45

THE SLIP HADN'T worked with the dress, so I wore it with just the nice black bra and panties under it. The shoes were three-and-a-half-inch heels, a little wider than spikes, thank God, but with panels on the closed-toe heels that were silver, clear, clear black, and ended up being mostly clear like the dress, so that the silver heels were the thing you noticed most about the shoes. Meng Die had produced a pair of thigh-highs from her bag so that the shoes weren't rubbing as I walked. With the sheer dress, the sheer black hose just seemed to make it all lingerie, but it beat the hell out of having blisters before I'd walked a few yards, which was what the shoes promised without hose.

Cardinal had applied makeup in a record speed. She even had a mirror so I could see that she'd made my eyes large and exotic; the lipstick was a red so deep and rich that it was going to be distracting just to watch me talk. Of course, my breasts might distract any heterosexual man in the room from ever seeing my face. There was way too much yummy mounded goodness going on in front of me for me to be entirely comfortable meeting a roomful of strangers, but I hadn't protested anymore. Micah had made his point. I kept my mouth shut and just let the two women do their jobs. Besides, the dress didn't hide a damn thing, so my breasts being obvious should have been the least of my worries. One of the interesting side effects of the dress being see-through was that every vampire bite was very visible. So were the scars I'd gotten in the line of duty, but the bites were actually more attention-getting. They were fresh, after all. The fact that I'd started wearing thongs since I found some that were actually comfortable meant that my ass was bare, though at least the front was well covered with black lace. I had other thongs that were pretty much nudity with decoration. That would have been worse, or that's what I told myself.

I'd divided my weapons among Nicky, Wicked, and Truth. They'd  rotate around me and Jean-Claude. The only jewelry I had left was the gold chain with the charm on it. I felt very underdressed without the weapons or my cross. But since Jean-Claude might have to pull out some serious vampire powers to help me tame the tigers, a holy object that would start to glow seemed like a bad idea.

The gold tigers and Jake himself were going to stay out of sight until we'd done the tigers, because we were pretty certain there'd be spies among them. Since even the Harlequin never saw all of them unmasked, not everyone knew what the others looked like, so Jake had a high-percentage chance of not knowing the bare face of the spies. It was one of the things that made the Harlequin so effective even to each other.

The big dining room had begun life as a speakeasy, back when Prohibition was the law of the land. It was a huge natural cavern with gas lamps in the walls, giving a soft, warm glow to everything. The big table had been moved to one side of the room and had candles on it, so that the only light in the big cave came from gas and candles. There was enough light to see everything, but it was soft-edged and there were lots of shadows, as if the flames that lit the room filled it with both light and darkness.

Except for the light and shadows it was a cocktail party, with everyone standing around sipping drinks, eating hors d'oeuvres, and chatting. I hated cocktail-party small talk mainly because I'd always sucked at it, but all the men in my life seemed really good at it. As long as Jean-Claude or Micah or Nathaniel or Asher or Jason was on my arm they took the conversation and I just smiled and nodded. That I could do.

Damian and I were both almost equally bad at this kind of thing, so he kept Cardinal on his arm, and we waved at each other.

I was on Jean-Claude's arm when we met Victor, weretiger and son of the Master of Las Vegas and the white tiger queen, Bibiana. Victor was still tall, broad-shouldered, and handsome with his short white hair carefully cut, looking as if someone styled it one hair at a time. His suit was expensive and tailored, and looked almost as good on him as Micah's had on him, but in very different ways. Victor was built more like Richard. Victor's tiger eyes were a rich, deep blue, bluer than Crispin's. I liked Victor's eyes; in fact my white tigress liked everything about him. He took my hand when I offered it, and the moment he touched me I wished he hadn't. His power breathed along my skin in a warm wash. It made it hard to breathe for a moment, and I watched his eyes go a little wider. His breath came  out in a shaking line as he let go of my hand. It took visible effort for him to stop touching me.

He laughed, and that shook, too. "Is it my imagination or are you even more captivating now than you were a year ago?"

"Thank you, and I don't know." The white tiger inside me wanted to touch him. I took a step forward without realizing it. Victor actually backed up a step, before he caught himself.

"Aren't you going to introduce us?" A woman came to lean against him in a possessive way that some girlfriends have. My white tiger didn't like it, and I had a moment to fight the instinct to mark him as some sort of territory. I'd met him twice, and slept with him twice, and had sex only one of those times. I had no right to mark him as mine, but wasn't I supposed to do exactly that? Shit, I didn't know.

The woman had long pale curls, mostly white, but with edges of pale golden brown here and there, and I knew that meant her white tiger would have stripes the color of her darker curls. She had the same lush curves as Bibiana, but on a body that was nearly a foot taller. Part of it was silver stiletto heels, but her legs were almost longer than I was. Her dress was silver, too, and managed to both cling and billow as she moved. She, like me, had to be wearing a bra under the dress or things wouldn't have stayed put.

Her eyes were a blue so pale they were gray, but with a line of black around the iris so that it echoed the eyeliner around her large, uptilted eyes. The effect was startling, and beautiful, even to me.

"Julia, this is Anita Blake, Jean-Claude's lady."

She held out a perfectly manicured hand. The nails were French-tipped with white. Cardinal had buffed my nails and declared them hopeless. I didn't really care about nails, so I smiled sweetly and held out my hand.

She wrapped her hand around mine and sent a flash of power into me. My white tiger was just suddenly there, roaring up through my skin, not to tear me apart, but to spill around me like some white phantom.

Julia tried to take her hand back, but I held on, and my tiger spilled over and through her. I tasted her tiger, saw it in its pale stripes, and knew she was no queen. She tried to slap me, like a girl, but my other arm was there blocking hers.

"Let go," she said, but her voice was high, and afraid. Fear meant food. Fear meant weak.

I started to, honest, but Jean-Claude was at my side. He said, "She began this, ma petite. You must finish it."

I glanced at him, and my tiger seemed to look at him, too.

"She challenged you," he said. "Answer it."

I glanced past the woman to Victor, who had moved so he wasn't touching her. "You must answer her challenge, Anita. Either you are queen, or you are not."

It was as if some faint piece of resistance melted away. We were supposed to play to win.

"Let go," she said again.

"Make me," I said, and I knew that though human words were coming out of my mouth, the attitude wasn't human. The white tiger in me knew that Julia had tried my power with hers; it was something you did only if you thought the tiger in question was lesser. Julia was about to learn she'd made a mistake.

Victor and Jean-Claude had moved a little back from us. The other white tigers had formed a little circle around us. I could feel the rest of the tigers beyond the white like a distant hum, but in that moment the white tigers were what I wanted, needed. One color at a time.

She tried to use all that otherworldly strength to pull me off my feet, but my sport of choice was judo, and that was all about leverage and balance. She pulled, and I went with it, so that I was suddenly up against her, her hand still in mine, and my leg went behind hers at the same time that I pushed on her with my other hand, and down she went. She didn't know how to fall, so she hit hard. I was suddenly on top of her, straddling her waist, my hands in her hands. I wasn't holding her down. I couldn't by strength alone, but there are other ways to make someone stay on a floor.

I was leaning over her, my face above hers as she caught her breath. But it wasn't my face near hers that widened her eyes and made her scream. It was my tiger's. We thrust that white, hot energy into Julia. We plunged it between those beautiful eyes and we brought her tiger, as we'd, I'd, they'd, brought Rosamond's lion, in a gentle wash of fur spilling over her skin, so that there was barely any fluid, just one moment human, the next fur and muscle and the face that went with those gray and black eyes.

She lay underneath me, still in the silver dress, though the shoes had been split. She blinked up at me, and I leaned our foreheads together, while my hands were still in hers. I rubbed my cheek against the silky fur  of her face. She was stiff under me for a moment, and then she rubbed back and that deep thundering purr began.

And one by one the other white tigers crowded around us and rubbed their human faces against me and against Julia. Victor was last. He didn't kneel. He picked me up in his arms while the white tigers rolled around his legs. I could see his tiger now, white and untouched by any stripe. The great white beast rolled through me, and my beast rose up to his, as white and untouched. It was as if he and I were the center of some warm, wonderful fire, and every tiger at our feet was fuel for it. His arms locked around me, so strong, so very strong, and the energy grew, thicker, richer, deeper, more, until his mouth touched mine and then we thrust our power into each other, and it was as if his beast and mine exchanged places, one sliding into the other so that they intermingled and became one, and then two, and then we were many. I could feel every tiger around us, and it was all fuel, all energy, all mine.