Anita Blake 20 - Hit List Read Free

he’d had muscle tone. He’d hit the gym, and it had done him no good at all. He would be another clanless tiger, a survivor of an attack rather than one born into a family group. The Harlequin were killing only the clanless right now, because they were searching for certain tigers. They were searching for gold tigers. A bloodline supposedly destroyed during the reign of the First Emperor of China, but hidden in secret by some of the Harlequin. Hidden from the other Harlequin and from the Mother of All Darkness; the fact that they’d managed to hide them from her when she was at the height of her powers said just how good the Harlequin were at subterfuge. They would have run the world’s best witness protection program ever.

    We’d hoped they’d stop slaughtering the clanless tigers when the gold tigers made their public debut to the other tiger clans, but though we’d made it public that we had all colors of the tigers with us in St. Louis, the Harlequin were still hunting and killing the weretigers. It seemed so pointless.
    I stood up, waiting for my bad knee to protest squatting too long, but it didn’t. I realized my “bad knee” hadn’t been bad in a while. I was Jean-Claude’s human servant and metaphysically tied to several wereanimals. I healed faster than human-normal, but I hadn’t realized I’d lost the old aches and pains from past injuries. When had that happened?
    Edward stood beside me, and he favored one leg a little. He had an injury on that one from a hunt that went bad. I thought,How old is Edward? Will he age and I won’t? Will my ties to the supernatural keep healing me? It was a weird thought to think that Edward might grow older faster than I did.
    “You’ve thought of something, what?” he asked.
    I opened my mouth, closed it, and tried to think of something else to say out loud. “Why keep killing the tigers?” I said.
    “You mean now that they know you and Jean-Claude have your own gold tigers in St. Louis?”
    “Yes. They were supposed to kill the clanless tigers to keep us from getting the gold tigers to bond with metaphysically. It’s too late, Edward, we’ve already done that, so why keep killing the other tigers?”
    “Maybe they’re looking for a specific weretiger.”
    “Maybe, but why, or who, and again why? There’s nothing to be gained by it.”
    “I can think of one thing they’ve gained,” he said.
    “Okay, what?”
    “They’ve separated you from Jean-Claude and all the other people you’re metaphysically tied to.
    In St. Louis you have enough bodyguards to make up a small army. Here, it’s just you and the police.”
    “You think they’d risk attacking me with the cops around? I mean, the whole concept of these guys is that no one knows they exist. They’re really invested in being this big dark secret.”
    “If Mommie Darkest told them to kill you, would they risk being outed to the human police?”
    “Maybe,” I said, and then I had another idea. I wasn’t sure it was worse, but it scared me more.
    “Her first idea was to take over my body. She wanted to kill me only after she realized I was too powerful for her to move into me.”
    “Are you as powerful out here hundreds of miles away from Jean-Claude and the rest?”
    I thought about it, really made myself look at it. “Metaphysically, no. I’m safer if I can touch my master and animals to call.”

    “Maybe they’re killing the tigers to keep you out here.”
    “You think they’ll try to kidnap me?” I asked.
    “If she still wants your body, yes.”
    “And if she just wants me dead, then that works better out here, too,” I said.
    “It does,” he said. He was looking out at the edge of the field. He was checking the perimeter for danger, trying to see the Harlequin hiding in the trees along the edge of the green, summer field.
    “I don’t sense any wereanimals,” I said, “and walking in full daylight is incredibly rare. I’ve only met three vampires that could do