Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [900]
Someone touched my arm, and I jumped. It was Micah, his fingers barely touching my arm. “You look pale. Do you need to sit down?”
I took a step back and nearly stumbled. He had to grab my arm to keep me from falling on the slick, wet tile. I wanted to jerk away from him, but I was dizzy as if the world wasn’t quite solid. He eased me to the floor.
“Put your head between your knees.”
I sat Indian fashion on the floor, the wall to my back, my head bent over my folded legs while I waited for the light-headedness to pass. I never fainted. Not just from shock—occasionally from blood loss—but never from shock.
When I could think again, I raised up slowly. Micah was kneeling beside me, all attentive and compassionate, and I hated him. I laid my towel-wrapped head back against the wall, closed my eyes.
“Where are Elizabeth and Gregory?”
“Elizabeth wouldn’t come to help,” Micah said.
I opened my eyes at that, turning just my head to meet his eyes. “She give a reason for that?”
“She hates you,” he said, simply.
“Yeah, she loved Gabriel, their old alpha, and I killed him. Hard to be friends after that.”
“That’s not why she hates you,” he said.
I searched his face. “What do you mean?”
“She hates that you’re a better alpha as a human than she is as a wereleopard. You make her feel weak.”
“She is weak,” I said.
He smiled, and it had humor in it this time. “Yes, she is.”
“Where’s Gregory?”
“Are you going to punish him for contaminating you?” Micah asked.
I glanced back at the other three waiting in the door, silent. I realized suddenly what the group dynamics meant. They were treating Micah as their Nimir-Raj, letting him deal with me, like calling in the husband when the wife has had one too many drinks. I didn’t like that much. But if I concentrated just on the moment, the question at hand, no speculation, no looking for the future, maybe I’d survive.
“If Gregory hadn’t interfered I’d be dead right now. They would have clawed out my heart. It was an accident that he fell into me during the fight.” I was watching Micah’s face, but I felt the relief sweep through the others, felt it from yards away. I glanced up at them, and it showed in the lines of their bodies.
“So where is he? Where’s Gregory?”
The three of them did that hot-potato eye-flick game again. “Did he refuse to come help save me like Elizabeth?”
“No, of course not,” Cherry said. But she didn’t explain, didn’t add to it.
I looked at Nathaniel. He met my gaze, no flinching, but I didn’t like what I saw in his eyes. There was more bad news to come, you could smell it in the air.
I turned to Micah. “Fine, you tell me.”
“When your Ulfric found out that Gregory had made you their Nimir-Ra in truth, he . . .” Micah spread his hands.
“He freaked.” Zane said it.
I glanced at all of them. “What do you mean, he freaked?”
“He took Gregory,” Cherry said.
“What do you mean, he took Gregory?”
“He treated Gregory as an enemy of the pack,” Micah said.
I looked at him. “Go on.”
“If you had been their lupa in truth, if someone injured you it is within the Ulfric’s rights to declare them an enemy of the pack, a criminal.”
I kept staring into those yellow green eyes. “What exactly does that mean?”
“It means that the wolves have your leopard, and they will pass judgment on him for injuring you.”
“No way, I mean, even if I am turning into a wereleopard, which I’m not. It doesn’t hurt me. I mean, I’m just going to be a shapeshifter like them now.”
“Not like them,” Micah said, “like us.”
I tried to read his face, but I just didn’t know him well enough yet. “You have a point, make it.”
“You can’t be the wolves’ lupa and the leopard’s Nimir-Ra.”
“I’ve been both for a long time.”
He shook his head, and again he winced as if his neck hurt. “No, you were a human dating the Ulfric, who declared you lupa. You were a