Flirt (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 18)

"Yeah, you do," he said, voice getting quieter, more controlled. He bent to pick up the guns and said, "Take off the arm sheaths so we can put the blades in them. If you do what the client wants, you get it all back at the end of the night."

I honestly didn't know what it meant for a werelion to be in heat, but I didn't debate with him, just started unbuckling the wrist sheaths. "Call your sniper off. It's not my fault that we've been delayed."

He nodded, shoving one of the guns into his waistband and handing the other to Nicky, who took it and tucked it out of sight under the baggy tank top. Jacob got his cell phone out and called. "Stand down for now. She's cooperating." Silence. "Yes, keep on him, but just observe." He looked at me; his eyes had gone back to human gray. "I know you don't have complete control when you're in heat, but if you do that again in an enclosed space like a car, we won't make our deadlines. That means that the next call that I need to make to the snipers on your men might not get made in time. Do you understand that?"

"You're saying that you both might forget your job and we'd just fuck our way through the deadlines while my boyfriends died."

"That's exactly what I'm saying, so it's in everyone's best interest if you keep a lid on it."

"I will do my best," I said, and meant it. I handed him one of the knife sheaths. We were both careful not to touch bare skin to bare skin as he took it from me.

"Look at me," Nicky said.

"Don't push at this," Jacob said.

"Lions are weird about weaknesses; I just want her to see. Maybe if her beast knows, she won't want me anymore and the power won't turn into a fight between us."

Jacob nodded. "Good idea."

"What's a good idea?" I asked.

Nicky lifted that long fall of blond bangs away from the right side of his face. His right eye was missing. Burn scars traced over the empty socket, caressed the edge of his cheek, and covered where his right eyebrow should have been. I looked because he seemed to want me to. I didn't look away because I was sharing my bed with a vampire that made Nicky's scar look like child's play, though the whole eye destroyed was worse. Asher had all the parts he was supposed to have; just some of them were nestled in burn scars.

Nicky blinked the one big blue eye at me, then let the hair fall back into place, and just like that it was hidden. "Most women, especially women, look disgusted or scared. You don't look either."

I shrugged. "If you know everyone in my bed then you know scars aren't a deal breaker for me."

"You mean the vampire with the holy water scars," he said.

I nodded.

He seemed to think about that for a few seconds, then nodded. "Guess you've seen worse."

"It's not about worse, Nicky; it's about the fact that the scar is just another part of you. Not bad, not good, just you." I held my left arm out so the flat of the arm showed. I pointed to the mound of scar tissue at the bend. "Vampire." I touched the claw marks next. "Shapeshifted witch." I traced the knife wound that made the cross-shaped burn scar a little crooked now. "Knife and burn were both human servants of different master vampires." I touched the flat, slick scar on the upper part of the arm. "Bad guy's girlfriend shot me." If I hadn't been afraid I'd flash the knife sheath under my tank top, I'd have showed him my collarbone scar. "I've got a few others, but we'd have to be better friends for me to show you those."

He studied my face. "Most werelion females don't want a one-eyed mate."

"It's an old scar," I said. "I'm assuming you've compensated by now."

He nodded. "But I've got a blind side in both forms; it's a problem in a fight."

"I fight my own battles most of the time."

He grinned. "Which is why you don't have a mate yet, and why your lioness is in heat. If you'd picked a mate, it wouldn't have happened."

I would talk to our local lions about leaving that part out, but in their defense I wouldn't have believed them. I'd have just thought it was Haven trying to get back in my pants after the fight we had. No, I couldn't blame this on them.

"It's not just heat," Jacob said, "it's fucking powerful heat. No female has ever made me lose it like that."

"So neither of you has mates, either," I said.

"She's right, it's not just her being picky that made this happen."

"It's said a man of a certain age and property is in want of a wife," I said.

"Did you just quote Pride and Prejudice?" Jacob asked.

"I guess I did, embarrassing, sorry."

"I wouldn't have known what book, or who you quoted," Nicky said, not like he was happy with it.

"But I get what you mean with the quote," Jacob said; "my hair is starting to gray and I've never taken a real mate. I've never committed to a territory and my pride is all males, except for one, and she's not into guys, so it's not a problem."

"We travel too much for women and kids," Nicky said.

Jacob nodded. "That's what I keep telling myself. Now get in the car, Anita. We've still got a job to do. Remember what I said about controlling your side of the problem. Nothing we could do would be worth the lives of your lovers."

"Agreed," I said.

He handed me my jacket. I slipped it back over the empty shoulder rig, but still had the big knife down my spine. He held the passenger door for me, and I didn't protest the gallantry, though under the circumstances it seemed weirder than normal. Nicky got in behind me and leaned against the back of my seat. "I wish you weren't the job, Anita."

"Me, too," I said, and meant it, though probably not for the same reason he did.

Jacob got in behind the wheel and said, "Buckle up; it'll slow you down by a few seconds if you decide to do something stupid."

I buckled up. "So we go on with your plan?"

"Yes," he said, "nothing's changed."

"So you'll still kill the people I love if I don't raise the dead for your client?"

"Yes," he said.

"Yes," Nicky said from behind me.

"Then we're clear," I said.

Jacob started the engine. "Yeah, we're clear. You'll kill us if you can, and if you're sure it won't get your people killed. We'll kill you if you force us to."

"Great," I said, "we all know the rules then."

"Why aren't you afraid?" Nicky whispered from behind me.

"Being afraid won't help."

"People are brave, but you can always smell the fear, taste their heart speed up. But you aren't. You really aren't any of that."

"If I get afraid, or pissed, then my pulse rises, and my heart races, and my blood pressure goes up and it's harder to control the beasts. Jacob was clear; I can't afford to lose control in the car with you guys."

"So because you have to be in control, you will be, just like that," he said.

"Just like that," I said, and watched where Jacob drove so if I lived through the night I could take the police back to their client and arrest his, or her, ass.

"If I'd known what you were we might not have taken the job," Jacob said.

"Nice thought, but it doesn't really help us out, does it?"

"No, we took the client's money, we have to deliver."

"Then it doesn't matter to me if you feel guilty or not, Jacob. In fact, I think it's worse that you're going to maybe kill the people I love, the people that make up my pride, and maybe kill me, and you'll regret it, but you'll do it anyway. That's not honor, Jacob, that's your conscience letting you know that you're doing the wrong thing."

"It's not my conscience, Anita, it's my libido, my beast, and it doesn't have a conscience."

He was right on that, but I also knew that wereanimals aren't just animals. There is a person in there and there is a conscience. The beast usually didn't care about it, and could make you do terrible things that you had trouble living with afterward, but this time Jacob and Nicky's beasts were on the same side as their conscience. It made me hopeful, and I cursed it, because hope will keep you alive, yes, but it will also get you killed in ways worse than anything you can imagine. Hope is a bad friend when men with guns have you. But my lioness and their lions lusted after each other, sort of. Lust I trusted. Hope will lie to you, but lust is what it is; it never lies. Hope would keep me hoping, but lust might be a weapon I could use to divide them. Divide and conquer has been a strategy for thousands of years; there's a reason for that.

We drove to a very nice subdivision in a part of St. Louis where the yards are large, the houses larger. Some of the smaller yards had the biggest houses, as if the owners felt insecure and had to compensate for something. The driveway we finally pulled into was long and swept gracefully from the road to a house that was as big as any and had one of the largest yards I'd seen. From house to professionally landscaped yard the place breathed money and care, and didn't seem to feel it needed to compensate for anything. The whole image was so perfect you knew the architect had worked with the landscaper to make the visuals, as if a magazine photographer should pop out of the shrubbery and put it all on the cover.

"You don't smell surprised," Nicky said, as we all got out of their rental.

I just shrugged.

Jacob blocked my way up the driveway. He studied my face. "Did you know the client's address before we drove you here?"

"No."

"Are you lying?" he asked.

I frowned at him. "No, I don't know who your client is, and I didn't know you'd bring me to one of our nicer new-money neighborhoods. But I did know it had to be someone with enough money to afford your kind of help." The moment I said it, I was betting on Natalie Zell. Any woman who wanted to raise her own husband from the dead so she could chop him up with an axe then bury the pieces "alive" wouldn't blink at a little kidnapping and the deaths of men she didn't even know.

I heard Nicky close behind me and fought not to move out from between them. I never liked for my kidnappers to flank me, and really didn't like shapeshifters this close when they meant me harm. "You're crowding me, Nicky."

"She smells like the truth," he said, but was still too close.

Jacob nodded, but said, "Give her some room, Nicky; we don't want to accidentally touch each other."

He backed up a few steps, so that I followed Jacob's broad back with Nicky trailing us. There was no talking, no questions; we just went for the front door. Nice that the client didn't make us use the servants' entrance. Did mansions have servants' entrances these days?

"No questions," Nicky said.

"No," I said.

"Most people would have questions, especially women. They always talk too much."

Jacob rang a doorbell that made a rich, melodious sound deep inside the house.

"You make a habit of kidnapping women?"

"Work is work," he said.

"Sure," I said. We waited to the tune of birdsong and someone's lawn service in the distance using a large mower.

"They talk because they're nervous," he said.

"The only one talking is you, Nicky," I said.

"I'm not nervous," he said, but it was too quick a denial, and there was a tone in his voice.

"Liar," I said, softly.

"Drop it, Nicky," Jacob said. He straightened his shoulders just a bit, and I knew he'd heard something I hadn't. A moment later the door opened and I was left staring at Tony Bennington.

Now I was surprised. "Son of a bitch," I said. He'd seemed so much more sane than Natalie Zell. Just another grief-stricken husband trying to bargain with God to get his wife back, but I guess when God didn't listen he'd bargained with someone else, something a little lower than heaven. When God ignores you, the devil starts looking good.

"That's better," Nicky said. "You really didn't know." But he said it soft from behind me and I'm not sure that the "client" heard him. I didn't give a damn if he did.

"Welcome to my home, Ms. Blake." He actually did that arm-sweeping gesture to invite us all inside. I fought a really serious urge to punch him in the jaw.

Nicky grabbed my right arm; my jacket and his gloves kept us from touching bare skin, but his grip was firm. He leaned in and whispered, "Hitting the client won't help."

"You saw me tense," I whispered back.

"Yep."

I started to protest that I wasn't really going to hit Bennington, but I wasn't sure it was the truth. I wanted to hurt him; I really did. Apparently all the nerves and fear that I wasn't letting myself feel were going to translate into violence. Goody, that fucking worked for me.

Of course, with my anger the lioness started to creep forward in the metaphorical grass she was crouched in. I had to close my eyes and concentrate on my breathing. In, out, slow, steady; control the breathing and you control the emotion. When I thought I could look at Bennington without wanting to hit him, I opened my eyes.

He was looking at me, his gray eyes uncertain, like someone who had purchased a dog but hadn't done their research, and now the dog was trying to eat the cat.

"I understand your anger with me, Ms. Blake. I am truly sorry it had to come to this."

It was an echo of what I'd told him in my office. I was truly sorry for his loss; truly sorry I couldn't help him. The echo didn't help me keep the anger down; it flared again, and I felt Nicky's hand tighten on my arm again. It helped remind me that my control was all that stood between my lovers and a sniper's bullet. I had to hold it together for them.

"You want me to raise your wife as a zombie," I said, and my voice was utterly empty. I'd started to fold away inside myself, going to that quiet place I went to when I killed someone not in a firefight, but when I stared down the barrel of a gun and pulled the trigger with thought and time to change my mind. It was the quiet inside my head when I had decided to take a life even if there was opportunity to save it. When I had decided that someone deserved to die, and my conscience was clear. I had one of those moments now, and it helped chase back the heat of the lions. It was a cold place, the place I went when I killed.

I pictured Bennington dead with my bullet in his forehead and it gave me comfort. It helped me smile and be calm.

Nicky let go of me. "She's calm."

"Yeah," Jacob said, "calm the way Silas gets." He was studying my face, and it wasn't metaphysical abilities that let him understand my expression and the peacefulness in my eyes.

"You're comparing her to Silas," Nicky said. "Shit."

I didn't know who Silas was, and I didn't care. I probably should have, but I didn't. I forced myself to see the room beyond Bennington 's face. When in danger, exits and entryways become important. The room was white: white carpet, white leather furniture, a slightly different shade of white wall. It was like they hadn't been able to decide on a color so they didn't choose one. The only color in that white room was a life-size portrait of Bennington 's wife. She was still blond and beautiful, but the photograph showed that she was model thin, which meant too thin for my tastes, but no one had asked me. She was wearing a bright blue ankle-length dress that made her eyes a brilliant blue. She lounged on a rattan couch that was surrounded by lush tropical plants, some of them in crimson and pink blooms. It was the only color in all that whiteness. It loomed over the room like some kind of goddess on high, or maybe a shrine. Jesus.

As for the exits, there were huge glass doors on one side of the fireplace, and more of them scattered throughout the bottom half of the open great room. There was one hallway that led deeper into the downstairs, and a huge-ass staircase leading up.

Nicky leaned in and whispered, "Don't bother scouting the room, Anita."