Anita Blake 18 - Flirt (7 page)

I glanced at the shapeshifter, and he was smiling wider, as if he understood my discomfort, or maybe I just amused him. But there was wariness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I’d done something that made him more nervous. If I could only figure out what, maybe I could do it again. Once I’d been able to use my petite, female packaging to fool the bad guys, but my reputation among the preternatural set had forced most bad guys to ignore the package and treat me like what I was: a predator that specialized in other predators.

I did the only thing I could think of: I slipped Ahsan’s number into my jacket pocket, and fished out the credit card I’d tucked in the same pocket. I put it in the little faux-leather holder and handed it back to him. I smiled one more time, turned back to my “coworker,” and said, “I didn’t think you worked today.”

Ahsan took the hint and left us alone.

He started walking slowly closer, hands still out. I didn’t tell him to stop, because I realized that the only way to make certain where my bullets landed was to have him so close I couldn’t miss. I was gambling that my own faux-shapeshifter speed would let me shoot him before he killed me. Maybe he wasn’t here to kill me, but whatever he was here for it was nothing good. I would have bet serious money on that.

He got to the edge of the table, hands spread a little more, and said, “May I sit down, because I’d rather not have you shoot me where you’re pointing right now.” He smiled happily as he said it, but the smile never touched his eyes. I knew that smile, those cold eyes. I’d worked with too many men who had it, and seen it in the mirror too often.

“Sure,” I said, “sit there.” I nodded toward the chair that would put him beside me, rather than across.

He started to tuck the chair closer to the table, and I said, “No, keep far enough away from the table so I can see that your gun stays in its holster.”

He gave a little nod, and angled his chair more toward me, one ankle on his knee, so that it was that very guy stance that some did, as if they wanted to frame their groin for inspection. I wasn’t interested, but the lioness was, because she was one of the few beasts inside me that didn’t have an equivalent on the outside. It meant she was way more interested in other lions than was comfortable for me. There was one werelion who was applying pretty hard for the job, but I kept avoiding him. I had enough men in my life.

I had slowed the lioness with my breathing and my pulse, but the image that she put in my head was not very human. She wanted me to drop to my knees and rub across him. She wanted more of his scent on us, more of his skin on us. With a gun in my hand, it was easier to push the thoughts down. I let her know that we were in danger, and that did seem to calm all my beasts. They understood danger, and through me, they knew what a gun could do.

The man kept his hands on his knees, and I moved so that the gun was angled more solidly at his chest. There’d be no collateral damage at this distance, because fast as he might be, he wasn’t faster than a speeding bullet from less than three feet.

“Just so we’re clear,” I said, “if you try to move fast, I will simply pull the trigger, because I know once you move for real it’s my only hope at this range.”

He nodded, still smiling, so that from a distance it would look like we were being friendly. “You moved me in close so you wouldn’t accidentally hit the nice humans. I smell you, Anita; I know I’m not the only kitty-cat at the table. It’s a weakness to care too much about your pets.”

I frowned. “Do you mean humans?”

He nodded, still smiling.

“I carry a badge; it’s sort of my job to care about them.”

“First, let’s be very clear. If anything happens to me, then your people die.”

“What people? You mean the people in the restaurant?”

“No, but knowing you care does make it easier.” He nodded a little behind me. “It’s a visual.”

“If I even feel you move too much, I will just pull this trigger.” The lioness in me snarled at the air, and the edge of it trickled out between my lips. It made the threat better, but it was not a good sign for my control.
One problem at a time, Anita, one problem at a time.
Talking to myself wasn’t a good sign, either, but sometimes using my own name reminded me that I wasn’t the beast, but the person.

“I believe you,” he said, voice dropping lower. “I will sit very, very still, kitten.”

I would have protested the nickname, but I had called him kitty first. I turned and found Ahsan almost at our table. He smiled, thinking I was looking for him, and in a way I was, because there was a second bad guy behind him. He had a blond skater’s cut, complete with a wedge of bangs that covered his right eye completely. He wore an oversized tank top and baggy shorts, which could hide a lot of weapons. How did I know he was a bad guy? Maybe it was the gun in his hand that he hid under the oversized shirt. The shirt was so big it hung off one shoulder and showed off that his upper body hit the gym a lot.

If I’d had concentration left for it, I’d have tried to taste whether he was shapeshifter or human. If he was shifter he was trying to hide his energy, or the energy coming off his friend drowned him out. Either way, he was following behind Ahsan, and he had his gun out. He was wearing exercise gloves like for biking or weight lifting, the ones that covered all the front of the hand. Leather gloves in this heat—seriously paranoid, or seriously had his prints in the crime-stopper databases. Either way, I got to watch him follow the waiter to “our” table. The threat was no longer subtle.

“Nick,” the man at the table called out, in a happy voice, “thought I’d have to eat lunch alone.”

The second man grinned at us both, and it reminded me of Jason’s grin. It even filled his blue eyes with laughter. He was damn near six feet and not built like Jason at all, but there was something about him that reminded me; maybe it was a meaner edge of that urge Jason always had to fight off, to keep pushing a situation. That was not a good personality trait in someone with a gun.

Ahsan made room for Nick to take the seat nearest the waiter, so that he and the first guy were sitting across from each other, and so Nick’s gun was still very close to Ahsan. I still hadn’t figured out how to sign the check one-handed, I couldn’t keep the gun pointed at both of them anyway. I’d gone from having some tactical advantage to none. Shit.

Ahsan had pity on me and held the pieces of paper while I signed, and I even managed to give him a generous tip. I mean, if I was going to get him shot it was the least I could do. His fingers brushed my hand, and I realized he thought I’d given him an excuse to touch me. Normally, it would have bugged me, but I had bigger problems than his fingers tracing over my hand. I even let him take my hand and give it a little squeeze. God knows what he might have said, but he glanced at my two “coworkers” and just wasted one more really good smile on me. I tried to return it, but wasn’t sure I managed. His smile didn’t fade, though; maybe he assumed that I didn’t want to show too much around my “coworkers”?

“He’s cute,” Nick said, in a voice that matched the hair and the clothes, but his hand, under the table, was pointing at me. I didn’t have to see the gun to know it was there, and that he’d hit me somewhere between stomach and chest.

“He’s okay,” I said.

“Oh, come on, don’t play coy. He’s hot.”

“Enough, Nick, this is business.”

“Just because it’s business doesn’t mean it can’t be fun.”

“Nick would enjoy killing your waiter, Anita.”

“Yes, I would,” Nick said, and smiled when he said it, all the way up to his baby blues.

“Sociopath much?” I asked, smiling sweetly, my gun still pointed at the other man, because I wasn’t sure what Nick would do if he saw my arm move in his direction.

“All the damn time,” he said, cheerfully.

“What do you want?” I said, trying to keep an eye on both of them for movement and knowing the moment they flanked me I was not going to win. I could take one of them, but not both, not like this. My pulse tried to speed up, and that made the lioness that had been behaving herself so nicely begin to walk up that metaphysical path. If I lost too much control of my body, she’d ride my pulse and breathing as near the surface of me as she could get. The beasts found my inability to shapeshift very frustrating, and that could lead to some very painful moments for me while they tried to claw their way out. I hadn’t had any of them do that in a while, but the bad guy
would
have to be a werelion. Worst choice possible; I might have thought the bad guys did that on purpose, but the first one had been genuinely surprised to smell lion on the air. It was just a bad coincidence.

I heard Nick take in a deep breath. I didn’t have to see the movement to know he was sniffing the air.

“Don’t move toward her,” the first man said; “we’re all going to be very calm, and that way we walk out of here without hurting any of the nice people.”

“She smells like lion,” Nick said, “but it’s different, somehow.”

“Shut the fuck up, Nicky.” The first guy was angry, and that made his power flare again, which made my lion trot faster. I tried to call my necromancy stronger, to calm all this hot-bloodedness, but Nick chose that moment to let me know that he was powerful, too.

Nick’s power smashed into me like a blow. It stole my breath, so that the blood in my head was suddenly loud and roaring. The lioness snarled, because it wasn’t just me it had hit.

“We’re working, Nicky, not dating,” the first man said, and there was an edge of growl to his voice that you might have mistaken for just a low bass voice, but I knew better. My lioness knew better.

My breath came back in a small gasp. “What the hell was that for?”

“You put your power all over her,” Nicky said, and he sounded sullen. He had enough power to be in the running for top lion, but there were other things to consider besides brute power. Sullen is not my favorite thing.

“You know why I did that,” first man said.

The lioness began to pace more slowly up that hidden path. I felt caution in her, and that wasn’t her usual thought process. Something about the second lion’s energy had made her think more deeply than normal. I would have loved to ask why, or what, but she was truly animal and they didn’t think like that. Something had made her hesitant, almost afraid. But what?

“Yeah, it was part of the plan,” Nicky said, “supposed to show her how powerful you are so she’d cooperate. Did you feel what she could do with her powers over the dead?” Nicky shivered, and I hoped his finger didn’t spasm on the trigger. “It was like water on fire, but it was power. So much power, Jacob, so much power.” Again, he did that shiver, but this time he did move his arm under the table so the gun was pointed at the floor. I appreciated the caution, and it made me think better of Nicky’s wisdom score.

Jacob’s power lashed out, not at me, but at his friend. I got the curl of it like a hot wave washing against my legs. It made me startle, and it was my turn to move the gun to the floor. “I don’t mind shooting you, but I’d like it to be on purpose, not because you’ve made me twitch.”

“Then keep it pointed at the floor,” Nicky said. His power smashed out at his friend, and again I caught that glancing blow. They were both very powerful; it was just a matter of flavor, not strength.

“Stop this, Nick,” Jacob said.

“Do you know how long it’s been?” Nick asked.

“Shut up,” Jacob said, and then he turned to me. “We knew about the wolves and the leopards, and we heard you cut quite a swath up in Vegas through the weretigers. You’ve got Jason Schuyler for your wolf to call, and Nathaniel Graison for your leopard, and even a leopard king in Micah Callahan, and we hear you brought some tigers back from Vegas and have bonded with them. You stole one of Chicago’s master vampire’s werelions to come down and take over your local pride. He’s your Rex, your lion king. You’re supposed to be all mated up.”

I didn’t like him listing my boyfriends, not one little bit, but he was wrong on one thing. Haven, the local Rex, was not my mate. I had slept with him, but he didn’t share well enough. He’d proven that when he slept over one night and started a fight with Micah, Nathaniel, and me the next morning. Haven had been surprised that I’d joined in on the other men’s side. He’d said, “The women don’t interfere.” I told him he had the wrong girl, and to get out. He’d actually apologized, which for him was a lot, but he was still not on my favorites list. “You got a point?” I asked the current problem werelion.

“Your Rex is lying about you and him. Your lioness doesn’t belong to him.”

“I don’t belong to anyone.”

“Liar, you belong to a lot of people, but you don’t belong to Haven. He’s put out the word that no more werelions need apply for your bed, because you’re his.”

“My dance card is full, so if his lies keep the others away, fine with me.”

“But it isn’t fine with your lion,” he said. He shook his head. “We didn’t know you were an unmated werelion. We wouldn’t have taken the job if we had.”

“Why not, and what job?” I asked.

“We’re being unprofessional, and I apologize for that, but you’ve caught us off guard.”

“Why are you here, Jacob?” I asked; maybe if I used his name it would speed things along.

“I’m going to reach into my jacket for a cell phone. I have pictures on it to show you. You aren’t going to like them. You’re going to get angry with us, but remember we were hired to do this, it’s nothing personal.” He looked past us. “Your waiter is coming back.”

“He’s probably going to take your orders,” I said.

“Would it really bother you if I killed him?” Nicky asked.

I finally realized that this problem, whatever it really was, wasn’t going to be settled by guns at the table. I stopped worrying about keeping an eye on both of them and just looked at Nicky. I gave him the full weight of my unfriendly gaze.

He blinked the one big blue eye I could see. “Nice look. It really has me quaking in my boots,” he said.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” I said.

“Tease,” he said, low.

Ahsan was back at the table. He wasted smiles on me and I was torn between wanting him away from the table and warning him. “Can I take drink orders?”