In the Company of Vampires (16 page)

“Wait a second. Did you say pride members? Like gay pride?”

David looked from me to Ben. “You didn’t tell her?”

“Tell me what?”

Ben shook his head. “No. You swore me to secrecy, if you recall.”

“Tell me what?”

“That’s right, I did. Do you want to tell her, or shall I?”

“Someone better tell me, before Mr. Punchy Hand gets annoyed,” I said with a narrow-eyed look that I split between them.

“David is a therion,” Ben said, just like that explained everything.

“Bully for him. What’s a therion?”

David laughed and stood up. “I think in this case, seeing is believing.”

My eyes widened as his body did an odd sort of shimmer, rippling and twisting until it turned into a sandy cinnamon-colored lion, an honest-to-Pete lion, complete with big brown mane, pale light blue eyes, and what I assumed were exceptionally big teeth.

“Goddess above,” I said, my eyes almost bugging out at the sight of the lion as it turned and faced me. “That’s a . . . that’s a . . .”

“A lion, yes,” David said as the lion form shimmered back into that of a man. A naked man.

You
are
ogling. I wish for it to stop.

I’m trying, I’m trying. Oh man!
My eyes widened further as David nonchalantly bent to retrieve his pants.

He was silent, but I could feel his irritation.

David buttoned up his shirt and gave me a rueful smile as he sat down again. “A therion is a shape-shifter with two primary forms. One of mine happens to be that of an Asiatic lion.”

“You’re like a werewolf, but with a lion instead of a wolf?” I asked, then craned my head to look behind me, where the moon was beginning to clear the horizon. “Is it a full moon?”

“Therions can shift at will, Francesca,” Ben said, taking my hand and rubbing his fingers across mine. It was a possessive move that I knew had its origins in the eye candy David had provided. I smiled to myself. “The myth about the full moon is a human fiction, nothing more.”

“Oh.” I looked back at David, my mind struggling to cope with the fact that he was a lion. “I thought . . . This is really stupid, I know, but I have to ask . . .”

“You thought vampires and werewolves hated each other?” David grinned at Ben. “That’s a fallacy, too. For one, the therions who favor wolf forms tend to be a very tight-knit group, and don’t mingle much with outsiders. For another, therions have no reason to dislike Dark Ones.”

“I’m glad to hear that. So, people in your . . . er . . . pride are disappearing, too?”

“Too?” Ben asked.

“There are a lot of things disappearing around me lately,” I told him. “My mother and the Vikingahärta, to name two. And Imogen’s boyfriend.”

“That’s no great loss,” Ben said in a tight voice.

“These disappearances have been going on for years, so I’m afraid they’re not related to yours,” David said, rubbing his face wearily.

“All right, but what does Naomi have to do with anything? And why is Ben letting her touch him and slobber on him and think she’s his girlfriend?”

That gave him something to think about, I noted with satisfaction. Until, that is, it struck me that he didn’t protest being called a friend. And then I realized that I had better take some responsibility for what I wanted, and not dump it all on him. I couldn’t think of anything worse than to realize I had fallen in love with him, only to find out he didn’t reciprocate the emotion.

I ignored the laughter in my head to deliver a glare at him before turning my attention back to David.

“Benedikt said you weren’t happy about that. I’m sorry, but Naomi is familiar with members of the European therion community,” David explained. “We needed someone who could get into her confidence, and that required an unknown. Benedikt offered to do the job, and although I know you don’t like it, he’s been tremendously helpful to us by allowing Naomi to believe he’s romantically interested in her. He found the group that we believe is organizing the abduction of therions across Europe.”

“Agrippans?” I asked, remembering the word he’d used.

“Yes. Do you know what an Agrippa is?”

I shook my head.

“Originally, it was the name of a book of mystical spells. A few millennia ago, the word came to be applied to the people who created those books, the seekers of knowledge who spent their lives locating and learning magic, which they offered to wield for a price.”

“Sort of walking encyclopedias of magic?”

“More or less. They hired themselves out to support their endless thirst for knowledge. Today, there are three Agrippan sets: one in North America, one here in Europe, and one in Africa.”

“I don’t see the connection between a seeker of knowledge and missing therions,” I said.

“Neither do we. Yet,” Ben said, his thumb sending little tendrils of heat up my hand with every stroke of it across my fingers.

“Benedikt’s been pressed hard by Naomi to join the local tyro—that’s a ceremonial meeting of Agrippans—so he can be inducted into the group, but he’s resisted so far.”

“Oh? Why?” I asked Ben.

He was silent, his eyes turning dark.

“Why?” I asked David instead.

He looked extremely uncomfortable. “Tyros are . . . The Agrippans tend to celebrate their baser natures, and that’s especially true at their ceremonies.”

He wants you to have sex with Naomi?
I asked, ignoring as best I could the cold wave of nausea that hit me with tidal force.

I will admit that both his words and the emotion behind them made me feel all warm inside, but David’s next words killed that.

“I know it’s asking more from you than I should, but, Fran, it’s important that we find out as much information as he can before Naomi discovers the truth about him. There’s a tyro scheduled for tomorrow night. Benedikt told Naomi he wouldn’t go, but she’s already suspicious, and if he misses yet another one . . . Well, it could make the last couple of years’ work all for nothing. Not to mention risking the lives of two of my pride members who have gone missing in the last six months.”

I stared at him in horror. “You are not asking me to sanction Ben having sex with a bunch of other people, are you? Because that’s what it sounds like to me, and if you are, you’re seriously in need of some mental counseling.”

“You have every right to be angry, and I completely understand your reaction, but it would be for just one night. You are Benedikt’s Beloved—he would never want to be with any woman but you.”

“No,” I said, wanting very much to punch David again.

“If you understood just how close we are to getting the names of the people involved, and how they are related to the disappearances of my pride members—”

“If I can do it without the sex, would you agree?” Ben asked.

I looked at him thoughtfully. “Could you do that?”

“It might be possible.” He was silent for a moment. I could feel him considering and discarding various options. “I might be able to use you as an excuse. Naomi knows you are my Beloved, but that we’ve had some relationship issues. If I told her that you being here is hampering my ability to make a final commitment to her, she might believe it.”

He didn’t answer me for a good thirty seconds. When he did, his words were stark with honesty.
If you weren’t here now, I would feel compelled to participate in the tyro, but in such a way that allowed me to keep my oath to help David at the same time it honored the bond between us.

How do you
pretend
to have sex?

Fury unlike anything I’d ever felt burbled up inside me.
And you think that would be honoring me?

It’s close enough to make no difference!
I snapped.

I thought about that for a moment, strangely pleased by the little tinge of outrage to his words.
But you would if you had to?

He sighed.
There is no way I’m going to be able to continue this discussion without you becoming angry with me.

I was going to point out that was a cop-out, when Inner Fran piped up once again with yet another dish of wisdom: What might have been was not important. It was the here and now that mattered.
You’re right. I won’t lambaste you for something you haven’t done.

Oh, yes.
He let me feel his emotions. The little spark that had always been between us shimmered into an electrical charge of attraction that skittered down my back. I could feel him considering me, as if he was seeing me with new eyes, and what he saw pleased him immensely.

I basked in that for a moment before I realized David was saying something to me.

“Fran? Benedikt has said he would not attend the tyro unless you agreed.”

I looked from David to Ben, my emotions torn. On the one hand, I wanted to tell David to stuff the tyro where the sun doesn’t shine. On the other hand, I knew from feeling the strength of Ben’s emotions just how much this mattered to him, to them both. And while I didn’t have any qualms about dissing Naomi, I hesitated at giving in to jealous anger if it meant that David’s lion friends might suffer for it. “There will have to be conditions. I want to know exactly what is involved in the orgy part of the evening.”

Ben’s lips thinned. “I will escort Naomi to the tyro. She will name me as a new member. They will initiate me into the group.”

“With sex.”

“A group celebration of primal forces.”

“Sex,” I said, nodding. I held up a finger. “Condition one: no sex.”

“Agreed,” Ben said. David watched us warily.

“No getting naked and rolling around with other people.”

Ben frowned. “That is not sex.”

“I don’t care. I don’t like the idea of Naomi seeing you naked.”

Ben said nothing.

I gasped, and socked him as hard as I could on the chest. “You didn’t!”

“I have to take a shower sometime, Francesca. I try to do it when she’s not around, but there are times when it is inevitable.”

I seethed for a few minutes, and desperately tried to remember a curse I had learned when I was fourteen. When my mother found out that I was trying to practice what she called harmful magic, she grounded me for three straight months. “There will come a day, Ben, when I am going to settle things with Naomi.”

To my surprise, he grinned. “I look forward to seeing that.”

Don’t be so happy—I have a few things to settle with you, too.
“Can you at least try to limit the nudity in quantity and time? Maybe just take off your shirt and hope no one notices your pants?”

“Yes,” he said gravely. I thought I heard David snort, but when I looked, his expression was blank.

“Condition two: no touching or kissing Naomi.”

“Francesca,” Ben said on another sigh.

“I don’t want you kissing her,” I said, realizing full well I sounded like a petulant child.

“She will be suspicious if I distance myself from her in that manner. I don’t enjoy it, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said.

I ground off a layer or two of enamel. “Fine. You can kiss her. But I get to kiss other men. In fact, I think I’ll start with David.”