Read Online Anita Blake 22 - Affliction by Laurell K. Hamilton - Free Book Online Page A

whole, both six feet, both built tall and lanky; muscle from the mandatory guard workout showed, but neither one of them bulked up fast. They were built for speed and strength. Both still had that military stamp on them, one that lingers if you were in long enough and haven’t been out long enough. Ares’ desert tan had mostly faded, though he tanned darker than most blonds I’d met. Bram couldn’t really tan any darker, though I’d learned that even very dark African American skin could burn; it just took a lot. Bram had been quietly disdainful when he found out that my black curls and dark brown eyes hadn’t come with my mother’s Mexican skin tone, but my father’s blond German so that I just didn’t tan worth a damn. Bram’s hair was still cut military short. He complained that the tight curl bugged him when it grew out. Ares had let his dark blond hair grow out a little, enough that a woman could run her hands through it, as he’d said, but it was mostly longer on top and still left his neck in no danger of being touched by hair. They partnered each other a lot on guard duty.
    Ares grinned at us. ‘How are we supposed to guard your bodies if you keep talking to the bad guys without us?’
    ‘One, they aren’t bad guys, they’re our hosts. Two, not a danger,’ I said.
    Nicky said, ‘I told you.’ He walked toward us, the spread of his shoulders making him look shorter than the other two guards, though he wasn’t really. His haircut was actually the thing you noticed after the muscles. His hair was short except for half his bangs, which hung in a long yellow triangle down the right-hand side of his face, covering the eye and halfway down the cheek. He used the hair to hide that the eye on that side was missing. He’d lost it when he was a teenager, years before he became a werelion, or he’d have still had the eye. The one eye that was left was a clear blue.
    ‘You told them what?’ I asked.
    ‘That you could handle yourself against anything that was on this side of the hangar,’ Bram said, in his clear, strong voice. He didn’t talk nearly as much as Ares, but when he did it was usually to the point. Ares would joke and tease, Bram almost never.
    ‘Should I be insulted?’ Alfie asked.
    I said, ‘No.’
    Ares said, ‘Yes.’
    Micah said, ‘No.’
    Alfie looked from one to the other of us, smiling slightly. ‘I don’t know what I expected from you, Ms Blake, Mr Callahan, but this easy camaraderie is unexpected.’
    ‘Pleasant, I hope,’ Micah said.
    ‘Yes,’ the vampire said, ‘most illuminating.’
    ‘Illuminating, why illuminating?’ I asked.
    ‘To shed light upon something; I thought it was a very appropriate word.’
    I would have asked more, but Micah’s cousin chose that moment to come up and say, ‘Who’s riding with me?’
    ‘Juliet, this is Anita and Nathaniel.’
    I offered a hand to forgo any thought of hugging. I didn’t like hugging people I didn’t know, and some families just hugged willy-nilly. Her hand was as small as mine, but more callused to match the working cowboy boots. She took Nathaniel’s hand, too, and he wasted a smile on her. She smiled back, but it didn’t reach her eyes. They were blue, and the frown between them made them look less the shape of Micah’s.
    ‘Aunt Bea said you were Mike’s fiancée; is that true, or are you just living together? I ask, because if it’s just Aunt Bea’s way of dealing with her issues about living in sin, I can help head off some of the wedding talk.’
    It made me half-smile and half-laugh. It was blunt and I liked it. ‘No wedding plans; can’t we just introduce me as his girlfriend?’
    ‘Nope, believe me. I lived with my husband before marriage, and
fiancée
is the family’s nice, hopeful double-talk for living in sin.’
    I looked at Micah, and he knew my expressions, too, because he answered the unvoiced question. ‘Some of my relatives are religious in a …’ He seemed to fumble for words, and