Anita Blake 19 - Bullet by Laurell K. Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page A

violent and we miscarry.”
    “That’s why the weretigers are trying to teach some of us how to do what they’ve done for centuries, so we can help the women in our animal groups have children.” When Crispin and Domino had come to live in St. Louis, we thought we’d just gained some new willing blood donors, a new dancer for Guilty Pleasures in Crispin, and a new security person in Domino, but the tigers had spilled one of their clan’s big secrets. The weretigers were the only animal group that could breed true. They had what they called purebloods, who were born with hair and eyes the color they would be when they took tiger shape, but they didn’t shapeshift until they hit puberty. These purebloods themselves didn’t shift into a normal orange and black tiger, but their victims did, usually. I hadn’t even known that the tigers bred true until I had to go meet with them in Vegas, but no one outside the tigers had known that they could calm a woman’s beast. The men were trained from childhood to work with their mates and help them get through an entire pregnancy without shapeshifting, so they didn’t miscarry. Crispin had quieted Gina’s beast the first time without realizing that it was a big surprise to the rest of us. We were now at three months and counting; if we made one more month it would be longer than any lycanthrope female on record outside of the weretigers. The tigers were freaked out that their psychic ability worked on any other wereanimal. One of the reasons a group of them was visiting us tomorrow was to discuss the implications of Gina’s pregnancy and what her potential breeding success could do to the entire weretiger culture.
    Vivian buried her head tighter against me, so her voice was muffled. “I’d accepted that Stephen and I would never have children, that we couldn’t, that I couldn’t have children.”
    “We are going to get Gina through this with her baby,” Micah said, and he sounded so sure. I wasn’t that sure, because not only did Crispin or Domino have to be with her every full moon, but someone had to be able to run to her side if she called for help. It wasn’t just a full moon that could make your beast rise; strong emotion, pain, lots of things could trigger that response.
    I was one of the people trying to learn how to do what Crispin and Domino did so effortlessly. I wasn’t making much progress, maybe because my beasts were trapped in my human body and I couldn’t give them animal shape. Micah was learning, though, and he was good at it. Crispin thought he’d have it down cold in a few more days. All of us who were learning how to calm Gina’s beast were on speed dial for her, so that if she felt herself starting to lose control we could come running. The two tigers were really hoping some of the other dominants of the animal groups learned the skill soon, so they’d have more backup.
    The shaking got worse as Vivian clung to me. “If Gina has her baby, I want one, too.”
    I laid my cheek against her hair. “Then you can be next.”
    She shook her head. “Stephen doesn’t want to.”
    “What?” I asked.
    She raised her face from my shoulder. Her lipstick and eye shadow were smeared across that perfect skin. “He says with his background he doesn’t want children. He’s afraid he’ll be like his father.”
    “Stephen could never be like his father,” I said. Stephen and his twin, Gregory, had been sexually abused by their father for most of their lives until they left home. The father kept trying to apologize to them as part of his twelve-step program. They wanted nothing to do with him, and his insistence on trying to make amends for their nightmare childhood just seemed to me to be another way of putting his need for the apology above their need to be left the fuck alone.
    “I told him that, but he’s afraid. He worked with Matthew some on his dance and it brought back horrible memories. Stephen’s been having the worst nightmares. His