Wounded (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 24.5)

Micah crawled out of the bed with his own handgun. He was one of the few lycanthropes I knew who carried a gun and weren't professional bodyguards or mercenaries. He was not only the Nimir-Raj of our local wereleopard pard but also head of the Coalition for Better Understanding Between Human and Lycanthrope Communities. The Coalition was a national organization that was slowly but surely forging the country's different types of shapeshifters into a cohesive group with one voice, shared goals, and they looked to him to lead them toward those goals. Not everyone was happy that the infighting that had always divided the shapeshifter communities was being turned into something more cooperative. Some hate groups saw it as a danger to humanity. Some lycanthropes saw it as us forcing our rule onto them, even though the Coalition never entered another group's territory unless invited in to solve a problem they couldn't solve on their own. It was like people who called the police when they needed them and then got angry that the police found evidence of a crime while they were saving the phone caller and his or her family.

There'd been more than one death threat against Micah, so he had bodyguards when he traveled and carried his own gun when he could. Not all buildings and businesses would allow concealed carry on the premises, so sometimes he had to leave the gun behind and rely on the bodyguards, but he liked to be able to take care of himself, too. Just one more thing we agreed on.

Micah's robe was one that Jean-Claude had bought for him, or maybe had had made, because it looked like something from the Victorian era, deep forest green velvet covered in gold-and-green embroidery. The thick cuffs and the collar and lapels that swept from his neck to his waist were shiny gold with more of the brocade embroidery. The robe also fell exactly to his feet but was a fraction short enough that he never tripped on it or had to lift it up when he was walking on anything but stairs. Stairs were tricky with anything that went to your ankles. I knew that at least the robe had been tailored to fit him. He added dark green house slippers and he was ready to go.

I finally had house shoes, too, so that my feet were warm, and they stayed on rather than making me shuffle like the house slippers had done, but the silk robe . . . I needed something warmer. Especially now that we were here at least five nights a week. The two days in the Jefferson County house were mainly so we could get some sunlight. Except for Micah, we all worked almost exclusively nights, and after a while it was just depressing without some sunshine. I'd finally asked Jean-Claude if he missed it, and he'd said, "Very much, ma petite, much more than I thought I would when I agreed to become what I am."

Micah gathered his own phone and his eyeglasses from the bedside table on his and Jean-Claude's side of the bed. The glasses had green frames with gold accents to complement his green-gold leopard eyes. He'd been wearing prescription sunglasses for a long time without most of us being aware they were prescription. A very bad man had forced him to stay in leopard form until he hadn't been able to shift completely back to human form. He had his summer tan from running outside, so that the eyes looked incredibly exotic against the darker skin, but the serious downside to his having kitty-cat eyes was that cats are nearsighted. He'd also lost some of his color vision, though not as much as a real cat, as if something were more human about his leopard eyes. His optician had asked permission to write a paper on the difference in his vision and was cowriting the paper with a zoo veterinarian. Micah had worn the sunglasses to hide his eyes when he didn't want to stand out and because he'd worried that having less-than-perfect eyesight might be used against him in fights for dominance in the lycanthrope community, but finally he'd gotten glasses that helped him read more easily as well as see farther away. Cat eyes focused differently and had made him work harder to read than we'd realized. He had contact lenses, too, but here with us he didn't bother. I liked the way the dark frames bordered his eyes like they were works of art that finally had a frame worthy of them rather than being hidden away behind dark sunglasses.

We left Nathaniel deeply asleep nested in the covers and already wiggling a little closer to Jean-Claude. This bed was big enough that he might just wrap himself in covers before he reached the other man for cuddling, but Nathaniel was a cuddle-seeking sleeper more than any of the rest of us, and the rest of us were pretty cuddly.

Micah and I moved as quietly as we could toward the door, leaving our shared boy asleep and our shared master sleeping the sleep of the dead. We probably didn't have to move all that quietly, but it was just polite. Micah stopped me at the door and made motions for me to fluff my curls into place. I raised an eyebrow at him, and he mouthed, Jean-Claude. Which meant my vampy fiance had requested that Micah remind me not to go out without tidying my hair a little. Since I was technically going to be queen of all the vampires once I married Jean-Claude, I guess a little decorum was called for, but it still irked me.

Micah actually finger-tamed his own curls, too, so at least it was evenhanded silliness. Jean-Claude had said that our appearance reflected on him, and vampires, especially the very old ones, could be exceedingly vain. It had been everything I could do not to say, Vampires vain, you're joking, but I didn't, since he rarely went anywhere when he wasn't perfect top to bottom. I didn't think of it as vanity, more just him, just Jean-Claude, and I loved him, so I did what men had done for centuries when they waited for their beauties to get ready for the night--waited patiently for the perfection that was worth waiting for. It had never occurred to me that he might start wanting me to do more perfection on myself as the wedding got closer. It was a trend I wasn't really enjoying, but I was letting it ride. One thing I'd learned was to pick my battles. I'd already lost on the size of the wedding; I was still hoping to win on the wedding dresses for the women, mine included.

Micah opened the outer door and the two guards went to attention, backs ramrod straight, shoulders back, arms at their sides as if they were still wearing a uniform that had a crease or stripe to follow.

I said, "At ease, guys. You're not in the Army anymore."

"I wasn't in the Army, Marshal Blake," the taller one said. His hair was still so short that I could see scalp through his nearly white-blond hair.

"It was a line of an old song, Milligan; I remember that it's 'Anchors Aweigh' for you."

The slightly shorter man, who was letting his brown hair grow out from the high and tight, gave a crooked smile and said, "Millie doesn't like the classics much."

I smiled back. "You need to broaden his horizons, Custer."

"Every time Pud tries to broaden my horizons, my wife gets mad," Milligan said, smiling. I knew that Pud was the first syllable of Pudding, because they'd started calling Custer Custard as a nickname, but in that mysterious way of nicknames it had changed into Pudding and then Pud. How did I know? I asked.

Micah chuckled and shook his head. "Your wife made me promise that I wouldn't let Custer lead you astray when we traveled out of town."

"I know she talked to you, sir."

"It's just Micah, or Mr. Callahan--no sir needed."

"Are you serious? Your wife talked to Micah about me?" Custer asked.

Milligan nodded. "That last weekend trip, you almost cost me my marriage."

"I thought you were joking about that," Custer said.

His friend shook his head.

"Well, fuck, man, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that." Custer actually looked serious, which wasn't typical for him.

Milligan and Custer were part of a SEAL unit that had been attacked by a group of insurgents that thought being wereanimals made them a match for the SEALs. They'd been wrong, but the six-man unit had lost one of their own and the surviving five had all tested positive for lycanthropy, which meant an automatic medical discharge. We had other former military for similar reasons. One of them had brought the unit to our attention, and we'd offered them jobs.

Some of the private contractor firms would take shapeshifters, but they were all new enough shifters that full moons meant they were either in secure areas or with older, more experienced lycanthropes who bab

ysat them as they learned to control their inner beasts. Until they got complete control of themselves they couldn't work for any of the private contractor firms, because their rule was that you had to be a lycanthrope for at least two years before you could apply. Some companies insisted on four years, and not all countries would allow lycanthropes across their borders. The former SEALs had less than a year of turning furry. When the time was over they might decide to go to the other firms, because the money was better, for some assignments a lot better, but the money here wasn't bad and the level of life-threatening danger was much lower. Either way, they had good jobs with benefits for them and their families while they were deciding what to do next with a set of skills that was impressive as hell but of limited use in the civilian sector. So far their biggest complaint, and only from Custer and one other, was that there hadn't been enough excitement on the job.

Micah and I started down the hallway hand in hand. It meant one of us had to compromise a gun hand, but since we didn't expect to be attacked in our own inner sanctum, I figured we were safe. I even let him have my gun hand, even though I had better scores on the range. Custer said, "I'm not sure how this works, but we're on duty here to protect everyone in the room behind us, including the two of you."

"I'll go with them. You stay on the door," Milligan said.

Custer eased back to his post beside the door without an argument. You could always tell who outranked whom in the newly ex-military, because of moments like that. We'd only had one person at a time from a unit before this, never most of a group that had worked together for years and then lost their careers in the same fight. They were still very much together as a unit. In fact, Claudia, who was in charge of our guards overall but especially here at the Circus, had talked to me about whether we wanted to separate them for work. They needed to learn to work with the rest of our people and not just with each other, but so far it hadn't been an issue that anyone had complained about.