Danse Macabre--chapter 21-22

Jean Claude gets to sleep with Anita anyway, and so we get the obligatory freak out when she wakes up and he's dead.

It's so nice how everyone in this series respects everyone else's issues.

There's a bigger problem, however: The Mother of All Darkness is sitting at the foot of Anita's bed. Okay, okay, it's her astral projection, but still.

 Anita asks why MOAD is there. She says Anita "interests" her. Because all roads lead back to Anita. This cycles back and forth for a few minutes. MOAD sighs and says she's "forgotten the knack" of being human, though I'd prefer that maybe she's a little fuzzy on the lyrics to "My Sharona" and wants Anita to help her out.

Then the MOAD turns into the darkness and psychically drowns Anita, and Anita has to call her inner wolf to save her. It does. End of chapter.

Next chapter: Anita wakes up in the bed with Jean Claude and Nate and Micah all around her. It was only a dream.

...at least it didn't end like that.

Her Inner Wolf has decided that it wants to become her Outer Wolf and is now trying to make Anita shape-shift. Everyone starts freaking out because if Anita shifts for the first time she'll *gasp* lose the baby! They dogpile on top of her and somebody dislocates her shoulder. The smell of wolves and leopards calms her down. Nobody takes credit for the injury, though.

I think one day somebody will write a story about a were-whatever that respects the boundaries and physical integrity of other members of its group, and then the world will end. Or at least the paranormal romance industry.

Also: the two dudes that Anita never wanted in her bed are now naked in her bed. Because they're the "only wolves they have" and nobody will let her kick them out.

And then they go call Richard. And I'm actually not pissed off this time because in a crisis involving a potentially new werewolf calling the Alpha is exactly the right thing to do.

Of course he and Jean Claude have to dick around for a few minutes, and Richard has to refuse to help Anita because she's got a large number of naked men in her bed. Jean Claude talks him into assisting. He crouches on top of her, which her wolf assumes means he's dominant to her, and they fight about him getting off for a few minutes.

Anita is having a bona-fide medical emergency. Supernatural, but it's real. Stop with the dick-measuring shit and get her stabilized.

 Then we get a description of her inner wolf and once again, it's...special.

It wasn’t truly white, but the color of cream, with dark markings like a saddle across its back and head. That dark cape was every shade of gray and black intermingled, and even the white and cream wasn’t truly white or cream, but mixed like milk and buttermilk.

...It's many a day I've traveled/ a thousand miles or more/but a wolf with a saddle on/I never saw before. Yeah, that image is kind of priceless. Also: milk and buttermilk. What the blazing blue fuck do you think buttermilk is, Anita? It's milk. It's the same color as milk. It just smells really bad and tastes about the same.

And everyone's all like "Make Anita shift!" And Richard is all "She'll lose the baby" and everyone says "She'll lose the baby anyway" because that's the most important thing when a pregnant woman is in a crisis--the baby. That by all accounts she doesn't actually want.

He let down his shields, not all the way, but as if he blinked metaphysically. I got a glimpse at his emotions, his thoughts, just a glimpse. If I shifted for real, he wouldn’t want me. He valued my humanity, because he felt like he had none. If I shifted, I would cease to be Anita to him. He still didn’t understand that being a werewolf didn’t stop you being a human being.

Nice. Also, the book points out that if Anita shifts for real, and it's wolf, she loses the leopards and Micah. FYI that means Micah is just as much of a shit as Richard. He's never been interested in Anita outside of her role as Nimir-Ra.

Anita decides to call her leopard. She kicks Richard out of bed, though she makes Graham stay because he keeps the wolf calm (Again: I'm imagining Grahame Coats. Being played by Steve Buscemi.) I guess that's that pick decided. Welcome to the harem. You might want to invest in a chastity set up for your penis.

Anita calls the leopard and gets both her inner leopard and her inner lion. The leopard is, naturally, pitch black. Because that's *special*. Apparently there's no way to make a lioness special, so it's just a normal lioness. This, BTW, means that Anita will never ever ever ever EVER shift into a lion.

She gives Nate her inner leopard, but the lion is still there, so she has to call a lion. She gets one of Auggie's people. The guy is Cookie Monster.

I'm not kidding. That's his nickname. He's got blue hair and a Cookie Monster tattoo. We've got a reject from the Sesame Street Porno on our hands.

Auggie's second in command, Octavius--the guy who broke his fingers during the forced orgasm--follows after to scream at Anita for raping his master (AND HIM) and stealing his people. Cookie is all like "Orgasm?!? WHERE" and Anita is just enjoying the view.

Cookie wanders over to the bed, and that's where the chapter ends.

we are 45% of the way through the book. There isn't a plot in sight. HELP.