“Shall we kill your human lover first, necromancer?” the vampire asked, and leaned in, the male body pinning me more solidly against the wall.
“Why won’t anyone believe he’s not my lover?”
“Jokes, even now, Anita,” she said in that deep voice. “There is a difference between bravery and stupidity, necromancer.”
Bernardo went limp in the choke hold. It takes longer to choke someone to death than you think it does, but I didn’t want to chance it. Shit!
“Let him go,” I said.
“But if he is not your lover, then you shouldn’t care.”
“Let him go,” I said, through gritted teeth.
“Let him breathe again,” she said.
The werelion eased the hold, and Bernardo made that terrible wheezing breath like coming back from the dead. He choked, and finally whispered, “Don’t do it, Anita.”
“He is very brave, your human lover,” she said.
I didn’t correct her again. “You’ve gotten inside my shields before and couldn’t possess me; what makes you think this time will be different?”
“I have a body to touch you with that I already possess. You should know that physical contact makes all vampire powers harder to resist.”
I stared into that stranger’s face with eyes that I seemed to have known for a lifetime. “But you’re wearing gloves. None of you is touching my skin.”
I saw the frown lines through the eyes of the mask. “Drop your shields, necromancer, and we shall see if I need to remove the gloves.”
I hesitated.
“You will do as I ask eventually, necromancer. The only question is how many of your companions will die first.”
Ethan was on the ground, and the werelion pistol-whipped him across the face. The werelion aimed one of the guns at the fallen man.
“We will kill the wererat first. He is more dangerous than the human, and I don’t like rats.”
“It’s because you can’t control them,” I said. “If it’s not a cat you can’t force it to do anything. You have to ask, just like with me.”
“Shoot him.”
“No!” I yelled.
The shot echoed through the emptiness of the space, but it was Thaddeus kneeling over Lisandro; he’d moved his body in the way of his master’s shot. He half fell over Lisandro, as his master fell to his own knees wounded as he’d wounded Thaddeus. “I can’t disobey you,” Thaddeus said, “but I can do things that you have not forbidden.” He coughed and blood sprayed down his chin. He looked across the room at me. “Thank you, Anita Blake.”
“Thaddeus,” I said.
“I am a slave no more.” He let himself collapse over Lisandro, and then his hand was up, his gun under his own chin. He pulled the trigger before his master could tell him not to, and they both fell in a heap, their cloaks and their bodies entwined. Lisandro lay under them and I couldn’t tell how badly he was hurt.
“You are forbidden to harm yourself,” she spat out, and the werelion that had Bernardo seemed to shift her weight, as if she’d been thinking about it.
The last Harlequin went toward the last werelion. “I forbade such things centuries ago, or he would have done himself a harm long ago, wouldn’t you, my pet?”
The male werelion snarled at him, but he kept the gun steady on Ethan. They might not like what they had to do, but they’d be good at it.
“Good, pet,” the vampire said, and then he stalked toward us.
The vampire pinning me to the wall said, “Everywhere you go you disrupt my vampires. Revolution follows in your wake like a plague after a rat.”
I wanted to make a smart remark, but my last one had gotten Lisandro hurt, and maybe worse. He hadn’t moved since Thaddeus and his master fell. Some ammunition went through flesh like it was butter. It could have traveled through Thaddeus and into Lisandro. He could be dead because I had to remind her that she couldn’t control wererats.
“Drop your shields or the human dies next,” she said.
“You would never fuck me, don’t do this for me,” Bernardo said. Lisandro lay very still on the floor. I didn’t want to see someone else die for me, and there was one more benefit to dropping my shields. Domino was one of my tigers to call; if I dropped my shields he’d be able to sense me. If I dropped them and burned bright enough, Jean-Claude and everyone I was tied to would sense me, and there were ties between us that physical distance had nothing to do with. She’d wanted me alone, but was I alone? Was I ever really alone?
My heart was trying to climb into my throat. I was so scared my mouth was dry.
Ethan called out, “Anita!”
“Don’t do it,” Bernardo said.
“If you can’t possess me, I don’t want you saying it’s because I didn’t drop my shields enough. You said it yourself: Vampire powers work better if you touch skin to skin. Take off the gloves at least, because when you aren’t vampire enough to roll my ass, I don’t want you bitching.”
“You are impudent, girl.”
“You’ve been trying to roll my mind and take my body for over a year; don’t go all high and mighty about the fact that you can’t do it.” My words were brave, but my mouth was still dry and I was so scared my fingertips tingled with it. One strong emotion reads like another sometimes.
“Do you want me to hurt you? Is that it? Are you trying to anger me so I kill you instead of possessing you?”
“No,” I said.
In the end, she let the other Harlequin help hold me and disarm me while she stripped off the gloves, and then she undid snaps at the neck and lifted the mask off. “Mistress, you reveal his face.” He sounded shocked. Everything else that she’d done, and this was the thing that shocked him.
The man’s face was very ordinary. It was a face that you’d pass in a crowd a dozen times and never notice. It was a real spy’s face—attractive, but not too attractive, ordinary, but not too ordinary. He was neutral, from the dark brown hair cut short to the medium skin tone. James Bond is a myth; real spies don’t stand out unless they wish to, and the man standing in front of me would have blended in almost anywhere, almost.
“This body is shocked to be so naked.” Her voice sounded bemused, and just that one comment let me know that the vampire whose body she was using was still in there, still feeling his own feelings. Would that be what it was like? Would I be in there, but a prisoner in my own body? Would I have to watch her do terrible things to the people I loved and be helpless to stop it? I said a silent prayer:
“If you use your fighting skills to hurt this body, your friends will suffer for it. Do you understand?” she said.
“If I hit or kick you, fight you physically, you’ll hurt Ethan and Bernardo.”
“Yes.”
I nodded. “Fine.”
She put her hands on either side of my face and said, “Let her go.”
The vampire at my back didn’t argue, but simply let go of me. We stood there for a breath, and she whispered, “Drop your shields.”
I did what she asked. I did exactly what she asked. I dropped my shields. She’d never specified which shields. I let the
“Sex opens us all up, Anita. I have tamed many a necromancer during sex.” She leaned down and kissed me, and I dropped another shield. I dropped the one that guarded the worst power I had ever learned, the one that I had learned in New Mexico from a vampire whose eyes were the color of night and stars. She had taught me to take
