Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [1030]
“I’ll try not to hurt you,” I said, but I thrust my power into Gregory. I felt it hit his chest and sink into him like a large flesh-and-fur blade.
Gregory gasped, back arching, just a little.
I found his beast like a curled cat, asleep, sluggish, and I grabbed it in my hand, sank claws in it and pulled it screaming into the air. I ripped his beast out of him, and Gregory shifted, as Stephen had shifted in an explosion of blood, flesh, and fluid. I was covered in it, so thick I had to scoop it out of my eyes to see. To see that yellow and black spotted man-leopard lying hunched on the table. I watched Stephen come to sniff along his brother’s shivering body.
“Gregory, Gregory, can you hear me?” I asked, and my voice was softer than I meant it to be.
Gregory blinked leopard eyes at me, but a growling voice came out of that furred throat. “I can hear you.”
Stephen threw his head back and bayed. Jamil echoed him, and the leopards’ screams of triumph filled the night.
36
DAWN WAS SLIDING through the trees in a wash of white, white light that left the trees looking like black paper cutouts against the shining sky when I pulled the curtains and filled the bedroom with twilight dimness. I’d put very heavy curtains in the room when Jean-Claude had been a frequent visitor. The bedside lamp seemed dim after the glow of sunrise. Nathaniel sat on the edge of the bed by the lamp. He was wearing the bottoms of silk pajama shorts. They were a pale lavender silk that echoed his eyes and looked too delicate a color for men’s sleepwear. I always suspected the shorts were originally designed for a woman, but shorts were shorts.
The lamplight caught red highlights in his auburn hair, where it gleamed down the side of his body like something warm and alive, almost separate. Strangely, in wereleopard form, he was a black panther, so that auburn hair vanished once he left human form.
Nathaniel was the only one of the wereleopards still in human form. So he was the only one that got to share my bed. If they were kitty-cats, they had to sleep elsewhere, but in human form we tried to be a big pile of puppies. Somehow it was less comfy with only Nathaniel than it would have been with more of them. Maybe it was the fact that his right nipple still had a circle of my teeth marks.
“Shouldn’t the bite marks have healed by now?” I asked.
“I don’t heal as quickly as some,” he said softly. “And marks made by another shapeshifter, or even a vampire, heal more slowly.”
“Why is that?”
He shrugged. “Why does silver kill us, and steel not?”
“Point taken,” I said. I ran my hand through my still-damp hair. I’d showered and was actually wearing pajamas, not an oversized T-shirt, which was my usual sleep attire. Though pajamas may have been too big a word for the emerald green camisole and matching short-shorts. There was a floor-length robe in the same vibrant green, so everything was covered, but Nathaniel knew I hadn’t dressed up for him. Or at least I hoped he did.
He watched me pacing the room with careful eyes. We had crossed a line, he and I, and the mark on his chest just kept reminding me of it. I didn’t think that Richard would tolerate Nathaniel and me sharing the bed alone, not that I really expected the three of us to bunk together, either. Oh, hell, I didn’t know what I expected. I had expected Richard to come to me after his shower. But he was a no-show, and it was dawn, and I was tired.
There was a firm knock on the door. I said, “Come in,” with my heart beating a little too fast. Merle opened the door, and I hoped my disappointment didn’t show on my face. His own face registered nothing, so I couldn’t judge what he saw on mine.
“The Ulfric is in the kitchen.” He did look uncomfortable then. “He is crying.”
I felt my eyes widen. “Excuse me?”
Merle looked down, then up, almost defiant. “He has ordered his bodyguard out of the