Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 14. Danse Macabre(106)
«I don't see why he needs to enter,» I said.
«We will ask him.» Jean-Claude took me into the curve of his shoulder. Micah moved in front of me. I wrapped my arms around Micah's shoulders, drawing him in against my breasts. Yeah, the water covered me, but Remus was still one of the newer guards. I didn't know him well enough to be comfortable in the tub with him in the room.
«You may enter,» Jean-Claude said.
The door opened; Remus stepped inside, but kept his hand on the doorknob, as if he were no happier about invading our bath than I was. His eyes were green-gray, nice eyes, if he'd ever look directly at you. He never did, or at least he never did at me, or Jean-Claude, or Micah, or Nathaniel. Why? Remus's face had been broken at some point, and been put back together. There was no one thing you could point to and say, «That's out of place,» but the overall effect was lopsided, and looked almost uncomfortable, like a ceramic mask that had been glued back together wrong.
I couldn't make complete sense of Remus's face, because he wouldn't look at me. I wanted badly to tell him to just look at me, but I couldn't without raising a subject that was probably painful, and none of my business. So I let it go.
The rest of him was dressed in the usual bodyguard black. If there were injuries under the clothes, it didn't show when he moved. He moved like there were steel springs in the lean muscles of his body.
«Claudia ordered anyone who takes over to check with you in person, eye to eye. Her orders.»
«Did she say why?» I asked, because it was a change.
He looked up then, gave that lopsided smile. I had a moment to see disbelief on his face, before he looked away. «She filled me in on what's been happening. She wants at least two guards in the room with you, at all times.»
«I don't think so,» I said.
«That's what I told her you'd say.» He gave another glance at me, and I had a second of those green-gray eyes, angry, then down and away again. «With Micah with you, it's not a problem, but if it were only Jean-Claude — «he shrugged. «If you shift for the first time and it's wolf, then he may be able to control you, but if you shift to an animal he doesn't control, then what if you eat him?»
«He's a Master of the City; I think he can handle it.»
«You don't get it,» Remus said, and he came into the room a step, letting go of the doorknob. He finally looked at me, and held my gaze. Since I give absolute eye contact, it left us staring at each other. His eyes flinched, but he kept the gaze. It was a relief to be able to see his face straight on. «Jean-Claude is powerful, but in plain unarmed combat, shifters beat vampires. Unless they can mind-fuck us, we will win a fight.»
I glanced at Jean-Claude to see how he felt about that. He gave the same lovely, blank face. I turned back to Remus. «So, what, you guys get to watch?»
«Do you think this makes me happy?» he said, and his power flared through the room like a hot wind. He closed his eyes, and counted to ten, or something, because the heat vanished. He gave calmer eyes to all of us, but he knew it was mostly me he had to persuade, so he stared at me. The angry defiance, was back in his eyes. «You have no idea how dangerous you could be when you first shift. You won't just be a lycanthrope — that's bad enough, but you'll be this uber-preternatural power. You'll be a shifter with powers over the dead. If you lose control of one power, maybe you'll lose control of all of them. Do you have any idea what could happen?»
I stared up at him, scared, and not liking it. I could be scared, or I could get angry. Guess which I picked. «The beast blocks the necromancy. Once I give in to one hunger that completely, the others go away.»
«Are you a hundred percent sure of that?» he asked.
I opened my mouth to say yes, then hesitated.
Micah answered for me, patting my arm as he did so, «No.»
No was truthful, but… «So what do we do?»
«You have to have at least one shapeshifter with you at all times, someone powerful enough to handle the emergency.»
«Handle how?» I asked.
«Keep you from hurting anyone too badly.»
«Who's on the list of powerful enough?» I asked.
«Me, Claudia, Fredo, Lisandro, Socrates, Brontes, Bobby Lee, Mickey, Ixion. A lot of the wererats are ex-military and mercs. But some of them are better at killing than minimizing the damage.» He shrugged. «Claudia and Bobby Lee will be in charge of the list, but I know that you won't be left with just Graham and Clay again. Maybe one of them, but they'll need to be paired up with someone with more real-world experience.»