32

I WOULDN'T LET Damian come with me. I didn't really think Jake would try to hurt me, but just in case I wouldn't put both Damian and me within reach of one of the finest close-in assassins in the world. Nathaniel might survive my death, but there was no way he'd survive both Damian and me dying. I'd almost lost Nathaniel just hours ago. I wouldn't risk it. Jean-Claude wasn't coming for the same reason. I knew that the guards had picked up Richard still in wolf form. Some of them were waiting for a tow truck and doing their best to keep it from being reported to the police. It would be hard to explain all the blood on the front seats without Richard being hurt. Again, playing Clark Kent was a problem for our furry Superman.

But right that moment I was more concerned with the werewolf sitting across the desk from me than the one down in the underground. Asher's office was at the top of the seats in the one permanent circus tent inside the Circus of the Damned. The office was set up almost like a press box for a ball game, but there were drapes over all the glass windows and the door in the back wall led into a bedroom. The outer office was still very plain: a desk and chair, two client chairs, and a small loveseat against one wall. The drapes at the back of the desk hid the door to the back room. It looked the same as when I'd first entered it years ago, when it was Jean-Claude's office. Asher had added nothing of himself to it. That seemed sad.

Nicky leaned against the wall, closer to me than to Jake, so that the other man would have to get past him to reach me. Jake looked like I remembered him: short dark hair, medium complexion, and brown eyes, attractive in a manly-man kind of way, but even there he was almost too ordinary. He was nondescript. He was even an average height. He would blend in, and since the Harlequin were supposed to be spies that was probably right for the job. The weretigers who had come with him were the  opposite: eye-catching blonds, tall, and beautiful, or handsome, and somehow unworldly, as if they'd only recently been let out of their cages.

Jake slumped down in one of the client chairs, looking at everything and nothing with his brown eyes. "Are you sure about talking in front of him?" he asked.

"Nicky's okay," I said. I didn't feel the need to explain that he was my Bride and couldn't repeat anything we said unless I told him he could.

Jake shrugged. "I have to trust your judgment since I trust you with the pretty kittens."

"You're a werewolf. How did you end up with so many weretigers?"

"I've known these kittens their whole lives. I think they'd be safer here with you."

"I don't know, Jake, you may be bringing your lambs to the slaughter." I told him about the assassination attempt on Richard.

"Amateurs," he said.

"I agree, but they almost killed him. If they'd hit his heart with that second bullet, I don't think we could have saved him."

"I think Jean-Claude could have kept the rest of you alive, but you would have been down a wolf."

I frowned at him. "You say that like it's no big deal."

"I don't mean it that way, Anita." He rubbed his eyes as if he were tired, and I realized that there were lines around his eyes that I didn't remember from last time.

"Why are you here, Jake? Why did you bring me weretigers? The truth."

"I do think they're safer here with you, but ask me why I think they're safer."

"Pretend I asked, now answer the question."

He smiled. "Direct. I like that after dealing with all the old vampires. They're almost never direct."

"Then be direct back, Jake," I said.

"They aren't survivors of an attack, Anita. They're pureblood tigers."

"You said they were clanless. The purebloods all have clans."

"One color doesn't have a clan."

I frowned. "We only have one blue tiger, so Cynric doesn't have his own clan, but other than that they all have clans."

He shook his head. "Yellow doesn't."

"Because the last yellow tiger died here in St. Louis after she killed one of our people and did her best to kill more."

"Including you," he said.

I nodded. "Including me."

"She belonged to one of the Harlequin," he said quietly.

I blinked. "Last I checked it was against the rules to say that word out loud unless we were contacted by them first. In fact, saying it out of school is a death sentence."

"But you know that I am the animal to call of one of the Harlequin."

I nodded. "Most people don't remember that you revealed that. Even some of the powerful shapeshifter guards act like ordinary humans, as if you mind-fucked them and made them forget."

"My master thought it would be better that way."

"Are you contacting us officially?"

"Yes, and no. I am here as an agent of some of the Harlequin, but I am not sanctioned by the council to be in St. Louis."

"I'm listening."

He gave a small smile. "Almost anyone else would ask questions, at least be astonished, that I'm telling you that the Vampire Council's own spies, police, and executioners have broken with them."

"Let's just say we had some remote-viewing visits from a few council members."

"Then you know what has happened," he said.

"You tell me what you know and I'll tell you what we know and we'll see how deep the shit really is."

He nodded, the smile fading. "The Mother of All Darkness isn't dead."

I nodded.

"She's visited you," he said, sitting up from his comfortable slump.

"Sort of."

"When she felt her body destroyed by the bomb, she sent her essence out in search of a home. She found fertile ground in some of the council. Once, so long ago that most do not remember, that was what the council was, Anita. They would come to sit in their great chairs, but the deep dark secret was, once they took their places on the council the Mother possessed them. She had more trouble possessing some than others, but she took them all. The council only pretended to vote and be fair; in truth they were all her puppets."

I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and nodded. "I'm not surprised."

"The Traveller seems free of her; he and his human servant are running for their lives. They are hiding somewhere; even we do not know where."

"Are some of the Harlequin on her side, still?"

He nodded. "We are at war with each other. It is a very quiet, deadly little war, more like a series of assassinations, but we are at odds with each other."

"Do you really think we can hide you from some of the greatest warriors and killers that ever lived? We're good, Jake, but I'm not sure anyone's that good."

"No, I come to offer my gun and my strength to help fortify your safety, not the other way around."

"You think the other Harlequin will come for us?"

"I know they will."

"When?" I asked.

"It depends on how fast we can kill the ones that want to kill you. If our side loses enough manpower, then they'll come for you. Right now they see the other Harlequin as their greatest threat. Once we are neutralized, then they will turn to you."

"So it behooves us to help you guys."

He smiled. "I didn't come here for that, Anita. We will live or die as we always have, by our own hands."

"Then what do you want from us?"

"Depending on how our private feud goes with the other Harlequin, others of us will come to your aid, or to spy on you. There are some who are more neutral, because they do not believe that you and Jean-Claude and your two triumvirates could be Master of Tigers."

I stared at him. "Did you guys bug our phones again?"

He grinned. "No, your wererats sweep very effectively for listening devices now."

"We may be a little slow, but once we learn something we don't forget it."

His voice was all serious, suddenly. "The last remaining tigers that are not red or white belong to the Harlequin as their animals to call. When Mother Dark took the power of Father of the Day, she gave some of that power to us. We gained the tigers through it. Your blue boy is not the last of the blue, there is one more, but she is busy fighting for her life alongside  her master, so soon your Vegas teenager may be the only blue tiger left in the world."

"Are she and her master on our side?"

"They are," he said.

"So, you have a black tiger or two," I said.

"We have one. We had two, but when the Father of the Day regained some of his power, he called Sebastian away from us."

"Funny, Sebastian never mentioned he was one of you guys." I felt a little spurt of anger, because I had let him go when I could have turned him over to the police, or just kept him.

"Sebastian was and wasn't one of us. He had been, but the Father of the Day was truly his master, so the Mother of All Darkness didn't trust him. She allowed him to live, but he had no one. My master and I kept track of him, but he has been on his own for a very long time."

"Tell me who's on our side and who isn't, Jake."

"The remaining black tiger's master is not. We have one male gold tiger, and he and his master have agreed to be on your side if we can prove to them that you can be Master of Tigers."

"How do we do that?" I asked.

"Funny you should ask."

"One more oblique answer, or question, and I'm going to get pissed."

"I'm sorry." He sat up and almost shook himself like a bird settling its feathers. "When the Mother of All Darkness declared the gold clan to be destroyed, some of us hid a few of them. We helped them escape to various parts of the world, including the New World. We've been helping them to hide, waiting for another Master of Tigers. One who wasn't evil."

"Or a sexual sadist," I offered.

He gave a very small smile. "That, too."

"The other clans think the gold is destroyed and the strain of lycanthropy inside me is the last remnant of them," I said.

"They would be wrong."

"You've hidden the gold tigers since the first emperor of China; that's twenty-two hundred years. You've been planning this for that long?"

"We've been hoping for that long."

I raised eyebrows at him. "That's a long damn time to hope."

"When you live forever and don't age, it gives you the time to hope."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I shrugged. "So you're saying the tigers with you are gold, yellow, whatever."

He nodded.

"They are the purest of their line that we have been able to preserve. There are some who are like your Domino, of more than one clan. We have found that the tiger survivors mated with the gold breed mostly true."

"I'm an American, Jake. It means that pure blood is sort of overrated. We're a nation that's all about the melting pot."

"The tigers are not. It's important to them."

"So, I pick one and do what?"

"Bond with them, Anita. Pet them, fuck them, mind-fuck them, whatever it is you do when you gain a tiger to call."

"I can also make them my Brides."

"Like your werelion," Jake said.

I fought to keep my face neutral. "How did you find out?"

"Rumors that you've just confirmed. And I've seen other Brides over the centuries; they have a certain smell to them."

Nicky moved against the wall, as if he'd say something, but he just settled back like a good bodyguard, seen and not heard.

"I think we need one of the tigers to call you master in the way that your wolf and leopard call you master. I don't think making one of them a Bride would be as impressive."

"You left out my other lion," I said, and studied his face, though no matter how human he looked, I knew that after enough centuries you could get pretty good at keeping your thoughts off your face.

"No games, Anita. We heard what happened to your local Rex. We know that you need a new Rex, and you haven't chosen a lion to call, which was one of your old Rex's bones of contention."

"You have spies in with us," I said.

"We have spies everywhere, Anita; don't feel special."

"Oh, it's not special I feel, trust me."

"The Mother of All Darkness is trying to turn the council back into her puppets. We must stop her."

"How? How do you fight something with no body of its own? How do you fight something that can jump from body to body?" I asked.

"By being powerful enough to cut her off from each body in turn, until she is nothing but spirit and spite. We believe she will fade then."

"But you don't know," I said.

"If I said we were sure, you'd know I was lying."

"How do we cut her off from their bodies?"

"The way you cut her off from Belle Morte."

"No one in that room told you."

"Belle told us, Anita. She has turned to us to hide her."

I just stared at him.

"Why do you look surprised?"

"I'm not sure, but Jake, we used the powers of Belle Morte's own line to free her. We don't carry the power of anyone else."

"Now who's lying?"

"I'm not."

"Anita, you carry the power of every line that's attacked you. You collect vampire powers like butterflies. The Master of Beasts attacked you and now you can call all manner of wereanimals. The Dragon barely touched you from a distance and you can feed on anger. I heard you even did her nifty trick of using the vampire's own aura against them to cut like glass."

"Only once, and Jean-Claude was driving the metaphysical bus."

"We want him to gain the powers, too, Anita. We need him to be powerful enough."

"Enough for what?" I asked.

"To head the council in America."

I shook my head. "Damn, word does travel fast. You must have spies in every major city."

"Not every city, but the ones that are powerful enough to be helpful, yes."

"So I choose from the boys. Who's the girl tiger for?"

"You can choose anyone you want, but knowing your preferences the girl is more for Jean-Claude."

"More for - what does that mean?"

"It means this works better if you like everyone in your circle of power. Your line of power is based on sex, lust, even love, so your liking everyone who sleeps over is a good thing. Maybe even a necessary thing for you."

"So how does this work? I just go out there and pick the cutest one? It's not like picking kittens from a litter, Jake."

"If you could wrap your head around it, I think you and Jean-Claude taking them all back to your room and seeing which ones you like best would be the fastest and surest way."

I just looked at him. "So we go from Hello, my name's Anita and this is Jean-Claude to Let's all go back to our room and fuck? Aren't they  related to each other, as in a little too closely related to screw each other?"

"We don't want them to screw each other. We want them to screw you and Jean-Claude, and your other men."

"You're a little short on girls then," I said.

"We can get more if they make it here alive."

"So someone is killing the clanless weretigers because they suspect what you've done."

"Someone, probably another Harlequin, has figured out that we saved the gold tigers, but they don't know how weak the bloodline has gotten. So they're just killing every weretiger they find."

"I haven't heard anything about it."

"They're only hitting the clanless. They know the bloodlines for the clans, and they know about Cynric. They aren't worried about them. Please, Anita, take Nathaniel to bed with them, or Micah, whoever you need to feel better about this, but we need you to bond with a gold tiger, as soon as possible."

"Why is that so important?"

"Because once you have all the colors under your control, you will gain an astronomical amount of power and so will the tigers."

"Bibiana said that, too."

"Once you have a gold tiger to call your own, the others will not be able to resist you."

"Then why didn't the gold tiger who tried to kill me and her master rule the tigers?"

"Because she was just gold."

"I thought gold automatically gave you all the other colors."

"No, if it's a one-off, it's just like all the other tigers."

"How are you so sure that giving me a gold tiger will give me all the tigers then?"

"Because you already have a white and black."

"I'm not sure whether they're my tigers to call, or closer to what Nicky is," I said.

"Doesn't matter, you have power over them and the blue."

"Cynric was sixteen and I was his first sex. Any sixteen-year-old boy would have bonded with me."

Jake laughed. "I think you underestimate yourself, but it's a good point. What I mean is that you call to all the colors you've met, including the red.

You were little queen enough to put out a countrywide call to all unmated males. You damn near caused a riot with our gold males. They were ready to get on a bus, or a plane, whatever it took, and come to you. We had a hell of time stopping them. Soledad's mistress couldn't call all the males, and neither could Soledad."

I thought about it, then said, "We help you with the tigers, and you help us with the assassins."

"Rafael's rats are on it now. If your Ulfric didn't insist on playing human, he'd have had guards with him."

"He likes being a normal person, but I think he'll be willing to have guards until this is fixed."

"It may not be fixed by autumn, Anita."

"Jake, if people keep trying to kill us for another two, three months solid, the problem will be fixed, because eventually one of us will be dead."

"You're really calm when you say that. Most people would be afraid."

I shrugged. "I'll be afraid when I have to be."

"So, you and Jean-Claude and whoever else you wish to include will take the gold tigers?"

"If we're fighting the council and the Mother of All Darkness, we need all the power we can get."

"I remember you as arguing more the last time I was in town."

I shrugged again. "Maybe even I get tired of arguing."

"Or maybe circumstances have worn you down," he said.

It was my turn to give a little smile. "That, too. If you were going to offer the tigers to Jean-Claude, too, why not include him in the talk?"

"He's your master, Anita; if you wanted to include him you would. If you want to share information with him, you simply think it and let him hear your thoughts. This way he was able to talk to more of the American Masters of the City while I told you all this."

"Labor division at its best," I said. I stood up. He stood up. "Introduce me to your tigers, Jake."

"They aren't mine," he said.

"You've known them since they were born. Don't you feel anything for them?"

"I've watched them grow up; of course I do."

"Then how can you just offer them to us like they're not really people with their own free will?"

"They were raised for this moment, Anita."

"You make them sound like farm animals."

"I don't mean to, but we didn't keep them hidden and protected for thousands of years out of the goodness of our hearts, Anita. We did it because we needed them. We needed them so we could give them to you, and you could make them food."

"My animals to call aren't food," I said.

"Pretty to think so, but food is just energy that you eat, and they are energy that feeds your and Jean-Claude's power base."

"You do think of them like livestock," I said.

"We have married them, bred them, and watched over them like our special little flock of sheep for over a thousand years, Anita. When the new Master of Tigers emerged, there was no guarantee that he, or she, would be a kind master. We had to stay detached because when the moment came to give them to someone, we had to be willing to do that. If I loved them the way you love children, I might not have been able to do that. Do you understand that?"

"I understand that the big bad wolf has been watching the flock, when they thought you were the sheepdog."

"You're right. They call me Uncle Jake."

"And if I'd been an honorable but cruel person, you'd have still offered them up like lambs to slaughter."

He looked at me. Brown is supposed to be a warm color of eye, but in that moment there was nothing warm in his gaze. It was as cold and pitiless a look as any I'd ever seen, and I'd seen some good ones. "Yes," he said, "I would have."

"Evil old Uncle Jake," I said.

He nodded. "Yes."

"I couldn't be evil Aunt Anita," I said.

"Even to keep the Mother of All Darkness from spreading across the entire world like an evil, death-spreading plague?"

I wanted to look away then, but I forced myself to keep meeting his eyes. I finally said the only truth I had. "I don't know."

"Yes, you do," he said. "You just don't like that your answer would be the same as mine."

"If we do evil in the name of good, it's still evil, Jake."

"Lucky for me, you are a good person at heart, Anita Blake. You will do your best not to hurt them, so I can do my duty and not be evil this time.  But I never lie to myself. I know the only thing that keeps giving those kids to you from being evil is your own innate goodness. But if you were the most evil bastard on the planet and it would save the rest of us, I would give you all my golden kittens, and that is evil." He offered me his hand. I took it, expecting him to shake it, but he raised it to his mouth and laid a brief kiss on my knuckles. "Thank you for letting me do my duty, and not be the motherfucking bastard I feared I'd have to be."

He rose and turned away, but not before I saw the shine of tears in his eyes. He said he never lied to himself, but he did. He said he didn't love them like children, and I knew in that moment that he did.