"He says that he leaves his swan maidens in the care of your leopards when he's gone for a while."

I nodded. "There's only three of them in town."

"They've stayed over at your house," Edward said.

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"They need someone to look after them sometimes."

"Donovan said that, that you took care of his people. He says you rescued them once, and almost got killed doing it."

"Yeah," I said.

"He says that if you risk your life for his people, he would do the same for you, so what's a little sex between allies?"

"He didn't say that last part," I said.

Edward grinned and shook his head. "Okay, but he did say, 'I would risk my life for Anita and her people. This is a small thing you ask of me.' "

"That sounds like Donovan," I said.

"He's offering to let you feed on every swanmane in the United States. There's maybe one to six in most major cities."

"I had no idea there were that many of them."

"I don't think anyone did but Donovan. He gave up a lot of intelligence, Anita. He didn't make me promise not to use it against him if I got a contract from someone who wanted me to go swan hunting."

"Edward…"

He held up a hand, stopping me. "I'll promise you, if you ask."

We looked at each other a second, and then I said, "Promise me you won't use anything you've learned against any of the animal groups."

"I won't hunt any more swans," He said.

"No, Edward, I mean it. You're going to have to learn things about vampires and the shapeshifters that you could use against them. I need your word of honor that what you learn won't come back to haunt them, or me."

His face went to that cold, empty look. It was almost the look he used when he killed, except for a hint of anger in his eyes. "Even the lions?" he asked.

"They're members of our coalition."

"That mean they're off limits?"

"No, it means we have to kick them out of the coalition before we do anything to them."

He smiled then. "So honorable."

"A girl's got to have standards," I said.

He nodded. "As long as the lions answer for it, I'm cool."

"One crisis at a time, but yeah, they'll answer for it."

He gave that cold, pleased smile. It was Edward's usual smile, the real one. The smile that said the monster was home, and happy to be there. I didn't need a mirror to know that the smile I gave back was almost a match for it. I used to worry about becoming like Edward. Lately, I counted on it.

Chapter Twenty-six

WHATEVER WE WERE going to do with the local lion pride had to wait. One emergency at a time. Funny how when Edward comes into my life, or I come into his, we're almost always running from one emergency to the other. The difference this time was that the emergency couldn't be handled at the point of a knife or gun barrel. A flamethrower wouldn't even help, though Edward had probably brought one. How would he get it through airport security? It's Edward; if he wanted to, he'd manage to get a Sherman tank through security.

I had less than two hours to feed. Less than two hours to keep Willie McCoy, with his loud suits and louder ties, alive. The love of his life, Candy, tall and blond and gorgeous, and so in love with the small, not-so-handsome vampire. I thought of Avery Seabrook, who I'd stolen away from the Church of Eternal Life. Avery with his gentle eyes, so newly dead that even to me he still felt alive sometimes. I thought of so many of the lesser vamps who had jumped ship from Malcolm's church to us in the last few months. I couldn't let them die, not if I could save them. But I so didn't want to have sex with Donovan Reece.

There was nothing wrong with him. He was tall, pale, and handsome in a preppy, clean-cut sort of way. He was an inch shy of six feet, broad shoulders tucked into a baby-blue sweater that complemented a milk-and-cream complexion so perfect it looked artificial, but it wasn't. The faint pink blush on his cheeks was just his own blood flowing under that white, white skin. He was as pale as a Caucasian vampire before they'd fed. But there was nothing dead about Donovan. No, there was something incredibly alive about him, as if at a glance you could tell that his blood ran hotter. Not hot as in passion, but hot as in hot to the touch, as though if you spilled it into your mouth it would be hot, like sweet, metallic cocoa.

I had to close my eyes and hold up a hand before he got right beside the bed. I spoke with my eyes still closed. "I'm sorry, Donovan, but you hit the radar as food."

"I'm supposed to be food."

I shook my head. "Not food for the ardeur, but food-food. I'm wondering what your blood would taste like going down."

"I was afraid of this." A female voice. I opened my eyes to see Sylvie, Richard's second-in-command, his Freki. She was a little taller than me, short brown hair, a face that could be pretty in makeup, but she usually didn't sweat it, so that your eyes had to adjust to the plainness of her eyes and skin before you could realize that she was pretty just as she was. With the right makeup, she'd have been beautiful. I wondered if people thought that about me sometimes. Since I was wearing a hospital gown, and probably looked like shit, who was I to comment?

Sylvie filled the room with a prickling run of energy. She was small and female and had managed to fight her way to second-in-command of a large pack of werewolves. She'd have probably been in charge if I hadn't interfered a few times. Richard could have beaten her physically, but Sylvie had the will to win, the will to kill, and there are fights when that will win the day over superior strength. Then, a while back, Richard had called her challenge, and he had hurt her, badly. He'd proven that he had the will to back the strength. On one hand, I was glad; it meant the question was answered. On the other hand, it had cost Richard a piece of himself that he'd never get back. I mourned that piece of him, almost as much as he did.

"You were afraid of what?" Edward asked from near the door. I hadn't realized he'd followed Donovan back in.

"Anita is like a new lycanthrope. It means her hungers are not under her control completely. Donovan may be powerful, but he's a prey animal, and her beasts smell that," Sylvie said.

I nodded from the bed, my hand falling to the white sheet. "What she said."

Donovan looked at me; his blue-gray eyes, as changeable as the sky, had gone to rainy gray. "Would you really tear my throat out?"

"Probably a gut wound, actually, soft underbelly."

He raised those soft, pale eyebrows.

"No oral sex," Sylvie said, and anyone else would have said it with humor; she was utterly serious.

The door opened behind them. I got a glimpse of some tall, dark-haired man who I didn't recognize. He looked too young to be standing there, but then there were a couple of other guards that I thought the same thing about. Then the doorway was full of people and I had to look at them, but I promised myself that I'd talk to Claudia about putting an age limit on the guards here. I'd voted out Cisco for being eighteen, but apparently I hadn't made it clear that it was the age, not Cisco himself, that was the problem. If we all survived today, I'd make that more clear. No, not if, when. When we survived. To think anything else, well, it had to be when.

I looked for Asher in the vampires who came first through the door, but he wasn't there. It was as if Requiem read my mind, or at least my face, because he said, "Oh, my evening star, you look eagerly past me, as if I am not here. Asher wakes seventh among us. When dawn comes he will die, but those who stand before you now have a chance to remain awake long enough to see this through." His face was a glimpse of white flesh between the black of his hooded cloak and the beard and mustache. His hair was lost in the blackness of the hood. The only true color to his face was the brilliant blue of his eyes, with that hint of green in them like sea water in the sunlight he would never see again.