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  Nicky’s voice came out hoarse and choked with need. “Your power is all mixed up with heat and sex.”

  My tongue on his neck made him shudder, and something about him doing that while my mouth was so close to the blood pulsing under his skin turned the switch in my head from sex to blood. I fought to move back from his neck and that hot, sweet blood. “Yes,” I breathed.

  “I can feel your hunger now. You want to feed on me.”

  “I’m trying for sex here, Nicky.”

  “Why isn’t my beast rising to yours? Why isn’t my hunger rising to yours? Why do I feel like prey?”

  They were all excellent questions. It forced me to think, and that helped me push away the urge to feed, enough for me to say, “I don’t know.” The ardeur didn’t usually turn to bloodlust this easily. Once it was raised it stayed raised, but not tonight. Tonight I had to think myself out of that hot, sweet scent just below his skin. If I tore his throat out, it would be the same as any other violence; it wouldn’t save Micah. Jacob would take one look at his dead lion and I’d lose my leopard. That helped me struggle to think about his questions, and how I could turn this craving for meat and blood back into sex. I needed to feed on something, though, which meant that Nathaniel and Damian, at least, knew I was hurt, because of all my metaphysical men I drained them first when I was injured. Silas must have hurt me badly for me to need to feed this much. Jean-Claude had taught Nathaniel and Damian how to feed the ardeur and send the energy to me; like any good servant of a vampire, they could feed while I stayed hidden. It was one of the main purposes of having a vampire servant of any kind. But if they’d gathered energy, then it hadn’t come to me. If Ellen’s barrier could keep out the energy of my leopard to call and my vampire servant, then she was even better than I’d feared. But it meant that until I fed, I really wouldn’t be able to raise their zombie; I’d used too much of myself up healing what Silas’s blow had done to me. Shit.

  I licked over the pulse in his throat. My breath came out in a shuddering line against his skin. I fought not to sink my teeth into his flesh, because I wasn’t sure how many times I could resist doing what the inside of my head wanted to do. Eventually, if I couldn’t regain more control, I would take blood and flesh, if I couldn’t turn this to sex.

  He moved in my arms, put his mouth on mine, and kissed me. The kiss was enough to turn the switch again, and suddenly he was all warm potential in my arms. My hungers didn’t care which one got used as long as one of them did.

  I heard Jacob’s voice yelling outside, “What the hell are you doing?” I think he was yelling at us.

  The door to the shed opened, and Jacob stood there haloed by moonlight, with a second shorter figure in black outline behind him. He pointed the gun at me, but we were so close that it was more like pointed at us.

  “Get off her, Nicky.”

  I drew Nicky in so that he wrapped his arms around me and lifted me so that we were both kneeling. He leaned in for a kiss, but Jacob was beside us, his anger roiling out like a nearly visible thing. “Don’t you dare.”

  I looked up at him, and Nicky began to kiss his way down my face toward my neck. He never looked at Jacob.

  “He can’t help himself,” the second figure said, and it was a woman’s voice; was this Ellen the witch?

  “Bullshit.”

  Nicky found the bend of my neck and I had trouble concentrating. I moved his face away from me. “I can’t think with you doing that.”

  “I don’t want you to think.”

  “Her power calls to him, as it calls to you, Rex.” Ellen’s voice had that distant singsong quality that some psychics get when they’re sensing something otherworldly. I realized what she was sensing was me, but for once I couldn’t feel it. All I could feel was the weight and warmth of the man above in my arms.

  “She doesn’t call to me,” Jacob said.

  I looked at the other man and I could suddenly feel the connection between the werelion touching me and the one in the doorway. Jacob was their leader, and that meant more in the supernatural community than it did for humans. Jacob had shared his power with Nicky, his beast with Nicky. I knew in that moment that he was the one who had turned Nicky into a werelion. He was Nicky’s creator, his alpha and omega, beginning and end.

  I had fed on leaders of animal groups before, and knew that through that connection I could feed on all their people at once in a massive feed, but I’d never realized that the reverse might be true-that I could follow the connection between one of the lesser lycanthropes to their leader, and have the control of the lesser help me gain control of the king. But it was there, a tug on my power like a fish caught on a line. It went through me, into Nicky, to his Rex, and through him beyond. Nicky was the key that opened it up, but Jacob was the guardian at the door. If I could take him, I could take them all, including the woman in the door. She wasn’t just a witch; she was a lion, too. I felt her beast pulling toward Jacob like a flower moving sunward, but I had power in Jacob now from earlier, and her beast would flow through him, to me. I threw my power outward, searching for how many lions were outside. I touched one more, and he, definitely he, was hurt.

  Ellen grabbed at something that hung around her neck, and I couldn’t feel her as strongly. She touched Jacob, and I couldn’t throw my net of power farther than the doorway.

  Jacob aimed his gun at my head; at this distance he wouldn’t miss. “Jacob,” I said, “you don’t want to hurt us.”

  The end of his gun began to lower toward the dirt floor. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he repeated.

  I felt Ellen’s power then, like a red flare behind my eyes. It hurt, and I was suddenly flung back to just sensing Nicky. I couldn’t feel Jacob anymore.

  “Fuck,” he said, and he took something out of his jacket. “You hooked up with your vampire master and thought you could roll me like some young kid. I warned you what would happen if you did that.” He was dialing his phone.

  I fought panic, and it shut down the ardeur, and suddenly Nicky went very still against me. He growled low in his throat and said, “Now who smells like prey?”

  “It’s my power,” I said, and knew my voice was thin with fear, but I didn’t care. “I didn’t contact anyone outside.”

  Jacob was quiet, listening to the phone ring in his ear.

  I tried to get up, but Nicky held on to me. “No,” he said, and I wasn’t sure if he meant “no, don’t get up,” or “no, something else.” But he let me feel just how strong he was as his arms locked around my body. It was like a hug that could suffocate with just a little more pressure. He let me feel the potential in his body for hurting me. There was more than one problem with the ardeur shutting down.

  “It is her power,” Ellen said.

  “That’s not possible,” Jacob said, and then he frowned down at the phone in his hand. “Mike isn’t answering. It went to voice mail.”

  I felt a small spurt of hope. Maybe Micah had figured it out? We had our own bodyguards; maybe Jacob’s plan wasn’t going so smoothly after all.

  “You’d feel if he’d gotten captured,” Nicky said, his arms still locked around me.

  Jacob nodded. “I would.”

  “It’s her power, my Rex,” Ellen said.

  “I thought her vampire powers came through her Master of the City; when you put up the shield against that connection, her powers were supposed to be less.”

  “I can only apologize; I didn’t understand that some of the powers are her own now.” She dropped to her knees beside him, holding her hand up to him. I’d seen similar gestures among other animal groups. It was a human version of acknowledging that Jacob was dominant to her, and an apology for screwing up.

  Jacob stared down at her, and I knew if he didn’t take her hand that it meant he didn’t forgive her. That could be the beginning of being cast out of your group. He finally lowered his gun hand so she could lay her smaller hand on the back of his; I’d seen much more elaborate versions of this, but apparently Jacob
wasn’t big on ceremony. It was his pride; he could run it the way he wanted.

  “Get her up, let’s raise this zombie and finish this,” Jacob said.

  Nicky simply stood up with his arms around my waist. There was a moment when he held me completely in his arms, my feet off the ground, and we looked into each other’s faces from inches away. He looked disappointed, as if he was worried the ardeur had gone, but he sat me down on the ground just the same. But the moment my feet were under me the world swam in streamers of gray and white. I waited for the headache to come back, but it didn’t. I was just suddenly so weak. I started to fall and Nicky had to catch me to keep me from falling to my knees. My vision was going in spots and swirls, and I couldn’t get my legs to work right.

  Nicky changed his grip and I was suddenly being held against his body, while my legs wouldn’t support me. I sagged against his bare chest, and the grayness swallowed my vision in little white starbursts, then the world went black and then nothing. There wasn’t even time for me to wonder what was happening.

  I heard voices first. A woman said, “She needs to feed, or she will die.”

  “She’s human,” a man’s voice said.

  “Not human enough,” the woman said.

  I was lying on my back again, but this time there was something folded under me for a pillow. It took me a moment to realize it was my suit jacket. My bare arms were warm in the summer night. Nicky moved into my line of vision. “She’s awake,” he said. He was sitting beside me, again. It was like a slightly different version of the first time I woke.

  Jacob and Ellen came to stand over me. They looked impossibly tall from this angle. Ellen knelt beside me, but kept her hand on whatever she wore around her neck. “You used a lot of energy healing what Silas did to you, and you’re not human, or one of us. You need to feed on energy outside yourself like a vampire.”

  I licked my lips and found them dry. I felt impossibly weak, and wasn’t sure I could sit up without help. Shit. I found my voice and it sounded thready. “What is wrong with me?”

  “I believe if you do not feed your vampire powers you will die. I did not understand what it would do to you for me to cut you off from all the men you are bound to metaphysically. That was my fault, and I have apologized to my Rex for the oversight, but you are so terribly unique, Anita. How was I to know what you were?”

  “It’s your job to know,” Jacob said, and his unhappiness was plain in his voice.

  Ellen lowered her head, long straight dark hair falling around her face. “You are right. I did not do my job adequately; I am sorry, Jacob, but if you wish her to raise the dead tonight she must feed first, and I fear it is too late for steaks and human food.”

  “What are you suggesting we do?”

  “She needs to feed on one of us.”

  He glared down at her. “And who gets to open a vein for her?”

  “It’s not blood she needs, Jacob,” Ellen said.

  He stared down at us for a moment, his gaze going from her to me. “So it’s true, she really is a succubus?”

  “You felt her power earlier,” Ellen said; “you know what she is, we all do.”

  “Can I have some water?” I asked.

  “Nicky, get her some water,” Jacob said.

  “You trust me now?”

  “Just do it.”

  Nicky got up and went for the open door. I wondered what he’d bring the water back in, but Jacob was kneeling on the other side of me from Ellen, and I had other things to worry about.

  “You’re our supernatural expert, Ellen. You fucked up, you fix it,” he said.

  “What do you mean, fix it?” she asked.

  “Let her feed on you.” He gave her an unfriendly look.

  “If she feeds on me, then I can’t maintain the circle of power that is all that stands between her and the power of her master. If she is this dangerous on her own, imagine what she’d be like with her master’s power running through her.”

  “Fine, then who do we feed to her?”

  Nicky came back at that moment with his hands cupped, water dripping from them, silver in the moonlight. He knelt beside me and looked from one to the other of them. “A little help here, please.”

  Jacob looked at Ellen. She said, “I’m afraid to touch her for fear what she’s done to the two of you will jump to me.”

  “She hasn’t done anything to me,” Jacob said.

  “I am keeping you free of her will by using my will, and my faith.” She opened her hand and flashed a pentagram, then covered it with her hand again.

  “The water is leaking out, someone lift her up,” Nicky said, and his voice was impatient.

  Jacob made a disgusted sound, but moved closer and put one muscled arm under my shoulders. He lifted me, gently enough, and Nicky put his hands down to me. It was messy, spilling water down my front, but the water was cool and good, and I needed it. When I’d drunk all the water, or had it spilled down me, Nicky took his empty hands and wiped them across my forehead and down my cheeks the way you’d touch someone’s face with a cool cloth if they were sick.

  I think the gesture surprised Nicky, too, because he sat back from me. “I don’t know why I did that.”

  “She’s rolled you,” Jacob said, and he started to lay me down on the floor and the suit jacket under my head. He moved away, and I grabbed his wrist. The moment I touched him his pulse sped against my hand and the hunger rose inside me in a wave of heat and need that pulled me up, sitting, and leaning toward him.

  He angled in, as if for a kiss, and a pentagram appeared between our faces, dangling on the end of its chain. I half-expected it to glow, but it didn’t. Maybe I wasn’t quite vampire enough yet. But it let Jacob jerk free of me and go stand near the door.

  I looked up at Ellen and her not-glowing pentagram. “Harm none is the rule, Ellen; bad witch, no cookie.”

  She swallowed hard enough for me to hear it, and backed away from me with the pentagram still bare in her hand. I think she’d thought it would glow, too. Did the fact that it didn’t make her wonder if she’d lost some of her faith?

  I started to fold back toward the floor, and Nicky caught me, lowering me to the ground. I watched the witch’s wide eyes and smelled her fear. “Threefold law, Ellen; what you do to others comes back threefold.”

  She was by the door now. Jacob had walked out while I was scaring his pet witch. “How do you know that? You’re supposed to be Christian,” she said.

  “I have friends in your faith. They’re good people.”

  “Implying that I’m not,” she said, and she was angry now.

  I lay there cradled in Nicky’s arms and said, “I’m not implying anything, I’m stating fact. You are a bad witch.”

  “You’re a bad Christian,” she said.

  I laughed, and she flinched. “God forgives me; how forgiving are the powers you’ve been praying to lately? You aren’t powerful enough to cut me off from all my people without help from something.”

  “I am powerful enough.” But her voice was too strident; she didn’t believe it.

  “Can you smell the lie, Nicky?”

  “Yes,” he said, and his voice was thick again. It was almost as if without his Rex there, my hold on him was growing stronger. Was it that, or was it just him touching me?

  Jacob appeared in the doorway again. He said, “You fed on my energy just from touching my arm, didn’t you?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “Nicky,” he said, “do you want to feed her?”

  “You mean sex?” Nicky asked.

  Jacob nodded. Ellen had moved out to stand beside him in the doorway.

  Nicky looked down at me, that one eye pale in the moonlight streaming through. “Oh, yeah.”

  “You know it’s a bad idea, right?” Jacob asked.

  “Yep,” Nicky said.

  Jacob nodded. “Make it quick. We don’t have all night.” Then he and Ellen left, closing the door behind them.

  Nicky looked d
own at me and there was something fragile on his face, almost fear, like a child when you close the door at night, but they know the monster is still under the bed. Nicky looked down at me with a knowledge on his face that he was holding the monster in his arms. I’d have comforted him, but it would have been all lies.

  The hunger rose in me like a tide that came higher each time I denied it; eventually, if I didn’t feed voluntarily, it would choose the method of feeding and one of us might not survive that choice. “I need to feed,” I said.

  “You mean you need to fuck,” he said.

  “That’ll do,” I said.

  He grinned, making his face look younger, more the joker I’d met in the restaurant. Was it only hours ago? “I’m guy enough to want to do a good job, and it feels good enough to touch you that I want to make sure you enjoy yourself enough to want to do it again.”

  I smiled up at him and wasn’t sure if it reached my eyes. “It’ll be good.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  I could have said a lot of things. I could have explained that your inhibitions took the place of a lot of foreplay. Instead I leaned in and kissed his chest where it showed above the overlarge neck of the tank top. The hair was softer than it looked, and like his brown eyes, darker than the blond hair. It didn’t mean he wasn’t a natural blond, but it made the chances less. There was enough muscle on his chest that I had to work to get a mouthful of meat and bite down.

  “Ow,” he said.

  “If you don’t like teeth and nails then you’ll have to protect yourself, because there is going to come a point where I won’t remember to behave.”

  “Are you saying you’ll hurt me?”

  I studied his face, tried to see by moonlight if he meant the question. “Haven’t you ever been with another shapeshifter?”

  He just shook his head. “After what happened to his first pride, Jacob forbids it.”

  I ran my hand through that silky hair again. “Oh, Nicky, you are missing so much.”