"The guards could not have shopped for lingerie," Meng Die said, standing up with the shoes in one hand and the dress in the other.

"Hurry, Anita," Cardinal said.

I didn't want to hurry. I didn't like the dress.

Micah kissed me on the cheek. He was dressed in a tailored black suit, except it was made of soft black leather. His shirt was white and made his summer tan look very dark. The collar of it was open to expose the bite marks on his neck. The idea was that we would all show the vampire bites to demonstrate that Jean-Claude kept the best stuff for himself. It was a way of emphasizing he was still master, even though a lot of the metaphysical stuff with the tigers would seem to come mostly from me.

"You're okay with this?" I asked.

"Anita, after last night and what happened in Atlanta, I'd wear the dress myself if it would help us be safe." Jean-Claude looked at me, and there was something of weight, and sorrow, and just him, that made me take his hand.

"If I really thought the dress would help us be safe, I wouldn't mind."

Micah kissed me. "Anita, have I ever asked you to just do something?"

I thought about it and shook my head.

"I'm asking now." He looked sad.

"Did I miss something? Has something else happened?"

"Anita, it's afternoon. We have about six hours until full dark. Whatever we are going to do with the tigers, we need it done before dark."

"But Europe isn't on the same daylight schedule," I said.

"If they are underground, ma pet.i.te ma pet.i.te, the council does not sleep much. They await our darkness, not their own," Jean-Claude said.

"Richard is in the other room wearing a h.e.l.l of a lot less than I am. He's sucked it up and is playing host while the rest of us are in here holding your hand. You're about to throw a fit because the dress is sheer. Anita, honey"-and he took my hands in his-"Richard is doing what we need him to do; are you going to do less?"

I sighed. "I'm sorry, you're right. I'm just not the exhibitionist that-oh, h.e.l.l, Micah. I'm just not comfortable mostly nude in front of a roomful of strangers."

"I'm sorry for that, but we need to play to our strengths. Those are s.e.x, psychic ability so strong they won't know what hit them, and bluntness. The dress is s.e.xy, and blunt." He smiled. "Honey, it's you. I'll go help the other men with our guests. Okay?"

I nodded. "Okay."

He kissed my cheek again, gave Jean-Claude a look I couldn't quite understand, and went back down the hallway to our guests. And just like that, I stopped protesting. Micah's att.i.tude brought home more than anything else could have that modesty was no longer a virtue. It was the proverbial midnight, and the clock was striking. Whatever we were going to do before that last strike, we had about six hours to do it.

CHAPTER 45

THE SLIP HADN'T worked with the dress, so I wore it with just the nice black bra and panties under it. The shoes were three-and-a-half-inch heels, a little wider than spikes, thank G.o.d, but with panels on the closed-toe heels that were silver, clear, clear black, and ended up being mostly clear like the dress, so that the silver heels were the thing you noticed most about the shoes. Meng Die had produced a pair of thigh-highs from her bag so that the shoes weren't rubbing as I walked. With the sheer dress, the sheer black hose just seemed to make it all lingerie, but it beat the h.e.l.l out of having blisters before I'd walked a few yards, which was what the shoes promised without hose.

Cardinal had applied makeup in a record speed. She even had a mirror so I could see that she'd made my eyes large and exotic; the lipstick was a red so deep and rich that it was going to be distracting just to watch me talk. Of course, my b.r.e.a.s.t.s might distract any heteros.e.xual man in the room from ever seeing my face. There was way too much yummy mounded goodness going on in front of me for me to be entirely comfortable meeting a roomful of strangers, but I hadn't protested anymore. Micah had made his point. I kept my mouth shut and just let the two women do their jobs. Besides, the dress didn't hide a d.a.m.n thing, so my b.r.e.a.s.t.s being obvious should have been the least of my worries. One of the interesting side effects of the dress being see-through was that every vampire bite was very visible. So were the scars I'd gotten in the line of duty, but the bites were actually more attention-getting. They were fresh, after all. The fact that I'd started wearing thongs since I found some that were actually comfortable meant that my a.s.s was bare, though at least the front was well covered with black lace. I had other thongs that were pretty much nudity with decoration. That would have been worse, or that's what I told myself.

I'd divided my weapons among Nicky, Wicked, and Truth. They'd rotate around me and Jean-Claude. The only jewelry I had left was the gold chain with the charm on it. I felt very underdressed without the weapons or my cross. But since Jean-Claude might have to pull out some serious vampire powers to help me tame the tigers, a holy object that would start to glow seemed like a bad idea.

The gold tigers and Jake himself were going to stay out of sight until we'd done the tigers, because we were pretty certain there'd be spies among them. Since even the Harlequin never saw all of them unmasked, not everyone knew what the others looked like, so Jake had a high-percentage chance of not knowing the bare face of the spies. It was one of the things that made the Harlequin so effective even to each other.

The big dining room had begun life as a speakeasy, back when Prohibition was the law of the land. It was a huge natural cavern with gas lamps in the walls, giving a soft, warm glow to everything. The big table had been moved to one side of the room and had candles on it, so that the only light in the big cave came from gas and candles. There was enough light to see everything, but it was soft-edged and there were lots of shadows, as if the flames that lit the room filled it with both light and darkness.

Except for the light and shadows it was a c.o.c.ktail party, with everyone standing around sipping drinks, eating hors d'oeuvres, and chatting. I hated c.o.c.ktail-party small talk mainly because I'd always sucked at it, but all the men in my life seemed really good at it. As long as Jean-Claude or Micah or Nathaniel or Asher or Jason was on my arm they took the conversation and I just smiled and nodded. That I could do.

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 s.e.x only one of those times. I had no right to mark him as mine, but wasn't I supposed to do exactly that? s.h.i.t, 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 pet.i.te ma pet.i.te. 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 att.i.tude 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.

CHAPTER 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 p.r.o.nouns 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.

We found her pressed against the far wall. She wasn't very tall, dainty like me, like Meng Die, with the same straight, shining black hair, except hers was long, sweeping past her waist to caress the swell of her a.s.s. She was even wearing one of those short Oriental-style dresses, in bright royal blue. Her eyes looked brown and human from here, but the power knew better, the black tiger knew better. I told the power and the tiger about contact lenses, and we wanted to see her closer. We wanted to see her eyes.

I tried to sweep through her the way I had Domino and Cynric, but she stayed by the wall. I-we-concentrated on her, and still we could not make her come to us. I had Victor put me down, and I walked through a forest of hands and bodies, as I left the other tigers. I walked toward her. The other tigers had already parted like water when a fast boat slices it open, leaving the woman alone against the wall.

Her lips were painted as red as mine had started the night, though I'd left most of mine on Victor's mouth. Her lips were parted, her breathing faster, her heartbeat speeding, just from refusing the call of all that power. But the fact that she had been able to stand against us said more than anything else, that she was more powerful than any tiger I'd tried yet.

I walked toward her, the black tiger's energy riding on the strength of the white, and blue, so that each color grew and fed off the power of the others. The black tiger was like a dark image blurring and growing more solid around me, as if I, Anita, were somehow already inside it. My human hand reached out, encased in a huge, black, phantom paw.

"Don't," she whispered.

"You're a black tiger," I said in a voice that was almost an echo, as if my words were bouncing off the shape I could see around me.

"Yes," she whispered.

"You've been hiding in plain sight, pretending to be a survivor of an attack," I said.

"Yes."

I held my hand out to her. "Take my hand."

Her hands came out from behind her body where she'd been leaning on them, as if she'd needed the weight of her own body to remind her hands not to touch me. "I want to."

"Then do it. Touch us." I stretched my hand out toward her, with that shadow of black around it that I could see behind my eyes. Could she see it?

Her fingertips touched ours, and I wrapped my fingers through hers, drew her hand into mine, and my black tiger flowed over her skin, down her arm, and found her beast. It was as if I'd tried to pick up a stray kitten and found out I had a full-grown tiger on my hands. Her power didn't just pour into mine, it came like a tidal wave trying to drown me under the crushing burden of all that power.

I was on my knees, her hand still locked in mine. I'd thought Bibiana in Vegas was powerful, but she was nothing to this. I'd never dreamed of anything this powerful from a wereanimal. It felt more like vampire, and the moment I thought it, I knew. She belonged to someone. Someone old, and that someone was pushing power through her and into me.

I spoke through gritted teeth. "Cheat."

"Can you not tame me as you did all the others?" she said, and her voice was derisive.

My black tiger reached out and found Domino. He came to me and my tiger, and we felt him come like some vibrating thing, so full of energy.

The woman looked past me and said, "Do not help her, brother."

"You are not my sister," he said, and he knelt behind me. The moment his hands touched my shoulders, bare skin to bare skin, it was like touching a live wire. The power jumped and crackled through me and into her. She cried out and fell to her knees in front of me, and I used our joined hands to spill her in against me.

Her face was inches from mine, my hand in the back of all that silky hair. Her face was a mixture of fear and need. She'd been so lonely without another black tiger, so lonely. Others had their color, but she had no one. She drew in the scent of us, because we both smelled like home. We were what she had been mourning for more than a thousand years. That was the true strength of the ardeur ardeur, that it could see into your mind, your heart, your soul, to the thing you wanted most, and if I could I would give it to you, and it would be exactly what you wanted most. How many people can resist their heart's desire?

Domino's arms came around me so that we both held her, and drew her into me for a kiss. She whispered, "Master, help me." My lips touched hers before I realized she wasn't talking to me.

Her vampire master shoved his power into me, not like I was a necromancer, or another vampire, but as if I were just another black tiger to call, because that was his beast. Not just tiger, but this tiger. My tiger snarled at him, a huge, black beast, and he laughed at us. That laughter tried to spill out of her mouth and down my throat, but I kissed her. I kissed her because she was soft and fragile in my arms. I kissed her, because Domino was solid at my back, his strong arms folding over us both, so that he gave me not just the strength of his black tiger, but of his white, and the vampire on the other side of this tug-of-war wasn't ready for that. He faltered, a metaphysical stumble, and my two tigers spilled into her mouth, and down the long, shining curve of power that connected him to the woman in my arms.

I had a moment to see his face, upraised, startled. He was close by; he'd sent her to us like a Trojan horse. No, he hadn't believed that any of us could be a danger to the tie that bound them. His skin was both dark and pale; he looked as if he'd begun life as someone very dark, but vampires grow pale with age, as if the centuries try to lick them down to bone and blood. His eyes weren't brown, they were black, his hair short and tightly curled, his lips full and soft. I kissed the woman in my arms, but I thought of him as I did it, and he raised fingers to his own mouth as if he felt that distant kiss.

Her arms traced over me and Domino, her mouth feeding at mine, until small, eager noises fell from her lips and into mine. I pressed her to the floor; she wrapped her legs around my waist, while the kiss grew between us and her bright red lipstick smeared across our faces like blood. Her dress was pushed up around her a.s.s, which was pale and bare. She proved she was wearing nothing under the dress as she ground herself against my body and the extra friction of my dress.

Normally that would have freaked me out, but Jean-Claude was there, and so were Richard, Nathaniel, Damian, and Micah, and they liked girls just fine. They helped calm me, and the black tiger inside me already saw her as beautiful.

I was in more control than I'd ever been of the ardeur ardeur. It was a weapon at last. Then two things happened that I hadn't expected. He drove his power into her so hard and sharp that it tore her mouth from mine, and spasmed her body underneath mine as if he meant to kill her if he could not keep her, but she was his animal to call; the death of one might mean the death of both. Then the power hit my black beast, and I realized he wasn't trying to kill her, he was trying to tame her, and me, but he'd used pain and sheer force to tame her once before, long ago. I offered something so much better than violence.

I ground my hips against hers, pinned her to the floor underneath me, thrust my beast into her not to harm, but to pleasure. Even then I think I would have kept control, but I wasn't used to other women. I didn't understand that some of them were easier to bring than I was. One moment I was riding the edge of s.e.x, using it to push back the threat that the vampire had used on her for centuries, and the next her o.r.g.a.s.m caught me. I was too tied to her, too far into that line of power that connected her to her master vampire. I couldn't pull out in time, couldn't separate us, so that I rode her pleasure and Domino's weight was suddenly on top of me, as the pleasure spread. His weight pressed me harder against the most intimate part of her, and her body began to dance under my body again.

I saw her master fall beside the bed, one hand holding desperately to the bedspread, as he tried not to feel what she was feeling. It wasn't just the pleasure; he was feeling her pleasure, a woman's pleasure. He tried to draw his power to hurt her again, but as pain had hurt her concentration, pleasure seemed to hurt his.

Domino went to his knees behind me. I had a moment to stare down into the woman's face. Her eyes were unfocused, body limp under mine. She saw something past my shoulder, and whispered, "Please."

I felt Domino slide my thong to one side, and knew before he pressed his weight against my body that he'd be nude, or nude enough. The vampire in his distant hotel room yelled, "No!"

The woman underneath me whispered, "Yes."

Domino angled himself against my body. I lifted my hips to help him find that magic angle, and felt the edge of sorrow that shadowed her face as I moved my body away from hers. I felt the triumph of the vampire in the distant room. f.u.c.k that. I reached my hands down and lifted her hips in my hands. She smiled at me and angled her own hips upward, wrapping her legs more tightly around my waist, pressing herself against me. Domino began to push himself inside me. The feel of him entering me made me lose concentration on her for a moment, bowing my head, making me shudder as he worked himself inside me.

I had to put one hand on the floor to support myself against the push of his body. I kept one hand on her a.s.s, pressing her against my body, helping her stay as tight as she wanted. Domino slid himself inside me, and I was already wet, tight, but wet. It helped him find a rhythm quicker, long, deep, thrusts, caressing that point inside my body. She put her arms on the floor and used them to lift her body and began to dance her hips against the front of my body as Domino did from behind.

I found my own rhythm, grinding myself between them, helping caress myself over and around him, and helping her rub herself against the front of me, and again she found her happy before anyone else did. Her body shivered underneath me, and I held her in place while Domino's rhythm grew faster, harder. I felt that warm weight building inside my body.

The vampire on the floor in the room tried one last time to take back the woman. I felt him gathering his power, and my tiger and I didn't like him. He'd offered the cat underneath us nothing but pain. We felt his power coming one last time. The woman's eyes went wide, face afraid, like she felt the blow coming. I meant to thrust the black tiger down that metaphysical link and beat him with his own game, but Domino made that one last stroke and I was suddenly bucking against his body, against hers, where I still held her against me, and it was enough for her to join us, so that we all screamed our o.r.g.a.s.m at once in one long, warm spill of pleasure. I shoved all that pleasure at the vampire, and I felt the connection between her and him break. She was suddenly mine, so much mine. The three of us collapsed to the floor with her trapped underneath our double weight. Her mind floated in a wash of nearly liquid happiness. Her body, like mine, was limp and almost boneless with pleasure. I could feel our three heartbeats inside my head like three drums beating in unison. And from one moment to the next, her mind opened to me. She wanted me to know.

Her master was one of the Harlequin, and he would kill her before he let her go. She'd been sent to spy on us, because the Harlequin had broken with the Vampire Council. They were running from the Mother of All Darkness. The warm edge of pleasure began to fade under that revelation, and then came another.

One of the other tiger survivors was a golden tiger, and the animal to call of one of the other Harlequin. His master was kinder than hers. They'd been sent to see if Jean-Claude could really stand against the Darkness, and if I could really be Master of Tigers. She let me see his face in her mind. She betrayed him to me, because he and his master had done nothing to help her in all those long centuries. They'd respected the bond between servant and master, even knowing that her master had abused her for over a thousand years.