"Come to our meeting place, and if you can call him away from our queen's side then he is yours, but if you cannot then you are not the Mistress of Tigers."
I swore softly under my breath. "Are you all aware that I'm in your city trying to solve murders? I'm trying to save the lives of other weretigers."
"None of the dead are clan tigers; they are all survivors of an attack. Their deaths are unfortunate, but not clan business."
"Do you understand that if they finish up the lone tigers that aren't part of a clan, they may turn on the clans themselves?"
"We can defend ourselves, Anita Blake."
"Pretty to think so, but no tiger clan has faced these guys in hundreds, if not thousands of years. They wiped out all of you guys in your homeland, all the weretigers regardless of clan color."
"Legend says we were unprepared. We will not be this time."
I listened to the certainty in his voice and knew it was a mistake, but I also knew that nothing I could say over the phone would change his mind. I even knew that it wasn't his mind I had to change; it was Queen Cho Chun that I needed to convince. This was her certainty, her arrogance.
"Fine, Donny, just tell me where to meet and we'll go from there, but I really do need to see Alex sooner rather than later."
"You would feed on our prince as if he were the lowest prostitute on the street. We do not approve of how you treat him."
Again, I knew it was the queen talking, but I let it go. Donny was a good little mouthpiece, and arguing with the help never changed any boss's mind, so I didn't try.
"That's between Alex and me," I said.
"What affects our prince affects the clan."
I was beginning to see why Alex had stayed the hell away from his clan for years before I met him. He was a reporter, and a good one. He'd done an amazing piece on the war in Afghanistan that had won a Peabody, which was a very big deal if you were a journalist. He was also in deep cover pretending to be human. He wore brown contacts to hide his yellow-gold eyes with their rim of orange red, like the sun rimmed in fire. He was pure clan; his eyes and hair proved that. The hair he passed off as a funky dye job, but the eyes, he had to hide those.
"Fine, I am the Mistress of Tigers, I am the first vampire in a thousand years to be able to use that title, and I do not argue with underlings, Donny. Tel me where to meet Alex and his mom, or I will call him to me across the city, but bear in mind that I'm not real precise when I do a roll call for tigers. I could end up with every unmated male in your clan coming to me, and then how would they pretend to be human?"
"You cannot do that."
"Do you mean I can't, or I shouldn't?"
He was silent for a moment, and then he said, "We felt your call when you bound our prince to you. I know you can do what you say . . . Mistress, but I would ask you not to do it."
"It's not my first choice, Donny, I just want some alone time with my red tiger to call, that's all."
His breath came out heavy, and then he said, "I will give you the address to meet our guards. They will escort you in to see the queen and prince."
"Great." I opened my phone up so I could jot the address down as a note, and said, "I'm ready to write it down, shoot."
He told me. I typed it in, and then the phone call was over. Donny didn't seem to like me. Fine with me, I wasn't here to win any popularity contests.
I gave Edward the address and he started heading that way. He seemed to know Seattle a lot better than a man on his first visit. I'd asked him if he was familiar with the city, but he'd just smiled that mysterious smile of his and not answered. Mr. Secret.
"Could you do what you threatened to do? Could you call all their unmated males to you like some sort of succubus Pied Piper?"
I thought about it, then finally said, "I'm not sure; maybe. The tigers tell me I put out a call to all