Anita Blake 24 - Dead Ice by Laurell K. Hamilton Page A

servant before I caught lycanthropy, and his vampire marks somehow prevented me from shape-shifting. But we were so far out into theoretical metaphysics that we honestly didn’t know. I’d learned a few months ago that some of the less public parts of the military were interested in seeing if they could create soldiers that had my combination of the best of being a shapeshifter without turning into an animal form. I’d let people know that it was the vampire marks that prevented the shifting, and they couldn’t duplicate that part in a lab. So far no one had come knocking on my door about it and I was good with that.
    It was awesome that I could keep pace with Socrates, who was a werehyena, and none of the old aches and pains hurt, but I wondered what else had changed. What else had changed about my body that I hadn’t realized? Which led to the thought, what if all the lycanthropy and vampire marks had affected more than just my physicality?
    “What’s wrong, Anita? You look too serious for a woman about to see a jeweler about rings.”
    I smiled at him, because I knew he was teasing me. I’d never been much for jewelry. I told him about my knees not hurting.
    “That’s a good thing, not a bad thing,” he said.
    I nodded. “But what else has changed that I didn’t notice?”
    He sighed. “You don’t mean just the physical stuff.”
    “Nope.”
    We were outside the door now. “Someday we should sit down and I’ll tell you everything I know about what I’ve noticed before and after I became a werehyena.”
    “I’d like that.”
    “You may not like it after you hear it all.”
    I shrugged. “That’s okay, too. I’d rather know the truth than have to guess.”
    “Most people wouldn’t,” he said.
    “I’m not most people.”
    “Well, now that is the truth.” He smiled again.
    I smiled back, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, but I didn’t really feel all that smiley.
    Socrates knocked on the door, then put his hand against the slight crack at the edge of the door. I could hear something sniffing on the other side. It was a new thing, but the wereanimal guards were using scent as their “password.” You could find out passwords or secret knocks, but you couldn’t change the scent of your body. Even if everyone was in human form it was still effective, though their sense of smell was heightened the closer to their animal shape they shifted.
    Lisandro, tall, darkly Hispanic, and handsome, opened the door for us and ushered us into the front office. It held a desk and two chairs, and it was a nice, ordinary office, except for the vintage circus posters framed on the walls, which was really the only sign that this wasn’t the office of any normal administrative assistant at any upper-crusty business in the United States. There really would be an admin after full dark tonight, when she finally woke for the day. Betty Lou wasn’t a very powerful vampire, but she was a hell of an office assistant. He said, “That new hair product smells too sweet, how can you wear it?” Which meant he’d smelled it through the door; I hadn’t smelled it much standing next to Socrates.
    “Like I was telling Anita, neither of you has my fabulous curls, so you wouldn’t understand.”
    Lisandro used one hand to flip his shoulder-length ponytail. “My hair is about as straight as it gets, so I don’t have to worry about it.”
    “It’s just that wererat nose of yours,” Socrates said. “It means everything smells funny to you.”
    Lisandro grinned. “You’re just jealous because rats have a better scenting capability than hyenas.”
    Socrates did a little head shake. “But we can eat through the side of a Buick with one bite, and you can’t.”
    I rolled eyes at both of them. “Enough interspecies one-upmanship; take me to Jean-Claude.”
    “I would say you know the way, but we’re being all formal because of the jeweler,” Lisandro said.
    I shook my head. “The daytime jeweler is the