I SAT ON the edge of one of the examining tables in the infirmary area deeper in the underground. Doc Lillian's rubber gloves tasted like stale balloons as she fished around in my mouth. Her short gray hair was long enough to cover her ears now, but she was still the same smallish, thin, and terribly competent woman she'd been when I first met her. She'd thrown a white coat over her dress and hose. It was easier to trade the coats than to keep changing clothes. Lillian had a thriving medical practice in the human world, but that was because they didn't know she was a wererat. Humans didn't want to be treated by someone they were afraid would give them lycanthropy of any flavor, but rats had a double problem of not being "romantic" like werewolves, or wereleopards, et cetera... If you were going to be a shapeshifter, everyone wanted to be a big, sexy predator, not a scavenger.

"If you were human you'd need stitches," she said, as she took her fingers out of my mouth. She took the gloves off and tossed them into a large trash can that had biological hazard stickers all over it. Blood from almost anyone here was usually either shapeshifter, or vampire, and though you couldn't "catch" vampirism from being exposed to blood on gloves or bandages, it was still considered a contagious disease. You couldn't become a vampire from touching dirty hospital waste, and come to think of it...

"Dr. Lillian, has there ever been a case of someone catching lycanthropy from hospital waste?"

She looked startled, then thoughtful, and finally smiled. "Not that I'm aware of, but we do hospital protocol anyway."

The curtains parted, and Jean-Claude stepped through. He still looked perfect in his black leather pants and matching jacket, only the white shirt in the middle of all that leather was his typical lacy shirt. It was like an echo of his original century, though I had enough memories of that time through him to know that the shirt was modern material and sewn tight to the body, rather than loose and billowy. It looked antique in style, but it wasn't. It was like a lot of his clothes, touches of olden days, but they were all actually sexy club wear, or at least sexy everyday wear. I'd never seen Jean-Claude in anything that wasn't theatrical and/or sexy.

"Anita," Dr. Lillian said, voice sharp.

I startled and turned away from Jean-Claude and looked at her.

She made a little unhappy mew of her lips, then turned to Jean-Claude. "She's a little shocky. I think it's a combination of the police work earlier, then the fight, being injured, and worried about Cynric, and..." She paused, looked down, and then said softly, "I'm sorry about Asher. I know he means a great deal to both of you."

"Thank you, Lillian; I know that you do not care for him."

"I try never to question who my friends fall in love with, Jean-Claude."

"I'm happy that you think of me as a friend," he said. His voice was lovely to listen to, but unemotional, as if he could have used the same tone to say almost anything. It wasn't necessarily that he wasn't happy about Lillian thinking of him as a friend, but more that it was the voice he used when he was being very careful not to show any emotion. It was his version of a cop voice and face, except that where my cop affect was hard to read, a little brittle and cynical, his "cop face" was beautiful, almost seductive. You had to know him like I did to realize that it was as empty and meaningless as the smile I could pull out of the air for customers at Animators Inc., when I had time to raise zombies. Lately, police work was taking all my time.

Lillian smiled, but studied his face, as if trying to see behind the pleasant mask. She was harder to fool than most people. "Take Anita to that big bathtub of yours and help her clean up. Enjoy the fact that she's bleeding, before the wounds heal."

"How many stitches would she have needed if she had been more human?"

Lillian looked down, then up, and met his eyes. No, I was wrong on that, she was staring steadily at the corner of his jaw, and not meeting his gaze. It was standard practice with vampires not to meet their eyes, unless you had natural resistance to vamp gaze like I did. Being a wererat didn't keep you from being bespelled by a vampire, it just made you a little harder to "magic" than a standard human. Even though she considered Jean-Claude a friend, she still wouldn't meet his eyes full on; interesting. But it was interesting in an almost disinteresting way; Lillian had said I was shocky, and she was right. Everything felt a little distant and unimportant.

"Ten, maybe fifteen stitches," she said, as if she hadn't wanted to answer the question. "Don't let that make you angrier with Asher, please."

"Why do you care how angry I become with him?"

"Because you've been fair, and just, and haven't overreacted. I like that about you. It's part of what makes you such a very good leader."

"You flatter me, to try and get me to do what you want."

She smiled, and all the lines in her face suddenly showed themselves as smile lines. It was a glimpse of a younger Lillian before sixty got so close. She was suddenly pretty. I hadn't thought about her one way or the other, until that moment. I realized she was blushing, just a little. Jean-Claude did have that effect on most women.

"My feminine wiles aren't up to your standards, but yes, I want you to keep being patient and fair, and the leader we need."

"As you say, ma petite will heal. There is no permanent harm done." But his voice was still that pleasant, empty charm. I couldn't blame Lillian for wondering what he was really feeling.

"Exactly," she said.

Jean-Claude came to me and took my hand in his. I didn't really need help down from the table, but I'd learned to be gracious about the men in my life wanting to be gentlemen. It was rare enough these days that it needed encouragement, not discouragement. I hopped off the table with his hand in mine.

"How's Sin?"

"He is fine. Nathaniel and Micah will take turns staying with him to make certain he doesn't have a concussion."

"Good," I said, but my voice sounded distant. I squeezed his fingers, as if touching him helped the world be more solid.

He swept the curtains aside and led me out. I let him lead. I was ready to follow someone, and Jean-Claude wasn't a bad choice for it.

Nicky and Claudia fell in behind us. Nicky had a small butterfly bandage near his eye, and a bruise starting around it. "How's Ares?" I asked.

"Concussion, broken arm and leg," Nicky said.

I stopped walking, which made Jean-Claude have to stop, too. I looked at Nicky. "Ares is a special forces sniper, and you did all that in just a few minutes?"

"Like you said, he's special forces, I'm not. I had to end the fight hard and fast, or I'd be the one in the hospital."

"I'm not arguing that part, Nicky. I just..." What was I supposed to say? "It's just that Ares does better than you in sparring practice, that's all."

"That's practice, Anita. We're not allowed to hurt each other for real in the ring here, and the army doesn't like you disabling each other in practice either."

"I guess not. What's your point?"

"I'm a werelion, Anita. Ares is a werehyena. Hyenas are a rough bunch, but they don't fight each other the way lions do. It's expected that males in a pride will challenge the leaders, and they have to be put in their place, or killed."

I realized something and felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner. "I thought Payne and Jesse were away on assignment like the wererats send their mercenaries away to earn money for the group, but that's not it, is it?"

"What answer do you want?" he asked.

"The truth," I said.

He shook his head. "No, you don't. Because you'll get all self-righteous about it, and then you'll feel guilty because you made me the Rex of the St. Louis lions, and so you'll blame yourself, and me, but you'll take it out on me, and I don't want that."

"So, you killed them."

"To keep them from killing me, yeah, I killed them, but not by myself. Kelly and some of the other werelions helped me. If the majority of the dominants in the pride had sided with Payne and Jesse, then I'd be dead, but they sided with me. They thought I was a better leader, and had stronger ties to you and Jean-Claude, so the lions would be better protected."

I thought about Payne and Jesse dead. It should have meant more to me, but it didn't. I felt numb, and distant with everything. My mouth was beginning to give me small, sharp pains. The fact that I'd gone shocky and it was only now hurting meant I was really hurt.

"So, if I'd been sleeping with Payne, then they would have sided with him and killed you?"

"It's not the fucking, it's the fact that I'm your Bride, and you're fucking me. That makes me more important to you."

I nodded. "What happens if someone I'm tied to metaphysically turns out to be a bad guy?"

"They all trust you to take care of it, like you did with the old Rex before me."

I had shot the old Rex point-blank in the face after he killed one of the other werelions, and tried to kill Nathaniel. Haven hadn't been able to share me with the other men. He'd wanted me to himself, and when he couldn't have that, he'd tried to kill the men I loved. His jealousy had made him do really bad things, and in the end I'd had to kill him to keep everyone safe. It had been a fight that had gotten out of hand, sort of like this one.

I tugged on Jean-Claude's hand, squeezing his fingers. "I don't want to have another moment like with Haven, Jean-Claude."

"None of us do, ma petite."

"Asher could have really hurt Sin, Jean-Claude. It takes a lot to knock the weretigers silly with one blow."

"Devil wouldn't have been knocked for a loop," Nicky said.

I looked at him. "What do you mean?"

"Devil is a lot stronger, he's got more muscle around his neck, so the blow wouldn't have hurt him as much, and he's a more powerful wereanimal. That helps protect you, too."

I looked at Claudia. "How strong is Sin compared to the rest?"

She shrugged. "He's clan tiger, so that's a step up in metaphysics, but I'd say he's one of the least powerful of your tigers. The only one weaker is Jade, and I think her problem is she's afraid of the power."

I thought about the only woman tied to me metaphysically. She was tinier than me, fit under my arm like I did with most of my men. She was all pale skin, and long black hair, with those big brown eyes that uptilted in her face. She always made me think of words like delicate, dainty, and not a lot of women made me think that.

"She was her vampire master's punching bag for centuries; it makes her think like a victim."

"She's got these wicked skills when she practices by herself," Nicky said, "but when we try to put her in the sparring ring, she freezes."

"He made her into his victim," I said.

"But she's got these ninja skills, and I'm not making a racist remark on that; all the Harlequin are beyond special-forces good at some things. They're like movie ninjas, almost magical."

"Her master trained her up like the rest of the Harlequin, but he abused her so badly that she had the skills but never got to use them," Claudia said. "As if he crippled her at the same time he trained her."

"Accurate, I think."

"Why would the Harlequin waste all that training?" Claudia asked.

"I still wish you would not all say that word so casually," Jean-Claude said.

"The Harlequin aren't the bodyguards of Marmee Noir anymore. They work for us now, Jean-Claude," I said.

"And you were right to have me change the law about mentioning their name. It was excessive for that to be a death sentence."

"Excessive, you think?" I asked.

He smiled at me. "But they are still the greatest warriors, assassins, and spies that have ever been known," he said.

"Yeah, but they should never have been forced to hunt someone down and kill them for just saying the Harlequin."

"The Mother of All Darkness was the ruler of the Vampire Council for thousands of years, ma petite. She was the first vampire, the creator of our culture and most of our laws. She was beyond queen or empress to us. She was our dark goddess."

"We killed the Mother of All Darkness; that means we get to change her crazy-pants laws."

"The queen is dead, long live the king," Nicky said.

I looked at him.

He shrugged as much as all that muscle would let him. "It's what all the vampires and older wereanimals are saying. You killed her, so you get the spoils by wereanimal society rules, but you're Jean-Claude's human servant, so he gets credit for it by vampire law."

"I know the vampires consider me just an extension of Jean-Claude's power, like a gun, or a bomb."

"I do not think of you that way, ma petite, you know that."

I leaned into the hug, putting my head on his chest. There was no reassuring heartbeat against my ear. His heart beat more than most vampires' did, but it didn't have to beat, and it didn't beat all the time, and it certainly beat slower than human or wereanimal normal. I hugged him tighter, because I missed the beat of his heart. I preferred furry to vampires, still. I loved Jean-Claude and a few other vampires, but I bedded a lot more wereanimals than vampires; there was a reason for that.

"I fed on a human tonight at the club, not one of our wereanimals, and I have not been near enough to you for your presence to warm me."

"We'll fix that," I said, with my head tucked against the ruffles of his shirt. The ruffles and lace were never as soft as they looked, but tonight I didn't care. He'd actually stopped wearing as many of his signature shirts because I didn't like the stiffness of the cloth. But tonight I didn't care; I just wanted him close to me.

He held me close and whispered, "Yes, we can fix that."

"I have to clean up first. I'm still all sweaty and stuff from the crime scene." I realized he was wearing a white shirt and I might have dried blood on me. It made me draw back and look at the front of him.

"What is wrong, ma petite?"

"I may have dried blood and things on me, and you're wearing white."

He drew me back into his arms. "I would rather hold you close than worry about my clothes. The shirt will wash, or we can throw it away. I do not care."

I pushed back just enough to turn my face up, resting my chin on his chest so that I gazed up the line of his body, and he looked down so that our eyes met down the line of his chest. "I know you love me, but when you don't care about your clothes, I know it's true love for you." I grinned as I said it.

He laughed, abrupt, surprised, and for a moment I got to see what he must have looked like centuries ago before being a vampire had taught him to control his face and show nothing for fear it would be used against him by those more powerful than him.

I smiled up at him, held as close to him as I could with clothes and weapons still on, and loved him. I loved that I could make him laugh like that, loved that he felt safe enough to show me this part of him, loved that even when we were ass-deep in alligators, being with each other made it better. The alligators would be chewing on our asses either way, but with each other it was more fun, and we were more likely to be able to make a matching set of alligator luggage out of our enemies rather than end up as their dinner.

I gazed up at him as the laughter filled his face, and just loved him. The day had sucked, but Jean-Claude made it suck a lot less, and that was what love was supposed to do. It was supposed to make things better, not worse, which made me wonder if Asher truly loved anyone. I pushed the thought away, and enjoyed the man in my arms, and the fact that I had made him laugh.

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