Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [751]
“I do not gossip.”
“You have always gossiped.” He motioned to me. “Anita holds different types of lycanthropy inside her.”
“That is not possible.”
“Nor is it possible for her to have a vampire servant, or an animal to call that is not mine, but those are true things.”
“We had heard, but we thought the servant was rumor.”
Jean-Claude shook his head. “Augustine is powerful enough to see truth. When he sees her with Damian, he would know the truth anyway. I tell you only a night early, oh, a day early.” He said it as if he had just remembered that he was up at dawn. He had so not forgotten. “I swear to you that human doctors have drawn her blood and tested it. She carries more than one strain of lycanthropy, and yet has not shifted to any. She holds the animal but seems unable to turn. They have tried to tear their way out tonight, and still she cannot shift.”
Micah added, “She’s stuck at that point where the beast is trying to get out, and you don’t know how to let it out.”
“Ouch,” Cookie said. He looked down at me, smiling. “You’ve had a hard morning.”
“You have no idea,” I said.
“Yes he does,” Nathaniel growled from beside me.
The two shapeshifters looked at each other. It was a long look. “Yeah, I remember the first time, we all do.”
“She fought, fought it to a standstill.”
He looked at me, eyes narrowing. “You can’t do that, no one can.”
“Never underestimate how stubborn Anita can be,” Richard said from across the room. “You’ll regret it, if you do.”
I looked at him. He’d taken one of the chairs near the fireplace, as far from the bed as he could get without leaving the room. He was mostly in shadow, so that I couldn’t see his face well. But then again, maybe I didn’t want to see his face right then.
“Don’t mistake force of will for stubbornness,” Micah said. “There is a difference.”
“It looks the same to me,” Richard said.
“It would,” Micah said.
A low growl trickled from Richard, and it echoed through the room, much the way Jean-Claude’s sigh had. The sound made me shiver but not with the promise of sex; it flared across my skin like heat, and the lion reacted to it. She spilled into my skin like the leopard had done, like the wolf had done. I was suddenly writhing on the bed, screaming again. I did not want to hurt again. But if I didn’t want to be wolf, I sure as hell didn’t want to be lion. I didn’t even know the lion pride here well. Shit. If sheer force of will was keeping me in human skin, my will was getting worn down. Eventually, I’d lose this fight. I didn’t want it to be now.
I reached out for Cookie. He grabbed my hand, almost by reflex. I dragged him down to me, and he didn’t fight me. He could have, but he came to me. He laid his body on top of mine while the lion tried to come out. She stretched, stretched, impossibly huge, trying to thrust claws out through my fingers and toes. She couldn’t come out, but those metaphysical claws cut through my skin. I screamed. I raised my hands up to hold him to me, and there was blood flowing down my fingers. Sweet Jesus, help me.
From far away I heard Cookie say, “What do I do?”
“Kiss her,” someone said.
He kissed me. The moment his mouth touched mine, I let the lion go. I let it plow into him. With Nathaniel I’d tried to be a little controlled, but I was all out of control today.
It hurt for it to leave me, like someone had thrust a shovel down my throat and was digging out my internal organs in one ripping, burning line. I screamed into his mouth, and he screamed back. He kept his mouth on mine, even while his body began to writhe in pain. His hands dug into the bed on either side of me, holding on, holding on, while that line of tearing, ripping, burning power ripped him open. There was no moment of bones sliding, or reshaping. One minute he was human, the next his skin had exploded outward, raining on the room in thick wet globs. The