Claude is powerful, but in plain unarmed combat, shifters beat vampires. Unless they can mind-fuck us, we will win a fight."

I glanced at Jean-Claude to see how he felt about that. He gave the same lovely, blank face. I turned back to Remus. "So, what, you guys get to watch?"

"Do you think this makes me happy?" he said, and his power flared through the room like a hot wind. He closed his eyes, and counted to ten, or something, because the heat vanished. He gave calmer eyes to all of us, but he knew it was mostly me he had to persuade, so he stared at me. The angry defiance, was back in his eyes. "You have no idea how dangerous you could be when you first shift. You won't just be a lycanthrope—that's bad enough, but you'll be this uber-preternatural power. You'll be a shifter with powers over the dead. If you lose control of one power, maybe you'll lose control of all of them. Do you have any idea what could happen?"

I stared up at him, scared, and not liking it. I could be scared, or I could get angry. Guess which I picked. "The beast blocks the necromancy. Once I give in to one hunger that completely, the others go away."

"Are you a hundred percent sure of that?" he asked.

I opened my mouth to say yes, then hesitated.

Micah answered for me, patting my arm as he did so, "No."

No was truthful, but. . . "So what do we do?"

"You have to have at least one shapeshifter with you at all times, someone powerful enough to handle the emergency."

"Handle how?" I asked.

"Keep you from hurting anyone too badly."

"Who's on the list of powerful enough?" I asked.

"Me, Claudia, Fredo, Lisandro, Socrates, Brontes, Bobby Lee, Mickey, Ixion. A lot of the wererats are ex-military and meres. But some of them are better at killing than minimizing the damage." He shrugged. "Claudia and Bobby Lee will be in charge of the list, but I know that you won't be left with just Graham and Clay again. Maybe one of them, but they'll need to be paired up with someone with more real-world experience."

"Real-life experience?" I made it a question.

"Ex-military, mere, ex-cop, professional bodyguard. Raphael recruits from some very hardcore places."

"Narcissus doesn't?" I asked.

Remus shrugged again. "He does now. He lost nearly three hundred men when Chimera took them over. They slaughtered them. Narcissus had a lot of muscle and athletes, but he didn't have many real fighters. One of the reasons that the werehyenas got taken over by such a small force was that they