of you wasn’t, but the leopard inside you likes the idea a lot, or you wouldn’t have reacted.’
I couldn’t argue, though I really wanted to. ‘Okay, no sex with anyone in full animal form, I got it.’
Nicky looked down, avoiding eye contact.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Lions don’t have full spines like the other cats.’ He looked up and he smiled, but his single eye gleamed. His eye had shifted to the rich yellow of his lion form. Something had stirred his own beast. He looked at me with his lion looking out of his eye at me and said, ‘Male lions are more ribbed for her pleasure than spiked.’
I looked at that golden-yellow eye set in that handsome face and realized that the idea excited at least part of him, maybe all of him. I didn’t know what to say to the eagerness I saw in his face, so I said nothing. We all stood there while the question was raised, and we all ignored it as hard as we could. In a few minutes I could stand on my own.
I fastened the heavy leather collar around the muscled velvet of Nathaniel’s neck. It had a flat silver plate attached to the front of the collar. There was a word carved into the metal in swirling letters.
Ares said, ‘Pussycat? Does that actually say Pussycat?’
‘Yes,’ I said, as I attached the heavy leather leash to the collar. It was my turn not to make eye contact.
‘Pussycat?’ he said, again.
‘It’s her nickname for him,’ Nicky said.
‘And Asher’s for him, too,’ I said.
‘Asher mind-raped me like I was nothing and made me try to hurt you guys.’ He shuddered. ‘I’ve never had anyone roll me like that.’
‘There aren’t a lot of vampires that can call hyena.’
‘Good,’ he said. Then he looked down at the shiny silver plate and grinned. ‘Pussycat. The cops are going to love it.’
I frowned at him. ‘It was supposed to be private; at best he’d wear it at a fetish event. It wasn’t supposed to be used around the police – ever.’ Nathaniel rubbed his cheek against my thigh, and I petted the thick fur. I pushed my fingers through the thickness and found his skin underneath fever-hot to touch. Most animals run hotter than human-normal 98.6–100 degrees or higher usually. I hadn’t touched that many wereanimals in full animal form. Were they all this much hotter?
I sent Nicky to bring Al around so we could finally get started hunting for Henry and Little Henry Crawford.
Ares stayed beside me, grinning ear to ear.
‘What is so damned funny?’
‘Does everyone have a cute nickname?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Aw,’ he said, ‘come on. Micah must have one, or maybe Sin?’
‘Drop this topic,’ I said.
Nicky came back with the police and it was time to introduce them to the big black pussycat at the end of my leash. I knew we’d won the day when some of them petted him, as if he were a big dog. But there were still more of them who wouldn’t approach too close, let alone touch the huge leopard. Al had a jacket and a used rag from the Crawfords’ truck so that Nathaniel could know what scent he was trying to follow. I saw Ranger Becker mouth the word Pussycat silently to herself as she read his collar. Her eyes flashed up to me, and she smiled, eyes shining so hard with suppressed humor that it showed in the odd light.
It was Travers who said, out loud, ‘Pussycat?’
I rolled my eyes at him, and Nathaniel scented the wind and went very purposefully toward the trees. ‘He’s got the scent.’ Nathaniel pulled against the leash hard enough that I started jogging to keep up. He moved faster, and so did I. He gave a small, eager noise, and we started running.
24
We ran in the dark, unfamiliar trees, with me fighting to stay with him. He was faster in this form, as if the extra legs gave him more horsepower, or more all-terrain power. My human body struggled to bend and weave through the pines. Their needles were everywhere on the thin earth, the rocks, so that the world smelled like Christmas trees and the sharp, clean smell of leopard. Just as tattoos stayed on the skin under the fur, so the shampoo and soap he’d used earlier was still there intermingled with the scent of leopard. I could smell the leather of the leash handle as my hand warmed it. The pine needles had killed almost everything on the thin, rocky