There was only one answer to that question: Anything.

I held out my hand. “Come to me, Nicky.”

“No,” he said, but it was a whisper.

I remembered this game. There’d been a time years ago when I’d fought every time Jean-Claude had wanted to touch me. I’d craved the feel of his hand on my body long before I’d been willing to admit it out loud. I realized with a start that sent jolts of electricity down my fingertips that I wanted to touch Nicky. I wanted the feel of his skin under my hand. Normally, this would have made me run the other way, but not tonight. Tonight I couldn’t afford to be afraid of this part of myself, because it was the only weapon I had left.

I thought I’d have to touch him first, but in the end he came to me. He wasn’t strong enough to force me to come to him.

He crawled on all fours, closing the small distance between us. Lycanthropes, especially the cat-based ones, can crawl like they have muscles in places no human ever possessed, all liquid grace and sensuality. Nicky just crawled, almost like he wasn’t sure it was a good idea. Maybe it wasn’t, but when you run out of good ideas, bad ones start to look better.

I expected him to use his hands to touch me, but he rubbed his cheek against the unbruised side of my face. The moment our skin touched the hunger rose inside me in a hot rush of need. I carried Jean-Claude’s blood hunger in me, and the hunger for flesh of several wereanimals, and the need in me would have been happy with either. Lucky for what was left of my humanity I had one other option for hungers. The ardeur was one of the most specialized abilities of Belle Morte’s bloodline, from which Jean-Claude descended. It enabled vampires to feed on sex so they could travel in countries where they were still illegal and not leave a trail of vampire-bite victims behind them. Other bloodlines fed on fear, or anger, and that last one I’d managed to find on my own. I could feed on anger now, but it wasn’t as a good a feeding and I didn’t want Nicky mad at me.

“Oh, my God, what is that?” He breathed it out in a trembling line of fear. His one visible eye was wide, flashing white in the dimness of the shed. The side of his neck was lost in shadows, but I could feel the beat of his pulse on my tongue like candy that I wanted to lick and suck, and finally bite down and let all that rich, hot center burst into my mouth. I leaned forward, aiming for his mouth and a kiss, but that would only be the beginning. His mouth wasn’t what I wanted him to open for me. It was a way to get closer to that throbbing heat in the side of his neck. A distant part of me understood that this was wrong, that tearing his throat out would be bad, and my chances of killing him faster than he could kill me were almost nonexistent, but the front of my head was screaming for food. I had planned on using the ardeur to roll Nicky and make him help me, but I hadn’t planned on the other hungers being this strong. That only happened when I’d used up a lot of energy. Healing used up a lot of energy. How hurt had I been, and how much of my reserves had gone into getting better?

I kissed my way down the side of his face, and then laid my lips against the warmth of his neck. I breathed in the scent of his skin, and it was all mixed together with the trees and the grass, and the distant scent of water on the summer air. He smelled like outside, like the summer had seeped into the pores of his skin and made him sweet and fragrant with its warmth.

Nicky’s voice came out hoarse and choked with need. “Your power is all mixed up with heat and sex.”

My tongue on his neck made him shudder, and something about him doing that while my mouth was so close to the blood pulsing under his skin turned the switch in my head from sex to blood. I fought to move back from his neck and that hot, sweet blood. “Yes,” I breathed.

“I can feel your hunger now. You want to feed on me.”

“I’m trying for sex here, Nicky.”

“Why isn’t my beast rising to yours? Why isn’t my hunger rising to yours? Why do I feel like prey?”

They were all excellent questions. It forced me to think, and that helped me push away the urge to feed, enough for me to say, “I don’t know.” The ardeur didn’t usually turn to bloodlust this easily. Once it was raised it stayed raised, but not tonight. Tonight I had to think myself out of that hot, sweet scent just below his skin. If I tore his throat out, it would be the same as any other violence; it wouldn’t save Micah. Jacob would take one look at his dead lion and I’d lose my leopard. That helped me struggle to think about his questions, and how I could turn this craving for meat and blood back into sex. I needed to feed on something, though, which meant that Nathaniel and Damian, at least, knew I was hurt, because of all my metaphysical men I drained them first when I was injured. Silas must have hurt me badly for me to need to feed this much. Jean-Claude had taught Nathaniel and Damian how to feed the ardeur and send the energy to me; like any good servant of a vampire, they could feed while I stayed hidden. It was one of the main purposes of having a vampire servant of any kind. But if they’d gathered energy, then it hadn’t come to me. If Ellen’s barrier could keep out the energy of my leopard to call and my vampire servant, then she was even better than I’d feared. But it meant that until I fed, I really wouldn’t be able to raise their zombie; I’d used too much of myself up healing what Silas’s blow had done to me. Shit.

I licked over the pulse in his throat. My breath came out in a shuddering line against his skin. I fought not to sink my teeth into his flesh, because I wasn’t sure how many times I could resist doing what the inside of my head wanted to do. Eventually, if I couldn’t regain more control, I would take blood and flesh, if I couldn’t turn this to sex.

He moved in my arms, put his mouth on mine, and kissed me. The kiss was enough to turn the switch again, and suddenly he was all warm potential in my arms. My hungers didn’t care which one got used as long as one of them did.

I heard Jacob’s voice yelling outside, “What the hell are you doing?” I think he was yelling at us.

The door to the shed opened, and Jacob stood there haloed by moonlight, with a second shorter figure in black outline behind him. He pointed the gun at me, but we were so close that it was more like pointed at us.

“Get off her, Nicky.”

I drew Nicky in so that he wrapped his arms around me and lifted me so that we were both kneeling. He leaned in for a kiss, but Jacob was beside us, his anger roiling out like a nearly visible thing. “Don’t you dare.”

I looked up at him, and Nicky began to kiss his way down my face toward my neck. He never looked at Jacob.

“He can’t help himself,” the second figure said, and it was a woman’s voice; was this Ellen the witch?

“Bullshit.”

Nicky found the bend of my neck and I had trouble concentrating. I moved his face away from me. “I can’t think with you doing that.”

“I don’t want you to think.”

“Her power calls to him, as it calls to you, Rex.” Ellen’s voice had that distant singsong quality that some psychics get when they’re sensing something otherworldly. I realized what she was sensing was me, but for once I couldn’t feel it. All I could feel was the weight and warmth of the man above in my arms.

“She doesn’t call to me,” Jacob said.

I looked at the other man and I could suddenly feel the connection between the werelion touching me and the one in the doorway. Jacob was their leader, and that meant more in the supernatural community than it did for humans. Jacob had shared his power with Nicky, his beast with Nicky. I knew in that moment that he was the one who had turned Nicky into a werelion. He was Nicky’s creator, his alpha and omega, beginning and end.

I had fed on leaders of animal groups before, and knew that through that connection I could feed on all their people at once in a massive feed, but I’d never realized that the reverse might be true-that I could follow the connection between one of the lesser lycanthropes to their leader, and have the control of the lesser help me gain control of the king. But it was there, a tug on my power like a fish caught on a line. It went through me, into Nicky, to his Rex, and through him beyond. Nicky was the key that opened it up, but Jacob was the guardian at the door. If I could take him, I could take them all, including the woman in the door. She wasn’t just a witch; she was a lion, too. I felt her beast pulling toward Jacob like a flower moving sunward, but I had power in Jacob now from earlier, and her beast would flow through him, to me. I threw my power outward, searching for how many lions were outside. I touched one more, and he, definitely he, was hurt.