Dead Ice

Next offer was two of the wereleopards, Elizabeth and Caleb, who had been a couple, though not exclusive, for a while now. I’d once shot Elizabeth full of non-silver bullets, so she’d healed, and she’d feared me after that, but it didn’t make us buddies. She was the only one of the local wereleopards who had pushed me that far after I’d taken over their pard. Caleb would have been a bad guy if he’d had the balls to be truly evil; instead he was just sour, and cruel when he could get away with it. It was a shame, because he was cute in a Goth-boy, I’ve-pierced-too-many-things way, but his attitude stole all his attractiveness. I was glad they were dating each other; it saved anyone else from having to date either of them. They both went under the same rule as Meng Die. I wasn’t falling asleep in a bed with people who hated me.

“It doesn’t have to be matching animals, doc, they just have to match my internal beasts.”

“True, but we’ve discovered that matching wereanimals from the same group that you are already connected with speeds your healing even more, and with such limited time before you have to go back to the police, it makes sense to use our resources efficiently.”

I sighed. “Fine, and you’re right, who else is available?”

Magda, the werelion who had been beating the shit out of Kelly, and the other Harlequin lion, Giacomo, were the next ones Doc Lillian offered as a possibility.

“No.”

“Anita, you are going to use up all your sleeping time being picky. I’m not asking you to have sex with any of these people, just sleep between them and let the group energy help you heal.”

“Falling asleep between two people takes a lot more trust for me than fucking them,” I said.

She frowned at me. “Anita, we are running out of people who match your animals. We have far more wererats on duty right now, but we are not your animal to call, so we can’t help you heal.”

“Is that why Micah and I couldn’t heal Rafael?”

She nodded. “I’d hoped that Micah’s abilities might stretch to more wereanimals, but you seem to only be able to heal people you have some metaphysical tie to, so even if you could call rats, I’m not sure you could have healed Rafael, or any of us.”

“I’m sorry, Lillian, I honestly am not trying to be difficult.”

“Well, if this is you not trying, I can’t wait for more effort on your part,” she said, voice dry and unhappy.

I couldn’t tell if she’d made a joke or was genuinely upset with me. “Are we really down to the bottom of the barrel on choices?”

“I would recommend not saying it that way to Magda, but yes.”

“I’ll compromise, then; one of the Harlequin, but not two.”

“I can wake Nicky for you.”

“No, let him sleep. If I’m too hurt to go to Cynric’s school thing, then I want him and Nathaniel to be able to go.”

“Very few of the werelions bunk here, Anita.” Then I watched a thought cross her face. “How about Travis, he’s spending the week here so he can do fight training.”

“Travis is my size, and more bookworm than gym rat; he’s never going to be that good,” I said.

“Bookworm doesn’t mean you can’t be a great warrior,” she said.

“No, but your heart has to be in both your books and the practice field. Travis practices fighting because he knows he has to in order to survive in lion society, but his heart isn’t in it.”

She smiled. “That may well be true, but he seems to be thriving under Nicky’s leadership.”

I didn’t tell her that the only reason Travis was still alive was that Nicky protected him and made it clear that all challenges to Travis were met with a double team of both men. Why did Nicky do it? Travis knew that being smart and being gentle were his strengths, neither of which did him much good with the werelions. He’d come to me, asked me to help him talk to Nicky about an idea he’d had. Real male lions, and some lionesses, worked in groups. There were prides in the wild that were ruled not by one male, but coalitions of two to six. Some were brothers, or cousins, but genetic testing had revealed that a lot of them were just battle buddies that had met along the nomadic wanderings that young males are forced to do when their fathers kick them out of the home territory when they get old enough to challenge their dad and uncles. Almost anything that the natural version of the animal did was fair game to be part of the wereanimal’s culture.

Travis proposed that he and Nicky do that; when we’d asked what Nicky got out of it, okay Nicky asked, but Travis had said this: “Nicky feels emotions through you, but on his own he’s pretty much a sociopath, which means he’s not understanding the emotional dynamics of the pride, and especially with the lionesses he needs that. I’ll explain the emotional stuff in private to him, and do any research he needs on wereanimal culture, or anything else he needs.”

Nicky had said, “The research is pretty useless, but I know I’m missing stuff in the pride dynamics. Is it that obvious that I’m not getting the emotional stuff?”

“My emotional intelligence is really high.”

“What does that mean, emotional intelligence?” Nicky asked.

“It means he’s as smart about emotions as he is about book stuff,” I said.

“Like Anita’s social/communication intelligence is really high when she doesn’t get in her own way, and your physical intelligence is amazing. There’s a lot of ways to be smart; the kind that gets you straight A’s in school is only one way.”