Bullet

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.

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.