Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [93]
“I didn’t,” I said.
He looked at the tiger on top of me. “Do you usually make friends this fast?”
What could I say? “Sometimes.”
He nodded. “Sometimes,” he repeated, shaking his head. “You go back to making friends, Blake. I’ll leave Shadwell and Rowe on the door. Though I think you’re right. If the vampire threat is real, I sort of hope he picks your window tonight, Mr. Schuyler. Nothing personal, but I think if he climbs in here, he won’t be climbing back out.”
Jason and I spoke at the same time. “No.” We looked at each other, and then he motioned at me, and I said, “He won’t.”
Crispin said, “Is there a big bad vampire around?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Oh, goody,” the weretiger said, “something to play with.”
Chuck shook his head again, and closed the door quietly, but very firmly behind him.
40
THE WERETIGER SIGHED and was suddenly heavier on top of me, as if some tension had left his body. “Always so hard in front of the humans,” he said in that growling voice.
“Off,” and I added, “please.” He had saved us; saved me, but he was still heavy.
He half-rolled, half-fell off me, to collapse on his side beside me. He blinked those strange blue eyes at me.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” I said.
He smiled; it was a smile full of teeth that could have shredded my throat, but it was a smile. And I’d learned through working with the police on serial killer cases that humans had teeth, too. I had so learned things about my fellow human beings that I did not want to know. It made me calmer around the “monsters,” because I knew scratch us deep enough and we were all monsters.
“You fought your tiger. If you had just given it to me, then it wouldn’t have hurt either of us.”
It must have shown on my face, because his face looked curious, speculative. “You didn’t know that,” he said.
“I know that if a lycanthrope fights his beast, the change is more violent; I guess I just never made the logic leap.”
“You’ve done this before with someone,” Jason said.
“Of course I have. I’m an adult male of my clan. This is how we keep our pregnant females from losing our babies.”
Jason and I both looked at him. I said it out loud. “The weretigers do this routinely with their pregnant females?”
“Yes,” Crispin said, and then he frowned, though his face made it more of a snarl. “And you should know that.” He frowned/snarled harder. “Though your tiger was white, and we’re the only white tiger clan in the United States. You should be one of our females, but you’re not.” He rose up on one elbow, balancing with the other arm flat on the wet carpet as if he were still shaky. His face showed concern, all sympathy. “You survived an attack, but it can’t be one of our clan. We would never do that. It’s against the law of every clan to bring someone over against their will.” He went back to frowning. “And when our master says to attack, it is for killing. We don’t leave survivors.” He said it easily, as if he knew he could confess all his sins to me.
I felt compelled to say, “I really am a federal marshal, Crispin. Be careful what you say to me.”
“Do they know you’re one of us?”
I looked at Jason. What could we tell this stranger? What was safe to share? He seemed to understand the look, as he so often did.
“You’re one of Max’s tigers from Las Vegas, right?” Jason said.
Crispin moved his gaze to the standing man. “Yes.”
“Max knows what Anita is, and isn’t. If he didn’t share that with you, it’s probably not something he wants shared with you. Nothing personal, but I think my master would have to talk to yours before we could explain.”
“Are you hinting that she’s not a weretiger?” Crispin asked.
“The humans say a picture is worth a thousand words. We know a smell is worth a hell of a lot more.”
Crispin just nodded.
Jason knelt in the damp carpet on the other side of me from the weretiger.
“The beasts are quiet,” I said. “I really don’t want you both to go furry on me, literally or figuratively.”
“Do you feel well enough to sit up?” he asked.
I thought about it, explored my body not with hands but