“We’re just going to wait here until Silas phones, and then we’ll pack up and head for the cemetery,” Jacob said.
Bennington added, “I had her reburied because I found that most animators needed a grave rather than a mausoleum.”
“Very thoughtful,” I said, and didn’t try to keep the anger out of my voice.
“I am being reasonable, Ms. Blake. I could have had them kill your first boyfriend, Callahan, as an incentive for cooperation. You, unlike me, have spares.”
“They’re people, not extra tires in case of emergency.” The anger rose another notch, and I had to control my breathing again, count again. The lioness was getting impatient in the long grass. We could kill him before they could stop us. She was probably right, and if we killed him then the money went away. That was an interesting idea.
“You’ve thought of something, Anita. I can see it in the set of your shoulders, the way you went still. Whatever it is, don’t do it,” Jacob said.
The trouble with wereanimals that were also professional bad guys was that it’s very hard to surprise them. The only way to do it was to take action before you really think about it, the way you do in martial arts. You see your opening and you react, because you’ve already made your decision to hurt them before the fight starts. If I killed Bennington, would they be professional and just stop all this, or would they kill at least one of my lovers as an object lesson? Until I had an answer to that question, did I dare kill Bennington if the chance came?
Jacob sat down on the couch beside me, arm on the back of it, like we were a couple. I leaned just out of touching of the arm. He could think I was being unfriendly, but I didn’t want him to feel the knife hilt under my shirt. Thanks to the lions being overly friendly I had one weapon left; I didn’t want to lose it.
He leaned in and spoke low. “Whatever you are thinking, it won’t work. We have a sniper on all three of them. They’ll call in as each man goes outside for the first time today. They’ll follow them and if we don’t call in periodically, they’ll kill them.”
“I understand that,” I said, but part of me filed away the fact that he’d said we. Jacob didn’t have to be the one to make the phone calls to the shooters. Nicky could do it. I only needed one of them alive and on my side. I tried to breathe past the anger and that edge of fear that wanted to scream through me. I had to think, which meant neither anger nor fear was my friend. Fear will keep you alive, and anger will help you in a fight sometimes, but when it came to planning action you needed no emotions. Be empty, be still, and think.
“I am sorry, Ms. Blake, to force you, but I want the woman I love back, you understand that.”
“I’ll do my best, but it will still only be a zombie. No matter how lifelike she looks when you first see her, it can’t last, Mr. Bennington.”
“I’ve been told that there is one set of circumstances where the recently dead can be raised as a zombie but stay intact.”
“If so, it’s news to me.” I was leaning forward a little, trying not to let Jacob touch me. For some reason that made him move closer to me so that our hips touched on the couch. Great, it was like one of those dates where the guy doesn’t respect your personal space.
“Mr. Bennington,” Jacob said, “I wouldn’t overshare with Anita. She’s cooperating, and once Silas does his part we’ll head to the gravesite. We don’t need to talk about the details.”
Then Bennington gave me a look. It was hostile. “You know, I wasn’t certain I could go through with it. I actually thought I might lose the first half of the payment and not do this, but then I saw the pictures of your lunch with your lovers. I watched your Mr. Schuyler and your Mr. Graison flirt. My Ilsa liked to flirt; in fact, she loved it. She loved attention and she had a fascination with shapeshifters.”
So he knew she was a fur-fucker. I just looked at him, not sure what emotion he wanted from me. I gave him a blank face and waited for him to talk. He was in that villain speech mode that only the amateurs do.
“I watched them comfort you, and then watched you flirt with the waiter. You wouldn’t give me back my flirt, so I took yours, and if you take my Ilsa away from me again, I will take your men away from you forever.”
I must have tensed forward, not on purpose, because Jacob put his arm across my shoulders just in case, but I’d been too intent on Bennington ’s words. I’d forgotten for a second that I didn’t want him to touch my back.
I tried to stand up, and he grabbed me, but I managed to get to my feet, but Nicky was there behind me, arms hugging me from behind, and this time he wasn’t distracted by lion hormones. “What the hell is that?”
“Something big that you missed,” Jacob said.
I forced myself not to struggle in Nicky’s grip, but I couldn’t not tense up, or stop the lioness from not wanting them to manhandle her, us. I had a moment of pronoun loss, and that growl trickled out from between my lipsticked lips. Heat came with it in a rush over my skin like a sudden fever. I was suddenly so hot, so hot, but I wasn’t sweating.
“Her skin is hot to the touch,” Nicky said, and his voice sounded strangled, as if he were fighting off his own growl.
“I can feel the energy,” Jacob said.
Bennington stood up, got close to me, trusting Nicky to keep me from hurting him. Nicky tightened his arms around my body, pinning my arms to my sides. He held on tight enough that it was almost hard to breathe. “You wanted to know what our plan is for us to go back to our lives; well, you will use the energy of a human sacrifice to raise Ilsa from the dead. It will be enough energy to make her beautiful forever, mine forever. And once you use murder to raise the dead, you can’t tell on us without risking the death penalty yourself.”
I found my voice. “That’s the errand that Silas is supposed to finish, isn’t it?”
Nicky tightened his grip until it dug my empty holster into my body, and it began to truly hurt, but I didn’t mind; the pain helped me think. It helped me not give in to the snarling lion inside me. If we killed Bennington, the second half of their money was gone. And they were professionals. I didn’t think they’d kill us for free. It was a plan, and besides, we wanted him dead. It’s hard to fight the inner beast when you agree with it.
The lioness charged out of that long metaphysical or metaphorical grass, and began to run full out up that path inside me. She was a golden blur, moving through me.
“Fight it,” Nicky said in my ear.
I glared at Bennington. “Why?”
Jacob was in front of me, blocking my view of Bennington. “Because if you shift, you can’t raise the dead and you’re no good to us. Don’t make us kill you, Anita.”
Nicky spoke through gritted teeth as if it were beginning to be an effort to hold me. “Don’t make us kill your men.”
“Look at me, Anita!”
But all I could see was that blur of gold, and for the first time I didn’t want to put a wall between her and me. For the first time I needed the help, and I would take it.
Jacob grabbed my face, forced me to look at him, but he also touched bare skin to bare skin. I snarled up at him, and the golden blur slowed. Slowed and screamed through me, so that my body vibrated with the sound of her rage, her need, her hunger.
“God, she smells good,” Nicky said.
“Don’t you start,” Jacob said, but he was still touching my face, and the look in his eyes was uncertain, as if he were listening to things I couldn’t hear. His lion was talking to him, too. Would it help me to force them to change?
Jacob said, “Get out, Bennington, get out until we call you. She’s not safe.”
The lioness screamed again, and the sound came out of my throat. It hurt, as if the sound needed a bigger throat, a different mouth, and it rubbed raw things that should never have held the sound.