Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [101]
But impossibly, I felt him out there in the hall, felt him move closer, and knew that there were at least two other wolves with him. Our wolves, our pack.
Crispin was on his feet, his otherworldly energy swirling off of him like invisible fire. It was way more power than he’d had last night. Had he hidden it? Was I that bad at tiger energy? Shit.
I stood up, a little slower, gun in hand. “It’s my Ulfric and my pack.”
“What are they doing here?” he growled from human lips. Once I’d thought growling voices from human mouths was strange. Now it was so low on my weird list, I didn’t blink.
“I don’t know. I think they came for me.” I was already going for the door. Did we still have guards out there? What would they do about Richard and his men?
I had a moment to realize I was naked, covered in blood and other things, along with wounds. I might have tried to throw something on, but I heard male voices by our door. “Stop right there.”
Shit.
I took a deep breath and went for the door. Maybe I could hide to the side, and not flash the entire hallway. I had a memory of doing this last night. The red tiger had come and the guards had stopped him. I’d opened the door nude and let him in. I’d told the guards that I knew him and had asked him to stop by, or something like that. I could remember his human form now. Tall, short hair the dark red of his own fur, and his eyes. I’d looked into his eyes and been disappointed. They’d been brown, just brown. I’d known that was wrong, very wrong. I had a glimpse of him with human eyes that were dark rich golden yellow, with edges around the iris of orange, red. He’d had to take out his contacts that hid his tiger eyes before I’d let him touch me. Why was that important? Why had that mattered to me? Hell, for that matter, why had I let in a stranger at all?
I heard deep voices, and the guards repeating, “Back off, now.”
I was out of time to get clothes. The returning memories had distracted me. I took a deep breath and opened the door.
43
I HID AS much of me behind the door as I could, but with one hand on the doorknob and the other hand still holding a gun; it was a little awkward in so many ways.
The guards were Shadwell and Rowe. That was wrong. They hadn’t been our guards in the night. What time was it? How long had we been out? Had we cycled back through our guard shifts? Shit, again.
“It’s all right, guys,” I said.
“The hell it is,” Rowe said.
“We can’t let them in, Blake,” Shadwell said, “not without clearing it with someone.”
I looked farther down the hall, and there they were. Jamil and Shang-Da stood in front of whoever was behind; they were not small men and seemed to fill the hallway. Shang-Da was well over six feet, the tallest Chinese man I’d ever met. His hair was cut short, and he wore a long black trench coat. I knew it wasn’t because of the summer heat. There would be dangerous toys under the coat. Jamil was almost five inches shorter, which put him at about six feet. He looked small, but then everyone looked small beside Shang-Da. Jamil’s hair was in cornrows to his waist with tiny white beads showing. He wore a white suit that made his skin look even darker than it was. The suit was a generous cut, not the formfitting style he preferred. Some suits he had were for show, but this was a business suit of someone who wore weapons and didn’t want them spotted. It was a tailoring challenge, I knew that myself.
They were Richard’s bodyguards, his Sköll and Hatí, respectively. The names are the wolves in Norse mythology that chase