Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [249]
I was on the far side of the broken bed, and Nathaniel was with me. He’d put himself a little in front of me. He hadn’t pushed me behind him like I was a damsel in distress, but it was close. I was his Nimir-Ra, and supposedly his dominant. Shouldn’t I be in front?
Jason lay on the collapsed bed, stunned. He’d been thrown from less than eight feet onto a bed, and he was breathless, frozen while he recovered. I didn’t have the recovery power that Jason and Nathaniel had. Maybe me being in front wasn’t bright, but shit. I didn’t know what to do. Like so often with Richard, I didn’t know what to do.
“Why don’t you all get back on the bed? I’m sure it’s a hell of a show. Raina and Gabriel would have loved it.” Since I’d had to kill both of them so they wouldn’t star me in a rape/snuff film, it was a truly vicious cut. But the time when that kind of shit from Richard could make me angry was passed. I was afraid to add my anger to his.
His power was everywhere, as if the very air stung and burned. But it wasn’t just his rage I could feel. Disgust, horror, and under that the thing that fueled the rage . . . envy. Why envy? And he was too wide open, he was hardly shielding at all. I got my answer.
It was as if someone threw a puzzle into the air, and I saw pieces. Clair and Richard in bed. Richard doing his usual vigorous job of it. Clair shifting in the middle of it. Her claws cutting up his back and shoulders. Clair in human form, screaming.
Richard shoved his anger at me, and I stumbled as if he’d actually pushed me. “Stay out of my head.”
“Then stop projecting so hard that I can’t help but hear it.”
He screamed, a full-throated cry of rage. It echoed in the big room, and I heard running out in the hallway. I knew who this was, too, or at least what.
Three people spilled into the room. One woman, two men, all with guns. They pointed them at Richard. Claudia, who was almost as tall as Dolph, and had broader, more muscular shoulders than most of the men in my life, did quick eye flicks around the room, taking in everything. Her tight ponytail flicked as she moved, because it was high on her head. A girl ponytail to offset the lack of makeup and those amazing arms. I didn’t recognize the men with her, except that they held guns like they knew how, but I’d come to expect nothing less than professionalism from Raphael’s people. The wererats didn’t recruit amateurs.
“What is happening here, Anita?” Claudia asked. Her voice was even, just a little tight, as if she were gearing up to do her job, and she’d have less qualms than I would about that job.
“A difference of opinion,” I said.
She laughed, not like it was funny. “A difference of opinion, well, hell.”
“This is not Rodere business,” Richard said, “it concerns the pack and the pard, not the rats.”
Claudia’s gaze went around the room again, took in the bleeding werewolf and the collapsed bed, my hand on Nathaniel’s arm to keep him with me and away from Richard. She came back to Richard and smiled, again not like it made her happy. “This doesn’t smell like pack or pard business, it smells personal.”
“That’s not your call,” he said, and his voice was lower, not growling, but lower.
She smiled again, and this time it was just a baring of teeth. “It is when we we’re being paid to guard the Circus and everyone in it. You’ve already bloodied one of the people in our care, Ulfric, we really can’t let you harm anyone else.”
“He defied me. No one gets to defy the king. Raphael would agree with that.