Affliction (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,16

to volunteer for learning something new. His short hair was a soft mass of curls, longer on top, so that it almost did a natural pompadour. His curls were a blond that was almost white with what looked like gray highlights in it. There was one streak of dark red from the back of his head to his forehead as if he’d added it for dramatic effect, but it was all-natural color. His eyes were a soft gray that matched the highlights.

‘I’ve never seen Nilda lose it this bad,’ Nathaniel said.

‘Me either,’ Micah and I said together. I moved out from between the two men and went for the stairs and the almost-fight. I’d try to see if I could keep it from turning into a real fight. I would have thought that Nicky had said something to bait her, but I couldn’t think of anything that he could have said that would have caused this reaction. The Harlequin guard were supposed to be the ultimate spies, so they had to have iron-willed control, but what I’d noticed was that some of their wereanimal members had serious therapy-worthy issues. Their vampire masters were trying to use it as a way of saying, See, they need a tight leash, because they’re just animals. I thought it was more that the wereanimals had been abused for centuries, some a thousand years’ worth or more, and now they had the freedom to be a person and they didn’t know how. Or now that they were allowed their real emotions they were just so angry, and they couldn’t take it out on their masters, so they took it out where they could. Apparently, today Nilda was taking it out on Nicky. Fuck.

I came to the top of the steps and called out, ‘Nilda, chill out.’

She didn’t seem to hear me but poked a finger into Nicky’s chest. I watched his shoulders stiffen. She’d touched him, escalated the fight, invited the physical. I yelled this time, ‘No fighting! That’s enough, Brunhilda!’

She glared up at me with her huge blue eyes gone almost gray. Gray meant that she was close to losing herself to her anger. In the months she’d been with us, we’d all learned that tell from our Viking maiden. The next tell was worse. Energy rolled off her in a wave of heat as if I’d stepped too near to a blasting furnace. In the old system, flaunting this much power would have made most other wereanimals back off and concede the fight or flash their own power. Now it breathed along my skin in a near-scalding heat, power so hot it took my breath away for a second. Even for Nilda this was a lot of power flaunting.

‘You say we are one of you, but you always take their side! We served the Dark itself and now we are nothing!’ she yelled, and it was as if the scalding heat spilled out her voice so that each word growled power, as if I should have been able to see the words hanging in the air between us like flame.

I kept my voice even but forceful as I said, ‘You’re the one yelling at me, Nilda. You’re the one who’s losing control in public like a newbie. Where is the famous discipline of the Harlequin?’

‘You do not know what discipline means,’ she growled. ‘You are a little girl who has not lived a lifetime yet. We are Harlequin!’ Her power poured around me, so hot it felt like it should hurt to touch my skin. I fought not to flinch and wondered how Nicky was standing so stoically barely an arm’s length from her. Proximity made the effect worse, and touching could be downright painful, yet Nicky stood like a boulder in the rush of that river of power. If he could do it, I could do it.

I stepped down two more steps and it was like wading into a scalding bath, so hot you knew it would leave your skin red and hurting. ‘You guys fight good, but so far I haven’t been impressed with anything else. And this little girl is in charge of your ass, all your asses.’

‘Jean-Claude is in charge; you are less than an animal to call, you are only a human slave. You should not be in charge of anything!’

Ah, here we had it. It was worse than being just the girlfriend, who everyone perceived as being given a management job because she was sleeping with the