Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [1049]
Nothing happened for what seemed like forever; the silence was utterly still. My hearing came back in stages. I heard Caleb muttering over and over again, “Mother fucking son of a bitch, mother fucking son of a bitch.” He was curled against the far cabinets behind me, making as small a target of himself as he could. Nathaniel actually had Igor’s dropped handgun and was pointing it at the sliding glass door. I’d taught Nathaniel the basics of guns. I had too many around for him not to know something about them, but watching him lean against the island cabinets above Igor’s body, the gun held two-handed, his left arm steadied against the cabinet edge, I knew he’d shoot whoever came through that door. If he was actually going to start picking up guns during fights, I was going to have to take him out to the range with me more.
Of course, that presupposed we would all live to do anything else. The silence stretched, until the wind sighing through the trees outside the broken glass seemed loud.
A voice came from the direction of the deck. “It’s me, it’s Micah.” The voice was a deep, growling bass.
“It doesn’t sound like Micah,” I called back.
“It sounds like me when I’m not in human form,” the voice said.
I said, “Merle?”
“It’s Micah,” he said.
“Come into the doorway, slowly,” I said.
The black wereleopard eased through the broken doorway, claws held in the air. The dark shape seemed to fill the doorway. In leopardman form he was over six feet, broader through the shoulders, bulkier all over, as if he had muscles in this shape that he didn’t have in human form. His fur gleamed like ebony, sunlight caressed his side, bringing out black-on-black rosettes like sable flowers crushed into velvet. Pale skin showed through at his chest, stomach, lower. In the movies the wolfmen are sexless, smooth as a Barbie doll. In real life, they are very much male. Somehow it was easier to see him naked in half-human form and not be the least bit embarrassed. I just didn’t see the shapeshifters as sex objects once the fur started to flow.
“Where’s the guy you threw out the door?” I asked.
“He got away.”
“I don’t hear anyone in the living room,” Merle said.
“They all went out the front door,” Zane said, “or at least the room looks clear.” He and Cherry were still crouched under the kitchen table, flat to the ground.
“I’ll check the living room,” Micah said.
“These bad guys have silver bullets. I wouldn’t be so cavalier about it,” I said.
He nodded and his head was mostly leopard, very little left of the man he was, except, strangely, those chartreuse eyes. They marked him as alien, other, in human form, but as that furred and muscled body stalked past me, those same eyes marked him as Micah. The color was richer. Encircled with black fur, the eyes were even more striking. He hesitated in the doorway, then crept through, going low, making as small a target of himself as he could. It was rare to see a lycanthrope that took advantage of cover. Most of them seemed to see themselves as invulnerable, which was usually true, but not today. Igor was very still on the floor, and Claudia’s shoulder looked like so much meat. She was slumped against the cabinets. Her left hand still gripped the gun, though the hand was motionless on the floor, as if she had no use of the arm.
When I glanced down, the gun was pointed somewhere in the direction of the sliding glass doors. The hand wavered enough that I was nervous