Danse Macabre--chapter 3

Anita makes it to the Circus of the Damned without having to pull over for sex.

We've managed to mature this character back to Basic Human. This is actually a positive, because fuck the sex chapters are annoying.

 ...LKH needs to sort out what crosses do in the presence of vampires. Whenever they work onscreen, they make a big purdy lightshow that hurts vampires and vampires only. HOWEVER, Anita is leaving her cross in the car because she doesn't want another cross-shaped burn scar. Also, what the fuck does this mean:

 I’d left my cross in the glove compartment, because the chances of no one “accidentally” using vamp powers on me tonight were between zero and nothing.

Forget about double negatives. This is like a negative squared. Seriously. Is she saying that nobody's going to use vamp powers, or that everybody is using vamp powers?

Nathanial's ankle length hair will never stop being funny. Nor will his perfect pony princess lavender eyes.

Depending on how the light hit the shirt it brought out either the green or the yellow of his eyes, so that the color of his eyes changed with almost every breath. It was a nice effect.

It's a shirt. Anita, it's a motherfucking shirt. You are not fucking Saruman, you cannot wear all the colors, and even if you were, the rainbow robe thing never works out.

Also: I'm picturing homemade cheap porn costumes. Simplicity, Pirate Garb. You know the type.

Four-inch spikes, with open heels, and laces that wrapped around my ankles. When Jean-Claude couldn’t persuade me into a skimpier outfit for the night, we’d compromised with the totally impractical shoes.

Your fuck-me shoes are going to get you killed, Anita. I do not care how good you are at walking in them, all you need to do is torque your ankle once during a fight scene and there you go. The best thing you could do is order from the same catalogue as nurses and food service workers. (They have some really nice flats that do the dressy thing very well.)

I had a key to the new back door of the Circus of the Damned.

You know, I actually liked the hyper-paranoid system JC had. It made for good worldbuilding and it kept the people inside of it alive. OF COURSE we're getting rid of it. Anita's life trumps everyone else's safety concerns.

A werewolf answers the door because we need to introduce yet another new character .This is Grahame, a werewolf, and because I have no fucking idea if I've seen him before he is now Grahame Coats. In ferret form.

You're welcome.

Also?

His perfectly straight black hair managed to fall decoratively over his brown eyes, and still be very, very short on the bottom, so the strong line of his neck was left bare and strangely tempting. His eyes tilted up at the edges, and I now knew that he had his Japanese mother’s eyes and hair, but the rest of him seemed to have been copied from his ex-navy and very Nordic-looking father.

That's not Nordic. Unless you're talking about noses or something. Which you don't actually mention, so WTF Anita?

It turns into a pissing contest. Of course it does. We Literally cannot walk through a motherfucking door that Anita has gone through TEN MILLION times without it being a goddamn pissing contest between her and another character. GOD FORBID anything be normal, non-confrontational and routine.

Micah tries to bully his way past, and Anita reminds Grahame that she's got power in the pack and can tell him to fuck off if she wants to. Because Richard hasn't found a new Lupa yet.

There were so many reasons Graham had not made the leap from bodyguard to breakfast snack for me.

This is the creepiest line I've found so far. We're in rapy territory and we're only in chapter three. Great job, Anita. PEOPLE ARE NOT BREAKFAST SNACKS WHY DO YOU THINK THIS WAY.

Once Nathaniel moved from pomme de sang to my animal to call,

WHEN THE FUCK DID THIS HAPPEN?!? I've been READING these books. Admittedly I took a big-ass break from them, but the animal-to-call shit was something I was waiting for. Did I miss it? Did I go blind? DID LKH REALLY JUST DEVELOP SOMETHING MASSIVELY IMPORTANT TO THE SERIES OFFSCREEN?!?

WHAT THE BLEEDING FUCK ANITA.

....it was when you did that tri-whatever thing with Damian and Nathanial. Okay. Not quite offscreen. It's just defined offscreen. Oh, and having Random Ass MotC explain this OFFSCREEN isn't helping. I'm still pissed. And the reason why Anita has to "feed" (aka fuck) so often is apparently none of her current guys "count" as a full meal because they're all tied to her magically. So she needs to screw outside all her important relationships so the important relationships have lots of fuel. Got it?

Anita makes Grahame get on his knees and beg her not to kill him. Our heroine, ladies and gentlemen. She's literally kicking the dog. Okay, werewolf, but still. THIS IS HOW YOU DEVELOP A VILLIAN (lazily). WTH is this doing in a HEROIC character's development? I'd understand if we wanted Anita to be an antihero, but her holier-than-thou attitude makes that impossible. WHAT ARE WE DOING. BOOK SHOULD NOT WORK THIS WAY.

The "begging" turns out to be licking Anita's mouth. I am not making this up. It's explained as wolf behavior, but I'm pretty sure wolf behavior wouldn't be that sexualized.

Also, I've just realized how much of the non-con bullshit is covered under Anita HAVING to stand up for herself. Grahame is submissive to her, so she can't "back down" from this sexualized encounter, which Grahame knows and is taking full advantage of. A LOT of the rapy shit happens because Anita actually standing up for herself and demanding, you know, consent and that her bounderies be respected and the like, would be interpreted as weakness. She has to let these people do these terrible things to her. If she doesn't ,she'd be seen as weak.

Anita. You're packing serious heat. They'd protest once. If they survive, they'd never do it again.

The sexy lick goes on for a few pages.

HELP. ME.

Anita walks off and Grahame follows, demanding sex, and asking why Anita is always mad at him. Uh, maybe it's because she's made it very fucking clear she does not want to fuck you, and you just used wolf-pack business as an excuse to cop a feel. She's got no obligation to sleep with you, dipshit. She's pissed because you won't GO AWAY.

Richard is now forbidding his wolves from carrying guns. Great.

So Grahame informs Anita that there was an emergency in the Circus that made Asher cry out for Jean Claude. He's got no idea what this is, but is worried that JC isn't upstairs yet. The book is much more focused on the who's-fucking-who politics of the (sigh) vampire kiss. Apparently there was an influx of powerful vamps, one of them's pissed, and Grahame is stuck in the middle because fuck if I know.

Anita then acknowledges that it isn't fair for her to keep her men monogamous when she isn't, but fuck if she's going to change.

End of chapter.