Danse Macabre ab-14 Read online

  She stared at him as if he were something horrible. He prompted her, "Right?"

  She nodded, and whispered, "Yes."

  "You knew Anita wasn't fucking me, so you thought if she didn't want me maybe it would be okay, but I didn't pick up on any of it. I ignored the hints, so you started to get mean about it. Maybe you didn't even know why you were doing it." He leaned in so close that she moved back until her butt hit die cabinet, and she had nowhere else to go. "You kept belittling me in front of Anita, and worse behind her back, as if you'd convince her she didn't want to keep me. That I wasn't good enough to keep. Real enough to keep. Have you ever set your sights on anyone and not fucked them, at least once?"

  She gave a little trembling shake of her head. She was biting her lower lip, and tears gleamed unshed in her eyes.

  "Then suddenly, Anita is going to keep me, and you don't poach your friends' guys. That is a rule. You tJhought I was just food, and you could have me, at least once. Suddenly I'm a boyfriend, and it's against your rules to try for me, but you still wanted me. Just once. Just once to feel me inside you..."

  I called it then. "Enough, Nathaniel, enough." My voice was shaky. This had gotten so ugly, so fast. How had I missed it?

  Natlianiel moved back from her slowly, and said, "I used to believe in women like you, Ronnie. I used to think that anyone who wanted me that badly must love me, at least a little." He shook his head. "But people like you don't love anyone, not even themselves."

  "Natlianiel," Micah said, as if he'd been shocked by that one, too.

  Nathaniel ignored him. "You need to find out what you're running from, Ronnie, before it ruins the best thing you've ever found."

  She spoke in a harsh whisper, "You mean Louie."

  He nodded. "Yeah, I mean Louie. He loves you. He really, truly loves you, not just for a night, or a month, but for years. Part of you wants that or you wouldn't still be with him."

  She swallowed hard enough that it sounded like it hurt. "I'm scared."

  He nodded, again. "What if you love him? What if you give him your whole heart and then he dumps you the way you dumped so many others?"

  She gave that trembling nod of hers again. "Yes."

  "You need help, Ronnie, professional help. I can recommend someone."

  I knew Nathaniel saw a therapist, but I'd never heard him talk about it with anyone before, not like this.

  "I've been with her for a few years. She's good. She's helped me a lot." His face was gentler than it had been.

  Ronnie looked at him as if he were the snake and she were the helpless little bird.

  He went to the corkboard above the phone. There were business cards pinned to it; important numbers, notes. He took one of the cards down. He walked back over to Ronnie and held it out to her. "If she can't take you, she'll know someone good who can."

  Ronnie took the card carefully, just by the corner as if she were afraid it would bite. She gave him wide, frightened eyes, but she put the card in her jeans pocket. She let out a deep breath, and turned to me. "I'm sorry, Anita. I'm sorry about everything." She looked at Nathaniel, then back at me. "And now I'm going to leave the mess behind and let you guys clean it up like I've always done. I am sorry." And she walked out. We all waited until we heard the door close behind her.

  The three of us stood for a few seconds in silence, waiting for the shock waves to settle. But of course there were other problems than just Ronnie's issues.

  Micah turned to me, and said, "Are we in a mess?"

  "I'm not sure yet," I said.

  "But you think you're pregnant?" he said.

  I nodded. "I missed last month. I'd planned on finding out for sure before I told anyone." I sighed and crossed my arms under my breasts. "I haven't bought a pregnancy test, because I wasn't sure how to take it without one of you finding out."

  Nathaniel came to stand beside me, but to one side so he wouldn't block my view of Micah. "Anita, you shouldn't have to go through this alone. At

  least one of us should be holding your hand while you wait for the little strip to turn colors."

  I looked up at him. "You sound like you've done this before."

  "Once; she wasn't sure it was mine, but I was the only friend she had to hold her hand."

  "I thought I was your first girlfriend."

  "She found out I'd never been with a girl, so she took care of it." His voice made it seem utterly matter-of-fact. "I wasn't very good at it, but she came up pregnant. It was probably one of her customers, but it could have been mine."

  "Customers?" Micah made it a question.

  "She was in the game, like I was then."

  I knew "the game" meant she'd been a prostitute, but "the game" usually meant when he was on the street. He'd been off the street by sixteen. "How old were you?" I asked.

  "Thirteen," he said.

  The look on my face made him laugh. "Anita, I'd never been with a girl, but I'd seen a lot of men. She thought I should know what it's like to be with a girl. She was my friend, protected me sometimes, when she could."

  "How old was she?" Micah asked.

  "Fifteen."

  "Jesus," I said.

  He smiled, that gentle, almost condescending smile that always let me know what a sheltered life I'd led.

  "And she got pregnant," Micah said, softly.

  Nathaniel nodded. "The odds were that it wasn't mine. We had sex twice. Once so I could see if I liked it. The second time so I could get better at it." His face softened in a way I'd never seen before.

  "You loved her," I said, voice as gentle as I could make it.

  He nodded. "My first crush."

  "What was her name?" Micah asked.

  "Jeanie, her name was Jeanie."

  I almost didn't ask, but it was the most he'd ever talked about that part of his life, so I asked. "What happened?"

  "I held her hand while the test turned positive. Her pimp paid for an abortion. I went with her. Me, and another girl." He shrugged, and the soft light faded in his eyes. "She couldn't have kept it. I knew that. We all knew it." He looked suddenly sad, lost.

  I wanted to take that lost look out of his eyes, so I hugged him, and he let me, and he hugged me back.

  "What happened to Jeanie?" Micah asked.

  He stiffened in my arms, and I knew then it would not be a good answer. "She died. She got into the wrong car one night, and the date killed her."

  I hugged him tighter. "I am so sorry, Nathaniel."

  He hugged me, one fierce, tight hug, then he moved back enough to see my face. "I was thirteen and she was fifteen. We were street hookers. We were both drug addicts. There wasn't going to be a baby." His eyes were so serious. "I'm twenty, and you're twenty-seven. We both have good jobs, money, a house. I've been clean for three, almost four years."

  I pulled back from him. "What are you saying?"

  "I'm saying we have choices, Anita. Choices that I didn't have the last time."

  My pulse was in my throat, threatening to choke me. "Even if I am—" and it took me two tries to say—"pregnant, I'm not sure I'm keeping it. You understand that, right?" My chest was so tight I could barely breathe.

  "It's your body," he said. "I respect that. I'm just saying that we have more than one way to go here, that's all. It has to be mostly your choice."

  "Yes," Micah said, "you're the woman, and like it or not, the final choice has to be yours."

  "Your body, your choice," Nathaniel said, "but we need a pregnancy test. We need to know."

  "We're running late now," I said. "You guys need to shower and we have to go to Jean-Claude's place."

  "Can you really just go to the cocktail party with this hanging over us?" Nathaniel asked.

  "I have to."

  He shook his head. "It's fashionable to be late, and once he knows why, Jean-Claude won't mind."

  "But...," I said.

  "He's right," Micah said, "or am I the only one that thinks I would go crazy smiling and nodding tonight, and not knowing?"


  I hugged myself tighter. "But what if it's positive, what if..." I couldn't even finish it.

  "Then we'll deal with it," Micah said.

  "Whatever happens, Anita, it will be okay. I promise," Nathaniel said.

  It was my turn to look into his face and realize how young he was. We were only seven years apart in age, but they could be an important seven years. He promised it would be all right, but some promises you can't keep no matter how hard you try.

  That tight feeling climbed up my throat and spilled out my eyes. I started

  to cry, and couldn't stop it. Nathaniel wrapped his arms around me, held me against his body, and a moment later Micah moved in behind me. They both held me, while I cried my fear and confusion and anger at myself. Self-loathing didn't even begin to cover it.

  When the crying slowed, and I could breathe without hiccuping, Nathaniel said, "I'll go out and get the test. Micah can shower while I'm gone. I should be back in time to clean up and we'll only be a little late."

  I pushed myself away, enough to see his face. "But what if it's a yes, I mean how can I go to the party if it's a yes?"

  Micah leaned over my shoulder, putting his face next to mine. "You don't want to know," he said, "because you'll find it easier to pretend tonight, if you don't know."

  I nodded, my cheek sliding against his.

  "I'll get the test," Nathaniel said, "and we'll use it later tonight, after the party. But we are getting one, or two, to take with us." For someone who was supposed to be a submissive his voice held no compromise. It was simple fact.

  "What if someone finds it in our stuff?" I asked.

  "Anita, you're going to have to tell Jean-Claude and Asher sometime," Nathaniel said.

  "Only if it's positive," I said.

  He gave me a look, but nodded. "Okay, only if it's positive."

  Positive. It seemed like such the wrong word. If I was pregnant it was def­initely a negative. A really big, scary negative.

  3

  AN HOUR AND a half later we were parked in the employee lot behind the Circus of the Damned. Nathaniel had helped me with my eye shadow. He could blend about a dozen different colors and make it look like I wasn't wearing anything, yet make my eyes look amazing. He did his own eyes for the stage, so he had the practice. My dress was actually a skirt outfit. Black, stiff material, so that the gun in its holster at the small of my back didn't show through the dark cloth. Nor did the knife in its spine sheath. My hair hid the hilt. I'd left my cross in the glove compartment, because the chances of no one "accidentally" using vamp powers on me tonight were between zero and nothing. Yeah, they were our "friends" but they were still Masters of the City, and I was the Executioner. Someone wouldn't be able to resist trying me out, just a little. Like someone who shakes your hand too hard. But this "handshake" could make the cross burn against my skin. I did not want another cross-shaped burn scar.

  Both the men were in Italian-cut suits, tailored to their bodies. Nathaniel was in black with a lavender shirt shades paler than his eyes. His tie was rich, purple silk. He'd braided his hair, so that it gave the illusion that his hair was short, until you saw the braid waving around his ankles. His black leather shoes gleamed, the cuffed pants long enough to hide the fact that he wore no socks. Micah was in charcoal gray with a thin black pinstripe. His shirt was a green with yellow undertones, almost the same shade as his eyes. De­pending on how the light hit the shirt it brought out either the green or the yellow of his eyes, so that the color of his eyes changed with almost every breath. It was a nice effect.

  I was wearing jogging shoes, but there was a pair of four-inch black heels in the overnight bag. Four-inch spikes, with open heels, and laces that wrapped around my ankles. When Jean-Claude couldn't persuade me into a skimpier outfit for the night, we'd compromised with the totally impractical shoes. Though strangely, they weren't uncomfortable. They looked like they should have been, but they weren't. Either that, or I was getting better at

  walking in high heels. Jean-Claude's fault. I'd put the shoes on when we reached the bottom of the stairs, before we saw our guests.

  I had a key to the new back door of the Circus of the Damned. No more waiting around for someone to let us inside. Yea!

  I'd actually turned the key and felt the lock click over, when the door started opening inward. Security was pretty good at the Circus of late, since we'd made a deal with the local wererats. But it wasn't a wererat that opened the door; it was a werewolf.

  Graham was tall enough and muscular enough to make it impossible to move through the door without brushing him. He stood for a moment look­ing down at me, at us, I guess, though it felt more personal than that. His perfectly straight black hair managed to fall decoratively over his brown eyes, and still be very, very short on the bottom, so the strong line of his neck was left bare and strangely tempting. His eyes tilted up at the edges, and I now knew that he had his Japanese mother's eyes and hair, but the rest of him seemed to have been copied from his ex-navy and very Nordic-looking father.

  Graham was the only one of the lycanthropes I'd ever known to have his parents visit his place of work. Since his usual job was security at Guilty Pleasures, a vampire and furry strip club, that had been an interesting night.

  I thought for a moment Graham would stay in the doorway and make me push past him. I think for a moment, so did he. I was almost sure he would have moved, given us room, but Micah stepped up, just a little in front of me. "Give us some room, Graham." He didn't say it mean, or even call any of that otherworldly energy. He even made it a little bit of a request, but Graham's face darkened just the same.

  I watched Graham think about it. Think about not moving. He was al­ready dressed in what all die security would be wearing tonight; black slacks, black T-shirt, though the shirt should probably have been a size larger. The one he was wearing looked like it was having trouble holding on, as if one flex too many and it would shred. Micah looked fragile beside him.

  Micah let down some of his careful control. He let just a whisper of the power that lived inside him breathe rfirough the night. My skin shivered with it. His voice came lower, deeper, an edge of growl to it. "We are Nimir-Raj and Nimir-Ra and you are not. Move."

  "I am wolf and not leopard; you have no audiority over me." He actually tensed, as if he were bracing for the fight.

  I'd had enough. "But I have authority over you, Graham," I said.

  His eyes did not move from Micah, as if I weren't a threat. There were so

  many reasons Graham had not made the leap from bodyguard to breakfast snack for me.

  His ignoring me pissed me off, and the first thread of anger brought my own version of the beast. That warm, prickling thread of power breathed over my skin and danced around the men around me. I was not a true shapeshifter, because I couldn't shift, but I carried four different strains of ly-canthropy in my bloodstream. If you catch one type of lycanthropy, it pro­tects you from any other strain. You can't carry more than one disease at a time, but I did. A medical impossibility, but blood tests don't lie. I carried wolf, leopard, lion, and one mystery strain that the doctors couldn't identify running through my veins. That, and some metaphysical impossibilities, meant I had power to call. Power to use, up to a point.

  Nathaniel rubbed his arms and said, "Easy, Anita."

  He was right. Because I couldn't shift, it was possible to call the beast, but impossible to finish the call, so it was like having a seizure. Not pleasant, and I'd ruin the dress. But I was tired of Graham. Tired of him in so many ways. The energy had made him look at me, and for trie first time I saw him re­member that I was something besides a piece of ass he wanted, and hadn't had, yet.

  "I am the lupa of your pack, Graham, until Richard picks another mate." I stepped up, and Micah moved back so I could do it. I kept moving, push- ing my power into that tall, muscular body, so that it was Graham who moved out of my way. "But I will always be Bolverk of the Thronnos Rokke Clan, Graham. I will always be the doer of evil
deeds for your Ulfric, your wolf king. I am the executioner of bad little werewolves who don't remem­ber their place. I think you've forgotten that."

  I'd backed him up among the boxes in the storeroom. His head actually hit the lone light that hung from the ceiling. The light swung and filled the room with shadows, and darkness.

  I could feel that part of me that had begun life as Richard's beast, but now, somehow, was mine, pacing just below the surface of my mind. It was as if my body were a cage in the zoo, and my beast paced the narrow confines of its prison. Paced, and did not like it. Trapped, so trapped, and so wanting to break free.

  I staggered. Micah and Nathaniel caught me before Graham could reach me. Micah growled, "Don't touch her!"

  Nathaniel said, "She's called wolf; if another wolf touches her right now, it will make it harder to control."

  I clung to them, my two cats. I put my face against the warmth of Micah's neck, and drew in a deep breath of his scent. But underneath the warm scent

  of him, the sweetness of his cologne, was the nose-wrinkling musk of leop­ard. It helped chase back the wolf, helped me fight free before things got out of hand.

  Graham dropped to his knees, head bowed. "Forgive me, lupa, I forgot myself."

  "Size doesn't make you dominant, Graham, power does. You are submis­sive to me in our pack. You are always submissive to Micah, because he is the leader of another people that has a treaty with the wolves. You will treat him accordingly or it will not be as lupa that I talk to you next, but as Bolverk."

  He looked up, startled, as if he hadn't expected me to say that last. He'd been playing, and I'd upped the stakes so high he didn't like the game any­more. Maybe if I hadn't been so tense about the maybe-baby I wouldn't have invoked Bolverk, or maybe I was just tired of Graham.

  Once Nathaniel moved from pomme de sang to my animal to call, then I'd needed a new pomme de sang. As my animal to call he was bound metaphys­ically too close to be just food. Jean-Claude and some of the other vamps had put their heads together and finally realized that there was a reason that an animal to call, human servant, and pomme de sang are three separate jobs. The first two are so closely bound to you metaphysically that though they can feed you, it's a little like eating your own arm. You can do it, but it has a price. It fills your belly, but it also takes energy from other places. It was ac­tually Elinore, one of the vamps we invited in from England to join our vam­pire kiss, who figured out why I was having to feed so often from all my men. Because almost all the men I was feeding the ardeur from were bound to me metaphysically—Jean-Claude as my master, Richard as my Ulfric and Jean-Claude's animal to call. We were a triumvirate of power, but we needed fuel from outside that triumvirate sometimes. I'd accidentally made another tri­umvirate of power with Nathaniel as my animal to call, and Damian as my vampire servant (another impossibility), and again they weren't a complete meal. So no matter how much I "fed" off any of them, I just didn't stay filled up. Asher, Jean-Claude's second-in-command, and our sweetie, was a full meal. Requiem would probably have been a full meal if I'd allowed myself to have full-blown intercourse with him. Byron had been emergency food, and frankly just wasn't enough my type to be a permanent part of my bedroom. He enjoyed sex with me, but he liked boys better. I don't mind not being someone's main squeeze, but being the wrong sex, that just made my head hurt.