46

I THREW THAT energy into the other tigers. Cynric was already at the edge of the white, and when the power swept over him, my blue tiger knew he was already ours. He was such an easy mark that the power barely hesitated before it swept out to find harder prey.

Domino was half black and half white tiger, so that half of him was already prepared to bend to my - our - will. I had a moment to wonder whether this was how it felt to be a multiple personality, to lose yourself in the pronouns so that you weren't sure what you were doing and what the other was doing, or what you were doing together. I should have been afraid, but I wasn't. It felt too good to be afraid of it.

The black tiger filled Domino and he climbed the white tigers to lay a hand on my skin, and the moment he touched me the black tiger scented something else. Something that was hers, that was ours was here.

The power searched outward until it found the weretigers who had no clan, but were just survivors of attacks. The power eased through them like a warm wind, and they were tiger and they were tasty, but the black tiger was seeking something else, like calling to like.

We found her pressed against the far wall. She wasn't very tall, dainty like me, like Meng Die, with the same straight, shining black hair, except hers was long, sweeping past her waist to caress the swell of her ass. She was even wearing one of those short Oriental-style dresses, in bright royal blue. Her eyes looked brown and human from here, but the power knew better, the black tiger knew better. I told the power and the tiger about contact lenses, and we wanted to see her closer. We wanted to see her eyes.

I tried to sweep through her the way I had Domino and Cynric, but she stayed by the wall. I - we - concentrated on her, and still we could not make her come to us. I had Victor put me down, and I walked through a  forest of hands and bodies, as I left the other tigers. I walked toward her. The other tigers had already parted like water when a fast boat slices it open, leaving the woman alone against the wall.

Her lips were painted as red as mine had started the night, though I'd left most of mine on Victor's mouth. Her lips were parted, her breathing faster, her heartbeat speeding, just from refusing the call of all that power. But the fact that she had been able to stand against us said more than anything else, that she was more powerful than any tiger I'd tried yet.

I walked toward her, the black tiger's energy riding on the strength of the white, and blue, so that each color grew and fed off the power of the others. The black tiger was like a dark image blurring and growing more solid around me, as if I, Anita, were somehow already inside it. My human hand reached out, encased in a huge, black, phantom paw.

"Don't," she whispered.

"You're a black tiger," I said in a voice that was almost an echo, as if my words were bouncing off the shape I could see around me.

"Yes," she whispered.

"You've been hiding in plain sight, pretending to be a survivor of an attack," I said.

"Yes."

I held my hand out to her. "Take my hand."

Her hands came out from behind her body where she'd been leaning on them, as if she'd needed the weight of her own body to remind her hands not to touch me. "I want to."

"Then do it. Touch us." I stretched my hand out toward her, with that shadow of black around it that I could see behind my eyes. Could she see it?

Her fingertips touched ours, and I wrapped my fingers through hers, drew her hand into mine, and my black tiger flowed over her skin, down her arm, and found her beast. It was as if I'd tried to pick up a stray kitten and found out I had a full-grown tiger on my hands. Her power didn't just pour into mine, it came like a tidal wave trying to drown me under the crushing burden of all that power.

I was on my knees, her hand still locked in mine. I'd thought Bibiana in Vegas was powerful, but she was nothing to this. I'd never dreamed of anything this powerful from a wereanimal. It felt more like vampire, and the moment I thought it, I knew. She belonged to someone. Someone old, and that someone was pushing power through her and into me.

I spoke through gritted teeth. "Cheat."

"Can you not tame me as you did all the others?" she said, and her voice was derisive.

My black tiger reached out and found Domino. He came to me and my tiger, and we felt him come like some vibrating thing, so full of energy.

The woman looked past me and said, "Do not help her, brother."

"You are not my sister," he said, and he knelt behind me. The moment his hands touched my shoulders, bare skin to bare skin, it was like touching a live wire. The power jumped and crackled through me and into her. She cried out and fell to her knees in front of me, and I used our joined hands to spill her in against me.

Her face was inches from mine, my hand in the back of all that silky hair. Her face was a mixture of fear and need. She'd been so lonely without another black tiger, so lonely. Others had their color, but she had no one. She drew in the scent of us, because we both smelled like home. We were what she had been mourning for more than a thousand years. That was the true strength of the ardeur, that it could see into your mind, your heart, your soul, to the thing you wanted most, and if I could I would give it to you, and it would be exactly what you wanted most. How many people can resist their heart's desire?

Domino's arms came around me so that we both held her, and drew her into me for a kiss. She whispered, "Master, help me." My lips touched hers before I realized she wasn't talking to me.

Her vampire master shoved his power into me, not like I was a necromancer, or another vampire, but as if I were just another black tiger to call, because that was his beast. Not just tiger, but this tiger. My tiger snarled at him, a huge, black beast, and he laughed at us. That laughter tried to spill out of her mouth and down my throat, but I kissed her. I kissed her because she was soft and fragile in my arms. I kissed her, because Domino was solid at my back, his strong arms folding over us both, so that he gave me not just the strength of his black tiger, but of his white, and the vampire on the other side of this tug-of-war wasn't ready for that. He faltered, a metaphysical stumble, and my two tigers spilled into her mouth, and down the long, shining curve of power that connected him to the woman in my arms.

I had a moment to see his face, upraised, startled. He was close by; he'd sent her to us like a Trojan horse. No, he hadn't believed that any of us could be a danger to the tie that bound them. His skin was both dark and  pale; he looked as if he'd begun life as someone very dark, but vampires grow pale with age, as if the centuries try to lick them down to bone and blood. His eyes weren't brown, they were black, his hair short and tightly curled, his lips full and soft. I kissed the woman in my arms, but I thought of him as I did it, and he raised fingers to his own mouth as if he felt that distant kiss.

Her arms traced over me and Domino, her mouth feeding at mine, until small, eager noises fell from her lips and into mine. I pressed her to the floor; she wrapped her legs around my waist, while the kiss grew between us and her bright red lipstick smeared across our faces like blood. Her dress was pushed up around her ass, which was pale and bare. She proved she was wearing nothing under the dress as she ground herself against my body and the extra friction of my dress.

Normally that would have freaked me out, but Jean-Claude was there, and so were Richard, Nathaniel, Damian, and Micah, and they liked girls just fine. They helped calm me, and the black tiger inside me already saw her as beautiful.

I was in more control than I'd ever been of the ardeur. It was a weapon at last. Then two things happened that I hadn't expected. He drove his power into her so hard and sharp that it tore her mouth from mine, and spasmed her body underneath mine as if he meant to kill her if he could not keep her, but she was his animal to call; the death of one might mean the death of both. Then the power hit my black beast, and I realized he wasn't trying to kill her, he was trying to tame her, and me, but he'd used pain and sheer force to tame her once before, long ago. I offered something so much better than violence.

I ground my hips against hers, pinned her to the floor underneath me, thrust my beast into her not to harm, but to pleasure. Even then I think I would have kept control, but I wasn't used to other women. I didn't understand that some of them were easier to bring than I was. One moment I was riding the edge of sex, using it to push back the threat that the vampire had used on her for centuries, and the next her orgasm caught me. I was too tied to her, too far into that line of power that connected her to her master vampire. I couldn't pull out in time, couldn't separate us, so that I rode her pleasure and Domino's weight was suddenly on top of me, as the pleasure spread. His weight pressed me harder against the most intimate part of her, and her body began to dance under my body again.

I saw her master fall beside the bed, one hand holding desperately to  the bedspread, as he tried not to feel what she was feeling. It wasn't just the pleasure; he was feeling her pleasure, a woman's pleasure. He tried to draw his power to hurt her again, but as pain had hurt her concentration, pleasure seemed to hurt his.

Domino went to his knees behind me. I had a moment to stare down into the woman's face. Her eyes were unfocused, body limp under mine. She saw something past my shoulder, and whispered, "Please."

I felt Domino slide my thong to one side, and knew before he pressed his weight against my body that he'd be nude, or nude enough. The vampire in his distant hotel room yelled, "No!"

The woman underneath me whispered, "Yes."

Domino angled himself against my body. I lifted my hips to help him find that magic angle, and felt the edge of sorrow that shadowed her face as I moved my body away from hers. I felt the triumph of the vampire in the distant room. Fuck that. I reached my hands down and lifted her hips in my hands. She smiled at me and angled her own hips upward, wrapping her legs more tightly around my waist, pressing herself against me. Domino began to push himself inside me. The feel of him entering me made me lose concentration on her for a moment, bowing my head, making me shudder as he worked himself inside me.

I had to put one hand on the floor to support myself against the push of his body. I kept one hand on her ass, pressing her against my body, helping her stay as tight as she wanted. Domino slid himself inside me, and I was already wet, tight, but wet. It helped him find a rhythm quicker, long, deep, thrusts, caressing that point inside my body. She put her arms on the floor and used them to lift her body and began to dance her hips against the front of my body as Domino did from behind.

I found my own rhythm, grinding myself between them, helping caress myself over and around him, and helping her rub herself against the front of me, and again she found her happy before anyone else did. Her body shivered underneath me, and I held her in place while Domino's rhythm grew faster, harder. I felt that warm weight building inside my body.

The vampire on the floor in the room tried one last time to take back the woman. I felt him gathering his power, and my tiger and I didn't like him. He'd offered the cat underneath us nothing but pain. We felt his power coming one last time. The woman's eyes went wide, face afraid, like she felt the blow coming. I meant to thrust the black tiger down that metaphysical link and beat him with his own game, but Domino made that  one last stroke and I was suddenly bucking against his body, against hers, where I still held her against me, and it was enough for her to join us, so that we all screamed our orgasm at once in one long, warm spill of pleasure. I shoved all that pleasure at the vampire, and I felt the connection between her and him break. She was suddenly mine, so much mine. The three of us collapsed to the floor with her trapped underneath our double weight. Her mind floated in a wash of nearly liquid happiness. Her body, like mine, was limp and almost boneless with pleasure. I could feel our three heartbeats inside my head like three drums beating in unison. And from one moment to the next, her mind opened to me. She wanted me to know.

Her master was one of the Harlequin, and he would kill her before he let her go. She'd been sent to spy on us, because the Harlequin had broken with the Vampire Council. They were running from the Mother of All Darkness. The warm edge of pleasure began to fade under that revelation, and then came another.

One of the other tiger survivors was a golden tiger, and the animal to call of one of the other Harlequin. His master was kinder than hers. They'd been sent to see if Jean-Claude could really stand against the Darkness, and if I could really be Master of Tigers. She let me see his face in her mind. She betrayed him to me, because he and his master had done nothing to help her in all those long centuries. They'd respected the bond between servant and master, even knowing that her master had abused her for over a thousand years.

I whispered, "Bastards."

"Yes," she said.

I didn't have to say a word; I thought, "Jean-Claude." I just let him see what I knew. I felt his fear at the word Harlequin, but he directed Wicked and Truth and some of the wererats toward the huddled survivors. He knew which man they wanted, because she had given me the face, and I'd given it to him. I also knew her name. Yiyu. It meant Jade, Black Jade.