Page 115 of Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 29)

The energy of his beast swirled through the hallway. It hit Custer and he let it flow over and away from him, but Geoff was too inexperienced to resist. His hyena swirled to life, changing Geoff’s dark eyes to a paler shade of brown. Their combined energy danced over my skin. The hyena inside me blinked awake, pale brown eyes in the dark. She stepped out into the light so I could admire her spotted coat. Her long face with the slightly floppy ears looked almost comical, but the expression on her face in her eyes was... thoughtful, but she wasn’t thinking at me, she was thinking about me, or aboutsomething. I waited for her energy to rise up and change my own eyes to that shade of pale caramel brown, but it didn’t. She sat there patient, waiting, but for what?

It wasn’t words, but I still knew that she was waiting for someone worthy.Worthy of what?I asked. “Us,” she said, or thought, or something I still didn’t have a word for. Unlike the lioness that was progressively more frantic to find a male to keep us safe from other lions, the hyena waited for no one to protect her. Female hyenas are bigger than the males; they don’t wait for anything bigger to come protect them, they do it themselves.

Geoff dropped to his knees.

“Shut it down, Kane,” Custer said.

“You’re going to bring his beast,” Ethan said.

“I don’t care if his beast comes or not.”

I looked into the eyes of my hyena. I swore she smiled at me. “My hyena isn’t going to rise for you, Kane, never for you.” He was weak, too weak to have in our clan. In the wild we’d chase him off or kill him.

“I don’t give a shit about your inner bitch.” Killing him sounded good.

“He is seeking me,ma petite,” Jean-Claude said.

I didn’t understand at first, and then my hyena sniffed the air. I thought at first she was smelling the other hyenas, but then she “looked” toward Jean-Claude. “You can sense the hyenas, just like you can lion and gold tiger,” I said.

“Oui, Narcissus seeks to force my choice.”

“You’ve called gold tiger, I’m here,” Dev said.

“He still calls hyena, because I can feel it,” Kane said.

“It is an embarrassment of riches,” Jean-Claude said.

I looked at him. “You can still sense hyena.”

“The choice is not finished,” he said.

“No,” Dev said, “this is mine.”

Custer was kneeling by Geoff, telling him to fucking hold on, tonot lose his shit. The energy went up a notch as Custer looked at me with hyena eyes in his human face. I waited for my hyena to join the fun, but she just sat there, calm. She really meant it, Kane didn’t have enough juice to interest her, not even with Asher’s vampire marks upping his energy.

“Enough,” Richard said, and his energy filled the air like sunlight flickering through the forest, warm and welcoming. I felt him try to calm the energy in the hallway, but a warm spring walk in the woods wasn’t enough to go up against Kane and Asher’s power.

Richard’s power faded until the only thing in the hallway was hyena. Geoff fell facedown on the floor, the skin of his back rippling and starting to push upward. Custer fell to all fours beside him. His voice was strained so that each syllable came out like he was fighting to still be able to speak. “Can’t-hold-it-to-gether.” Custer was stronger than this, so why was he losing control? Then I felt it, another vampire’s power, and if it was Kane it could only be...

Jean-Claude yelled, “Asher, stop this!”

Asher walked down the hallway with his golden hair floating back on either side of his face like from a wind machine in a photo shoot, so that every scar on his face was exposed, but more, he was shirtless, wearing nothing but silk pajama pants. He’d never willingly appear in public showing that much skin, because the scars on the right side of his chest and stomach were so deep they looked like his skin had partially melted in deep runnels, rough waves of flesh frozen forever to remind him of the worst moment of his life. It was as rough to touch as it looked, because I’d explored every inch of it. If he was self-conscious about his face, that was nothing compared to how he felt about the rest of his scars. I’d never seen him expose himself like this willingly. Jean-Claude’s thoughts backed me up; centuries and he’d never done this, so what in the fuck was going on?

“If hyena is your newmoitié bêtewe will still have something in common after you abandon me for the perfection of your wolf king.”

“I would never leave you,mon chardonneret.”

“Lies!” Asher shouted, and the energy was skin-tingling heat, but it was all coming out of Kane like he was a speaker playing Asher’s power over us. Geoff screamed as his face elongated and the ridge of his spine thrust up through his back like a small ridge of skin-covered mountains, and gray and black fur poured over the skin. Custer crab-walked away from him until he hit the wall. “Boss, Geoff is new, not sure how forced change is going to work for him, especially if I can’t control him while he shifts.”

I yelled, “Asher, one of the werehyenas is too new, he’s dangerous when he shifts.”

“Let your wolf king protect you!”

Rodina and Ru moved between us and the werehyenas. Truth joined them; the rest of the security stayed around us.

The power changed slightly; now a different kind of energy was trickling through it like a small stream of safety in an ocean of crazy. Something stirred inside me, blinking blue eyes in the dark. The hyena glanced back but stayed sitting. There was none of the usual hostility to the other beasts, just that continued calmness in the face of Asher’s energy. The blue eyes stepped out into the light and it was my gold tiger, cream with stripes of rich yellow. She looked at the hyena, and it was like they acknowledged each other, but there was no hostility, justI see you, I see you, too, and we are not here to hurt each other today. The gold energy grew from a trickle to a fast-moving stream, but it was still trying to pour itself into the ocean. Dev took my hand in his, and I knew where the stream was coming from. Ethan came to kneel beside me; I thought he was getting between me and the hyenas struggling to hold their human form, but he touched my hand and it was as if he gave his power over to Dev, and I was just the conduit between them, and the power that flowed from him to me matched the new power that was trying to chase back what Asher and Kane were doing. I looked up and found that Ethan’s eyes had changed to hazel blue, his gold tiger looking out at me. My tigress started walking up the path; she looked back at the hyena asif waiting for her to protest, but the hyena just sat there with the almost-grin on her face. Asher had no energy she wanted; it wasn’t that he lacked power in this moment, but that she chose not to accept it. Female hyenas choose their mates always; there is no force possible for spotted hyenas, only shared pleasure. Kane would never be a pleasure and as far as she was concerned neither would Asher.

Jean-Claude said,“Ma petite,”and stroked his hand just above my skin and Ethan’s, and Dev’s. My gold tigress rubbed up against some invisible point as if she were trying to rub up against something I couldn’t see. Then I realized she was reacting to Jean-Claude’s stroking just above our skin. Ethan started to rest his head on the vampire’s shoulder, then caught himself.

---