytail, not quite tight enough to hide the fact that there was a lot more hair behind him. His face had thinned down, letting nice, triangular cheekbones come out of what I could only have called baby fat, though no one called it that now. He was leaner from gaining extra inches of height and hitting the gym in a serious way. Nathaniel worked out because he was a stripper, and when you take your clothes off for customers, you need to look good. I worked out so I could fight bad guys. The bodyguards who stayed at the house with us, and at the Circus with Jean-Claude, worked out to stay in shape to protect our asses. Richard was Ulfric, wolf king, and occasionally you had to fight to keep the title, so he worked out to make sure he could do that. Micah worked out because I, his leopard queen, did, and because occasionally the leopard king had to fight for the right to keep his title, too, though it was a lot rarer among the leopards than the wolves. Wereleopards were more practical creatures than werewolves, as a general rule. Micah didn’t work out as much as I did, but then neither did Nathaniel. I was the one most likely to be depending on my body to save my ass on a regular basis. It was a serious incentive to exercise.
I’d insisted that Cynric take fight practice with me and the guards, because I preferred my people to be able to defend themselves. I couldn’t be with everyone all the damn time, so fewer victims was a good thing. Cynric had gotten his ass kicked at the hand-to-hand and non-gun weapons practice, so he’d started lifting weights and running with us, so he’d be in better shape for practice. It had probably helped give him that extra height and widen his shoulders, fill out his upper body, and just put muscle on what had been a slender, softer frame. Now he was lean and had more muscle. He didn’t bulk up as much as some of the other men; Nathaniel had broader shoulders and put on muscle easier. Cynric muscled up not much better than Micah did, which meant he fought for every ounce of it, almost as much as Micah. Micah looked amazing out of his clothes, lean, muscled, strong, and so very male, but in clothes, especially anything that wasn’t tight, it was harder to see the workout. Cynric had some of the same problems. It meant that in the new preternatural high school football league, he was quarterback. He didn’t have the bulk to be much else, and he had a good eye, good hands, lightning-quick reflexes, and dead-calm nerves even with kids three times his size barreling down on him. He also could run like a son of a bitch and would have made a good running back or wide receiver if he hadn’t been so good at quarterback. Considering he’d never played organized sports in his life, it was pretty impressive. His couch bemoaned all those years of lost opportunity.
He was also running track again, in a preternatural league, and there he excelled at anything that required speed and agility. He was a sprinter, not a distance runner, but within his distances he was almost untouchable. We actually had college coaches sniffing around, because there was talk of a college preternatural league, and there were already amateur adult leagues across the country, with some talk of a professional one starting up, at least in football.
There weren’t enough preternaturals between one school and another to have more than one team between states right now. Which meant the St. Louis team was really a Missouri team. We were doing well in football, and a lot of that was due to the guy standing in front of me.
Nathaniel loved going to the games and meets, and they introduced themselves as brothers, which left me in the interesting situation of having a few parents at the games wondering exactly what I was doing with Nathaniel and his younger brother. I didn’t really care what strangers thought about me, but Cynric bothered me, personally, and always had.
Cynric was wearing jogging shorts and no shirt, so he’d either worked out already or been about to when he heard me get up. He wasn’t sweating, so he’d been getting dressed to run, and just stopped in the middle to come out to me. The shorts left his upper body bare in the last of the late-day sun, so that the dying gold of the light painted his muscles in amber highlights, giving them even more depth and shading. At least he was wearing the bottoms; a lot of the wereanimals went around nude unless my modesty protested-though Cynric had come with his own share of modesty and rarely went around buck naked, come to think of it.
