Bullet

The nameless male stood up and started back toward them. “Lacey.”

“She’s his sister; his twin,” Hunter said.

“You had to use a blade on her,” I said. “You can’t shift just your hands.”

“She only has one form,” Jared said.

I’d never seen a wereanything use a blade on another wereanimal before. Reba had just admitted that she was too weak to shapeshift fast enough to fight. She only changed into a big tiger, no half-human form for her. So weak.

She pulled the woman’s arm up hard, meaning it to hurt. The woman made a small, hurt sound for her. It pissed me off, and better yet it pissed off the red tiger. She’d missed her own kind. They all smelled like home, and she didn’t like them getting hurt.

“Let her go,” I said, and my voice echoed as if the red mist were more solid than it looked behind my eyes.

“She’s mine!”

“No,” I said, “she’s not!” And that last word growled out from between my lips. I could feel the rumble of it all the way down my chest. I didn’t think what I’d do next, I was just moving toward them faster than I should have been able to move. It was as if I were there beside them before I’d had time to think. Reba tried to move the woman back with her, as she slashed at me. That one slash let me know that she didn’t know how to fight with a knife.

I smiled; I couldn’t help it.

“I will cut you.”

I shook my head. “No, you won’t.” I moved into her, and she had the speed, but now so did I, and I had the training. She tried to keep the girl’s arm in hers, like a hostage, and that put her off balance even more. I got close, and she did what I thought she would do, slashing at the air in front of her. It was more trying to keep me back than trying to cut me. I blocked her arm at the wrist, grabbed her elbow, applied pressure, and hooked my leg behind hers. I brought her to the ground with her arm and its knife still trapped in a joint lock, so that when she hit the floor I already had pressure on her elbow.

The woman that she’d cut ran toward the other red tigers. It was just Reba and me. “Drop the knife or I break the arm.”

She didn’t drop the knife, so I added a little more pressure to the elbow. She cried out, then sent the knife clanging to the floor. I kicked it out of reach and found Truth there to pick it up. So hard to bodyguard someone when they have to do their own fighting.

“It’s against every rule for you to use a knife to discipline your people. If you aren’t queen enough to shapeshift and do it right, then you aren’t allowed to be queen at all,” I said.

“Look who’s talking, human!” She spat that last word at me.

I called out, “How bad is Lacey hurt?”

“The blade was silver,” one of the men said.

“If she’s scarred for life, Reba, I promise you, you will be, too.”

Her eyes widened and she struggled. I leaned on the joint a little more, and it stopped her moving. I couldn’t grow claws and discipline her like a real queen, but I could do something that most dominants couldn’t do. It was a rarer gift, and depending on how you did it, it hurt more. I’d been gentle with the white tiger, Julia. I wouldn’t be gentle with this one.

I gazed down at her, and I could almost see the red tiger over me like a hood. The energy of it called to her tiger. I whispered, “Change for me.”

“I will not, and you can’t make me. You are a survivor of an attack. You are not pureblood.”

She was so angry, but anger was food, too. I drank her anger down through the feel of my hands on her skin and the pulse of her blood beating against my hands. There wasn’t much anger; it was a thin disguise for her fear. She was so afraid, afraid of me, afraid of how weak she was, afraid that her mother had sent her here to die.

“Let go!”

I let go of the joint lock but not the arm. I rode that down so that I was straddling her waist, pi

Fear and anger fought in her eyes, down her skin, across the energy of the red tigress. She tried for bold, and said, “Are you going to fuck me, too? Is that all you know how to do here in St. Louis?”

I laughed, and felt my eyes go, not tiger, but vampire. My eyes if I’d been one for real. I felt the fear win out over the anger, as I moved her arm down, so that I could pin it under one knee. She could have fought me. She had the strength, but for all she tried to do she could have been human; hell, most people would have fought, but she didn’t. I put my hand against the back of her neck. Her skin was warm; the small curls at the back of her neck, silky against my hand.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Making my point,” I said, as I leaned into her. I kissed her, and she froze against me, as if she didn’t know what to do. I let my tiger spill into my mouth, and into hers. Not because I was about to change, or in danger, but because I needed her never to fight me again.

I tried to think, but the red tiger would have killed her, and distant behind that was a very practical thought, that if we did this there would be no more arguing. I looked up from the woman under me and found Jean-Claude standing by me. I knew it wasn’t my thought. The problem was that I agreed with that very practical, very ruthless thought. It’s hard to fight the bad thought when you agree with it.

I had a moment of choice, and then I closed my eyes and I kissed her. It wasn’t just the red tiger that spilled through me, it was all the other colors, only gold held back, but the others spilled into my mouth and across my lips and into her. The energies tore her apart. I straightened up a second before a wave of clear, warm fluid and blood exploded across me. The violence of it tore screams from her, her body bucking underneath mine, until a tiger lay underneath me, shivering as if everything hurt. Her fur was so dark a red it was almost as black as her stripes. She stared up at me with the same eyes, but now they were full of pain, and very afraid.

I got up from her, a little shaky on my heels. Jean-Claude was there to take my hand, to steady me. I looked into his eyes and they were as blue and blind with power as mine were brown and black with it. I was covered in blood and fluid.

“The dress is ruined,” I said.

He smiled. “We’ll buy another.” He led me until we stood in front of the gold tiger who was still kneeling between the guards. His eyes were a little wide, lips parted. He was afraid of us.

“Do I need to make my point again?” I asked.

“What point do you want to make?” he asked.

“That the tigers are ours. That we can be Master of Tigers. That’s what you and the rest of your people came to St. Louis to find out, isn’t it?”

“You read that from Jade’s mind,” he said.

“We did,” Jean-Claude said. Jake had also told us that, but we let that slide. We were wi

“My master knows what I know. He knows you only need gold to complete the tigers.”

That was our cue, or rather Devil’s and Envy’s. We were keeping the other golden tigers hidden, but the two that were ours would get trotted out. The rest could stay hidden for now.

I didn’t have to use a phone. I just thought of Dev, and Jean-Claude did the same for Envy. Micah had Dev by the hand and led him to me. His hand wrapped around mine and my skin was flushed and warm, like being wrapped in a blanket of comfortable power. Richard had Envy by the hand and handed her to Jean-Claude.

The other golden stared at them. “The young ones we cared for were massacred. Those of us who were hiding them never told the others, so that if one was destroyed the others would be safe. My master and I didn’t know if you would have more of my kind here.”

“Jade saw you with your master and was envious that you seemed to love one another,” I said. “I wouldn’t break a love that’s survived thousands of years. That’s got to be rare even among vampires.”