Kiss The Dead

“As you say, ma petite will heal. There is no permanent harm done.” But his voice was still that pleasant, empty charm. I couldn’t blame Lillian for wondering what he was really feeling.

“Exactly,” she said.

Jean-Claude came to me and took my hand in his. I didn’t really need help down from the table, but I’d learned to be gracious about the men in my life wanting to be gentlemen. It was rare enough these days that it needed encouragement, not discouragement. I hopped off the table with his hand in mine.

“How’s Sin?”

“He is fine. Nathaniel and Micah will take turns staying with him to make certain he doesn’t have a concussion.”

“Good,” I said, but my voice sounded distant. I squeezed his fingers, as if touching him helped the world be more solid.

He swept the curtains aside and led me out. I let him lead. I was ready to follow someone, and Jean-Claude wasn’t a bad choice for it.

Nicky and Claudia fell in behind us. Nicky had a small butterfly bandage near his eye, and a bruise starting around it. “How’s Ares?” I asked.

“Concussion, broken arm and leg,” Nicky said.

I stopped walking, which made Jean-Claude have to stop, too. I looked at Nicky. “Ares is a special forces sniper, and you did all that in just a few minutes?”

“Like you said, he’s special forces, I’m not. I had to end the fight hard and fast, or I’d be the one in the hospital.”

“I’m not arguing that part, Nicky. I just…” What was I supposed to say? “It’s just that Ares does better than you in sparring practice, that’s all.”

“That’s practice, Anita. We’re not allowed to hurt each other for real in the ring here, and the army doesn’t like you disabling each other in practice either.”

“I guess not. What’s your point?”

“I’m a werelion, Anita. Ares is a werehyena. Hyenas are a rough bunch, but they don’t fight each other the way lions do. It’s expected that males in a pride will challenge the leaders, and they have to be put in their place, or killed.”

I realized something and felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner. “I thought Payne and Jesse were away on assignment like the wererats send their mercenaries away to earn money for the group, but that’s not it, is it?”

“What answer do you want?” he asked.

“The truth,” I said.

He shook his head. “No, you don’t. Because you’ll get all self-righteous about it, and then you’ll feel guilty because you made me the Rex of the St. Louis lions, and so you’ll blame yourself, and me, but you’ll take it out on me, and I don’t want that.”

“So, you killed them.”

“To keep them from killing me, yeah, I killed them, but not by myself. Kelly and some of the other werelions helped me. If the majority of the dominants in the pride had sided with Payne and Jesse, then I’d be dead, but they sided with me. They thought I was a better leader, and had stronger ties to you and Jean-Claude, so the lions would be better protected.”

I thought about Payne and Jesse dead. It should have meant more to me, but it didn’t. I felt numb, and distant with everything. My mouth was beginning to give me small, sharp pains. The fact that I’d gone shocky and it was only now hurting meant I was really hurt.

“So, if I’d been sleeping with Payne, then they would have sided with him and killed you?”

“It’s not the fucking, it’s the fact that I’m your Bride, and you’re fucking me. That makes me more important to you.”

I nodded. “What happens if someone I’m tied to metaphysically turns out to be a bad guy?”

“They all trust you to take care of it, like you did with the old Rex before me.”

I had shot the old Rex point-blank in the face after he killed one of the other werelions, and tried to kill Nathaniel. Haven hadn’t been able to share me with the other men. He’d wanted me to himself, and when he couldn’t have that, he’d tried to kill the men I loved. His jealousy had made him do really bad things, and in the end I’d had to kill him to keep everyone safe. It had been a fight that had gotten out of hand, sort of like this one.

I tugged on Jean-Claude’s hand, squeezing his fingers. “I don’t want to have another moment like with Haven, Jean-Claude.”

“None of us do, ma petite.”

“Asher could have really hurt Sin, Jean-Claude. It takes a lot to knock the weretigers silly with one blow.”

“Devil wouldn’t have been knocked for a loop,” Nicky said.

I looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Devil is a lot stronger, he’s got more muscle around his neck, so the blow wouldn’t have hurt him as much, and he’s a more powerful wereanimal. That helps protect you, too.”

I looked at Claudia. “How strong is Sin compared to the rest?”

She shrugged. “He’s clan tiger, so that’s a step up in metaphysics, but I’d say he’s one of the least powerful of your tigers. The only one weaker is Jade, and I think her problem is she’s afraid of the power.”

I thought about the only woman tied to me metaphysically. She was tinier than me, fit under my arm like I did with most of my men. She was all pale skin, and long black hair, with those big brown eyes that uptilted in her face. She always made me think of words like delicate, dainty, and not a lot of women made me think that.

“She was her vampire master’s punching bag for centuries; it makes her think like a victim.”

“She’s got these wicked skills when she practices by herself,” Nicky said, “but when we try to put her in the sparring ring, she freezes.”

“He made her into his victim,” I said.

“But she’s got these ninja skills, and I’m not making a racist remark on that; all the Harlequin are beyond special-forces good at some things. They’re like movie ninjas, almost magical.”

“Her master trained her up like the rest of the Harlequin, but he abused her so badly that she had the skills but never got to use them,” Claudia said. “As if he crippled her at the same time he trained her.”

“Accurate, I think.”

“Why would the Harlequin waste all that training?” Claudia asked.

“I still wish you would not all say that word so casually,” Jean-Claude said.

“The Harlequin aren’t the bodyguards of Marmee Noir anymore. They work for us now, Jean-Claude,” I said.

“And you were right to have me change the law about mentioning their name. It was excessive for that to be a death sentence.”

“Excessive, you think?” I asked.

He smiled at me. “But they are still the greatest warriors, assassins, and spies that have ever been known,” he said.

“Yeah, but they should never have been forced to hunt someone down and kill them for just saying the Harlequin.”

“The Mother of All Darkness was the ruler of the Vampire Council for thousands of years, ma petite. She was the first vampire, the creator of our culture and most of our laws. She was beyond queen or empress to us. She was our dark goddess.”

“We killed the Mother of All Darkness; that means we get to change her crazy-pants laws.”

“The queen is dead, long live the king,” Nicky said.

I looked at him.

He shrugged as much as all that muscle would let him. “It’s what all the vampires and older wereanimals are saying. You killed her, so you get the spoils by wereanimal society rules, but you’re Jean-Claude’s human servant, so he gets credit for it by vampire law.”

“I know the vampires consider me just an extension of Jean-Claude’s power, like a gun, or a bomb.”

“I do not think of you that way, ma petite, you know that.”