Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

"That's right."

Dev and Pride looked at each other and then back at Nolan. "If we could pass the physical, some of us would have tried for the military," Dev said.

"I can't picture you in the military," Nathaniel said.

Dev turned to him with a grin. "Not me, but some of my other cousins would have."

"Military service would have divided you from your other loyalties," Jake said.

Pride asked, "Are you saying that even if we could pass the physical, we wouldn't have been allowed to join?"

"It wasn't possible," Kaazim said, touching Jake's arm, "so it does not matter; it is moot."

Nolan was watching the interchange. He was trusting us with his secret, but we didn't have to trust him with any of ours, not until I'd had time to talk to Edward in private. "It sounds like the born wolf is different from the clan tigers in more than just flavor of inner beast."

"It would seem so, but these are the first clan tigers I've ever met, and since I'm almost certain Devereux and Christensen are the same clan, maybe other clans will be closer to my people," Nolan said.

"To our knowledge none of the clan tigers can pass a blood test for lycanthropy," Kaazim said.

"Which means," I said, "maybe what you have isn't lycanthropy. Are you tied to the moon at all?"

He shook his head. "No, we aren't forced to change with the full moon, or forced at all. Once we gain control of the power we can go years without changing form."

All of us who fought against our inner beasts exchanged looks. It was Dev who asked, "Don't you miss it?"

"Miss what?"

"Your beast."

"I do, but it's a preference. I could choose to be fully human and never become the other again."

"Do you know any werewolves who have chosen to do that?" Pride asked.

Nolan nodded. "My mother, for one."

"I'd have never guessed she was anything but human," Edward said.

"The less you change form, the less you give off the energy. It's said that if you go too many years you can lose the ability to slip from human to animal, but I don't think my ma would care. She helped teach me how to control my wolf and how to shift form, but once that was done I'm not sure she ever changed again. I'd come home for visits and ask her to come run with me, but she would never do it again. It was like her being a wolf like me was a dream."

"Did you have other family that went into the woods with you?" Jake asked.

"Cousins, but there are fewer and fewer of us every generation. Unless we start marrying closer into the family line again, there may come a day when there are no MacIntires or MacTires worthy of the name."

"I seem to remember a second cousin of yours that you told me to stay away from," Edward said.

Nolan smiled. "She's married now and has three kids."

"Are any of them werewolves?" Jake asked.

"No."

"Would she tell you if they were, or would she just have the tail removed in the hospital and hide it from everyone?" Edward asked.

"Some have tried, but you can't ignore your shadow from birth. If they take after our ancestors and are not taught control, the inner beast will come out in other ways. The last of my cousins that were treated that way ended up in prison. He nearly beat someone to death in a bar fight. Part of what we learn to control as children is the amoral part of ourselves. The wolf sees nothing wrong with fighting for what is his, or when threatened."

"Wolves in nature seldom fight to the death," Jake said.

"And they aren't put into situations like school, or bars where they can drink until they lose all sense of themselves," Nolan said.

"Very true," Jake said.

"Wolves are not dogs," Nolan said, "and they do not behave like dogs when you put a collar and leash on them."

"True again."

Nolan looked at Edward. "I didn't think it would bother you this much. Makes me think if I'd told you years ago we wouldn't have been friends."

"Honestly, I don't know. I wasn't as comfortable with shapeshifters back then, but you'll always be Wee Brian to me." He said the last with a perfect Irish accent, as far as I could tell.

Nolan sighed and shook his head.

"Wait. Wee Brian," Dev said, "for real?"

"I'm named after my father, who's named after his father, and further back. I hated being Wee Brian."

"Little Brian would be bad enough, but even with an Irish accent Wee Brian would be hard as a kid," I said.

He smiled and looked up. "My da is Little Brian, my grandfather is Young Brian, and my great-grandfather was Old Brian, because that's what Great-Grandma Helen insisted on calling him after he named their son Brian Junior."

"Both you and your father are taller than your grandfather, so it just made it funnier," Edward said.

Nolan laughed. "You were so confused when I introduced you to my gran-da, Young Brian, after meeting my da, Little Brian."

I perked up; if Edward had met Nolan's family, maybe Nolan had met his. Edward said, "Let it go, Anita."

"How do you know what I was going to say?" I asked.

He smiled at me, the smile that let me know he'd not only seen through me but out the other side, and knew exactly how eager I was to solve the mystery of Ted Forrester alias Edward.

"Aww," I said.

Edward let his smile get a little bigger.

Nolan was looking from one to the other of us. "Either you've gotten much more comfortable with women, or she really is your comrade in arms."

"I'm much better with women than I was that summer, but Anita is going to be my best man at my wedding."

"And you're going to be mine," I said.

"Yeah," he said, slipping back into his Ted voice. "I'll be standing up with you, before you stand up with me."

"Yep," I said, trying for a down-home drawl.

"You really shouldn't try to do accents, Anita; you suck at it," he said in that middle-of-America, not-from-anywhere accent, the Texas/Oklahoma/Wyoming drawl of a second ago gone, and his voice crawling down into the cold-as-ice tones of the Edward I'd come to know and love.

"He always picked up accents like that; within a week of going home with me he sounded like he was a local. If he hadn't been so blue-eyed and fair-haired, he'd have been so much more useful as a covert operative," Nolan said.

"Contacts and hair dye fix a lot of problems," Edward said, still in his own voice, and still crawling around the tones that would tickle along your neck and make you realize just how dangerous he might be.

"You didn't go into military covert ops," Nolan said.

"I didn't say I did."

They had another moment of looking at each other. I couldn't tell if they were best buds or hated each other. It was like it switched back and forth depending on what they were talking about, or their moods. Edward was usually pretty even-tempered, but Nolan seemed to bring out his moody-bastard side. It was like visiting family; the walk down memory lane could bring out the worst in all of us.

"Does Van Cleef know your secret?" Edward asked.

"Not twenty years ago."

"Now?"

"He does."

"He must have given you hell for hiding it."

"I was attacked a few years back by a werewolf. I let everyone think that's what did it."

"If he ever finds out you hid something he wants so badly . . . He's disappeared people for less than this, Nolan."

"What do you mean, disappeared people?" Nathaniel asked.

I patted his thigh. "Think the government safe houses for new lycanthropes, but more secret and probably more permanent than just a cell."

"That's not far off," Nolan said.

"Have you helped disappear other shapeshifters?" Nathaniel asked.

Nolan just looked at him, and it was my boy who looked away first. He looked at me with those beautiful eyes and he didn't like this one little bit. Me either. It was like lately no matter where I went Van Cleef's name kept coming up.

"I've

hunted rogues all over Europe. We were able to capture some of them alive," Nolan said at last.

"Is Van Cleef still chasing the same goal?"

"If you mean super-soldiers, yes. That's why he collected both of us."

"I remember," Edward said.

"I swear to you that he is not directly involved in this; it's the Irish government wanting their own special-forces team."

"You know what I'll do if you're lying to me."

"The same thing I'd do."

Nathaniel said, "Did you both just threaten to kill each other?"

I patted his leg again. "Let it go," I said.

"I'm not going to understand a lot of this, am I?"

"No," I said.

"No," Nicky said.

Dev patted his other thigh. "Don't feel too bad, Nathaniel. I'm more guy-guy than you are and I don't understand it."

"But you understand, don't you?" he asked me.