Hurt as I was, watching them crawl toward me nude quickened my breathing, sped my pulse. It made the wolf start to pace in tight, agitated cir­cles. I didn't have a hand to touch Clay. "Clay, touch me." He closed the small distance he'd made for Richard to straddle me. He pressed his body against the line of mine, but was careful not to touch my left shoulder. He was a quick study, and he seldom argued. It was sort of refreshing.

Micah touched my legs, but Nathaniel crawled around Clay, so he could be by my head. Micah asked, "What do you need us to do?"

I'd never tried to call one animal instead of another. We'd only learned about a month ago that I held three different kinds of lycanthropy. Wolf and leopard hadn't been all that unexpected, but lion, that had caught me off guard. Such a delicate injury, so little blood, but sometimes a nick is enough with blood-borne diseases.

"I don't know, yet." I knew how to call someone else's beast, if it matched mine. Richard had taught me the theory of that. I thought of leopard. I sim­ply thought of it, and I felt it stir inside me. It was always the oddest sensa­tion, as if there were some deep cave inside me, and the beast lived there until called. Now it uncurled itself, stretched, and began to rise. My body was like a dark liquid that the beast rose inside of; that was all pretty typical of being a lycanthrope. The problem was that my body lacked the switch to actually shift, and once the beast got to the surface of my body, there was no place to go. Or there hadn't been, up until now.

But somewhere during the rising liquid feel of fur curving against places that nothing should have touched, I realized that there were two shapes ris­ing for the surface. I'd tried to call leopard, but I was about to get double for my money.

The wolf bristled, his ruff standing up, his body stiffening. I felt his fear. He knew he was about to be outnumbered, and inside my body there was no pack to call. The wolf stood his ground, making himself look as large and fierce as he could, then the cats hit the surface of my body, and the wolf fled. I could feel him running, running back the way he had come. Like he was heading home. It was the first time I realized that my body wasn't just a prison, but also a den, a place of safety.

The cats hit the surface together, and the force of it bowed my spine,

threw my body upward, as if some great force had hit me from behind. I fell back to the bed, screaming with the pain of my abused body taking yet an­other hit tonight. I needed this to stop. We needed it to stop.

I saw the cats. The leopard looked small beside the lion. Small, sleek, and gleaming black. It had backed away from the larger cat. I didn't blame it. The lioness was huge, a great, tawny beast of a cat. Maybe it would have looked smaller if I hadn't been looking at wolf, and now leopard. The lion was staring at the leopard in a way that was patient, waiting for the leopard to decide what to do next. The lion had the confidence of several hundred pounds of extra muscle on its side.

I let go of Graham and used my good hand to reach for Nathaniel. He bent over my face so that when I touched him, his face was nearly above mine. I buried my face against the sweet warmth of his neck. He always smelled like vanilla to me, but underneath that was the scent of leopard. Sharper than the musk of wolf, less sweet, more exotic for lack of a better word. The leopard stopped being defensive, and looked up with eyes that were soft and gray, with just a hint of green in them. I didn't call Here kitty-kitty, but I called it all the same.

The leopard rose up through me, and hit the surface of my body. It filled me like a hand sliding inside a glove, so that I felt it stretch out and out, fill­ing me. I waited for that fullness to finally split my skin and step out, but nothing happened. I could feel fur rubbing against my skin on the wrong side; I could feel it in there. I gazed down my body, and watched things roll under the skin of my stomach like the cat was rubbing against me. The sen­sation left me nauseous, but that was all. It wasn't as violent as the wolf had been, but I still wasn't shifting.

Graham and Clay slid off the bed so that Micah could move up beside me. "It's there, but it's not coming out—why?"

Nathaniel slid down so that the two men framed my body with their own. "I don't know," Micah said.

"Give your beast to me," Nathaniel said.

I looked up at him, and thought at the furred thing inside me. It was pa­tient because I wasn't afraid of it. I'd embraced it, welcomed it. Now it slid inside me, waiting for release. A release that I couldn't give it.

"I've taken your beast once before," he said.

"I remember." I turned my head, just enough to see Micah's face. I looked a question at him.

"Give your leopard to him, Anita."

Nathaniel pressed his body closer to my side, so I could feel him pressed soft against my hip. He leaned over me, propping himself across my body with one arm, so he laid no weight on my upper body. He leaned in for a kiss, and I felt the leopard roll toward him like something half liquid and half solid fur. His moutJi found mine, and we kissed. The last time I'd given him my beast had been almost as violent as tonight, but I'd been fighting; now I simply gave it to him, and Nathaniel didn't fight. He kissed me hard and deep, as if he were trying to taste that furred shape, and the next moment that shape spilled up through my mouth. I felt it as never before, as if truly it slipped up and out through my mouth. I had a moment of choking, and then it was in him. My leopard smashed into his body, smashed into his beast. The force of it pushed his body off the bed, like a blow, but he fought to keep on kissing me. Fought to kiss me as thick, heavy liquid ran over my body from his. So warm, hot, as if he were bleeding to death. I opened my eyes enough to see that the liquid was clear, but had to close my eyes to keep it from getting in them. His hands were on my face, trapping us in the kiss. But I wanted the kiss, I wanted this. I wanted, needed the release, and my body couldn't give it.

I wrapped my good arm across his back so I could feel his skin split, and the fur flow out like solid water, hot velvet under my hand. His mouth re­formed against mine, so that the kiss had to change, because the mouth he had now couldn't kiss like his human body. Not enough lip. I licked my tongue along teeth sharp enough to eat me for real. He drew back, and I was left to wipe the heavy liquid off my face, so I could see him. The face was leopard, and human, a strangely graceful mix. Leopardman worked better than wolfman, maybe because the cat had a shorter muzzle naturally.

I raised both my arms toward him, and realized that the left arm was working now. I hadn't shifted, but something about giving him my beast had given me some of the benefits of healing that shifting would have done. In­teresting.

I hugged him, and found his fur dry, though my body was covered in the clear goo that shifters "bled" when they changed. I never understood how their fur came through dry, but it always did.

I ran my hands over the unbelievable softness of his fur, felt the muscled strength of him, and felt that his body wasn't at all unhappy to be pressed against mine. We'd made love once before when he was in this form, and at that moment it didn't sound like an entirely bad idea, but there was some­one else inside me, waiting.

The lion roared where it was still standing, patient. It let me know that it—she—was still there.

"Shit," I whispered.

Nathaniel snuffled next to my face. "Lion."

Micah rolled off the bed. "We need a werelion, fast, before it decides to try to tear its way out."

"We have no lions," Jean-Claude said.

I thought about it. I thought, / need a lion. I thought about the golden fur, the dark, orange-amber eyes. I put the call out, not for my lion, but for a lion. I felt an answer, like a distant voice. I felt two answering tugs, almost as if I held two leashes. One was reluctant, the other was eager.