Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [95]
“I smell the wolf, but you can’t be both, can you?”
I shook my head, again. “Long story.”
“Anita, you need to feed,” Jason said.
“I know, but every time I’m close to you, Jason, the wolf seems stronger.”
“I’ll help,” Crispin said.
I gave him a hard look, which didn’t seem to faze him in the least. “The tiger reacts to you. I don’t know what’s wrong tonight.”
“I took you to a room that was so thick with sexual tension you could have walked on it,” Jason said. “We both know that can make it hard on the ardeur, on you. I wanted to see the girls. I wanted to flirt and be flirted with, and I forgot my duties.” He shook his head. “You and Jean-Claude trusted me to take care of you and I failed. We have to feed you again. I think once we do that the beasts will calm.”
“By the way,” Crispin said, “what the hell is with that necklace of yours?”
I glanced down at the charm on its chain. It was back to being dull and almost unreadable. But I had the image burned inside my mind, as if I would never forget it.
Crispin went to all fours and started crawling toward me, in that graceful I-have-muscles-in-places-you-can’t-see way that they could do in this form, or even human form. It was just a little more disturbing in this form.
“No closer, Crispin,” I said.
Jason stepped between us. “You heard her.”
Crispin growled, a sound that made my body react both for sex and for the tigers crowded at the back of my wolf. No fighting, I thought, as hard as I could. The beasts could fight inside me, and it hurt like hell. “Stop it; stop it, both of you. I am having real trouble here with both the tiger and the wolf. I don’t need you to make it worse.”
“Then you should stop calling to me,” Crispin said.
“I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.” He sat back on his haunches, hands hanging down between his knees so that at least he was covered and I could look at him without worrying about staring at his groin. I tried not to stare at strange men’s genitalia; just politeness, I guess. Or squeamishness.
“I didn’t mean to,” I said.
“You call to me like a little queen.”
“You don’t mean that as a pet name, do you?” Jason said.
He turned those strange blue eyes to the other man. “No, little queen is what we call our dominant females who would be powerful enough to eventually break off and form their own clan if our queen would allow it.”
“What happens if she doesn’t allow it?” I asked.
“She kills the little queen, or has her killed, after she’s bred at least once.”
I just stared at him. I couldn’t read the tiger face quite well enough. Jason said, “I think he’s serious.”
“I am.” He held his arm up, and showing through the white fur was a raw burn mark. “What is this mark on me?”
“Jason,” I said, “you look at it. I don’t think closer to the tiger is better.”
Jason did what I asked, and Crispin raised his arm up obediently. “It’s the charm. The symbols in a circle and the many-headed tiger inside it. You’ve branded him.”
“I didn’t mean to,” I said.
“What is that charm supposed to do?” Crispin asked.
I debated on what to say. It was supposed to keep Marmee Noir from taking me over from far away in Europe. It was designed so she couldn’t be as big and bad a vampire as she truly was, but I was beginning to wonder if the charm could do other things that no one had told me about. Had the werewolf who gave it to me known that it had other magic in it? Was it a trap instead of a treasure? Shit. I needed Jean-Claude. I needed to be home, not out here in some strange city with just Jason. If the metaphysical shit hit the fan, I needed more help.
“Your face,” Crispin said. “You’re afraid to tell me.”
“I can say this, that it’s never reacted to anyone like it did tonight.”
“Am I the first weretiger you’ve been around since you got the charm?”
A very logical question. “One other, but she…we’ve been very careful around each other.” I didn’t add that Christine was an attack