Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(108)

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because Narcissus felt Jean-Claude’s power spike earlier tonight. Narcissus is convinced that he’s going to pick a second animal to call,” Custer said.

“I have already chosen gold tiger for my next moitié bête,” Jean-Claude said.

“Narcissus told us to stop you from choosing anyone else before he gets here,” Geoff said.

“You aren’t the boss of any of us,” I said.

“I know,” Custer said, “hell, we’re both your security so it’s really awkward that Narcissus told us if we don’t interfere he’ll take a pound of flesh or two, and it’s not a metaphor, Anita.”

“Narcissus wants to be sure that the hyenas do not get left out this time,” a voice down the hallway added. We turned to find Kane walking toward us.





41

KANE WAS DRESSED in a brown silk robe. It was a nice robe, I knew just how nice, because I’d bought it for Asher one Christmas when we were closer. The color looked warm and just right with Asher’s golden hair and the autumn undertones of his pale skin, but the color was all wrong for Kane.

His black hair and tanned skin needed something in bright jewel tones like royal blue, or red. If it was possible to make him less attractive to me the color did, and he was wearing a present I’d bought Asher. I tried to think it was an accident, that he’d just grabbed it to cover himself, but the sneer on his face as he stroked his hands down the front of the robe let me know he’d done it on purpose. God, was there anything he ever did that wasn’t for spite, or jealousy?

The energy of his beast swirled through the hallway. It hit Custer and he let it flow over and away from him, but Geoff was too inexperienced to resist. His hyena swirled to life, changing Geoff’s dark eyes to a paler shade of brown. Their combined energy danced over my skin. The hyena inside me blinked awake, pale brown eyes in the dark. She stepped out into the light so I could admire her spotted coat. Her long face with the slightly floppy ears looked almost comical, but the expression on her face in her eyes was . . . thoughtful, but she wasn’t thinking at me, she was thinking about me, or about something. I waited for her energy to rise up and change my own eyes to that shade of pale caramel brown, but it didn’t. She sat there patient, waiting, but for what?

It wasn’t words, but I still knew that she was waiting for someone worthy. Worthy of what? I asked. “Us,” she said, or thought, or something I still didn’t have a word for. Unlike the lioness that was progressively more frantic to find a male to keep us safe from other lions, the hyena waited for no one to protect her. Female hyenas are bigger than the males; they don’t wait for anything bigger to come protect them, they do it themselves.

Geoff dropped to his knees.

“Shut it down, Kane,” Custer said.

“You’re going to bring his beast,” Ethan said.

“I don’t care if his beast comes or not.”

I looked into the eyes of my hyena. I swore she smiled at me. “My hyena isn’t going to rise for you, Kane, never for you.” He was weak, too weak to have in our clan. In the wild we’d chase him off or kill him.

“I don’t give a shit about your inner bitch.” Killing him sounded good.

“He is seeking me, ma petite,” Jean-Claude said.

I didn’t understand at first, and then my hyena sniffed the air. I thought at first she was smelling the other hyenas, but then she “looked” toward Jean-Claude. “You can sense the hyenas, just like you can lion and gold tiger,” I said.

“Oui, Narcissus seeks to force my choice.”

“You’ve called gold tiger, I’m here,” Dev said.

“He still calls hyena, because I can feel it,” Kane said.

“It is an embarrassment of riches,” Jean-Claude said.

I looked at him. “You can still sense hyena.”

“The choice is not finished,” he said.

“No,” Dev said, “this is mine.”

Custer was kneeling by Geoff, telling him to fucking hold on, to not lose his shit. The energy went up a notch as Custer looked at me with hyena eyes in his human face. I waited for my hyena to join the fun, but she just sat there, calm. She really meant it, Kane didn’t have enough juice to interest her, not even with Asher’s vampire marks upping his energy.

“Enough,” Richard said, and his energy filled the air like sunlight flickering through the forest, warm and welcoming. I felt him try to calm the energy in the hallway, but a warm spring walk in the woods wasn’t enough to go up against Kane and Asher’s power.

Richard’s power faded until the only thing in the hallway was hyena. Geoff fell facedown on the floor, the skin of his back rippling and starting to push upward. Custer fell to all fours beside him. His voice was strained so that each syllable came out like he was fighting to still be able to speak.

“Can’t-hold-it-to-gether.” Custer was stronger than this, so why was he losing control? Then I felt it, another vampire’s power, and if it was Kane it could only be . . .

Jean-Claude yelled, “Asher, stop this!”

Asher walked down the hallway with his golden hair floating back on either side of his face like from a wind machine in a photo shoot, so that every scar on his face was exposed, but more, he was shirtless, wearing nothing but silk pajama pants. He’d never willingly appear in public showing that much skin, because the scars on the right side of his chest and stomach were so deep they looked like his skin had partially melted in deep runnels, rough waves of flesh frozen forever to remind him of the worst moment of his life. It was as rough to touch as it looked, because I’d explored every inch of it.