Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(34)

Jean-Claude was suddenly in my head saying, “I adore being the love of your life, ma petite, I cannot wait to see you tonight.” I was in the dimness of the SUV grinning at my phone like an idiot with Ru sitting still and quiet beside me.

“So wedding shop, then Guilty Pleasures?” he asked.

“Yes, can you please text Rodina and Ethan?”

“If you lower your shields Ethan can read your mind, and Rodina and I always know when you are thinking of Jean-Claude.”

I fought not to frown, because I hated that so many people were so far into my business in a way that I couldn’t prevent. “Just text them, please, let’s at least pretend to be normal.”

“I’ll text them, but why does part of you persist in wanting to be normal?”

I glanced at him, but his face was bent toward the phone typing with his thumbs. “Didn’t you ever want to be normal?”

“We were trained to be part of the Harlequin from birth, this is my normal.”

I started the car and reminded him to buckle his seat belt automatically but realized it was already fastened. Rodina would have made me order her to do it. “You and Rodina are the only people I know whose parents were both Harlequin; everyone else was an adult when they were inducted, or invited, or whatever.”

“There were others born to Harlequin over the centuries, but it has always been rare since the female half of the couple would be unfit to serve our dark mistress’s bidding during the latter stages of the pregnancy.”

“So, there are other Harlequin that were born into the family business?”

“Yes,” he said.

I glanced at his profile as I drove out of the parking lot and headed for the I-70. “You don’t want to talk about it, or them.”

“No, I do not.”

I wanted to ask why so badly, but the topic obviously upset him, so I was willing to let it go, but he knew what I was feeling, and what I really wanted. “One of them was our friend, and the other was our enemy.”

“You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to, Ru.”

“You wish to know.”

“But you don’t have to tell me.”

He looked at me then. “You are my master, my queen, you have but to ask and I must do it.” He shivered. “You really don’t like being reminded that if you give a direct order I must obey it.”

“Nope,” I said, and concentrated on driving.

“I do not understand your push for us to find lives of our own, but I appreciate that you mean well by it.”

“I mean well by it, let me translate that for a second, that means that my good intentions are turning out not so good for you and Rodina, right?” I glanced at him in time to see him smile.

“We are having something of an identity crisis.”

“Rodina said she needed for me to give her purpose.”

“Yes, that is exactly what we lack. A purpose. We were literally raised from birth to serve the queen of the Vampire High Council as her bodyguards, spies, and assassins. When she fell into her deep sleep the rest of the vampire council took over as our masters, sending us out into the world to further their goals and those of all vampirekind.”

“But you’re not vampirekind, you’re wereleopards.”

“Our master was a vampire, and his interests were ours.”

“I guess my interests must seem boring compared to traveling the world spying and killing people.”

“We did not always travel the world, once we helped curate all the treasures that the vampire council had accumulated over the eons.”

“That must have been a hell of a collection.”

“It was, only the British Museum comes close in scope, but even they are missing so much of the most ancient history. They have to buy it as artifacts, but we were able to collect it in person when it was new and had people who spoke and wrote the languages on it all.”

I thought about that for a few seconds as we drove through the night. There was too much light to say it was dark, but it still had that intimacy that a car gets after dark that daylight never seems to give it. “Are there members of the Harlequin who could decipher archaeological finds that no one else could?”

“Yes.”

“If I ordered some of you to do it, would that be interesting to you?”

“We can safely travel to the United Kingdom, but in most of the rest of the world we would not be welcome.”

“Vampires aren’t, but shapeshifters can travel to more countries.”

“But how would we explain that we have lived for thousands of years, Anita? Humans would know that we either had ties to a vampire or to something else that was ageless and very illegal in their country.”

“I bet the British Museum would jump at a chance for you and Rodina to visit them.”

“Would you come with us?”

“I don’t know, the idea’s too new, I’d have to talk to Jean-Claude and find out how the vamp politics are going there.”

“You truly want us to be happy, I can feel that it makes you hopeful to offer us this chance to do something that interests us.”

“I like my people to be happy, why is that so strange to everyone?”

“You have no idea how selfish and petty most people are, Anita.”