"I know that Damian has never had this kind of power, but Jean-Claude does, and through him . . . you."

The look he gave me was chilling, so much so that I struggled to my feet, and Dev helped me, moving me farther away from one of my own bodyguards. Pride moved in front of us, closer to the werejackal.

"That small extra space will not save you if I deem it otherwise."

"I know," I said, and fought not to just pull a gun while I had the chance. It shouldn't come to that, so I made the choice not to draw a weapon. If he crossed those few feet and killed me I was going to feel really stupid.

"Then why move away from me, my queen?" His voice was icy with his anger, like the desert in the grip of winter's cold.

"You know you'd have to get through all of us before you hurt Anita," Dev said; he'd already moved himself a little in front of me so that I was partially behind that big upper body of his. Pride said nothing, just took a fight stance. It telegraphed his move, but they all practiced together. They knew each other's moves; there would be no surprises during the fighting, only that there was a fight at all.

Ethan said, "Kaazim, do not threaten to break your oath to Jean-Claude and Anita." He was standing nearest to him, but his voice was calmest, his energy gentle, even soothing. I began to see why he'd been able to establish a relationship with the volatile werebear Nilda.

"Do you think that I will not hurt you because you have brought happiness to one of us?"

Apparently, I wasn't the only one who was thinking of Nilda. "No, Kaazim, I think you could kill me, but not out of fear."

"I am not afraid of you, boy."

"No one is," he said with a smile.

The comment made Kaazim think harder, because it was a puzzling comment, which was probably what Ethan was aiming for, because Kaazim would calm down if he could think long enough to not just lash out. I was 99.9 percent sure of that; the fraction of uncertainty was because I didn't know why getting those memories had scared him this badly.

"I'm sorry for whatever just happened, Kaazim," I said.

"I meant only to take blood from your wrist, Kaazim. I give you my oath that I intended nothing more." Damian had stayed sitting against the wall. I think he could have stood, but he didn't want to appear more threatening to the other man, and since he was so much taller, sitting was definitely less threatening.

"You smell like you tell the truth, but I have never had a vampire siphon off my energy like that without centuries of practice at doing it on purpose."

I tried to move around Dev and Pride and have more direct eye contact with him, but the two men were too in the way. "You told me yourself, Kaazim, that you wonder how much of the Mother's power went into me when I drank her down. This feels more like her than us."

He looked at me, and it wasn't a good look. "Is that supposed to make me feel better, my queen?"

I held the weight of his dark brown eyes with my own. "I was hoping, yeah."

"So either you are lying to me, or you have power inside you that you can neither control nor know when it will surface. Which of these is a comfort?"

"Put that way, it sounds sort of bad, but I meant it to be comforting."

He shook his head and sighed. "I am well enough to stand now, weretiger."

Ethan hesitated and then moved his hand slowly from the other man's arm. Kaazim stayed standing nice and steady. He even moved away from the wall so he wasn't leaning against anything.

"Your navete is one of your charms, Anita, but it is also a weakness, because it speaks to a lack of experience with the amount of power you now have inside you."

"Then perhaps, old friend, it is time to realize that everyone here is a child, except us, and to give them the understanding and teaching that requires," Jake said. He and Fortune came around the corner and seemed to know everything that had just happened, which made me wonder how long they'd been listening just out of sight.

"Nice of you to join the party," I said.

"Do you not understand, Jake? These children were able to get through my defenses."

"Were you shielding as hard as you could when you let Damian feed?" Fortune asked.

Kaazim didn't look surprised, exactly, but he stiffened, flinched maybe.

"You weren't, were you?" she said.

"I did not think it was necessary."

"You were arrogant," she said, smiling to take some of the sting out of her words.

"As Jake said, they are children compared to us."

"Children grow up, my friend."

"Jake, Jacob, you cannot tell me you would not be equally upset."

"They drew forth what you loved and miss most; if it had been the Mother she would have brought it forward and forced you to live through the loss of that love. When they realized something was wrong, they did not hold you tight and force themselves on you further."

"I did not plot behind her back for thousands of years to end up back where I started only with a new face to wear the same power."

"You really are afraid that I'll turn into her, aren't you?"

"No, Anita, I am afraid that she is already inside you, and will control all of us again while wearing your face, but it will still be her."

"Maybe what keeps me from becoming the monster is the fact that I give a damn about the people around me, and I like someone who makes me smile."

"That would explain you picking Dev over me," Pride said.

"That would explain you picking him over all of our tigers," Kaazim said.

"I know I'm not the king you would have chosen," Dev said.

"You are not king, Mephistopheles. You were too busy chasing after Asher like a lovesick kitten to win either Anita or Jean-Claude to your cause."

Dev's face darkened. "I am trying to make up for that now with Jean-Claude and Anita, and Nathaniel."

"No one matters in this but Anita, Mephistopheles. Do you not understand that the Master or Mistress of Tigers must love one of our tigers, must wed them to keep us all safe? It is the last piece of magic that will keep Anita free of being possessed by the Mother's power, and the rest of us free of what will happen if this last stone is not firmly in place."

"I'm working on picking a tiger for the commitment ceremony with Nathaniel and Micah," I said.

"Yes, but you do not want to commit to them. Mephistopheles had a chance to win your heart, but he did not pursue it."

"I'm pursuing it," Fortune said.

Kaazim shook his head. "You are committed to Echo, as you must be to your master; your heart is not free to give."

"We tried and failed," Domino said, motioning at Ethan.

"Our fate hangs with two boys," Kaazim said.

"What two boys?" I asked.

"The blue tiger back in St. Louis that truly is a child, and this one who only behaves as one."

Dev's hands rolled into fists and he actually took a step toward the other man. I touched his arm, because I knew that would go badly. I'd seen them both in practice and Kaazim would kick his ass.

Nathaniel said, "Dev isn't just one of your tigers now. He's a lion, too. The golden tigers are supposed to rule all the other colors, but he's beginning to rule other groups as well; isn't that part of your legend, too?"

"And Sin literally made the earth move just before we got on the plane," I said. "Just because people are younger than you are doesn't make them children, just young."

"We don't have time for this; night is coming," Damian said.

"You are right," Jake said.

"We don't have time to admit aloud that the Mother's energy is waiting inside Anita like a coiled snake in the dark ready to strike? We don't have time to say that if she does not pick a tiger to love and marry, all we do here in Ireland is useless, because the Mother's power will consume the world and all of us with it?"

"She will not consume us today, but once night falls Damian's old master will do her best to destroy more of Dublin's people," Fortune said.

"You are letting your fears get in the way of our mission," Jake said, gently.

"No, Jacob, I am not. You and Fortune are allowing all this to interfere with our first and most important mission. What does it matter to us if all of Dublin burns tonight, if we do not prevent the evil from rising again?"

"Are you saying that it doesn't move you at all to see all those people in the beds there?"

"I am sorry that she has done this to them, she and her people, but if Jean-Claude and you had been able to contain the power it would not have come to her. They might not be hurt if you had chosen a tiger to call your own."

"Are you saying that somehow by marrying one of the tigers, magically all the scattered bits of the Mother's energy would be chased out of everyone else, or that Jean-Claude would suddenly be powerful enough to keep this kind of shit from happening?"

"That is what legend tells us."

"I think you're whistling in the dark, Kaazim."

"What does that mean?"

"I think you don't know how to put the genie back in the bottle."

"If you could call the djinn as the old Master of Tigers could do, we would have a formidable weapon against our enemies."

"Sorry that I didn't inherit anything but his ability to control the tigers, but I still think you worked all those centuries to kill the evil queen and didn't think what might happen afterward."

There was a moment when he glanced at Jake and Fortune but tried not to, and that was enough. "It is hard to plan for all eventualities," Jake said.

"You saw the defeat of your tyrant, but not what would happen to her vacant throne," Damian said.

"We thought that the one who defeated her would take her throne by right of conquest," Kaazim said.

"But by the time you won the war, the vampire council had imploded and there wasn't a European throne to take," I said.

"We did not anticipate an American king," Jake said.

"Echo says what we really didn't anticipate is that it took centuries to build the council's power base, and we expected it to transfer seamlessly to the next ruler, the next council," Fortune said.

"A little nave of you all, wasn't it?" I asked.

Kaazim gave me a sour look. "Perhaps in retrospect," Jake said, smiling, but not like he was entirely happy with it all.

"Kaazim, I'm sorry we got through your shields further than you wanted, or we wanted, but can you get past it to do your job here and now?"

"We can put out this fire tonight, Anita, but it is like a house fire when the world is about to burn."

"Can you follow orders and do your job to help us save Dublin, or not?"

"What does one city matter if you carry the seeds of the apocalypse inside you?"

"I'll take that as a no," I said, and looked to Jake and Fortune. "All right, tell us what you've learned, because we need a plan before nightfall that doesn't need Kaazim to work."

"I will do my part of any plan," he said.

I shook my head. "You had your chance, Kaazim. You said you'd let Dublin burn, let Ireland be destroyed tonight, because you're worried about a disaster that's not here yet."

"You feel her power inside you. You must," he said.

"Power is not destiny," Jake said.

"I'm a big believer in free will," I said.

"And I have seen too many centuries not to believe in fate," Kaazim said.

I turned to the rest of them. "Let's find Edward and get our plans off the ground without gloomy puss here."

"I am not a puss," he said.

"Fine. Without gloomy dog here-no, that doesn't work, does it?"

"Gloomy puppy?" Nathaniel offered.

"Gloomy pup?" Pride suggested.

"I expected better of you," Kaazim said.

"Dev isn't perfect, Uncle Chaz, but he's trying, and you really are a gloomy hound and always have been."

"Uncle Chaz?" I said.

"When we were little, they were Uncle Jake and Uncle Chaz," Pride said.

Kaazim ignored the old nickname; too angry to care, I think. Then he said, "You are right." He turned to me. "And you are right, as well. I have made the mistake of a soldier: letting the fear of defeat in war steal my courage for fighting today's battle. Thank you for reminding me that if we do not win today's battle, then we will never survive to win the war."