"Let"s just say we had some remote-viewing visits from a few council members."
"Then you know what has happened," he said.
"You tell me what you know and I"ll tell you what we know and we"ll see how deep the s.h.i.t really is."
He nodded, the smile fading. "The Mother of All Darkness isn"t dead."
I nodded.
"She"s visited you," he said, sitting up from his comfortable slump.
"Sort of."
"When she felt her body destroyed by the bomb, she sent her essence out in search of a home. She found fertile ground in some of the council. Once, so long ago that most do not remember, that was what the council was, Anita. They would come to sit in their great chairs, but the deep dark secret was, once they took their places on the council the Mother possessed them. She had more trouble possessing some than others, but she took them all. The council only pretended to vote and be fair; in truth they were all her puppets."
I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and nodded. "I"m not surprised."
"The Traveller seems free of her; he and his human servant are running for their lives. They are hiding somewhere; even we do not know where."
"Are some of the Harlequin on her side, still?"
He nodded. "We are at war with each other. It is a very quiet, deadly little war, more like a series of a.s.sa.s.sinations, but we are at odds with each other."
"Do you really think we can hide you from some of the greatest warriors and killers that ever lived? We"re good, Jake, but I"m not sure anyone"s that good."
"No, I come to offer my gun and my strength to help fortify your safety, not the other way around."
"You think the other Harlequin will come for us?"
"I know they will."
"When?" I asked.
"It depends on how fast we can kill the ones that want to kill you. If our side loses enough manpower, then they"ll come for you. Right now they see the other Harlequin as their greatest threat. Once we are neutralized, then they will turn to you."
"So it behooves us to help you guys."
He smiled. "I didn"t come here for that, Anita. We will live or die as we always have, by our own hands."
"Then what do you want from us?"
"Depending on how our private feud goes with the other Harlequin, others of us will come to your aid, or to spy on you. There are some who are more neutral, because they do not believe that you and Jean-Claude and your two triumvirates could be Master of Tigers."
I stared at him. "Did you guys bug our phones again?"
He grinned. "No, your wererats sweep very effectively for listening devices now."
"We may be a little slow, but once we learn something we don"t forget it."
His voice was all serious, suddenly. "The last remaining tigers that are not red or white belong to the Harlequin as their animals to call. When Mother Dark took the power of Father of the Day, she gave some of that power to us. We gained the tigers through it. Your blue boy is not the last of the blue, there is one more, but she is busy fighting for her life alongside her master, so soon your Vegas teenager may be the only blue tiger left in the world."
"Are she and her master on our side?"
"They are," he said.
"So, you have a black tiger or two," I said.
"We have one. We had two, but when the Father of the Day regained some of his power, he called Sebastian away from us."
"Funny, Sebastian never mentioned he was one of you guys." I felt a little spurt of anger, because I had let him go when I could have turned him over to the police, or just kept him.
"Sebastian was and wasn"t one of us. He had been, but the Father of the Day was truly his master, so the Mother of All Darkness didn"t trust him. She allowed him to live, but he had no one. My master and I kept track of him, but he has been on his own for a very long time."
"Tell me who"s on our side and who isn"t, Jake."
"The remaining black tiger"s master is not. We have one male gold tiger, and he and his master have agreed to be on your side if we can prove to them that you can be Master of Tigers."
"How do we do that?" I asked.
"Funny you should ask."
"One more oblique answer, or question, and I"m going to get p.i.s.sed."
"I"m sorry." He sat up and almost shook himself like a bird settling its feathers. "When the Mother of All Darkness declared the gold clan to be destroyed, some of us hid a few of them. We helped them escape to various parts of the world, including the New World. We"ve been helping them to hide, waiting for another Master of Tigers. One who wasn"t evil."
"Or a s.e.xual s.a.d.i.s.t," I offered.
He gave a very small smile. "That, too."
"The other clans think the gold is destroyed and the strain of lycanthropy inside me is the last remnant of them," I said.
"They would be wrong."
"You"ve hidden the gold tigers since the first emperor of China; that"s twenty-two hundred years. You"ve been planning this for that long?"
"We"ve been hoping for that long."
I raised eyebrows at him. "That"s a long d.a.m.n time to hope."
"When you live forever and don"t age, it gives you the time to hope."
I didn"t know what to say to that, so I shrugged. "So you"re saying the tigers with you are gold, yellow, whatever."
He nodded.
"They are the purest of their line that we have been able to preserve. There are some who are like your Domino, of more than one clan. We have found that the tiger survivors mated with the gold breed mostly true."
"I"m an American, Jake. It means that pure blood is sort of overrated. We"re a nation that"s all about the melting pot."
"The tigers are not. It"s important to them."
"So, I pick one and do what?"
"Bond with them, Anita. Pet them, f.u.c.k them, mind-f.u.c.k them, whatever it is you do when you gain a tiger to call."
"I can also make them my Brides."
"Like your werelion," Jake said.
I fought to keep my face neutral. "How did you find out?"
"Rumors that you"ve just confirmed. And I"ve seen other Brides over the centuries; they have a certain smell to them."
Nicky moved against the wall, as if he"d say something, but he just settled back like a good bodyguard, seen and not heard.
"I think we need one of the tigers to call you master in the way that your wolf and leopard call you master. I don"t think making one of them a Bride would be as impressive."
"You left out my other lion," I said, and studied his face, though no matter how human he looked, I knew that after enough centuries you could get pretty good at keeping your thoughts off your face.
"No games, Anita. We heard what happened to your local Rex. We know that you need a new Rex, and you haven"t chosen a lion to call, which was one of your old Rex"s bones of contention."
"You have spies in with us," I said.
"We have spies everywhere, Anita; don"t feel special."
"Oh, it"s not special I feel, trust me."
"The Mother of All Darkness is trying to turn the council back into her puppets. We must stop her."
"How? How do you fight something with no body of its own? How do you fight something that can jump from body to body?" I asked.
"By being powerful enough to cut her off from each body in turn, until she is nothing but spirit and spite. We believe she will fade then."
"But you don"t know," I said.
"If I said we were sure, you"d know I was lying."
"How do we cut her off from their bodies?"
"The way you cut her off from Belle Morte."
"No one in that room told you."
"Belle told us, Anita. She has turned to us to hide her."
I just stared at him.
"Why do you look surprised?"
"I"m not sure, but Jake, we used the powers of Belle Morte"s own line to free her. We don"t carry the power of anyone else."
"Now who"s lying?"
"I"m not."
"Anita, you carry the power of every line that"s attacked you. You collect vampire powers like b.u.t.terflies. The Master of Beasts attacked you and now you can call all manner of wereanimals. The Dragon barely touched you from a distance and you can feed on anger. I heard you even did her nifty trick of using the vampire"s own aura against them to cut like gla.s.s."
"Only once, and Jean-Claude was driving the metaphysical bus."
"We want him to gain the powers, too, Anita. We need him to be powerful enough."
"Enough for what?" I asked.
"To head the council in America."
I shook my head. "d.a.m.n, word does travel fast. You must have spies in every major city."
"Not every city, but the ones that are powerful enough to be helpful, yes."
"So I choose from the boys. Who"s the girl tiger for?"
"You can choose anyone you want, but knowing your preferences the girl is more for Jean-Claude."
"More for-what does that mean?"
"It means this works better if you like everyone in your circle of power. Your line of power is based on s.e.x, l.u.s.t, even love, so your liking everyone who sleeps over is a good thing. Maybe even a necessary thing for you."
"So how does this work? I just go out there and pick the cutest one? It"s not like picking kittens from a litter, Jake."
"If you could wrap your head around it, I think you and Jean-Claude taking them all back to your room and seeing which ones you like best would be the fastest and surest way."
I just looked at him. "So we go from h.e.l.lo, my name"s Anita and this is Jean-Claude h.e.l.lo, my name"s Anita and this is Jean-Claude to to Let"s all go back to our room and f.u.c.k Let"s all go back to our room and f.u.c.k? Aren"t they related to each other, as in a little too closely related to screw each other?"
"We don"t want them to screw each other. We want them to screw you and Jean-Claude, and your other men."
"You"re a little short on girls then," I said.
"We can get more if they make it here alive."
"So someone is killing the clanless weretigers because they suspect what you"ve done."
"Someone, probably another Harlequin, has figured out that we saved the gold tigers, but they don"t know how weak the bloodline has gotten. So they"re just killing every weretiger they find."
"I haven"t heard anything about it."
"They"re only hitting the clanless. They know the bloodlines for the clans, and they know about Cynric. They aren"t worried about them. Please, Anita, take Nathaniel to bed with them, or Micah, whoever you need to feel better about this, but we need you to bond with a gold tiger, as soon as possible."
"Why is that so important?"