Skin Trade (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 17)

Chapter 33

I DIDN'T USUALLY try to call the wereanimals that were tied to me metaphysically. It just sort of happened. My psychic mentor, Marianne, told me that my natural abilities were so strong that I did most things without thinking about it first. That could be good and powerful, or bad and a weakness. But I'd been learning how to be a grown-up psychic and do stuff on purpose. It was the difference between driving really fast on a public street, or driving really fast on a track with professional drivers. One was for kids; the other was for grown-ups.

I tried simple first. "Crispin, come to me." I held my hand out.

He stood up. Bibiana's hand fell away. He actually took a step my way before her power breathed through the room. It stopped my breath in my throat, made me taste my pulse on my tongue. Crispin's face was almost pained. His eyes looked at me with such longing, but he didn't move closer.

But the white tiger inside me did move. She began to pad eagerly up along that well-worn path inside me. She began to trot, and I knew once she started running, when she hit the "surface" of my body, it would feel like getting hit by a truck from the inside out. I hadn't had it happen in months, and I had seconds to stop it, if I could.

I tried to call wolf, but tiger was too close. The tigress was running full out, a white blur, streaking toward me.

"Fuck," I said.

Rick and Domino had moved closer to us, as if they couldn't help themselves. Only Ava seemed able to resist, but then she wasn't the same... color.

I called black tiger, I called it with a scream and a roar inside my head. The black form smashed into the white inside me and sent me spinning across the room. I ended up on the floor near the windows, with the two tigers snarling inside me, trying to tear each other apart, but my body was their battlefield.

I cried out. I couldn't help it.

Crispin yelled, "Anita!"

Bernardo was beside me, kneeling. I heard Edward yelling in my ear. "Anita, talk to me, or we're coming in."

"Don't... don't come. Not yet." My voice held the pain I was feeling. There was nothing I could do about that.

Crispin was halfway across the room, but she was beside him. I could not force him to me with the white queen beside him. Domino was walking toward me with a scowl on his face. The black tiger and the white hesitated in their battle. They looked up and used my eyes to see him. They both liked him.

I said, "Domino, come to me."

He shook his head, but the black tigress broke free of the fight, and the white tigress let her. The black began to stalk closer to me. I put that energy into the man I could see. I called him with images of dark fur and eyes like fire in the night.

He came to me as if each step hurt. He came to me with a look on his face that mirrored Crispin's when Bibiana kept him from me. But I didn't have time to care or think it through. I had to satisfy the tigers or risk becoming one for real. That was the real danger of what I was, that I might finally pick an animal that wasn't Jean-Claude's animal to call. If I did, then I might end up controlled by someone else, like Bibiana and her Max. To keep that from happening, I would mind-fuck Domino. Was it evil to think it all the way through and still do it? Maybe. Was I still going to do it, if it would keep the white queen from mind-fucking me? Oh, hell, yes.