Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(82)

My inner lion and hyena were having a fight to the death inside my body where they couldn’t escape, and neither could I.





34

RICHARD AND WICKED tried to hold me still, but it wasn’t my arms and legs that needed to be pinned. I was just the cage for the fight. Huge claws raked the hyena’s body, but I was the hyena. It was my throat that screamed in high-pitched sounds that were not human. The hyena darted in and tried to tear open the lion’s belly, but the big cat rolled away, and my body rocked with the force of that weight falling against my side. Wicked was thrown against the far wall of the car, as if the lion had rolled into him. He’d lost his grip on my arm and thigh. The hyena didn’t leap after the staggered lion, it stood there legs braced as if it had won something, but I knew the lion wasn’t finished. I wouldn’t have been finished and I was the lion. The hyena started running up that impossible path inside me. It wanted to be real, and the only way to do that was to get out of me.

Richard wrapped himself around me; the scent of wolf was everywhere. It should have called my own wolf and slowed the hyena down, but it didn’t. Instead, the hyena ran faster in that loping, rolling run that looked awkward but could eat up the miles.

Nathaniel was suddenly kneeling on the floorboard at my feet. He pressed his bare arm against my face, but the scent of leopard meant food to the hyena, either to steal their kill before they could hide it or to eat the leopard, either worked for the hyena rushing toward the surface of my body. Always before when my beast ran for the exit my body reacted like it had with the lion rolling into me and Wicked, but there was something different tonight. It was like the hyena knew something I didn’t. It ran toward me giving that high excited giggling, gibbering cry that would raise the hair on your neck if you heard it in the dark, or, hell, in the light.

Then I felt something bigger running. The hyena looked behind it, and the lion rose like a semi truck coming up too fast behind you on the highway, dwarfing your car like a giant about to crush you.

The hyena gave a squealing cry as the lion grabbed its rear leg and threw it around like it wasn’t one of the top predators in the world. If you think hyenas are scavengers you’ve watched too many cartoons. I screamed as if my own thigh had been grabbed, and I expected to see the blood, like something had bitten me for real.

Wicked was at my side again, not holding me down, but just holding my hand. He exchanged a look with Richard and Nathaniel; it was not a good look. I managed to say, “The lion is coming.” My voice was already hoarse from screaming.

“I know, ma petite, I know.” Jean-Claude was on his knees in the middle seat, reaching back toward me. I reached out, and the moment our fingers touched, the lion slowed; it didn’t stop, but it

wasn’t running full out now. It came at a fast walk, as if it was less sure of what would happen when it got to the end of me. Certain victory was gone with the touch of my lover’s hand, no, my master’s hand. I had three lovers in the back seat with me, but only Jean-Claude’s touch had slowed the inevitable.

I didn’t realize the SUV had stopped moving until Jake opened his door and moved the seat forward so that Nathaniel could get out. Jean-Claude held my hand, and that one touch held the lion to a walk. Wicked cradled me in his arms and lifted me closer to Jean-Claude as Richard slid out of the car. Then Nicky’s shoulders filled the opening; he almost didn’t fit through, his muscles gleaming in a tank top cut so wide through the neck and shoulders it was more flirtation than a real shirt. I saw his short blond hair and one blue eye above me. He’d worn an eye patch tonight where the scars had stolen his other eye.

He took me in his arms, smiling, and growled. The sound went through me like my spine was a tuning fork and he’d found just the right note. It made me shiver. He leaned in and sniffed above my face, and the next growl was deeper, more menacing. “That’s not your lioness I’m smelling,” he said in a voice that was more growl than speech.

“You’re my Rex,” I said in a voice ragged with screams.

He gave a fierce snarling smile. “You bet your ass, I am.”

That made me smile, but the huge lion was still walking up the path inside me. Nicky was right, it wasn’t my lioness, and it should have been. I couldn’t have a male lion inside me, because I wasn’t that, and yet there it was, with a huge dark, almost black mane encircling a rich gold face. The contrast made him look almost like a Valentine card, all dark lace and velvet lion. I thought, What a weird way to think of it, and then I felt my lioness behind him. It was how she thought of him. She’d shown me once before that she wanted a mate, but never this forcefully, or this painfully.

“Damn it,” I said, “I’ll look for a lion to call, just stop doing shit like this.” The big male sat down, and the lioness came up to rub her body along his like she was scent-marking him.

“I feel your lions, ma petite, Nicky. I feel them as I can feel wolves.”

We looked at him. “Wolves are your animal to call, lions aren’t,” I said.

“I am aware, ma petite.” He squeezed my hand, then reached toward Nicky, hesitating just short of touching him, playing his long, slender fingers above Nicky’s aura. The lions inside me looked up, the lioness sniffing the air as if Jean-Claude’s almost touching him had changed something.

Nicky rubbed his cheek against my hair. “That’s much more fun,” he said, voice already deepening with testosterone.