He grinned at me. “If it’s any comfort, it was impressive as hell to watch you beat a lycanthrope unconscious in the middle of shapeshifting.”
“It was arrogant and stupid, and if my reflexes weren’t more than human normal, I’d probably need that doctor.”
“I’ve never seen anyone move that fast in a fight.”
“Don’t you ever watch the new shapeshifter MMA fights?”
He shook his head. “I see them when they’re trying to kill people. That’s enough.”
“The fighters aren’t like Bobby. They have more than one shape, and they’re in control of their change.”
“I’ve heard it’s a hell of a show,” he said.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Are the fighters on TV scarier than what I saw Bobby do in that cell?”
“No, but they fight a hell of a lot better than he does.”
“He didn’t fight you at all that I saw.”
“Yeah, there was enough of Bobby still in there somewhere that he didn’t want to hurt me.”
“I think you nearly broke his jaw with your first punch, and he never recovered enough to hurt you before you knocked him out.”
“Or that,” I said. The paper towel stuck to the wound a little as I pried it off gently. I didn’t want to jerk it off and stop the blood from clotting this time. I threw the paper in the wastebasket with the first one.
“What did you cut your hand on?” Newman asked.
“A bone that was someplace it wasn’t supposed to be.”
“Is it always like that, fighting them while they’re in the middle of changing?”
“I don’t know. This was my first time doing it.”
Newman stared at me, and I watched the blood begin to drain out of his face. “Sweet Jesus, Blake. I don’t know if you’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met or the stupidest.”
“Today I’ll vote stupid,” I said. “Now, help me bandage my hand.” When my hand was bandaged, I went out to Newman’s Jeep for more of my gear. This was an active warrant and I needed to start treating it like one.
22
I CALLED MICAH from inside Newman’s Jeep, because it was the closest privacy I could find. It seemed weird that it was still black night outside, so much had happened, and the sun was still hours from rising. Shit, it felt like more time had passed than that. I wasn’t calling Micah for reassurance as my sweetheart. I was calling him because he was the head of the Coalition for Better Understanding Between Lycanthrope and Human Communities, which was now the Coalition for Better Understanding Between Therianthrope and Human Communities. I needed backup with Bobby and not the kind of backup that Edward would give me in a few hours. I needed someone who was better with shapeshifter energy than I was, and there was almost no one better at it than Micah Callahan. He’d become a wereleopard by surviving an attack; his uncle and cousin hadn’t been so lucky. One of the things the Coalition did was help survivors and their families cope with the aftermath of attacks. It wasn’t until his voice answered thick with sleep that I thought about the time difference. “Anita, what’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry I woke you,” I said.
“That’s fine. What’s wrong?” His voice was climbing into normal range, the sleep slipping away from him as he started to focus on the perceived emergency.
“Why do you think anything’s wrong?”
“Because you just left to fly out on marshal business. When you’re hunting monsters, we’re lucky if you remember to text. A call means something’s wrong.”
I’d have liked to argue with him that I was more considerate than that, but he was right. I try not to pick fights with the people in my life when they’re right and I’m not. “I need help keeping our suspect in human form. I thought I was good at this, but he’s not like you and Nathaniel. He’s low level, only one form. I’d forgotten how different that could be.”
“Tell me what happened.” Micah’s voice was serious, thoughtful, a voice you’d trust your secrets to, and I had almost from the moment I’d met him.
It had been so unlike me to fall for someone so fast and so hard, but I guess what they say is true sometimes about when it’s the right one. Micah was my one, but he’d come into my life too late to be my only. He and I had been an item for five years, but we’d never been a traditional couple. We’d always been a threesome with Nathaniel, not a twosome. If we could have legally done it, we might have tried a four-way marriage, but legalities and public opinion being what they were, I was marrying Jean-Claude, and Micah was marrying Nathaniel. They would be my intended forever, and I would be theirs. We would intend to marry one another indefinitely while we waited for the law to catch up with our hearts.
Micah listened to me without interrupting, except to ask for clarification a couple of times. He was a good listener and didn’t waste time on stupid questions or accusations. He didn’t even tell me that I could have been killed or ask me what I had been thinking, slugging it out with a wereleopard without backup from another supernatural. If the tables had been turned, I probably would have said something along those lines to him, but then I never questioned which of us was the better man. Micah was the most reasonable person I’d ever met. He was more logical than I was, and I was very logical as long as I didn’t let my temper get the better of me. We were both calm and cool under pressure and ruthless when it came to survival. He would never accuse me of being a monster for resorting to violence like one of my ex-fiancés had. I would never call him a monster for being a shapeshifter like his ex-fiancé had. We valued each other completely, even the parts that scared other people—maybe especially those parts, because those were the parts that would keep you alive when the real monsters came.